Methodological naturalism? 31 great scientists who made scientific arguments for the supernatural

F/N: I went searching, and after a few fits and starts (the Dover Trial really needs to be laid to rest . . . ) came across this from ASA in Nov 2009:

http://www2.asa3.org/archive/asa/200911/0224.html [Dr Davis:] >> It is one thing to affirm that design inferences from nature are possible, and even to endorse a few of them oneself. It is another thing to affirm that they are "scientific" inferences, as vs metaphysical or philosophical or theological inferences. As you know, I have myself maintained that design arguments are mainly (if not entirely) of a non-scientific nature, for various reasons, including my belief that without some knowledge of (or some assumptions about) a specific designer it is not possible to draw the inference of design or purpose . . . . I do not believe that design can be "proved" in the sense you seem to require here; it cannot be "compelled," as you say. Asa Gray realized this early on: that Darwinism *does* make it possible, as Dawkins puts it, to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Where Dawkins errs, IMO, is by entirely and constantly failing to acknowledge that one can also be an intellectually fulfilled theist--despite the basic truth of evolution. Indeed, I would say that the inference to design is still more strongly supported than the inference to its absence. Like Polkinghorne (among others), I believe that the whole universe and the its very intelligibility make more sense on theism than on non-theism. Like Polkinghorne, I also believe that the atheists are not idiots: nothing compels them to theism, just as nothing compels me to atheism. Lamoureux holds that nature shouts design, as the Psalmist says, but that spiritual darkness causes the atheist to deny this. Given this, would you say that Lamoureux believes in design inferences, or not?>>

In short, Dr Davis believes [or believed c. 2009 and likely since] design inferences on natural phenomena are possible, but seems to hold that by and large, they are non-scientific. Which in today's world of institutionally dominant and too often domineering a priori evolutionary materialist scientism, will be taken as UN-scientific in many quarters, with a strongly adverse tone. (Never mind the self-referential incoherence of such scientism, before we get to the logical snake swallowing itself from the tail nature of evolutionary materialism. As Lewontin notoriously inadvertently admitted in 1997 when he asserted that hoi polloi should be led to view science as the only begetter of truth.) However, this is manifestly a needless dichotomy and pushing of inductive design inferences on empirically reliable sign to the wrong side of the partition. For, science pivots on inductive reasoning and on empirical evidence fed into that reasoning. Where, some of the strongest and oldest forms of such scientific reasoning take the guise of inference on reliable sign. As long-time UDers will recall, at the start of the UD ID Foundations series, Hippocrates of Cos was brought to bear; where medicine is one of the root disciplines of science. Clipping a backgrounder:

https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/background-note-on-signs-symbols-and-their-significance/ Signs: I observe one or more signs [in a pattern], and infer the signified object, on a warrant: I: [si] –> O, on W a –> Here, as I will use “sign” [as opposed to “symbol”], the connexion is a more or less causal or natural one; e.g. a pattern of deer tracks on the ground is an index, pointing to a deer. (NB, 02:28: Sign can be used more broadly in technical semiotics to embrace “symbol” and other complexities, but this is not needed for our purposes. I am using “sign” much as it is used in medicine, at least since Hippocrates of Cos in C5 BC, i.e. to point to a disease on an objective, warranted indicator.) b –> If the sign is not a sufficient condition of the signified, the inference is not certain and is defeatable; though it may be inductively strong. (E.g. someone may imitate deer tracks.) c –> The warrant for an inference may in key cases require considerable background knowledge or cues from the context. d –> The act of inference may also be implicit or even intuitive, and I may not be able to articulate but may still be quite well-warranted to trust the inference. Especially, if it traces to senses I have good reason to accept are working well, and are acting in situations that I have no reason to believe will materially distort the inference. e –> The process of observation may be passive, where I simply respond to effects of the sign-emitting object; or it may involve active emission of signals or interaction with the object. For instance, we may contrast passive and active sonar sensing here, noting that both modes are used by sea-animals as well as technical systems. (NB: “Object” is here used in a very broad sense [u/d 02:17: it includes objects and credibly objective states of affairs].) f –> A sign can also be iconic, i.e sufficiently resembling [u/d, 02:17: or representing] the object to be recognisable as a representation, as a general class [a rock shaped like a face] or in specific [a sculptural portrait]. [u/d 02:28: In the case of a mace in its rest in Parliament, unless an elaborate form of a former weapon sits there, Parliament is not legitimately in session.] . . .

Where, Hippocrates gave a classic case,

"[If the patient's facial] appearance may be described thus: the nose sharp, the eyes sunken, the temples fallen in, the ears cold and drawn in and their lobes distorted, the skin of the face hard, stretched and dry, and the colour of the face pale or dusky . . . and if there is no improvement within [a prescribed period of time], it must be realized that this sign portends death."

Inductive inference on tested, reliable sign with a sobering predictive element. One that 2500 years later, apparently still holds good. As, these markers are tied to processes that if not checked, naturally end in death. The design inference is about that sort of thing: are there signs such that, on observing them, are good indicators of design as material causal factor per a reasonable inductive warrant? Including, as visible in the world of life and the physics of the cosmos? In 45 above, in response to Dr Swamidass, I commented:

I suggest instead that as far back as Plato in The Laws, Bk X, we see a very different contrast of alternatives from the “natural vs supernatural” one commonly imposed by champions of evolutionary materialistic scientism and/or fellow travellers. Namely, that: a –> per observable, testable signs, b –> one may inductively and properly infer that, c –> material causal factors credibly at work or potentially at work in an aspect of an object, process or phenomenon d –> include natural [= blind chance and/or mechanical necessity] and/or ART-ificial [= intelligent action] forces. Where, e –> The default is first that mechanical necessity and/or blind chance acting on plausible initial and intervening circumstances have led to an observed result. Thus, f –> Per Newton’s rules of reasoning, to infer to a plausible causal explanation of an object or phenomenon whose origin we did not directly observe, we must revert to factors demonstrated to be causally adequate to produce the like or sufficiently like in the here and now . . . a common-sense control on empirically unjustified, ideologically loaded speculation. Also, g –> such an inductive inference is inherently subject to onward further evidence and argument, per Newton’s remarks in his 1704 Opticks, Query 31. To wit: As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, but such as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. For Hypotheses [–> roughly, metaphysical speculations] are not to be regarded in experimental Philosophy. And although the arguing from Experiments and Observations by Induction be no Demonstration of general Conclusions; yet it is the best way of arguing which the Nature of Things admits of, and may be looked upon as so much the stronger, by how much the Induction is more general. And if no Exception occur from Phaenomena, the Conclusion may be pronounced generally. But if at any time afterwards any Exception shall occur from Experiments, it may then begin to be pronounced with such Exceptions as occur. By this way of Analysis we may proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from Motions to the Forces producing them; and in general, from Effects to their Causes, and from particular Causes to more general ones, till the Argument end in the most general. This is the Method of Analysis: And the Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discover’d, and establish’d as Principles, and by them explaining the Phaenomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations. The pivotally relevant issue regarding the design inference is that functionally specific, complex organisation and/or associated information [FSCO/I] and especially digitally coded functionally specific complex information dFSCI, is a commonplace, where we have literally observed trillions of cases of its cause. In EVERY observed case, its cause is purposeful, knowledgeable and skilled, capable intelligent action. For simple instance, consider text strings in English in this thread. (Which are actually adding to the observation base.) When it comes to something where functionally organised specific components must be properly arranged to get a result, such as say the Abu 6500 C3 fishing reel I have commonly used as a case in point, the pattern of part selection, arrangement and coupling can be represented as a string of yes/no questions in some description language. That is, FSCO/I patently has associated quantifiable information. Comparing the atomic resources of the observed solar system [~10^57 atoms] or the observed universe [~10^80 atoms] and fast chemical reaction rates, about 10^-13 – 10^-15 s, we may then readily show that 500 – 1,000 bits of FSCO/I specifies a configuration space of 3.27 x 10^150 – 1.07 x 10^301 states across 13.7 – 13.8 BY, so that islands of function based on specific configuration will be maximally unlikely to be discovered by blind chance and/or blind mechanical necessity. This is because the fraction of states that may be scanned by a random walk, or a dust or a combination or the like, of possible configurations, will be maximally small relative to the scope of search required to credibly find such islands. Where, a search is a sample of a config space by some means. Therefore, the set of possible searches is tantamount to the power set of the space. That is, for a space of scale n, the set of possible searches is of order 2^n. This implies that the search for a golden search is in a far harder space than the direct search. This is the issue pointed out by Dembski when he spoke of search for search, S4S. So, it is reasonable to focus on the direct search as the search for a golden search will be exponentially harder. But of course, intelligent actions routinely produce phenomena that exceed this threshold, 72 – 143 ASCII characters worth of information. As a result, it is reasonable — absent the sort of a priori ideological lockout shown in 29 above — to infer that such FSCO/I beyond such a threshold is a reliable sign of design as material causal factor. On both the trillion member observational base and the search space analysis. The problem of course is that on origins, cell based life is replete with FSCO/I and dFSCI well beyond the 500 – 1,000 bit threshold. The inductive inference, then, is reasonable that cell based life, from the root up to the major branches — body plans clearly require increments of 10 – 100+ mn bits of additional information beyond the 100k – 1 mn bits for a plausible first functional cell based life form — has but one empirically reliable causal explanation: design, working by art, as opposed to blind chance and mechanical necessity. This is independent of debates over common decent degrees up to and including universal common decent. This is controversial, not because it is inductively unsupported, but because there is an acting ideological a priori as was pointed out at 29 above, that patently seeks to lock it out.

That is the pivotal matter on the table, and it needs to be addressed on terms of empirically grounded, inductive inference. Where, it is also so that what is needed is not to independently know the designers potentially involved in a case, but to know from cases, that designers exist and have relevant characteristics that allow them to intelligently direct relevant configurations of components to form functional, often fine tuned wholes. This then allows signs of such design to speak as evidence, pointing directly to design as relevant causal process and onward to the need for credible designers to explain the designs. KF kairosfocus

Dr Davis, Pardon, but I must again observe that context counts, and behaviour that has enabling effect has just that -- enabling effect. The reason why there has been any focus on this document (much less the amount of conspiracy theorising we have seen for 15+ years) is precisely that the fundraising document was seized upon to manufacture a case that design thought had negligible scientific merit and was essentially a grand, fundy, creationist, theocratic christofascist conspiracy. In that interest, truth, fairness and reasonableness were given short shrift, including by bodies that should have known and done better. This is therefore a case of sustained injustice rooted in polarising slander leading to scapegoating, stereotyping and outright bigotry. Therefore, the principle applies, he who is not with me is against me; and, he who gathereth not, scattereth. In short, where one is missing in action where it counts, that counts. Despite protests to the contrary, and even where there is a degree of inadvertence. Where, in this context, to simply allude to "the Wedge document" and go directly to a claim that it outlines a socio-cultural agenda that still obtains, is to imply -- as opposed to, to overtly declare -- endorsement of the set of talking points that would use this to taint the design "movement" as illegitimate from scientific claims on up. If that implication is not intended, then an active statement of balancing is required. Which, was simply not given. (And, kindly cf here, on my notes on addressing news and views media spin. On this, I speak from a background of having to deal, live, with ruthless marxist agit-prop agitators and strategists, as well as with those they swept up in their hysteria, front groups, fellow travellers, useful idiots [the term comes from Lenin] and what has now come to be commonly called astroturfed movements. And, I note, nazi agit prop simply borrowed the marxists' tactics, as did the CIA etc. The marxists were the real innovators. A pattern that continues through the Frankfurt School, the Alinskyites and the cultural marxists and/or "Critical Theory" thinkers of today. All of which I find uncomfortably echoed or even patently manifest in the movements that pivot on hostility to today's design thought. Where, this pattern is so uniformly extremely destructive and dangerous, that once its signs are manifest, prudent, decisive countering action is indicated. And, as turnabout "you hit first" projections, doubling down and willful speaking in disregard to truth in hopes of profiting by what is said or suggested being seen as true are known tactics, bland assurances are nowhere near enough to show differently. No wonder Kant's Categorical Imperative warns against such patterns. ) Further to this, you will observe that from the first, I emphasised a point that Johnson (I believe) did right there in the fund raising document: the first issue is the inductive logic-grounded, scientific investigation-driven design inference. So, the pivotal question is: the basic logical and scientific case that grounds (or fails to ground) the design inference as a conclusion of best current explanation on empirically tested, reliable sign. If that inference on sign holds, modern design thought is inductively and scientifically valid, period. If design theorists are mistaken, then the design "movement" turns on a scientific error. But in neither case is this pseudoscientific fraud and subversive conspiracy. Which, is what is the STANDARD talking point. So, too, it becomes necessary for me to again point out a critical point in the exchange above. For, even after repeatedly drawing attention to the pivotal issue, you -- as with several objectors in this and other recent threads -- have not actually addressed the pivotal matter. Thus, the diagnosis, I am afraid, must remain: your argumentation as presented leaves on the table (even after repeated request to show otherwise) the issue of viewing the design movement through the lurid colours of conspiracy theorism, as fundamentally illegitimate. Yes, you have said "if you knew my published work better, you’d know that I believe ID is raising some important questions about the nature of science, philosophical and theological questions that people shouldn’t be fired for asking." No, I have had no occasion to look at your published work, nor have you given me reason so to do. Even this statement side-steps the matter of the inductive logic based, scientific validity of the basic design inference on sign. And, that, after specific, repeated request. While I appreciate that you, per your testimony, have objected to censorship and career busting, with all due respect, that has not gone anywhere near far enough. The pivotal issue on the table was, is, and will remain: the inductive logic, scientific case regarding the core design inference on empirically tested, reliable sign. Until and unless that is duly focussed per first things first, the dynamic left on the table is that of agit prop delegitimisation through red herrings dragged away to strawman caricatures soaked in ad hominems and set alight to cloud, confuse, poison and polarise the atmosphere. Which, must first be stopped if there is to be reasonable, responsible progress. KF kairosfocus

Ted @194 You write,

So, given that I actually believe that God designed the process of evolution to produce a specific outcome, and given that you (apparently) would be prepared to take that position yourself, if you found the evidence for macro evolution more persuasive, then any disagreements we might have would come down to theology and philosophy, not science: what outcome(s) did God specifically intend? to what extent does God want to put any “play” into the creation, perhaps even for God’s own pleasure? did God specifically plan for human beings with five fingers, two eyes, and one bladder? does the explanatory effectiveness of stochastic models in many branches of science mean that God sometimes “plays dice” with created things?

Again, Ted, the "science" of evolution refers to the Neo-Darwinian mechanism as the cause of biodiversity. And yes, that same mechanism does, by definition, play dice with created things by virtue of its randomness, which cannot produce specificity. Randomness can only produce indeterminancy. So when you include God's Divine action as a way of giving direction to an undirected process, you are violating your own principle of methodological naturalism. In truth, you are making God part of the process since, as I think we both understand, the process alone cannot produce specificity. In other words, the science of evolution, as you conceive it, consists of two causes; the mechanism as a cause, and God's divine activity as a cause. Put another way, you can explain how God achieves his apriori intent only if God is included as part of the scientific explanation. So you (and Robert Russell) are not simply going "beyond" science by including God in your scientific explanation, you are using God's Divine activity as part of solution. The unguided mechanism alone, which would be within the bounds of MN, is powerless to provide a result that corresponds to the Creator's precise intentions. So your explanation (and Russell's explanation) violates your conception of MN, just as ID's explanation violates your conception of MN. The only way to stay consistent with MN is to attribute everything to the mechanism, which can produce only an indeterminate result; but if you do that, you can't get the specified result required by Christianity. StephenB

Ted, thank you again for taking the time to respond: Boyle was arguing on behalf of natural causes/explanations for the operation of certain aspects of nature, not the existence or the coming into being of certain aspects of nature. He did not try to say, nor would he have dared to say, for example, that science ought not to search for causes outside of nature with respect to Big Bang Cosmology or the origin of life, or the DNA molecule. Further, I am sure that he would have had no problem if the Lourdes Commission declares, from time to time, that a certain medical healing cannot be explained by natural causes. All those examples would violate your conception of MN, not his. Bottom line: We cannot count it as part of the history of MN as you and your colleagues try to apply it. StephenB

Excellent writing, Ted, and thoughts, also. jdk

One more for SB@177: "If Robert Russell (and yourself) are using God to explain how the Neo-Darwinian mechanism can produce a specified outcome, that is, if you are making God a part of the scientific explanation so that a purposeless process receives direction, then you are violating the principle of methodological naturalism. You are not studying nature “as if nature is all there is.” The only way to return to methodological naturalism is to take God’s foot out of the door and assign purposeless Neo-Darwinian mechanisms (or some other secondary cause), as the explanatory cause for indeterminate (not specified) outcomes. Why not just take the rational ID position: If macro evolution is true, then God designed the process to produce a specified outcome? That is the only position that makes any sense." Stephen, if you had worded that second paragraph somewhat differently, I might fully agree with you. Here's the edited version as I would put it: Since macro evolution is true, then God must have designed the process to produce a specified outcome. As you may know, a major reason why I do not identify with ID is its deliberate ambivalence on several key scientific questions. Ironically, (probably) most ID experts regard most of those questions as having been answered more than adequately by science; e.g. the age of the earth and the universe(billions, not thousands, of years), the presence of animal death and suffering for long ages before any person sinned, the production of fossils through long geological ages (not in the Flood), or the origin of the universe in "the Big Bang." Officially, ID brackets the epistemic status of all of those things (granted, many ID authors quite properly seize on the Big Bang as very design-friendly piece of science), an attitude that is not designed to instill confidence in someone like me, who studied a lot of physical science. Now perhaps I am not well informed about contemporary ID views, but this is how things were done for some time--is this not so? Add the question of common ancestry (I assume that's what you mean by "macro evolution") to the mix, and I just can't swallow ID whole. IMO those questions, including macro evolution, cover big pieces of very well established science. Could it all be wrong? Yes--Aristotle came crashing down in the 17th century and even Newton was replaced (though the comparison with Aristotle would be a poor one, since there are good reasons why Newtonian physics is still universally taught to physics students). I can do no better than evaluate the evidence as it currently stands, and on those matters mainstream science looks like the best game in town, by far. So, given that I actually believe that God designed the process of evolution to produce a specific outcome, and given that you (apparently) would be prepared to take that position yourself, if you found the evidence for macro evolution more persuasive, then any disagreements we might have would come down to theology and philosophy, not science: what outcome(s) did God specifically intend? to what extent does God want to put any "play" into the creation, perhaps even for God's own pleasure? did God specifically plan for human beings with five fingers, two eyes, and one bladder? does the explanatory effectiveness of stochastic models in many branches of science mean that God sometimes "plays dice" with created things? I have just identified those as philosophical or theological questions, Stephen. As you imply in that first paragraph of yours, I am (with Bob Russell and others) not willing to leave God's foot outside the door in my own thinking. I am more than happy to go "beyond science," to borrow the title of a book by John Polkinghorne, in order to propose possible answers to those big questions, and I believe (with Polkinghorne) that Christian theism not only helps us answer those questions, but that it also offers more satisfactory answers to some other big questions specifically about nature and the science of nature: why does the only universe we've ever detected permit carbon-based life, which allows for creatures capable of realizing that they know about such things? why is science even possible at all? (For more on this, see my series on Polkinghorne at http://biologos.org/blogs/ted-davis-reading-the-book-of-nature/searching-for-motivated-belief-introducing-john-polkinghorne ) So, to cut to the chase in what must be my final comment on this thread: you and I differ (as best I can tell) on whether the design question is fully scientific. I am not able to separate these larger issues from the design question, since for me God (not some abstract intelligent designer) is the only viable candidate for designing a universe and its contents. Whether we think that God designed the whole shebbang or any specific individual part of it, cannot in my mind be separated from questions such as those I just laid out. And science can't answer those questions; there are good reasons why the NSF won't entertain a proposal to put God directly into the laboratory. So--is Darwinism purposeless, in an ultimate sense? Are quantum events purposeless, in an ultimate sense? Is the universe purposeless, in an ultimate sense? I don't think that naturalistic science can say one way or the other, since it's blind to ultimate purpose. Despite the fact that some very noisy scientists (most of whom are almost wholly ignorant of philosophy and theology, I don't hesitate to add) want their readers to think that science shows that there are no ultimate purposes. The best short, electronically available, statement of a view I like is this: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/12/chance-by-design IMO Barr's view exemplifies what Owen Gingerich calls "id, lower case i and lower case d," meaning that scientists aren't crazy or ill-informed to believe that (divine) design is consistent with what we know about nature. However, ID with capital letters comes with a big cultural agenda and the view (which I do not hold) that design inferences are fully scientific. That's probably where we would continue to differ. I know that Barr's beautifully written, deeply thoughtful piece did not go down well here, Stephen. I do not want to revisit that episode. If you didn't like his piece (forgive the understatement), I'm afraid I would not do any better. With that apology, I am signing off this thread. Ted Davis

For SB@177: "Ted, thank you for responding. I realize that you have other things to do, but this is the first time I have ever had a real dialogue with you. If you cannot continue, I will not assume that you had nothing more to say." Thank you for this gracious comment, Stephen. Even in the summer I do have quite limited time for electronic conversation (I always, inevitably, would rather sit down over coffee or tea and talk face to face, which is not just more personal but also much more efficient than typing). I will add just one more comment below and call it a day. Ted Davis

For kf@186: I understand why you reacted strongly to my assertion of the ongoing relevance of the Wedge document, kf. You've followed this issue for a long time, and you've seen many people try to argue from that document that ID is nothing but a right-wing, theocratic conspiracy. So, it's a natural connection to make. However, I made no such connection, and I never have. I've always tried to take ID seriously as both a set of ideas AND as a community upholding a counter-establishment mindset. (There is abundant evidence here and elsewhere of such a dual identity.) Indeed, if you knew my published work better, you'd know that I believe ID is raising some important questions about the nature of science, philosophical and theological questions that people shouldn't be fired for asking. You said flatly that I evaluated the ID agenda as "illegitimate." I said nothing of the sort, nor did I imply it. You drew that inference, by evaluating my statement against the background of your experience with others. OK, I see how that works, but you cannot just equate my views with those of a large number of other ID critics. I do my own thinking, and as some here know I disagree with most scientists and others who just equate ID with YEC, toss the C word as a hand grenade, and think that's the end of the conversation. If I agreed with them, I wouldn't bother to say anything at all on this site. Thus, I entirely reject your conclusion: "So, I must reject and even protest your assertion that I have been merely jumping to unwarranted conclusions." You did not accurately assess my point, and put into my mouth the words of many others. There are not just two "sides" to this issue, kf, but you seem to think there are. All too often that happens in culture wars, and (sadly) in those conflicts the truth is usually one of the first casualties. I have nothing further to add on this point. Readers can see for themselves what I did say, and what I did not say. Ted Davis

This might be useful, from Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 2009: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2007/PSCF9-07Poe.pdf jdk

Stephen @185: You said this: (a) "There are no historical examples of scientists presuming to tell other scientists which methodology they should use or which methodology is necessary for legitimate science." And then immediately afterwards (b) "Thus, there is no history of methodological naturalism. That scientists typically separated God from scientific practice (or included God in scientific practice, which also happened) has nothing at all to do with the point." MY REPLY TO (a): http://biologos.org/blogs/ted-davis-reading-the-book-of-nature/the-miraculous-meniscus-of-mercury Given that Boyle was (1) an extraordinarily devout Christian (acknowledged by all Boyle experts), (2) one of the pioneers of the modern scientific laboratory, and (3) the father of ID (see http://biologos.org/blogs/ted-davis-reading-the-book-of-nature/the-father-of-intelligent-design ), I think the example I am giving you is far from trivial. I could produce many others, including at least one from Kepler, who was as devout as Boyle (something I could not say about very many scientists in any period), but Boyle should suffice to refute claim (a). MY REPLY TO (b): As you know, Stephen, I'm an historian and you are not. And, I've actually published (with Johns Hopkins) an essay on the history of naturalism, though certainly not a recent one. If you don't like what I'm about to say, you can of course keep denying it, but you risk resembling the proverbial ostrich. We do in fact have some partial histories of MN, such as the article I cited by Robert Bishop, the article by Ronald Numbers that VJ (quite uncharacteristically) misinterpreted (with regard to Galileo), an article I wrote twenty years ago with (at that time) Discovery Institute Fellow Robin Collins, and several more such pieces. What we lack is a comprehensive history of MN or even naturalism in various other forms (Collins and I identified four types of naturalism, but others might identify other forms of it). Separating God from scientific practice is indeed part of the history of naturalism, including MN--at least in the opinions of the scholars who work on this topic. Yes, there's more to that history as well; VJ's quotes (most of which have been known to me for many years) are also part of that history. Many Christian scientists (and for my purposes here I mean only Christian scientists who accept the reality of divinely caused miracles) have taken the view that miracles don't belong in scientific accounts. I just gave you chapter and verse on a classic example, which could be multiplied many times. To say that this "has nothing at all to do with the point" is just an arbitrary claim on your part. Anyone who wants to research the history of MN--as several people have already done, but I don't recall seeing any evidence that you have done so in a serious way--certainly needs to study how scientists have consciously erected disciplinary boundaries, just as many other professional groups have, such as physicians, lawyers, clergy, or people in law enforcement. It has everything to do with the point. Ted Davis

Ted Davis @185

I did claim that it’s easy to find pertinent examples of natural philosophers carefully separating science and religion in “another era.” So, you are waiting for me to answer an objection to a point I did not make. That could prove to be a long wait.

Here is the problem, Ted. When you critique ID as science, you define methodological naturalism as a rule of science. However, when I ask you for any historical examples of any similar rule, you change the definition of MN to mean only that scientists have separated God from scientific practice, a historical fact which no one questions..

I cited one (of several) papers in support of my claim.

I already know about the history of scientists separating God from scientific practice. Why do you insist on emphasizing points that everyone knows while you avoid the subject on the table?

My impression of several comments here (by different people) is that my point is not being heard. It’s one thing to disagree with my point; it’s another thing not to understand what I actually said.

I understand what you said very well. Unfortunately, you don’t understand what I am saying. There are no historical examples of scientists presuming to tell other scientists which methodology they should use or which methodology is necessary for legitimate science. Thus, there is no history of methodological naturalism. That scientists typically separated God from scientific practice (or included God in scientific practice, which also happened) has nothing at all to do with the point. StephenB

NOTE: Pardon, I should have "his 2004 paper (three of which he ascribes to Dr Davis [--> Hunt])." My apologies. kairosfocus

PS: It is worth the pause to excerpt my remarks in 165:

Dr Davis, I invite you to explain to us, i/l/o the excerpt at 131 above, how DI in 1999 pursued an illegitimate socio-cultural agenda [and I note that there have been material changes since then as has been noted above from time to time, e.g. the explicit policy that ID should not be taught in schools, which was there by the time of the Dover and KS issues c 2005]. I suggest that such should specifically address the stated pivotal issue of a grounding in scientific research and linked analysis, and the explanatory document here. Further to this, perhaps you can enlighten us as to the legitimacy or otherwise of inductive reasoning, its application to science and thence the validity or otherwise of the design inference on tested, empirically credible signs such as functionally specific complex organisation and/or associated information and fine-tuning, say by responding to 45 above or the like. KF

. . . which responded to Dr Davis at 160:

IMO, the Wedge document remains more than relevant to the larger issues pertaining to ID, b/c it spelled out the cultural agenda that Discovery has been pursuing with its advocacy of ID. The purpose of that document was to declare their vision, in order to solicit funding from sympathetic philanthropists. I have not seen significant evidence that their cultural agenda is any different than it was when the Wedge document was written. If so, then its relevance is ongoing, even though Discovery has changed their view on teaching ID in science classes.

It is noteworthy that Dr Davis has not addressed or linked on the issue of warrant regarding the design inference but has focussed on socio-culrural matters. This is consistent with the general talking-point that the design "movement" is about politics and does not have any scientific case. Indeed, in looking at Axe's corrective to four errors regarding his 2004 paper (three of which he ascribes to Dr Davis), I notice how -- having praised Dr Hunt for actually engaging scientific issues -- he was moved to comment:

Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross, on the other hand, applied Objection 1 to my earlier work without making any attempt to understand the science. Rather, their book Creationism’s Trojan Horse [4] tries to make its anti-ID case with statements like, “Axe’s reference list does not include any known ID proponents”, and “The key words accompanying the abstract, which Axe himself supplied, do not include ‘intelligent design’ or anything remotely suggestive of it.” I guess there’s no need to use a scientific approach if you’re committed to the belief that there’s no connection between ID and science.

It seems to me that the proper priority is to first engage the issue of inductive reasoning, science in that context, and the design inference as a matter in that context. Such materially influences the way one may then address the design "movement." For, a "movement" that is concerned about a serious error of science that energises a destructive socio-cultural agenda is morally very different indeed from a theocratic, christofascist conspiracy that tries to illegitimately hide behind the lab coat and mislead the public through pseudo-science. (And I put things this starkly as that is what needs to be faced.) kairosfocus

Dr Davis, it is a given that the wedge strategy was a strategy. Much has been made of it in a context that overwhelmingly wishes to paint it in the most lurid colours as a right wing, fundy, creationist, christofascist theocratic plot to overthrow freedom, science, and civilisation; in my view (on looking at the matter), improperly. Improperly with implication that people are led away from knowable truth thereby, and also -- given the history of radical secularism over the past 100 years -- that our civilisation is being led into a march of folly on this issue. In a context where those who warn are being marginalised and worse, in part by painting them in unjustified, lurid colours. In that general context, one simply cannot merely neutrally state that such a strategy exists. For, general context colours statements -- that is, silence quite understandably invites the inference of enabling of and/or support for the accusation, nay, the branding or even scapegoating. In addressing said document, I pointed out that it pivots on the inductive logic, scientific case for the design inference -- cf 45 etc above down to 170 and the onward thread on induction. If such is warranted, it is legitimate to raise the issue as an answer to dominant schools of thought and cultural agendas that pivot on the assertion that such design does not exist in the natural world, nor can such be properly inferred on inductive investigation. I have pointed out why I believe the design inference is reasonable and responsible, and I have also pointed out how evolutionary materialism is inherently amoral and how it opens the door to might makes right nihilism. Which, no sane civilisation will entertain. (Which raises serious questions about our civilisation being caught up in a suicidal march of folly.) In that context, it first seems important to look at inductive reasoning (and I have put up a thread for that: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/id-foundations/back-to-basics-of-id-induction-scientific-reasoning-and-the-design-inference/ ) Then, it becomes important to look at scientific reasoning and at the design inference in that context. So also, we see that it is significant to notice the role played by a priori evolutionary materialist scientism and methodological naturalism in the current radical attempt to redefine science and its methods in such a way that the design inference on empirically reliable signs is locked out a priori. So, I must reject and even protest your assertion that I have been merely jumping to unwarranted conclusions. Context counts, KF kairosfocus

SB @57 said, "I am still waiting for Ted Davis, who claims that methodological naturalism is historical, to provide even one example from another era in which the scientific community imposed a universal methodology on its members as a “rule” of science." I never claimed that there was such a "universal methodology" in "another era," Stephen. I assume you were responding to my lengthy comment @6. I did claim that it's easy to find pertinent examples of natural philosophers carefully separating science and religion in "another era." So, you are waiting for me to answer an objection to a point I did not make. That could prove to be a long wait. I cited one (of several) papers in support of my claim. Here's the passage: "one can also pull together lovely examples of natural philosophers and scientists carefully separating God from scientific practice. Here’s a recent paper to that point: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2.....Bishop.pdf " My overall point is simply that VJ's excellent piece (and yes, it's an excellent piece) is part of the story. Likewise, Robert Bishops excellent article is part of the story. I'll add my own point about Robert Boyle. (I note in passing that VJ's summary/analysis of Boyle's position on design arguments in science could have been lifted from a paper I published around 20 years ago. Perhaps it was; he's under no obligation to provide a full bibliography.) Boyle's assistants prepared many private catalogs of his own writings, including those already published and those in progress, in which works were separated into two main categories: natural philosophical (i.e., scientific) and theological. So, the notion that discourse about God was (at least usually) in a different category than discourse about nature was certainly much in his mind. And, he often did not sign his theological works (technically they were anonymous or pseudonymous), perhaps to pay lip service to the official attitude of the Royal Society that politics and religion were out of bounds. My impression of several comments here (by different people) is that my point is not being heard. It's one thing to disagree with my point; it's another thing not to understand what I actually said. Ted Davis

For kf@165, where he said, "Dr Davis, I invite you to explain to us, i/l/o the excerpt at 131 above, how DI in 1999 pursued an illegitimate socio-cultural agenda ..." You've put words into my mouth, kf--one very important word. I never said their agenda was "illegitimate," indeed I did not use any evaluative adjectives in my comment. This is what I said: "MO, the Wedge document remains more than relevant to the larger issues pertaining to ID, b/c it spelled out the cultural agenda that Discovery has been pursuing with its advocacy of ID. " Where did I say or imply anything about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of Discovery's cultural goals relative to ID? If you're going to comment on my statements, kf, please read them more carefully and do not jump to conclusions. Ted Davis

An observation is in order. There is one sense in which methodological naturalism is an appropriate assumption for science, even if one does not define science as "what scientists do" (a circular definition of science, as how does one determine who are scientists except that they do science?). Perhaps the best definition of science is "the study of the reproducible". This allows science to have some powerful advantages, one of which is, others can check your work. If they can't reproduce it, your observations cannot become part of science. Thus there is a check for fraud. Also one can expect that in science, future results can be predicted by studying past results, and unstudied events can usually be assumed to be similar to studied ones (not always; for example, the placebo effect has to be accounted for). If God "intervenes" in nature (IMO takes different actions at times, but it looks from the outside like intervention), but does not do so in reproducible ways, then such events are strictly not part of science, and MN will rightly exclude those events from science. However, there is one sense in which applying MN becomes in fact philosophical naturalism. That pertains to the boundary between science and non-science. The question can be raised, can science ever point beyond itself? If one assumes naturalism, that nature is all there is, was, or ever will be, then science as the study of nature can never point outside itself, and philosophical naturalism is true, and methodological naturalism will keep us from looking for events that will never happen. On the other hand, if there are important truths outside of science, such as non-reproducible events, MN will keep us from even asking the question of whether they exist. With MN, science can never point outside itself, which is a problem if science should point outside itself. I expect thoroughgoing naturalists to laud MN. I find it harder to understand those who do believe in entities and events that are outside the realm of science insisting that MN must always apply. What if science does properly point outside itself? Insisting on MN is then the equivalent of self-blinding. The only way around that problem for a believer in God and at the same time a believer in MN as an absolute rule is an ironclad knowledge that God would never interact with His creation in a detectable, even statistically detectable way. That seems a hard enough lift for a classical theist, but for a believer in the inspiration of Romans 1:20 it looks to me to be impossible. Paul Giem

(Part 2 of 2) Time and time again, God gives sound advice throughout J-C scripture. Do not add or subtract to scripture, (Deut 4:2), (1:3), (4:14), and, “Do not add to his words, or else he will rebuke you, and you will be found a liar.” (Prov 30:6) God said, “You must diligently observe everything that I command you; do not add to it or take anything from it” (Deut 12:32). The reason God is so adamant on this is because “The sum of your word is truth; and every one of your righteous ordinances endures forever. (Psalms 119:160) Jesus/God, answered Satan, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God”’ (Matt 4:4). Not, we live by every word from out of the mouth of Darwin, Hubble and every big banger going. Jesus said, “scripture cannot be annulled.” (Jn 10:35) Jesus used the word “hypocrites” (Matt 15:3-9) for those justifying themselves that they need not keep a commandment to the letter, or to the dot. Concerning divine law, Jesus, as “the truth,” said: _____________________________________________________ Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:17-19) ______________________________________________________ Jesus spoke in obedience to the Father (Jn 12:49-50), keeping all divine law, therefore six means six, otherwise, He did not keep the law verbatim: our salvation is unreliable, as the Word becomes unreliable if we believe in consensus science. As for St Paul, he gives sound advice inspired by the Holy Spirit: _____________________________________________________ “I have applied all this to Apollos and myself for your benefit, brothers and sisters, so that you may learn through us the meaning of the saying, ‘Nothing beyond what is written’, so that none of you will be puffed up in favour of one against another.” (1 Cor 4:6) _____________________________________________________ Theory is now made a justifiable reason to disbelieve divine law. Still, who cares that we may get the plagues for adding and subtracting or even our name removed from the tree of life (Revelation 22:18-19). We have the Big Bang Theory and Darwinism to give us light. The point is vjt, if you or I want to set a standard for judging the word of God with regard to the Creation, then surely, God must also set a standard in how He will judge us, and that can only be as Jesus said, “we live by every word out of the mouth of God,” therefore, we will be judged by that standard. Before God wrote His Word in stone divine law (Exod 19:9-26), He sanctified the Israelites before Moses received them. There is no greater authority for truth in which we must be sanctified (Jn 17:17) and (Jn 14:6). Does the Bible have the Imprimatur and the Nihil Obstat! Clearly not. It just has the word of God describing verbatim that He has written Creation in a stone divine law and given it verbatim. A holy divine law asks us to remember the birth of the Creation over six days; and for His Holy and miraculous creation be remembered every seven days. Today, stamped is evolutionary theory with some form of Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat. How can that be right, especially when such science sets in space and stone unprovable measurements. Meaning, we do not know how such physical datums commonly accepted first arose, and how they came to be in that form, when miracles effect data. Therefore, how much more unreliable are they for resolving questions relating to the history of God’s Creation? We cannot prove or disprove God. There was a beginning, yes, but how God described, and set in law. If one divine law is deemed wrong, or must be tampered with to suit theory, all divine laws must be rejected as untrustworthy. Even an atheist can see that logic. Evolutionism is not even law, relative to the Big Bang theory and Darwinism. Legally, show how dirt changes into life and a worm into a human. Legally, show how an explosion creates order and then life. Please do not say via God, because His law says totally different. Through our God given means to faith we please God. And “the way” must be clear from God, otherwise, we have an excuse to get it wrong. Jesus is “the way” to the Father of Sinai (Jn 14:6). We cannot take a detour through Darwin or Hubble. We have been given divine and apostolic set standards on how to read Judaeo-Christian scripture. Today, Gnostic evolutionary Christianity prevails. If as Christians we rely on the Ten Commandments on our moral and ethics in setting standards, we cannot pick and choose. If, morally, creation in six days is wrong and therefore unethical, cast out must be the rest as “unreliable” for resolving questions relating to ethical standards in today’s world. Either, evolutionary science is unethical relative to Sinai and divine law; or God is unethical relative to such theories. Both cannot be true: they are totally opposite. Surely, our judgement should be just; accurate and truthfully by God’s own standards to His word? Then surely we must try to live by them. Jesus/God, replied to Satan, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”’ (Matt 4:4). That teaching speaks volumes when faced with the perfection of evil, beguilement, deception and consensus theory; the creation myth of fallen humanity which denies miraculous creation on the word of God. Today, we have taken a golden standard, a divine law, and made the Creation finished in six days equal to 13.7 billion years uncompleted, with an ongoing incomplete Sabbath. That is faith in theory, not faith in the word of God. Well, if a theory is the standard to judge every statement of the Judaeo-Christian God, we will destroy the faith, because to make six days equal to 13.7 billion years cannot even begin to be a yardstick. “Nothing beyond what is written, so that none of you will be puffed up in favour of one against another.” Absolutely ignored. We know better. Our evolution theories now are given the equivalent of the Nihil Obstat and the Imprimatur. They are the golden standards for natural creation. We have made the Creation to our own liking, to and with our own fallen standards. Indeed, it is more difficult to disbelieve theory than to believe every word out of the mouth of God. Let’s see, to eat of the tree of knowledge, you will be as God’s. We (Adam and Eve) could not even keep one law in Paradise, let alone Ten from Sinai. God must have known what He was asking. Hence He died keeping the law. If the law is untrue in the slightest, flawed is our salvation and the crucifixion to no avail. If the word of God, given plain and clear will not suffice, nothing will. Thanks vjt for a stimulating and wide reaching OP. mw mw

Thanks vjt for your comments, you make a good point: (Reply 1 of 2) “I’d like to quote a passage to you from the Introduction to The Life of Mary as Seen by the Mystics (compiled by Raphael Brown, Tan Books, Charlotte, North Carolina, 1951). The book has a Nihil Obstat and an Imprimatur. (You can read most of the book online.”) "If these visionaries are unreliable sources for the earthly history of Jesus and Mary, how much more unreliable are they for resolving questions relating to the history of God’s Creation?" _____________________________________________________________ No revelation other than accepted Judaeo-Christian scripture is canonical. My continuing point throughout my contributions is that divine law is the canonical golden standard in relation to the history of the Creation. What the revelations provide is a consistency of dogma in relation to the Creation. That is why they are all totally reliable for determining the “history of God’s Creation,” but not in detail. Oddly enough, (I have the books), one of the visionaries’ writings being given the Imprimatur, and another, the Nihil Obstat. So where does that leave us? ______________________________________________________ When an author wants to publish a religious book, he/she presents it to the local Bishop to be reviewed. The Bishop then gives it to a knowledgeable priest to have it read and corrected if necessary. If corrections are required, it is returned to the author to be corrected. When the priest who reviewed the manuscript (book) is satisfied with the corrections, he writes "Nihil Obstat" on the manuscript. "Nihil Obstat" means "no problem.” When the Bishop is satisfied with the content of the manuscript, he writes "Imprimatur." This word means "Let it be printed.". http://www.catholicdoors.com/faq/qu89.htm ________________________________________________________ By saying, “If these visionaries are unreliable sources for the earthly history of Jesus and Mary, how much more unreliable are they for resolving questions relating to the history of God’s Creation,” you may as well say; ‘if divine law is unreliable for resolving questions relating to the history of God’s Creation, then how much more is unreliable in the rest of scripture to resolving anything? If that be the case, God needs first to save His own word from the confused and distorted disaster we have place it in today. Why does God then allow saintly people to experience such revelations? Why does the Holy Spirit provide similar spiritual gifts, and from Pentecost? Why does Paul teach: “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good.” (1 Thess. 5:19-22) See, http://www.truthortradition.com/articles/things-to-consider-when-receiving-a-prophecy It is “good” to hold fast to that God said He created in six days: that is my whole point. What the revelations did for those women is to reinforce scripture and possibly make their faith stronger. What revelations did to exercise their interior spiritual life; I have no idea. Why God communicates in this way, is a mystery. That He allows flaws and contradictions, must be to do with pride? Pride: we now know better and more clearly than what God said at Sinai. However, in those mystical writings, God has preserved scripture as infallible in its central dogmas. The Creation in six days; at Sinai, the start of regular worship every seven days in remembrance of the holy Creation; the Incarnation; the Virgin birth; the Resurrection, and the Ascension. Three more dogmas connect; Satan, Original Sin and the Judgement. All scripture is inspired by God (2 Tim 3:16) because human nature by itself if flawed. Meaning, God has preserved the truth throughout the history of the creation from the beginning, but not in fallen humanity, in His inspired word. Otherwise, God is the biggest deceiver on the Creation, ever! You mention, vjt; one mystic says crucified was Jesus with four nails, while another says three nails had Him crucified. From my recollection of reading the books, and that of other mystics, an explanation is; used was a fourth nail. Jesus was nailed through one heel to hold the leg down from pulling away, then placed was the other heel on top of the other and both nailed together with a larger nail. Meaning, it was easier for those doing the crucifying. That explanation may be similar to where Jesus was born. One scripture says in a cave, another in a stable. It seems the full picture is given if we understand the stable was over or in front of a cave. It was a stable-cave. Are we to throw out all scripture by a lack of understanding in one small part that is not essential for salvation and that first appears contradictory with another? Any excuse will do for many. A prime question is, what is the most reliable source we have to determine how God created, and its subsequent history. What is the greatest seal and stamp of approval to create truth and authenticity? Surely, it is God’s very own historic word, set in stone, and the only scripture ever written by the finger of God, therefore, having the supreme seal of truth and of utmost holiness and importance. In a sense, the Ten Commandments given at Sinai are the holy of Holy scriptures. They are the origins of all Judaeo-Christian ethics and morals, and for knowing the unknowable; the manner of how the Creation came about. mw

Hi Ted, Have you gotten hold of Douglas Axe's latest book, Undeniable, yet? I would warmly recommend it to you. It represents an enormous advance on the discussion relating to Intelligent Design, and is written in an engaging and persuasive style. It may even change your perspective on what science should be about. vjtorley

mw, You mentioned mystical revelations in your last post. I'd like to quote a passage to you from the Introduction to The Life of Mary as Seen by the Mystics (compiled by Raphael Brown, Tan Books, Charlotte, North Carolina, 1951). The book has a Nihil Obstat and an Imprimatur. (You can read most of the book online.)

The study of history is based primarily on contemporaneous written documents. This work, however, has been compiled entirely from the visions and private revelations of St. Elizabeth of Schoenau (1127?-1164), St. Bridget of Sweden (1303-1373), Venerable Mother Mary Jesus of Agreda (1602-1665) and Sister Anna Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), as recorded in their writings or those of their secretaries... "Even when the Church approves them, they are not to be used as deciding questions of history ... philosophy or theology..." [Quote from The Graces of Interior Prayer, a Treatise on Mystical Theology by Rev. Auguste Poulain S.J. (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1912], Part IV, "Revelations and Visions." - VJT] ...St. Bridget and Mary of Agreda differ as to various details of the Nativity. Sister Anna Catherine Emmerich saw the Savior crucified with three nails, whereas St. Bridget saw four nails. And all three disagree concerning the number of years which the Blessed Virgin lived after the Crucifixion... We may therefore concede with the learned Father Herbert Thurston S.J., that "it seems impossible to treat the visions of Anne Catherine [Emmerich] - or, indeed, any other similar visions, as sources which can contribute reliably to our knowledge of past history."

If these visionaries are unreliable sources for the earthly history of Jesus and Mary, how much more unreliable are they for resolving questions relating to the history of God's Creation? vjtorley

I would also add that science can point to physical patterns that appear to have been arranged for a purpose (ancient hunter's spear, cities buried by a volcano, a sand castle etc. With respect to the latter, a pourposeful intelligent agent is a better explanation than wind, air and erosion. Nature contains many similar patterns, such as a DNA molecule. Just because the first three examples are man made doesn't mean that the patterns they exhibit are substantially different than some patterns in nature.. They aren't. That is the point. Science can make that calculation and can point to purpose in that context. StephenB

Ted

Bob Russell isn’t offering his NIODA idea as a scientific idea, Stephen. He’d be the first to say that it’s a theological idea *about* science, not a scientific idea per se. So, he’s not breaking “my rule.” Furthermore, it’s not “my rule” at all. As I just explained @141, I was simply giving my assessment of how things actually work, my reading of rules that others have made.

Ted, thank you for responding. I realize that you have other things to do, but this is the first time I have ever had a real dialogue with you. If you cannot continue, I will not assume that you had nothing more to say. If Robert Russell (and yourself) are using God to explain how the Neo-Darwinian mechanism can produce a specified outcome, that is, if you are making God a part of the scientific explanation so that a purposeless process receives direction, then you are violating the principle of methodological naturalism. You are not studying nature "as if nature is all there is." The only way to return to methodological naturalism is to take God's foot out of the door and assign purposeless Neo-Darwinian mechanisms (or some other secondary cause), as the explanatory cause for indeterminate (not specified) outcomes. Why not just take the rational ID position: If macro evolution is true, then God designed the process to produce a specified outcome? That is the only position that makes any sense.

If propositions such as Russell’s are within the rules of science, Stephen, then so are books promoting scientific atheism like those of Dawkins, Coyne, and Sam Harris–which also offer religious interpretations of science.

That is exactly what evolutionary biologists do, Ted. They declare that the "science" of evolution is to be understood as a naturalistic process with no purpose or goal. I documented the point earlier on this thread. I invite you to read all the relevant textbooks. However, they don't violate MN because they do, indeed, study nature as if nature is all there is-- No God, no purpose, no Goal. You cannot reasonably say, on the one hand, that you follow “the science,” while at the same time, say that you don’t agree with the evolutionary biologists who define the science. The only way out is to say that the community of biological scientists, 95% of whom are atheist/agnostic, no longer have the right to insist on a universal methodology for all scientists.

IMO, Stephen, your position seems to commit you the proposition that the existence of God and/or ultimate purpose is a claim that science can actually “prove” or “disprove.” Dawkins certainly believes that. I do not. Do you?

That is a fair question. I don’t think that science can prove purpose in or behind nature. The best it can do is point to a cause outside the physical universe. Indeed, that is what Big Bang science does, which violates the principle of MN by the way. MN does not permit the act of alluding to any possible cause outside of nature. However, I do think science can legitimately make a casee for fine-tuning--both for macro-marvels (the fine-tuning constants) and for micro-marvels (Information DNA etc.) which certainly puts the existence of an intelligent designer on the table. That isn't the God of the bible to be sure, but if we add a little philosophy to it, we can show that the designer must be a person. StephenB

Ted

IMO, the Wedge document remains more than relevant to the larger issues pertaining to ID, b/c it spelled out the cultural agenda that Discovery has been pursuing with its advocacy of ID. The purpose of that document was to declare their vision, in order to solicit funding from sympathetic philanthropists. I have not seen significant evidence that their cultural agenda is any different than it was when the Wedge document was written. If so, then its relevance is ongoing, even though Discovery has changed their view on teaching ID in science classes.

' So what? BioLogos' cultural mission is to make Darwinists out of Christians. The difference is that ID can defend its position all day long. BioLogos cannot survive even a modicum of rational scrutiny, as this thread makes clear. That is why everyone is not obsessing over the Wedge Document. By the way, have you come up with any historical examples where the scientific community imposed a universal methodology on other scientists as a rule of science? Of course, you haven't and never will. It's all a smokescreen. StephenB

Thanks, Mung, that you take the time to respond to a "moron," as you say elsewhere (# 71, https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/theistic-evolution/theistic-evolution-all-evolution-no-real-theism/#comment-614284) However, following my main comments # 150, (to recap):- “Let’s apply your logic to the resurrection. In an instant Jesus created a brand new species of human, regenerating himself from the dead with a body that is duality, a super creation. That is, a body able to transcend both the spiritual and physical realms. Did He use unguided evolution to create anything about His new Self? Where did He get His cues from when He was dead? The Father at Sinai, was, is and remains a six day creationist. The Son died keeping divine law.” _____________________________________________________ you reply # 152: "First, I deny that Jesus created a brand new species of human. Second, even if Jesus did create a brand new species of human, that’s one new species since the Creation." #71 _______________________________________________________ I perceive you edge your bets! There is only one humankind. You overlook the fact, that His resurrection was the second God-Man species. His first; at the Incarnation, when the Godhead became God-Man, physically bound with flesh. Also, are you not confusing species with varieties or kinds? Even Darwin had difficulty distinguishing between, the words, and the word “kind,” he avoided like the ten plagues of Egypt. _______________________________________________________ “Darwin’s failure to define a major term in his seminal work, On the Origin of Species, is not surprising. The true origin of every species is the Creator, the God of the Bible. The difficulties in defining the term “species” has more to do with the failure of evolution to adequately explain what we see in nature as well as what we have seen documented in the fossil record.” http://www.creationstudies.org/Education/darwin_couldnot_define_species.html ________________________________________________________ However, the original "moron" according to a plain reading of divine law, you must also tar: that is God the Creator/Jesus, and His divine law which He wrote in Stone at Sinai, as “I am.” He created in six days, the original YEC’ist. Still, to imply written were the Ten Commandments by a "moron" would be blasphemy if divine law is true, as said. Mung, I am not asking you to believe what I believe, only to try and at least understand my logic to a belief, which I readily acknowledge is not mainstream by today's sieve-like evolutionist logic. Nevertheless, Mung, you do me honour by classing me as a “moron.” Jesus said: "blessed are those who mock and say all manner of things against you, for great is your reward in heaven." And believe me Mung, I have had worse said in The Catholic Times, (England). Irrespective, if calling me a "moron" makes you feel better: fine. However, from my own experiences of being drawn or influenced by evolutionism, it was the realisation that true origin is set in a divine law that really sank home with me. At that point, scripture became clear and sound. No fancy footwork needed to get around things. For me, the cosmic measurements do not reflect or take into account a vast maturing miracle. Miracles affect data. The beginning miracle affects data big time. I believe we live in the matured wine of six-day creation. The yoke is easy and the burden light. Anyway, to finish, five “moron” woman to consider who were given mystical understandings of Genesis. Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) was the second woman to do so, and the first English woman to write a book in English, of the mystical “Revelations of Divine Love.” Saint Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), made Doctor of the Church 2012, in Scivias and Book of Divine Works was given an understanding of Genesis and John 1:1. Venerable Mary of Agreda (1602-1665) in The Mystical City of God, through the Holy Mother. Stigmatic Blessed Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824) in The Life of Jesus Christ and Biblical Revelations. St. Bridget (1303-1323), Patron Saint of Europe, wife and mother of eight children, was the only women ever to found a religious Order, Ordo Sanctissimi Salvatoris. She may also be called the patron saint of failures. “The value of St Bridget's Revelations, sometimes the object of criticism Venerable John Paul II explained in his Letter Spes Aedificandi: ‘The Church, which recognized Bridget's holiness without ever pronouncing on her individual revelations, has accepted the overall authenticity of her interior experience’” (n. 5). https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20101027.html No doubt, Mung, the Patron Saint of Europe is a “moron” also? mw

PS: I clip from 170, cf context:

scientific investigations seek ever more accurate and comprehensive descriptions, set in the context of ever improved explanatory constructs . . . sometimes laws, sometimes models, sometimes theories; though such terms can be frustratingly loose in meanings. Such, should demonstrate empirical reliability through accurate predictive power, but we must recognise this is not establishment of truth beyond correction. Such considerations provide crucial background for the design inference. That inference, made in a scientific context, points to observable phenomena such as functionally specific complex organisation and/or associated information, or digitally coded functionally specific information, or fine-tuning. On a base of trillions of observations, once we are beyond a reasonable threshold of complexity [500 – 1,000 bits works] we see that consistently such results from intelligent cause and not from blind chance and/or mechanical necessity. Analysis of search space challenges on the gamut of our observed cosmos or the solar system [our effective universe for chemical level atomic interactions], suggests strongly that the reason for that is, the search challenge is too high for blind forces, but intelligently directed configuration — aka, design — readily achieves such results. The comments in this thread show many cases in point. At root, then, the design inference is little more than expressed willingness to trust that base of observations and its analytical context. That is, we see here inference to a general or particular conclusion on tested, empirically reliable sign. This applies to the world of life, and to features of the observed cosmos . . . . anyone who uses the Internet is familiar with coded text strings and the general causal source of such: intelligently directed configuration. Many are familiar with information processing machines that make such codes work. So, when we turn to the world of the living cell and observe similar codes and processing using molecular nanotechnology, the impression of design is overwhelming. The design inference with a threshold of sufficient complexity that it is maximally unlikely that blind chance and/or mechanical necessity are credible as material cause, follows as a simple induction. And a strongly supported one, we have trillions of cases in point. To test and overthrow it, it would be necessary to show that forces of blind chance and/or mechanical necessity have sufficed to create such FSCO/I per our observation. That has never been done and in fact models for origin of cell based life and/or of major body plans have been put forth as reigning orthodoxy in spectacular violation of Newton’s common-sense rules of reasoning. Here, that we should only permit as explanatory constructs regarding things we see as traces of the remote past etc, that are shown to be capable of the like effects here and now. This prevents us from putting up metaphysical speculations without warrant that proposed causes are capable of relevant effects. How this was done, per fair comment, was through the injection of an exclusionary rule, multiplied by a polarising prejudice. That is, the suspicion of “the supernatural,” led to the imposition of methodological naturalism which permits only naturalistic causal explanations. So, even though blind chance and/or mechanical necessity have never been actually shown to have power to create FSCO/I beyond 500 – 1,000 bits, that is the only class of explanation allowed. For, “god of the gaps” and “the supernatural” are strictly forbidden and suspect. (And in context it is no coincidence that the timeline for this seems to be across C19, as VJT supports in the OP above.) Only, ever since Plato in The Laws bk X, it has been well known that another way to dichotomise causal factors is natural [= blind chance and/or mechanical necessity] vs the ART-ificial [= intelligently directed configuration]. Where, we exemplify but do not exhaust possibilities for intelligent design. So, we need to start over, from the basics.

Cf context. kairosfocus

JDK, The imposition of a naturalistic ideology on science is material, especially as the design inference is an empirically grounded, inductive one. I again highlight the NSTA Board declaration, July 2000, as this gives key context:

The principal product of science is knowledge in the form of naturalistic concepts and the laws and theories related to those concepts . . . . [S]cience, along with its methods, explanations and generalizations, must be the sole focus of instruction in science classes to the exclusion of all non-scientific or pseudoscientific [--> loaded word that cannot be properly backed up due to failure of demarcation arguments] methods, explanations, generalizations and products [--> declaration of intent to ideologically censor education materials] . . . . Although no single universal step-by-step scientific method captures the complexity of doing science, a number of shared values and perspectives characterize a scientific approach to understanding nature. Among these are a demand for naturalistic explanations supported by empirical evidence that are, at least in principle, testable against the natural world. Other shared elements include observations, rational argument, inference, skepticism, peer review and replicability of work [--> undermined by the question-begging ideological imposition and associated censorship] . . . . Science, by definition, is limited to naturalistic methods and explanations and, as such, is precluded from using supernatural elements [--> question-begging false dichotomy, the proper contrast for empirical investigations is the natural (chance and/or necessity) vs the ART-ificial, through design] in the production of scientific knowledge.

Also, observe 170 which has been headlined. Particularly note the imposed violation of Newton's Rules. 45 above is also very relevant. KF kairosfocus

kf writes,

Perhaps you missed the controlling significance of “NATURAL explanations.

No, I didn't "miss" that. That was the central statement of the standards, and we spent considerable time explaining and defending that definition. Also, kf keeps talking about the inductive nature of science. Benchmark 3.2 addresses this. I don't think anyone doubts that science is an inductive enterprise. The student ...

2. demonstrates a knowledge that scientific method historically proceeded from an inductive approach rather than a deductive approach. a. With the deductive method, scientists start with axioms - simple true statements about the way the world works. Galileo and his contemporaries realized that, for science, the problem was that it was enormously difficult to begin with "simple true statements about the way the world works". In fact, they realized that the simple true statement should be the goal of science, not the starting place. Since the 1600s to the mid 1900s, the inductive method has been incredibly successful in investigating nature.

jdk

170 headlined for discussion: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/id-foundations/back-to-basics-of-id-induction-scientific-reasoning-and-the-design-inference/ kairosfocus

F/N: It seems advisable to again go back to basics, here, inductive reasoning and why it has significance in scientific work; which then has implications for the design inference. A good point to begin is IEP in its article on induction and deduction (which gives the modern view on induction . . . the old view of generalisation has been superseded):

A deductive argument is an argument that is intended by the arguer to be (deductively) valid, that is, to provide a guarantee of the truth of the conclusion provided that the argument's premises (assumptions) are true. This point can be expressed also by saying that, in a deductive argument, the premises are intended to provide such strong support for the conclusion that, if the premises are true, then it would be impossible for the conclusion to be false. An argument in which the premises do succeed in guaranteeing the conclusion is called a (deductively) valid argument. If a valid argument has true premises, then the argument is said to be sound . . . . An inductive argument is an argument that is intended by the arguer merely to establish or increase the probability of its conclusion. In an inductive argument, the premises are intended only to be so strong that, if they were true, then it would be unlikely that the conclusion is false. There is no standard term for a successful inductive argument. But its success or strength is a matter of degree, unlike with deductive arguments. A deductive argument is valid or else invalid. The difference between the two kinds of arguments does not lie solely in the words used; it comes from the relationship the author or expositor of the argument takes there to be between the premises and the conclusion. If the author of the argument believes that the truth of the premises definitely establishes the truth of the conclusion (due to definition, logical entailment, logical structure, or mathematical necessity), then the argument is deductive. If the author of the argument does not think that the truth of the premises definitely establishes the truth of the conclusion, but nonetheless believes that their truth provides good reason to believe the conclusion true, then the argument is inductive . . .

In short, deductive arguments infer step by step conclusions through criteria of entailment relative to premises. Inductive arguments instead pivot on providing good reason for supporting a conclusion, even absent deductive validity multiplied by truth of premises leading to sound argument and logically certain conclusions. Of course, the truthfulness of premises and how such are to be established is always an issue; especially as infinite logical regress of successive challenges to premises is futile and circularity of such a chain is also futile. In part, we appeal to the fund of our experience and assert plausible claims. We may put up self-evident claims, on grounds that to deny X immediately, patently lands in absurdity so we go with the point that once we understand X we see it is so on pain of absurdity. (Think here on the consequences of distinct identity of say a bright red ball, A, on a table and the dichotomy of the world W = {A|~A}.) But in many cases, we accept claims based on induction, e.g. ravens are blacks, per reliable empirically grounded generalisation. Where, obviously, we may modify should we encounter a white or green one, etc. That is, encountering some x such that x is non-black but also a Raven would disconfirm the generalisation that Ravens are black. (Famously, this happened with the black swans of Australia; for, Swans are white.) Likewise, it is not a certainty beyond possible doubt that there will be a sunrise on the morrow. A related concept is abduction, where on a cluster of otherwise puzzling facts f1, f2 . . . fn, if E were asserted, these would all follow, so we regard the facts as [provisionally] providing support for the explanation. And as the body of facts widens, we seek the best of competing, empirically reliable, well-supported explanations. This is an inductive argument, and it is crucial to scientific, forensic, historical and many other contexts of reasoning. In this context we may see that scientific investigations seek ever more accurate and comprehensive descriptions, set in the context of ever improved explanatory constructs . . . sometimes laws, sometimes models, sometimes theories; though such terms can be frustratingly loose in meanings. Such, should demonstrate empirical reliability through accurate predictive power, but we must recognise this is not establishment of truth beyond correction. Such considerations provide crucial background for the design inference. That inference, made in a scientific context, points to observable phenomena such as functionally specific complex organisation and/or associated information, or digitally coded functionally specific information, or fine-tuning. On a base of trillions of observations, once we are beyond a reasonable threshold of complexity [500 - 1,000 bits works] we see that consistently such results from intelligent cause and not from blind chance and/or mechanical necessity. Analysis of search space challenges on the gamut of our observed cosmos or the solar system [our effective universe for chemical level atomic interactions], suggests strongly that the reason for that is, the search challenge is too high for blind forces, but intelligently directed configuration -- aka, design -- readily achieves such results. The comments in this thread show many cases in point. At root, then, the design inference is little more than expressed willingness to trust that base of observations and its analytical context. That is, we see here inference to a general or particular conclusion on tested, empirically reliable sign. This applies to the world of life, and to features of the observed cosmos. NWE has a useful summary of the general conclusion, i.e. design theory:

Intelligent design (ID) is the view that it is possible to infer from empirical evidence that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection" [1] Intelligent design cannot be inferred from complexity alone, since complex patterns often happen by chance. ID focuses on just those sorts of complex patterns that in human experience are produced by a mind that conceives and executes a plan. According to adherents, intelligent design can be detected in the natural laws and structure of the cosmos; it also can be detected in at least some features of living things. Greater clarity on the topic may be gained from a discussion of what ID is not considered to be by its leading theorists. Intelligent design generally is not defined the same as creationism, with proponents maintaining that ID relies on scientific evidence rather than on Scripture or religious doctrines. ID makes no claims about biblical chronology, and technically a person does not have to believe in God to infer intelligent design in nature. As a theory, ID also does not specify the identity or nature of the designer, so it is not the same as natural theology, which reasons from nature to the existence and attributes of God. ID does not claim that all species of living things were created in their present forms, and it does not claim to provide a complete account of the history of the universe or of living things. ID also is not considered by its theorists to be an "argument from ignorance"; that is, intelligent design is not to be inferred simply on the basis that the cause of something is unknown (any more than a person accused of willful intent can be convicted without evidence). According to various adherents, ID does not claim that design must be optimal; something may be intelligently designed even if it is flawed (as are many objects made by humans). ID may be considered to consist only of the minimal assertion that it is possible to infer from empirical evidence that some features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent agent. It conflicts with views claiming that there is no real design in the cosmos (e.g., materialistic philosophy) or in living things (e.g., Darwinian evolution) or that design, though real, is undetectable (e.g., some forms of theistic evolution). Because of such conflicts, ID has generated considerable controversy.

Of course, apart from cosmological design thought tracing to the 1950's and growing ever since, the modern school of thought began with Thaxton et al in the mid 80's, then was extended across the 90's by Dembski, Axe, Behe, Meyer and others. In the past 16 years, it has in fact created a growing body of published research. Often, in the teeth of determined opposition and outright censorship. However, the core argument is readily accessible. For instance, anyone who uses the Internet is familiar with coded text strings and the general causal source of such: intelligently directed configuration. Many are familiar with information processing machines that make such codes work. So, when we turn to the world of the living cell and observe similar codes and processing using molecular nanotechnology, the impression of design is overwhelming. The design inference with a threshold of sufficient complexity that it is maximally unlikely that blind chance and/or mechanical necessity are credible as material cause, follows as a simple induction. And a strongly supported one, we have trillions of cases in point. To test and overthrow it, it would be necessary to show that forces of blind chance and/or mechanical necessity have sufficed to create such FSCO/I per our observation. That has never been done and in fact models for origin of cell based life and/or of major body plans have been put forth as reigning orthodoxy in spectacular violation of Newton's common-sense rules of reasoning. Here, that we should only permit as explanatory constructs regarding things we see as traces of the remote past etc, that are shown to be capable of the like effects here and now. This prevents us from putting up metaphysical speculations without warrant that proposed causes are capable of relevant effects. How this was done, per fair comment, was through the injection of an exclusionary rule, multiplied by a polarising prejudice. That is, the suspicion of "the supernatural," led to the imposition of methodological naturalism which permits only naturalistic causal explanations. So, even though blind chance and/or mechanical necessity have never been actually shown to have power to create FSCO/I beyond 500 - 1,000 bits, that is the only class of explanation allowed. For, "god of the gaps" and "the supernatural" are strictly forbidden and suspect. (And in context it is no coincidence that the timeline for this seems to be across C19, as VJT supports in the OP above.) Only, ever since Plato in The Laws bk X, it has been well known that another way to dichotomise causal factors is natural [= blind chance and/or mechanical necessity] vs the ART-ificial [= intelligently directed configuration]. Where, we exemplify but do not exhaust possibilities for intelligent design. So, we need to start over, from the basics. KF PS: Functionally specific, complex organisation can be reduced to information content by seeing configurations as strings of y/n questions in a description language that specifies parts, arrangements and coupling in a functional network. Orgel put this on the table back in 1973. kairosfocus

Dr Torley Here is Tesla's own words..... http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jul/teslaauto05.html "The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power. My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible; therefore I devoted the next few months to the study of this work." Tesla finding truth in the bible "At this time I made a further careful study of the Bible, and discovered the key in Revelation. Andre

Dr Torley So what do you make of Pasteur's quote? “Posterity will one day laugh at the sublime foolishness of the modern materialistic philosophy. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory.” Andre

Ted, it's irrelevant to the scientific question. If someone thinks otherwise, then the only recourse is to walk through a piece of evidence, and they can point out when the wedge document takes over systematic reasoning, or enters into our measurement of the natural world. It's a losing proposition. If someone wants say that ID is non-scientific and attack it with the irrelevant, then they can be asked to engage what is actually relevant as well. They can make their points in front of the science, or they can't. Upright BiPed

jdk @ 161, Yes, I agree. From my perspective, when you see a chaotic pattern, you can only work with the data using statistical analysis. Good point. jdk @ 162, While I deplore political strategies applied to science and education, how should thoughtful people resist ideologues who have already o Permeated education with failed social experiments on children that with devastating social consequences for which they deny any culpability? o Changed historical climate data to justify an authoritarian bureaucracy making arbitrary and destructive responses to misrepresented threats? o Held back scientific progress by stubbornly clinging to an obsolete 19th century theory that extrapolates variation in species as the magical source of DNA, epigenetics, cellular biology, biochemical cycles, and body plans, all within impossibly short periods of time? And now, these same ideologues and their successors that implemented these disasters are in predictably hysterical opposition to another group that proposes to implement a political offensive with contrary goals, calling it indoctrination (gasp) as if what they themselves did wasn't the same type of thing. No sympathy here. -Q Querius

Dr Davis, I invite you to explain to us, i/l/o the excerpt at 131 above, how DI in 1999 pursued an illegitimate socio-cultural agenda [and I note that there have been material changes since then as has been noted above from time to time, e.g. the explicit policy that ID should not be taught in schools, which was there by the time of the Dover and KS issues c 2005]. I suggest that such should specifically address the stated pivotal issue of a grounding in scientific research and linked analysis, and the explanatory document here. Further to this, perhaps you can enlighten us as to the legitimacy or otherwise of inductive reasoning, its application to science and thence the validity or otherwise of the design inference on tested, empirically credible signs such as functionally specific complex organisation and/or associated information and fine-tuning, say by responding to 45 above or the like. KF PS: I draw attention to Walker and Davies:

In physics, particularly in statistical mechanics, we base many of our calculations on the assumption of metric transitivity, which asserts that a system’s trajectory will eventually [-->; given "enough time and search resources"] explore the entirety of its state space – thus everything that is phys-ically possible will eventually happen. It should then be trivially true that one could choose an arbitrary “final state” (e.g., a living organism) and “explain” it by evolving the system backwards in time choosing an appropriate state at some ’start’ time t_0 (fine-tuning the initial state). In the case of a chaotic system the initial state must be specified to arbitrarily high precision. But this account amounts to no more than saying that the world is as it is because it was as it was, and our current narrative therefore scarcely constitutes an explanation in the true scientific sense. We are left in a bit of a conundrum with respect to the problem of specifying the initial conditions necessary to explain our world. A key point is that if we require specialness in our initial state (such that we observe the current state of the world and not any other state) metric transitivity cannot hold true, as it blurs any dependency on initial conditions – that is, it makes little sense for us to single out any particular state as special by calling it the ’initial’ state. If we instead relax the assumption of metric transitivity (which seems more realistic for many real world physical systems – including life), then our phase space will consist of isolated pocket regions and it is not necessarily possible to get to any other physically possible state (see e.g. Fig. 1 for a cellular automata example).

[--> or, there may not be "enough" time and/or resources for the relevant exploration, i.e. we see the 500 - 1,000 bit complexity threshold at work vs 10^57 - 10^80 atoms with fast rxn rates at about 10^-13 to 10^-15 s leading to inability to explore more than a vanishingly small fraction on the gamut of Sol system or observed cosmos . . . the only actually, credibly observed cosmos]

Thus the initial state must be tuned to be in the region of phase space in which we find ourselves [--> notice, fine tuning], and there are regions of the configuration space our physical universe would be excluded from accessing, even if those states may be equally consistent and permissible under the microscopic laws of physics (starting from a different initial state). Thus according to the standard picture, we require special initial conditions to explain the complexity of the world, but also have a sense that we should not be on a particularly special trajectory to get here (or anywhere else) as it would be a sign of fine–tuning of the initial conditions. [ --> notice, the "loading"] Stated most simply, a potential problem with the way we currently formulate physics is that you can’t necessarily get everywhere from anywhere (see Walker [31] for discussion). ["The “Hard Problem” of Life," June 23, 2016, a discussion by Sara Imari Walker and Paul C.W. Davies at Arxiv.]

kairosfocus

F/N: It seems I need to again point to the (studiously ignored) concerns put on the table by Plato in The Laws, Bk X, c 360 BC . . . which unfortunately find all too many echoes in the past 100 years, including in the distortion of rights, law and policy that are the context of the ongoing abortion holocaust (at a rate of 50+ mn per year) -- proof positive that we live in a dark, dark cave, under the spell of manipulative shadow shows:

Ath [in The Laws, Bk X]. . . .[The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art . . . [such that] all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only [ --> that is, evolutionary materialism is ancient and would trace all things to blind chance and mechanical necessity] . . . . [Thus, they hold] that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.-

[ --> Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT, leading to an effectively arbitrary foundation only for morality, ethics and law: accident of personal preference, the ebbs and flows of power politics, accidents of history and and the shifting sands of manipulated community opinion driven by "winds and waves of doctrine and the cunning craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming . . . " cf a video on Plato's parable of the cave; from the perspective of pondering who set up the manipulative shadow-shows, why.]

These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might,

[ --> Evolutionary materialism -- having no IS that can properly ground OUGHT -- leads to the promotion of amorality on which the only basis for "OUGHT" is seen to be might (and manipulation: might in "spin") . . . ]

and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [ --> Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality "naturally" leads to continual contentions and power struggles influenced by that amorality at the hands of ruthless power hungry nihilistic agendas], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is,to live in real dominion over others [ --> such amoral and/or nihilistic factions, if they gain power, "naturally" tend towards ruthless abuse and arbitrariness . . . they have not learned the habits nor accepted the principles of mutual respect, justice, fairness and keeping the civil peace of justice, so they will want to deceive, manipulate and crush -- as the consistent history of radical revolutions over the past 250 years so plainly shows again and again], and not in legal subjection to them [--> nihilistic will to power not the spirit of justice and lawfulness].

The truth is, we are responsible, rationally free beings -- on pain of reasoned discussion collapsing in self referential absurdity. Thus, we have to find a grounding for the moral order other than delusions tied to might and manipulation make right, truth, rights, meaning, value, knowledge etc. This can only be at the root of reality, on pain of the IS-OUGHT gap in Hume's guillotine argument. That is, we must find a world-root IS capable of bearing the awesome weight of ought. A necessary being is that inextricably also grounds ought. Coming back to the issue of rights, a right is a binding moral claim and expectation that we be respected in some regard connected to our inherent worth and dignity as human beings. (The first of these being, life, without which there can be no other rights.) That is, my right entails your duty and the converse. Immediately, might and manipulation fail the test, and so necessarily, views that imply this. Including -- as Plato points out -- evolutionary materialism. (And it is no accident to see that a key plank in the abortion on demand agenda has been the effective, often implicit dehumanisation of the unborn child. And, unpleasant though this is, this case is the most relevant that there is.) Furthermore, we find a key answer to attempts to manufacture "rights" for politically correct special interests that are then forced on the rest of us under false colours of law, science and the like. Namely, as my rights claim entails your duty and the converse, we must ever and always avoid claiming rights that would force others to do or enable evils. (The current case of a pharmacy being in court over attempts to force it to carry abortion-inducing drugs is sadly, aptly, illustrative.) That is, to justly claim a right, we must manifestly be in the right. Many, many currently politically correct agendas cannot meet this test, with abortion on demand being at the head of the list. And, manifestly, anything that builds on or is built on enabling schemes of thought and cultural agendas that turn on the premise, might and manipulation make right etc, cannot pass this test. Which, patently, includes evolutionary materialist scientism and its fellow travellers. It is time for serious rethinking on where we are taking our civilisation. And in that rethinking, we should ponder a lesson I learned from the grim deterioration of my homeland: bloodguilt is among the most corrupting influences there is. (Only redemption and reformation can deliver us from its tentacles.) The patent mass bloodguilt of our civilisation cries up from the ground against us. KF kairosfocus

JDK (attn VJT), Perhaps you missed the controlling significance of "NATURAL explanations." (As in, in effect, naturalistic. The ideological censorship is there.) Observe the ideologically overthrown 2005 definition, which -- by its contrast, brings out the loading:

“Science is a systematic method of continuing investigation, that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building, to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena.

This does not push in evolutionary materialistic scientism, and is consonant with the sort of standard definitions that are reflected in high quality dictionaries published before the recent controversies and utter radicalisation of science education, e.g.:

science: a branch of knowledge conducted on objective principles involving the systematized observation of and experiment with phenomena, esp. concerned with the material and functions of the physical universe. [Concise Oxford, 1990 -- and yes, they used the "z" Virginia!] scientific method: principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge [”the body of truth, information and principles acquired by mankind”] involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses. [Webster's 7th Collegiate, 1965]

I suggest that the reader cf here on, on this case and others of like order. KF PS: I am inclined (on current balance) to the view that the cover did carry the title Wedge (assuming that the decorative cover is legitimate), but the lack of a title at the head of the article inside led to multiple [no-]titlings, none [DI . . . as close to an author as we will get], "Wedge Document" [objectors], "Wedge Strategy" [others, likely objectors]. Then, when it comes to misrepresentation, deliberate distortion, speaking in disregard to truth in hope that what is said or suggested is taken as true and the like, tantamount to fraud in the moral sense on matters connected to the ID controversy, unfortunately NCSE -- e.g. "Creationism in a cheap Tuxedo" etc -- is directly implicated and is untrustworthy. ACLU is directly responsible for the distortions and misrepresentations used by Judge Jones in his notorious 2005 ruling, which is directly related to the issues in the OP. Likewise, obvious agit prop front groups such as "XX Citizens for Science [Edu]" or the like are to be viewed with caution. Thus, in my view NCSE does not meet the criterion to be a sound chain of custody, similar to Anti Evo. PPS: In my further considered view, anything which inserts so-called methodological naturalism into the praxis, perception or teaching of science, is ideologically loaded with a censorship that directly undermines the ability of science and students of science to seek the truth unfettered by ideological censorship. The very need for the OP above is abundant proof of the point. PPPS: I notice, we are still off on a side-track and what 100 or so comments later, we can find no serious engagement of the pivotal issue of inductive reasoning and the empirical basis for science, thence the core design inference. We can likely take it to the bank that the absence of even a link to what would be a widely trumpeted triumph on the merits readily seen at ID objector sites is a case of the dog that did not bark. It is obvious from the studied silence, that there is lack of confidence that objections to the inductive nature of the design inference cannot stand scrutiny in a forum such as this. In absence of squarely addressing this, the sort of ideological projections manifest in distortions of the substance of the 1999 DI CSC fundraising proposal in order to try to discredit ID, speak revealing volumes. kairosfocus

Yes to what Ted said. In fact the following sentences from the Wedge document accurately describe the position of quite a few people here, and are the subject of some of the most lengthy threads:

Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment. This materialistic conception of reality eventually infected virtually every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and art The cultural consequences of this triumph of materialism were devastating. Materialists denied the existence of objective moral standards, claiming that environment dictates our behavior and beliefs. Such moral relativism was uncritically adopted by much of the social sciences, and it still undergirds much of modern economics, political science, psychology and sociology. Materialists also undermined personal responsibility by asserting that human thoughts and behaviors are dictated by our biology and environment. The results can be seen in modern approaches to criminal justice, product liability, and welfare. In the materialist scheme of things, everyone is a victim and no one can be held accountable for his or her actions.

jdk

Q writes,

The scientific method involving direct observation of the effects of a change in a single variable is the best way of understanding natural phenomena

Actually, chaos theory has shown that this is not true any longer, even though what you have stated is the traditional place where science starts, and which has worked very well in many situations. That is, the simple, traditional (and powerful) technique is to isolate one variable while holding all others fixed, and see what happens. However, in the real world, in the types of situations to which chaos theory applies, variables change all at once, as a system (and often as a non-linear, differential system). In this case, the results of chaos theory can hold in ways that the simple one-variable-at-a-time method would never reveal. jdk

IMO, the Wedge document remains more than relevant to the larger issues pertaining to ID, b/c it spelled out the cultural agenda that Discovery has been pursuing with its advocacy of ID. The purpose of that document was to declare their vision, in order to solicit funding from sympathetic philanthropists. I have not seen significant evidence that their cultural agenda is any different than it was when the Wedge document was written. If so, then its relevance is ongoing, even though Discovery has changed their view on teaching ID in science classes. Ted Davis

This topic is difficult to discuss due to the ideological content strongly associated with the terms used. Instead, let's try this: A. Briefly, let's assume that God does not exist. The scientific method involving direct observation of the effects of a change in a single variable is the best way of understanding natural phenomena. From chaos theory, we know that small fluctuations can result in major, unpredictable effects, and that this falsifies determinism. The origin of the universe is a non-theistic supernatural event, since all natural events are intrinsic to the universe and do not exist otherwise. Additionally, the Big Bang is not a regularly observed natural phenomenon within the universe, thus it's extremely unlikely to exist within nature even over 13.82 billion years. From the tremendous advances in genetics, epigenetics, paleontology, and cell biology, it's blindingly apparent to all but those poor souls desperately clinging to the mast of the H.M.S. Beagle, that the theory of evolution is missing a key functional component. Furthermore, we get better results and scientific progress accelerates when we assume that biological components were designed for a purpose even when we assume that a designer doesn't exist. From the perspective of the most precisely and rigorously validated of all the sciences, quantum mechanics clearly points to a mathematical and probabilistic (psi) source of all existence. This fundamental nature of matter, energy, and all its interactions is not materialistic, but informational, and cannot be observed with traditional scientific tools. B. Briefly, let's assume that God really does exist. See everything under A, except that God is the efficient first cause. As a result, God's direct intervention is not needed for every event, however, God has intervened in events, and has a purpose for our existence in this universe, which he revealed through his Word. -Q Querius

Yes, well, once you buy into a lie, it's hard to admit you were wrong. Mung

FYI/FTR: Following up on 153, and in keeping with the topic of "what is science", I offer some parts of the Kansas Science Standards of 2006, of which I was a member, concerning the nature of science The Introduction says,

Science is a human activity of systematically seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us. Throughout history people from many cultures have used the methods of science to contribute to scientific knowledge and technological innovations, making science a worldwide enterprise. Scientists test explanations against the natural world, logically integrating observations and tested hypotheses with accepted explanations to gradually build more reliable and accurate understandings of nature. Scientific explanations must be testable and repeatable, and findings must be confirmed through additional observation and experimentation.

Here is the section on the nature of science for grade 8-12. You might note 1.5: the student,

5. understands there are many issues which involve morals, ethics, values or spiritual beliefs that go beyond what science can explain, but for which solid scientific literacy is useful.

which is meant to make it clear that scientific knowledge and beliefs are not the only types of knowledge and belief that there are.

STANDARD 7: HISTORY AND NATURE OF SCIENCE Grades 8-12 STANDARD 7: HISTORY AND NATURE OF SCIENCE – The student will develop understanding of science as a human endeavor, the nature of scientific knowledge, and historical perspectives. Benchmark 1: The student will develop an understanding that science is a human endeavor that uses models to describe and explain the physical universe. 1. demonstrates an understanding of science as both vocation and avocation. 2. explains how science uses peer review, replication of methods, and norms of honesty. Scientific knowledge is made public through presentations at professional meetings and publications in scientific journals. 3. recognizes the universality of basic science concepts and the influence of personal and cultural beliefs that embed science in society. 4. recognizes that society helps create the ways of thinking (mindsets) required for scientific advances, both toward training scientists and educating a populace to utilize benefits of science (e.g., standards of hygiene, attitudes toward forces of nature, etc.). 5. understands there are many issues which involve morals, ethics, values or spiritual beliefs that go beyond what science can explain, but for which solid scientific literacy is useful. 6. recognizes society’s role in supporting topics of research and determining institutions where research is conducted. Benchmark 2: The student will develop an understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge. 1. understands scientific knowledge describes and explains the physical world in terms of matter, energy, and forces. Scientific knowledge is provisional and is subject to change as new evidence becomes available. a. Additional evidence can lead to further confirmation, revision and refinement, or rejection of previously accepted explanations. b. The core theories of science have a high degree of reliability within the limits to which they have been tested and their scope of applicability. c. The open-endedness of science is its greatest strength and allows for constant refining and improvement of our explanations. 2. understands scientific knowledge begins with empirical observations, which are the data (also called facts or evidence) upon which further scientific knowledge is built. a. The breadth and depth of sensory observations are enhanced by technological instruments such as microscopes, telescopes, and oscilloscopes. b. Observations often include measurements, to varying degrees of accuracy and precision, so they can be described and analyzed with mathematics. c. Observational data is gathered in a number of ways, including controlled experiments, field studies, and the systematic observation of natural phenomena. 3. understands scientific knowledge consists of hypotheses, inferences, laws, and theories. a. A hypothesis is a testable statement that is subject to further investigation and potential confirmation b. An inference is a testable conclusion, based on previously established knowledge, observed evidence, and logic. c. A law is a thoroughly tested descriptive generalization of a highly regular phenomenon, usually expressed in mathematical form. d. A theory is a broad explanation that integrates a wide range of observations and tested hypotheses, inferences, and laws (when applicable) into a meaningful and coherent whole. e. Well established and widely accepted explanations have explanatory and predictive power and are fruitful as guides for further research. 4. understands a testable hypothesis or inference must be subject to confirmation by empirical evidence a. A valid hypothesis or inference must be potentially falsifiable. b. A hypothesis or inference is tested by making logical predictions about what observational data one would expect to exist, given the hypothesis, and then comparing actual observed data to the predicted data, which will either support or not support the hypothesis. Benchmark 3: The student will understand science from historical perspectives. 1. demonstrates an understanding of the history of science. a. Modern science has been a successful enterprise that contributes to dramatic improvements in the human condition. b. Science progresses by incremental advances of scientists or teams of scientists. c. Some advances that are fundamental and long-lasting include: Copernican revolution, Newtonian physics, relativity, geological time scale, plate tectonics, atomic theory, nuclear physics, biological evolution, germ theory, industrial revolution, molecular biology, quantum theory, and medical and health technology. 2. demonstrates a knowledge that scientific method historically proceeded from an inductive approach rather than a deductive approach. a. With the deductive method, scientists start with axioms - simple true statements about the way the world works. Galileo and his contemporaries realized that, for science, the problem was that it was enormously difficult to begin with "simple true statements about the way the world works". In fact, they realized that the simple true statement should be the goal of science, not the starting place. Since the 1600s to the mid 1900s, the inductive method has been incredibly successful in investigating nature.

jdk

Hi vjtorley. Thanks for the comment about the title of the document, minor of a point as it is. I also agree that there is nothing wrong in being upfront about goals, nor anything wrong in saying that one wishes to advocate for a particular metaphysical viewpoint. Also, the Wedge document itself says nothing about teaching ID in schools, although members of the ID movement did indeed try to get that established in several states in the early to mid 2000's. And I agree that the Wedge document is not particularly relevant today, although it is an interesting historical document that was important, and in fact eye-opening, to many (myself included) when it came out. jdk

jdk: As a question of fact, I don't see how anyone could possibly deny that the title of the document you cite was "The Wedge," unless one wishes to accuse the NCSE of engaging in forgery: https://ncse.com/files/pub/creationism/The_Wedge_Strategy.pdf Having said that, I would broadly agree with the sentiments of most commenters on this thread. I see no problem with an organization having ideological goals and being up-front about those goals. In any case, the entire controversy is moot, as the Discovery Institute no longer supports the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools. http://www.discovery.org/a/3164 vjtorley

Hi Andre, I've finally managed to locate an online version of The Life Of Pasteur by Rene Vallery Radot (Doubleday Page & Company, Garden City, New York, 1923). It establishes beyond reasonable doubt that Pasteur was an advocate of what Stephen Jay Gould referred to as NOMA - the idea that science and religion have non-overlapping magisteria:

p. 111 If all comes from a germ, people said, whence came the first germ? We must bow before that mystery, said Pasteur, it is the question of the origin of all things, and absolutely outside the domain of scientific research. But an invincible curiosity exists amongst most men which cannot admit that science should have the wisdom to content itself with the vast space between the beginning of the world and the unknown future. Many people transform a question of fact into a question of faith. Though Pasteur had brought into his researches a solely scientific preoccupation, many people approved or blamed him as the defender of a religious cause. p. 112 Vainly had he said, "There is here no question of religion, philosophy, atheism, materialism, or spiritualism. I might even add that they do not matter to me as a scientist. It is a question of fact; when I took it up I was as ready to be convinced by experiments that spontaneous generation exists as I am now persuaded that those who believe it are blindfolded." ... Pasteur did not disinterest himself from the great problems which he called the eternal subjects of men's solitary meditations. But he did not admit the interference of religion with science any more than that of science with religion.

I think it's fair to conclude that Pasteur would have been adamantly opposed to the idea that science could provide any support whatsoever for belief in God or the supernatural. In that respect, he differed from the 31 great scientists whom I have listed in my OP, more's the pity. vjtorley

Mung, maybe we should discuss inductive logic and how it applies to the design inference. In which context, it becomes relevant that historically, scientists did not find themselves bound by ideological constraints such as methodological naturalism, so called. KF PS: The spillover into education put up by the US National Science Teachers education board in 2000 is inadvertently revealing:

The principal product of science is knowledge in the form of naturalistic concepts and the laws and theories related to those concepts . . . . [S]cience, along with its methods, explanations and generalizations, must be the sole focus of instruction in science classes to the exclusion of all non-scientific or pseudoscientific [--> loaded word that cannot be properly backed up due to failure of demarcation arguments] methods, explanations, generalizations and products [--> declaration of intent to ideologically censor education materials] . . . . Although no single universal step-by-step scientific method captures the complexity of doing science, a number of shared values and perspectives characterize a scientific approach to understanding nature. Among these are a demand for naturalistic explanations supported by empirical evidence that are, at least in principle, testable against the natural world. Other shared elements include observations, rational argument, inference, skepticism, peer review and replicability of work [--> undermined by the question-begging ideological imposition and associated censorship] . . . . Science, by definition, is limited to naturalistic methods and explanations and, as such, is precluded from using supernatural elements [--> question-begging false dichotomy, the proper contrast for empirical investigations is the natural (chance and/or necessity) vs the ART-ificial, through design] in the production of scientific knowledge.

kairosfocus

mw: In an instant Jesus created a brand new species of human, regenerating himself from the dead with a body that is duality, a super creation. First, I deny that Jesus created a brand new species of human. Second, even if Jesus did create a brand new species of human, that's one new species since the Creation. Mung

Seversky #149. Some credit must be given to your reasoning: fair points. However, the outcome is, science must shackle itself to science, and therefore itself is captive in some form. There is ample evidence for the supernatural. It is just not amply seen because it seems more aborhant than believing we are products or worms, and we are only the offspring of a degrading animal unto the end, death. As for epileptic seizures being possibly some form of a possession illness or not, a broader and more sensitive approach is needed because any illness can be mimicked in those terms. Nor do we see clearly into the realm of the spirit, if hardly at all. I could be wrong, but, are you using that example, and when I am also assuming you have little knowledge of the possession ministry, to create an atmosphere of discrimination against Christians? mw

Mung #106: "YEC literally takes its cues from materialistic assumptions of unguided evolution." _________________________ Mung #138, in reply to me # 125: You say you were "not talking about the Creation," but do not elaborate. _____________________________________________________ Is your reply somewhat on the style of a Zen Koan, in that I have to guess against all logic what you really mean, and supply my own answer? However, as a reminder. I take my cue from belief in a holy, divine law given at Sinai, of which you know. At no point of miraculous creation did God not guide creation, or afterwards at the regeneration, of which we are in. Of course, things have varied, buy always within the limits of form, and without the addition of greater information input. Let's apply your logic to the resurrection. In an instant Jesus created a brand new species of human, regenerating himself from the dead with a body that is duality, a super creation. That is, a body able to transcend both the spiritual and physical realms. Did He use unguided evolution to create anything about His new Self? Where did He get His cues from when He was dead? The Father at Sinai, was, is and remains a six day creationist. The Son died keeping divine law. I am sure you understand the basics of the belief of creation in six days, but not what is the sound of six day creation evolving. Madness. mw

It is often claimed that methodological naturalism is a principle which defines the scope of the scientific enterprise. Today’s post is about thirty-one famous scientists throughout history who openly flouted this principle, in their scientific writings, by putting forward arguments for a supernatural Deity. The term “methodological naturalism” is defined variously in the literature. All authorities agree, however, that if you put forward scientific arguments for the existence of a supernatural Deity, then you are violating the principle of methodological naturalism. The 31 scientists whom I’ve listed below all did just that. I’ve supplied copious documentation, to satisfy the inquiries of skeptical readers.

How is putting forward scientific arguments for the existence of a supernatural deity a violation of the principle of methodological naturalism? If such a being exists and if it is observable by us in some way then how is a methodical investigation of its nature a violation of any scientific principle? Who are the authorities who deny this and what are their grounds for such a denial? The problem for all such arguments lies in the lack of an accepted operational definition of "naturalism" and, by extension, "methodological naturalism. I think many of us are familiar with the opening paragraphs of the entry on "naturalism" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

The term “naturalism” has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy. Its current usage derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. The self-proclaimed “naturalists” from that period included John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook and Roy Wood Sellars. These philosophers aimed to ally philosophy more closely with science. They urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit” (Krikorian 1944; Kim 2003). So understood, “naturalism” is not a particularly informative term as applied to contemporary philosophers. The great majority of contemporary philosophers would happily accept naturalism as just characterized—that is, they would both reject “supernatural” entities, and allow that science is a possible route (if not necessarily the only one) to important truths about the “human spirit”

If you say that science is limited to the investigation of those phenomena that can be observed, however indirectly, or which can be inferred from such observation then I would agree. I would then ask, in what way is that a limitation? What else is there? Isn't the "supernatural" an empty set? Ghosts, for example, are popularly thought to be a supernatural phenomenon. But if such entities exist in objective reality, if they have a nature which can be observed and described, however elusive they might be, then how are they not a natural phenomenon? The same would also be true of any putative deity. On the other hand, if you assume that the set of supernatural phenomena includes those that are forever inaccessible to scientific investigation, such that we cannot know if they even exist, then how does that provide any explanatory purchase in the natural world? Take, for example, the case of epileptic seizures. Two explanations are proposed. The first argues that they are the effect of misfiring brain cells, the second claims that they are a sign of demonic possession. In the first case, we can observe the physical brain and the neurons of which it is partially composed and look for any abnormal activity that might be associated with the seizures. In the second case, if we cannot have any knowledge of the existence of demons, of their nature, of how they might "possess" a human being and influence their behavior then of what possible use is it as an explanation, let alone a scientific explanation? I do not doubt that all the scientists listed in the OP held the religious beliefs attributed to them. I'm sure that, in many cases, they provided the context for their research. But, unless those beliefs are embodied as operational elements in the explanations they constructed then I would argue there is no violation of the principle of methodological naturalism - whatever that might be. James Clerk Maxwell was by all accounts a devout evangelical Presbyterian. He believed the universe was created by God. But unless his equations include a term for divine intervention then there is no violation of MN. Scientists can believe whatever they like about the origins of life, the universe and everything but, as long as their hypotheses and theories don't include explanatory gaps labelled "Here there be Miracles" then there is no violation of MN> Seversky

Ted: Don’t shoot the messenger. But that's what we do best! ;) Mung

jdk: I’ve already agreed that you guys are right about both points. Yet here we are, still talking about The Wedge, even granted it's utter irrelevance. Mung

JDK, with all due respect, your side track is now past sell-by date. The pivotal issue remains what it has been from the OP. The inserted constraint on science, methodological naturalism, fails the history test. Part of why it does so is that it fails the inductive logic and evidence test. Which is what I pointed out from 45 on in reply to SJS just above that, as I cited and responded to. KF PS: When the agenda of evolutionary materialist scientism can be shown to be a material contribution to manipulating the concept of rights such that we are seeing 50 million abortions under false colour of law and rights per year, it is not hyperbole or distortion or extreme tone to point that out or to indicate that this is the -- in progress -- worst holocaust in history. That, though we may find it disturbing, is part of what is at stake; and, we need to face it. (Part of that: what is a right but a binding moral claim on others rooted in our nature and value. Thus, we must face the basis for morality apart from the self-refuting, might and manipulation. Then, we need to recognise that we cannot properly demand that others do or enable the wrong under the colour of claimed rights. To justly claim a right, we must first be in the right. Where, the first right is: life.) kairosfocus

I'll note that, again and as usual, kf's post does not relate to what Dave wrote at all, but just rehashes what he has said numerous times in this thread alone. I also note the extreme tone and hyperbolic accusations. There is never any sense ever in engaging kf on a specific point, no matter how small and clear-cut. Amazing. jdk

DS, the obvious pivotal question is whether inductive reasoning is credible, and whether on such logic and linked observation, there are reliable signs of design. As 45 above discusses, there are. The world of life and the fine-tuned cosmos exhibit such signs. This means one may responsibly hold that life and the cosmos that supports it, are credibly designed. On this, there is a significant challenge to scientific schools of thought, science education, institutionally dominant factions, cultural agendas and the like that are keyed to the idea that the world and science must lock out such signs and their import. This is first and foremost, all else hinges on this. So, no it is not an option to discuss this; not if one intends to be responsible. And it is astonishing to see how in the thread above this issue has been consistently evaded by design objectors. Like unto it, it is highly material that there are agendas imposed on science and society through a priori evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers, that would try to so redefine science and its methods that the evidence cannot speak for itself uncensored by the new magisterium. All of these are telling signs of the dark, dark, bloodguilt ridden age we are in. An era in which evolutionary materialistic secular humanism has opened the door to might and manipulation making 'right,' 'truth,' 'rights,' 'knowledge/science' and much more. As can be abundantly shown. KF kairosfocus

For SB@30, who said, "Ted, have you told your associate Robert Russell that he, too, is breaking your rule by positing Non Interventionist Objective Divine Action?" Bob Russell isn't offering his NIODA idea as a scientific idea, Stephen. He'd be the first to say that it's a theological idea *about* science, not a scientific idea per se. So, he's not breaking "my rule." Furthermore, it's not "my rule" at all. As I just explained @141, I was simply giving my assessment of how things actually work, my reading of rules that others have made. If propositions such as Russell's are within the rules of science, Stephen, then so are books promoting scientific atheism like those of Dawkins, Coyne, and Sam Harris--which also offer religious interpretations of science. In fact, those books are not scientific. They aren't based on competitively awarded research grants (such as those awarded by the NSF or NIH), and those particular ideas don't go through peer review and get published in scientific journals. IMO, Stephen, your position seems to commit you the proposition that the existence of God and/or ultimate purpose is a claim that science can actually "prove" or "disprove." Dawkins certainly believes that. I do not. Do you? Ted Davis

vjtorley, Thank you for your list of those who believed that Science could provide evidence for design in nature, and in turn evidence for a designer, whom they were happy to identify (often not very tentatively) as God. I think you have proved the point that science can easily be done without the stricture of methodological naturalism. I see with some amusement the insistence that scientists define what science is. Then it can be reasonably proved that science originally did not require methodological naturalism, and changed somewhere between 1800 and 1900 or so. So there are two (at least) competing ideas of what science should be. This has several implications. First, defining science in this way means that there is no particular reason why science should be respected by the rest of society. At least one iteration of science was wrong on a fundamental issue (regardless of which one it was), and there is no guarantee that the iteration we have now is the correct one, on this issue or any similar definitional question. This means science is on shaky ground even within science, let alone on metaphysical questions that are outside the competence of most scientists. Lest one think this is merely a theoretical point, let me point out that when I was in training, the vast majority view was that peptic ulcers were due to various local and systemic effects, but that infection had been safely ruled out. No bacteria or viruses could be found on thorough examination of ulcers, nor could a cause of infection be demonstrated to spread from one person to the next. Then some enterprising doctors discovered Helicobacter pylori, and the entire paradigm was transformed. Now ulcers are routinely tested for H. pylori, and treated with antibiotics if positive, with routinely positive results for the patient. We were demonstrably wrong earlier. Revolutions like this are not that unusual in the life sciences (e.g. Biochemical Predistination), or even in geology (e.g. the Bretz flood(s) and continental drift). There are even long-rejected theories that make a comeback (e.g. the particle theory of light). This idea that science is what scientists say it is can only have teeth if the unspoken, and ridiculous, addition is made that authoritative science is what scientists right now say it is and it will never change. One can call that science if one wants to. But it is certainly not authoritative if past experience is any guide. One can insist that this is the social reality we have to deal with. But in that case there is no particular reason, other than status and money, why we should assent to such a way of determining truth, and most of us would see the inherent insufficiency of those criteria for finding truth. Second, supposing that some combination of events establishes that the majority of the scientific community now favors the disregarding of MN as a criterion for "true science". Would people like Ted Davis and Joshua Swamidass now change their minds? If so, was their insistence on MN in science truly principled? Third, how does science ever change its mind? Is it legitimate for one person to take a stand that is not approved by the majority of the scientific community? Two people? 1% of scientists? 49% of scientists? Is science merely a sociological construct? If so, does science have any more claim to hegemony than any other social group? As I understand it, science lays claim to a better understanding of reality. If and when science becomes democratic without regard to a better understanding of reality, it loses its true authority and can only retain a pseudo-authority for those who have not figured out yet that it has lost its legitimacy. Paul Giem

For SB@50, where he says all this: "Ted and Joshua, I know that you both believe that the “scientific community” is responsible for defining the science of evolution. I am, therefore, going to share with you the science of evolution as presented by that same community. From Miller & Levine: Biology Evolution works without either plan or purpose … Evolution is random and undirected. Douglass Futuyma: This experiment conveys the essence of natural selection: it is a completely mindless process without forethought or goal. In 2005, 39 Nobel Laureates wrote the Kansas State Board of Education to inform them that “evolution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection.” Since you have granted this body of scientists the authority to define evolution, I must assume that you also believe that evolution is not the result of a purpose or plan. Is that a fair assumption? Do you agree that your community’s description of evolution includes non-scientific, metaphysical presumptions that rule out God in principle? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t expect an answer. I just wanted to put it out there so that readers can draw their own conclusions about your sincerity." How is my sincerity involved in any of this, Stephen? I invite readers to draw their own conclusions about why you even suggest that. I challenge you to find any ad hominems on my part anywhere in this thread. When I said that scientists get to define the rules of science, that is (IMO) a factual observation, pure and simple. If I said (e.g.) that attorneys (including judges, who are also attorneys) get to define the rules of the courts, that would also be a factual observation, pure and simple. Don't shoot the messenger. The examples you provided, in which scientists are making pronouncements about the alleged lack of foresight in evolutionary history are going well beyond science, IMO, despite the fact that many evolutionary biologists agree with them. I don't agree with them. As I am sure you know, a philosopher (Al Plantinga) and a scholar of religion (wasn't it Holmes Rolston?) called their bluff, pointing out that scientists are straying off the ranch when they say such things. As I say, scientists get to define their own rules. Sometimes those who live outside their borders report territorial violations, but scientists themselves sometimes also do this within their own communities of discourse. A recent, very important example is found in the journal "Nature," in Dec 2014, when George Ellis and Joe Silk (a pair of world-class cosmologists) quite rightly stated that certain colleagues were breaking the rules of science by trying to skate past the need to test their theories against observations. As the headline puts it, "Attempts to exempt speculative theories of the Universe from experimental verification undermine science, argue George Ellis and Joe Silk." http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-defend-the-integrity-of-physics-1.16535 Again, don't shoot the messenger. (The same goes for BA@27.) Ted Davis

Re137 and139: I've already agreed that you guys are right about both points. jdk

@137 Upright BiPed nailed it again. Plus, no one here wrote the wedge strategy. It's a red herring, but one that appears to be useful. Mung

mw:

To then say, that God created totally opposite to what he said, when commanding the holy remembrance of the Creation every seven days, would be the act of a schizophrenic God.

I was not talking about the Creation. Mung

I understand that this is a very minor point, but it baffles the hell out of me that kf can’t just simply say, yes, the title is the Wedge.

Yes, the major point is that the wedge is completely irrelevant to ID arguments, having no bearing whatsoever on the validity of those arguments. It is a rhetorical tool used to attack ID without having to engage physical evidence (i.e. anti-science). Upright BiPed

KF,

DS, the point is there is no one clear actual title coming from an indisputable source and the issue being made much over is a descriptive phrase — follow my link and you will see what I mean.

Well, in that case it would be best to avoid referring to "the actual title" as you did [in #131].

I am however also underscoring how there is a clear pattern of straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel. That camel is, first, the pivotal issue — one being studiously ducked — is the empirical and inductive basis of the design inference [notice what has happened since comment no 45 above].

There are many issues having to do with the wedge document (and ID generally) that one could discuss. Just because one chooses not to focus on one issue or another in a particular post or thread does not mean that person is "ducking" anything [cf. motive mongering above]. We've seen this pattern many times here: Someone raises a criticism pertaining to issue X, and you respond "well what about Y?", leaving the original criticism unrefuted. daveS

I understand that this is a very minor point, but it baffles the hell out of me that kf can't just simply say, yes, the title is the Wedge. He writes,

the point is there is no one clear actual title coming from an indisputable source,

and that's ludicrous. Does he think the document I posted is a fake? jdk

DS, the point is there is no one clear actual title coming from an indisputable source and the issue being made much over is a descriptive phrase -- follow my link and you will see what I mean. I am however also underscoring how there is a clear pattern of straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel. That camel is, first, the pivotal issue -- one being studiously ducked -- is the empirical and inductive basis of the design inference [notice what has happened since comment no 45 above]. Then secondly, lo and behold, the actual substance of this horrible revelation of a grand conspiracy on a theocratic, right-wing takeover of our civilisation turns out to be instead a reasonable and well warranted view as to the history involved and the responsible concerns over the impacts of evolutionary materialist scientism and its fellow travellers, leading to a proposal to try to counter it by first addressing scientific issues then taking a stance in the wider culture and in the policy space. You may disagree with the intent to have a move back to a cultural frame that is less hostile to ethical theism and to the Christian faith, but one can hardly responsibly pretend that this is Torquemada at work or the like. Especially given the incoherence and amorality of evolutionary materialism, and its track record when it has held power or influence, over the past 100 years. That, thirdly, raises serious questions as to the (at minimum over-wrought) twisting of this document into a grand conspiracy narrative, especially when it can readily be shown that there are powerful evolutionary materialistic ideologies and fellow traveller schemes out there that have done a lot of damage to our civilisation. Damage, that is clearly ongoing and even accelerating. Start with 50+ million unborn children slaughtered under false colour of law every year (easily the worst holocaust in history), and the ruthless, manipulative twisting of concepts such as rights and health to sustain that bloodshed. I say, something is very wrong with our civilisation and those who have tried to do something about it should be commended not turned into straw bogeymen. KF kairosfocus

KF,

THE WEDGE STRATEGY [–> note the actual title, a descriptive phrase for a strategy pivoting on a foundational engagement of scientific issues and going on to engage forces credibly implicated in undermining our civilisation]

It seems you're insinuating that jdk got the title of the document wrong. Did you look at the actual cover page that she posted? daveS

F/N: Collins Dict on consonance:

consonance (?k?ns?n?ns) or consonancy n, pl -nances or -nancies 1. agreement, harmony, or accord [--> as opposed to fundamentally incompatible and hostile, here in a context where ideas have consequences] 2. (Poetry) prosody similarity between consonants, but not between vowels, as between the s and t sounds in sweet silent thought. Compare assonance1 3. (Classical Music) music a. an aesthetically pleasing sensation or perception associated with the interval of the octave, the perfect fourth and fifth, the major and minor third and sixth, and chords based on these intervals. Compare dissonance3 b. an interval or chord producing this sensation Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

. . . just to make a key term used by Johnson clear. KF kairosfocus

F/N: It is worth noting for record that it seems that the relevant 1999 strategy & fund-raising document actually begins/is entitled:

THE WEDGE STRATEGY [--> note the actual title, a descriptive phrase for a strategy pivoting on a foundational engagement of scientific issues and going on to engage forces credibly implicated in undermining our civilisation] CENTER FOR THE RENEWAL OF SCIENCE & CULTURE [--> cf. http://www.public.asu.edu/~jmlynch/idt/_baks/wedge.html.0001.7ffc.bak and cf https://www.discovery.org/f/349 for the explanatory defense offered by DI] INTRODUCTION The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built. Its influence can be detected in most, if not all, of the West's greatest achievements, including representative democracy, human rights, free enterprise, and progress in the arts and sciences. [--> well-established facts of history, esp. history of ideas] Yet a little over a century ago, this cardinal idea came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science. Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment. This materialistic conception of reality eventually infected virtually every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and art [ --> fair summary of questionable trends over the past 150+ years] The cultural consequences of this triumph of materialism were devastating. Materialists denied the existence of objective moral standards, claiming that environment dictates our behavior and beliefs. Such moral relativism was uncritically adopted by much of the social sciences, and it still undergirds much of modern economics, political science, psychology and sociology. [--> fair summary] Materialists also undermined personal responsibility by asserting that human thoughts and behaviors are dictated by our biology and environment. The results can be seen in modern approaches to criminal justice, product liability, and welfare. In the materialist scheme of things, everyone is a victim and no one can be held accountable for his or her actions. Finally, materialism spawned a virulent strain of utopianism. Thinking they could engineer the perfect society through the application of scientific knowledge, materialist reformers advocated coercive government programs that falsely promised to create heaven on earth. [--> fair comment, made for cause] Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies. Bringing together leading scholars from the natural sciences and those from the humanities and social sciences, the Center explores how new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature. The Center awards fellowships for original research, holds conferences, and briefs policymakers about the opportunities for life after materialism. [--> theistically motivated doubtless [cf the atheistical motives of others], but pivoting on a sound grounding in scientific findings then existing or reasonably anticipated. And the anticipations have been significantly fulfilled] The Center is directed by Discovery Senior Fellow Dr. Stephen Meyer. An Associate Professor of Philosophy at Whitworth College, Dr. Meyer holds a Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University. He formerly worked as a geophysicist for the Atlantic Richfield Company. [--> credentials of operational leaders] THE WEDGE STRATEGY Phase I. Scientific Research, Writing & Publicity [--> research-led] Phase II. Publicity & Opinion-making Phase III. Cultural Confrontation & Renewal [ . . . ] FIVE YEAR STRATEGIC PLAN SUMMARY The social consequences of materialism have been devastating. As symptoms, those consequences are certainly worth treating. However, we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a "wedge" that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points. The very beginning of this strategy, the "thin edge of the wedge," was Phillip ]ohnson's critique of Darwinism begun in 1991 in Darwinism on Trial, and continued in Reason in the Balance and Defeatng Darwinism by Opening Minds. Michael Behe's highly successful Darwin's Black Box followed Johnson's work. We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions . . . [ --> declaration of intent, pivoting on research and analysis that grounds a case. Thus, the pivotal issue is the evidence as existing and discovered, and linked analysis. Therefore a fair-minded assessment MUST first and foremost address the issue of the empirically based, inductive logic driven inference to design on observed signs in the cosmos and the world of life. Linked, issues of the challenges of evolutionary materialist grounding of responsible, rational freedom. And, per further fair comment, that leads straight to self-referential incoherence and amorality inviting might and manipulation make right nihilism.]

It is to be noted that the pivotal issue is phase I, a scientific research programme. In short, unless it is fundamentally a reasonable and responsible view that we may properly infer design in the world of life [and -- not addressed, the cosmos] then it does not make sense to go further. It is therefore doubly significant to see that the sustained agenda has been to divert attention from that priority and to resort to marginalisation based on trying to improperly conflate the design inference with creationism, twist the concerns and responses to the destructive effects of evolutionary materialist secularism into an imagined grand right wing theocratic agenda and to play at defending freedom from theocracy. Whilst, all along, evolutionary materialistic scientism -- because of its physicalist reductionism and self-referentiality -- drastically undermines confidence in our responsible rational freedom and invites might and manipulation make right nihilism. With all too abundant cases in point across the past 100+ years. Not the least of which has been the drastic undermining of the respect for life, materially contributing to the in-progress worst holocaust in history. Just multiply the Guttmacher institute's 50+ mn abortions per year by 40 years and by 1/2 to account for growth, to see why I must say this. And these are the folks who so often twist exposes of quite patent cyber-stalking and outright on- the- ground stalking into in effect, you are a conspiracist nutter? And we dare to look back at past eras and accuse them of being dark ages? Blood-guilt is plainly among the most morally blinding of influences. It has been a longstanding and historically well warranted concern since Plato c 360 BC in The Laws, Bk X, that evolutionary materialism is inherently radically relativist and utterly, irretrievably amoral, inviting the doctrine, might and manipulation make right. In our time, this is multiplied by the persuasive power of the holy lab coat. Where also, it is quite evident that such ideological, evolutionary materialism is inherently self-refuting by undermining responsible, rational freedom. So also, fellow travellers taint themselves with that self-falsification. It is time for the main focus to go back to what is pivotal: the evidence and inductive logic behind the design inference. That is where the case is to be made or broken on the merits. And in my considered view: on a trillion case observational basis, it has been made. KF kairosfocus

SB, 120: Yes, the three Humanist Manifesto documents to date (where, we must not overlook the lists of primary signatories . . . ) speak to a stunning social- cultural- civilisational agenda driven by evolutionary materialist scientism and fellow traveller ideologies. Couple that to the sort of personal and official statements as have been cited above (and others not brought to bear) and you will see why it is clear that there is a dominant and domineering agenda that has sought to usurp control over the path and policies of our civilisation. Nor is such language echoing the US DoI of 1776 improper, for we have seen a long train of abuses and usurpations constituting a Cultural Marxist-style "long march through the institutions" takeover, marginalisation and exclusion of legitimate alternatives; leading to patently abusive behaviour such as stereotyping, smearing and scapegoating. (Also, yes, the Frankfurt School and the like have been . . . and through so-called critical theories very much continue to be, a big part of the process.) In that general context, it is highly instructive to observe the evasiveness above when the pivotal question of the empirically grounded, inductive inference to design using scientific methods, was put on the table. (Cf. 45 above, in context.) Note, I was replying to a specific cluster of claims prof Swamidass made, as quoted:

I know you are not trying to “prove God” per se. Rather, you are trying to demonstrate divine design in nature. Of course you want to do this to point to this as evidence for God. So sometimes we just group steps 1 and 2 into the same activity. Unless you legitimately believe some non divine being other than God is the designer, and have a mechanism for design that would be reachable for this mere mortal, you fall into this pattern.

The fact that "divine design" is substituted for intelligent design already tells us the rhetorical trajectory at work. This is multiplied by a demand for stating a non-theistic worldview and mechanism for the design of life and/or observed cosmos; on pain of disqualification from serious consideration. The undue personalising is already unacceptable; pointing to a crucial distortion of modern, scientific design thought -- pivoting on the empirically grounded design inference. That is,

a: the material issue is not motive-mongering, but instead, b: is it the case that designers exist or are possible and may leave traces of their work embedded in entities they have shaped? In particular, c: functionally specific, complex organisation and/or associated information [FSCO/I], and/or d: fine-tuning to achieve an operating point in a configuration space (such spaces naturally tending to exhibit isolated islands of function patterns), and/or e: some degree of irreducible complexity such that cumulative agglomeration through incremental complexity will not attain to gradually increasing degree of function.

The comments in this thread are themselves cases in point of the relevant patterns, and extend a base of observed cases that is in the trillions. Such characteristics, per observation, are indeed strong, tested and reliable signs of intelligent design as material causal factor. This is tied to analysis of search space challenges confronting the alternative, blind chance and/or blind mechanical necessity. Thus, we are entitled to infer to design as empirically warranted credible cause when we see such patterns, such signatures or signs of design. Yes, open-endedly, subject to further observations and analysis; that is always the case with inductive reasoning. As Newton highlighted in Opticks, Query 31 . . . as was cited in 45 above. Such does not undermine the ability to make such an inference with high confidence. It is worth the while to pause and examine a June 23, 2016 discussion at Arxiv by Walker and Davies:

In physics, particularly in statistical mechanics, we base many of our calculations on the assumption of metric transitivity, which asserts that a system’s trajectory will eventually [--> given "enough time and search resources"] explore the entirety of its state space – thus everything that is phys-ically possible will eventually happen. It should then be trivially true that one could choose an arbitrary “final state” (e.g., a living organism) and “explain” it by evolving the system backwards in time choosing an appropriate state at some ’start’ time t_0 (fine-tuning the initial state). In the case of a chaotic system the initial state must be specified to arbitrarily high precision. But this account amounts to no more than saying that the world is as it is because it was as it was, and our current narrative therefore scarcely constitutes an explanation in the true scientific sense. We are left in a bit of a conundrum with respect to the problem of specifying the initial conditions necessary to explain our world. A key point is that if we require specialness in our initial state (such that we observe the current state of the world and not any other state) metric transitivity cannot hold true, as it blurs any dependency on initial conditions – that is, it makes little sense for us to single out any particular state as special by calling it the ’initial’ state. If we instead relax the assumption of metric transitivity (which seems more realistic for many real world physical systems – including life), then our phase space will consist of isolated pocket regions and it is not necessarily possible to get to any other physically possible state (see e.g. Fig. 1 for a cellular automata example).

[--> or, there may not be "enough" time and/or resources for the relevant exploration, i.e. we see the 500 - 1,000 bit complexity threshold at work vs 10^57 - 10^80 atoms with fast rxn rates at about 10^-13 to 10^-15 s leading to inability to explore more than a vanishingly small fraction on the gamut of Sol system or observed cosmos . . . the only actually, credibly observed cosmos]

Thus the initial state must be tuned to be in the region of phase space in which we find ourselves [--> notice, fine tuning], and there are regions of the configuration space our physical universe would be excluded from accessing, even if those states may be equally consistent and permissible under the microscopic laws of physics (starting from a different initial state). Thus according to the standard picture, we require special initial conditions to explain the complexity of the world, but also have a sense that we should not be on a particularly special trajectory to get here (or anywhere else) as it would be a sign of fine–tuning of the initial conditions. [ --> notice, the "loading"] Stated most simply, a potential problem with the way we currently formulate physics is that you can’t necessarily get everywhere from anywhere (see Walker [31] for discussion).

In short, the fine tuning, functionally and often irreducibly complex organisation issue is very real and points to design. Which is typically viewed as unacceptable in many quarters. As for divine designers, from the outset of modern design thought (TMLO, 1984) Thaxton et al pointed out that the evidence in the observed world of life does not constitute by itself a basis to determine whether a putative designer of cell based life on earth was within or beyond the cosmos. I have often put that in terms such as: a sufficient candidate cause for C-chemistry, aqueous medium, protein, carbohydrate and r/dna-using, cell-based life on earth would be a molecular nanotech lab some generations beyond Venter et al. When the phenomena of cell based life are integrated with evidence pointing to cosmological fine-tuning that facilitates such, then that points to a designer sufficiently capable to account for a cosmos. A possible candidate is a grand computer simulation by intelligences at a different level. Some have even argued that, per the trajectory of computer technology and simulation modelling, such would become the statistically favoured candidate. Such, I doubt, on the fineness and complexity of detail involved [the processor complexity explodes exponentially with the fineness of details and the linked need to account for fine-grained interactions . . . a challenge faced by say climate models]. Though, such does point to a way we may understand "in Him we live and move and have our being," or "upholding everything by the word of His power." (That is, ironically, global simulation models give us a crude analogy to compare what sort of job the God of ethical theism would have to do.) Instead, the design inference shows that design of the world of life and of the cosmos in which we find ourselves, is a reasonable, inductively grounded account of a relevant, material causal factor. To address the worldview question, I suggest that we ponder ourselves as cell-based life forms who -- just to argue credibly -- must be responsibly and rationally free. Evolutionary materialist models of mind and moral governance simply cannot account for such, collapsing instead in self-referential incoherence. Multiply this by the need for a sufficient causal root of a world such as we observe. For, were there ever utter nothing; as such can have no causal capabilities, such would forever obtain. If a world now is, something always was, something causally capable of a cosmos as we observe, with morally governed responsibly and rationally free but contingent beings in it -- us. I have repeatedly pointed out that, after centuries of debates, there is just one serious candidate world-root being that fills the bill: the inherently good creator God, a necessary and maximally great being, worthy of ultimate loyalty and the responsible, reasonable service of doing the good in accord with our evident nature. If you doubt, simply put forward a serious alternative: __________________ (Then, we may sit to the table of comparative difficulties analysis across factual adequacy, logical & dynamical coherence and balanced explanatory power.) KF kairosfocus

Andre # 128, "You see Dr Torley Pasteur single handedly refuted Darwinism why (sic) back then." Of course, Jesus single handedly refuted Darwinism at the Creation, as "I am:" reinforced at Sinai in divine law. Of course, He does not count, as He was not a scientist. No; he just put all those scientists that vjt skillfully cites in their place, and at the time of His choosing, to benefit humankind. As for the science of Christ, it was superscientific. He created miracles instantly: water to wine, calmed storms, raised the dead, healed the sick, and rased Himself from the dead. Not one of His miracles took over an instant! He is not the handmaiden of evolution theory. mw

Dr Torley Thank you for the response ans sources. Please read The Life of Pasteur. You owe it to yourself. After which you will realize how materialists have skewed information over the years. You see Dr Torley Pasteur single handedly refuted Darwinism why back then. Andre

D, Anti Evo and the like are nothing like a fjord. Fever-riddled swamp, maybe. KF kairosfocus

kairosfocus: Some of your interlocutors may want to go back to their natural habitat in the beautiful Norwegian fjords? :) Dionisio

Hi Mung, # 106: _____________________________________________ "It is the YEC approach that drags religion into the discussion. YEC literally takes its cues from materialistic assumptions of unguided evolution. God would not do it that way." ____________________________________________ It is ID, OEC, YEC, and theistic evolutionism that drags religion into the discussion, in a wide range of spiritual formats. It is inevitable when speaking of the beginning, design and creation. Scripture begins: "In the beginning...." You say, "YEC literally takes its cues from materialistic assumptions of unguided evolution." That is plain wrong. You surprise me Mung. God literally said, and wrote in stone, that He created, direct, fast, in kinds and in six days; all fit for purpose to begin with; the cosmos, the lot. Almost an act of pure faith to believe: almost, that is. To then say, that God created totally opposite to what he said,when commanding the holy remembrance of the Creation every seven days, would be the act of a schizophrenic God. mw

JDK, it is now absolutely clear that you have no answer and can find and link no answer to the basis in inductive, logicand empirical evidence for the design inference (cf 45 above for an introductory summary in this thread). Instead of facing the import of this, that we may properly and reasonably infer design on empirically tested, reliable signs, in the world of life and in features of our cosmos, you have elected to go off on a red herring side track led away to a straw bogeyman caricature of some imagined grand conspiracy of ID thinkers. The turning away from truth to insistently enable a smear that has long been corrected -- a correction you have been repeatedly pointed to but have studiously ignored (now focussing on oh the fundraising proposal that has been turned into a straw bogeyman is titled "wedge" or the like . . . straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel) -- speaks volumes. And it speaks volumes on the agendas of too many who spend ever so much effort on such ill advised tactics in attempts to discredit and polarise people against the design inference. Why? Patently, because the possibility of evidence pointing to the design of life and the cosmos that is evidently fine tuned to support such life opens up possibilites that may lead where ever so many are utterly desperate not to go. Saddening. KF kairosfocus

may be titled the wedge.

Why not is titled the Wedge. And here's a link to the document from my website: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxqa3JlYnMwNDR8Z3g6MjJkYzU3NzBjZWFjNDJhYg jdk

I’m not sure I could answer your question any more directly: the Wedge document is about the purpose and goals of the Wedge movement, not about actual evidence for ID.

It is equally clear and direct that such things as the wedge document are irrelevant to ID arguments. They are a rhetorical device.

I’m not quite sure I’m your friend, although I’m willing to be a civil participant in a discussion with you.

Good. Attack ID with idle rhetoric and ignore the evidence, and we'll get along just fine. Upright BiPed

JDK, I am perfectly willing to accept that the document may be titled the wedge. However, except under duress I will not go to a hate and slander site that has spent years targetting me and my colleagues. I will not ever view it as a credible source for anything. For excellent reason as I have seen its tactics firsthand. Just linking that site is offensive, period. I hope that registers. KF kairosfocus

jdk, (Attn:: KF), As a matter of social strategy, like minded people often join hands to achieve cultural aims. The Wedge document is one such effort and it is so modest and short-lived as to constitute a mere blip on the radar screen. The ID community abandoned it long ago. Darwinists, on the other hand, have a much longer and persistent history of grounding their social aims and banding together as a community. To be more specific, they have been formaly united for 83 years. They began with the "Humanist Manifesto" in 1933. Unlike the early Discovery institute, which abandoned its Wedge strategy shortly after is was initiated, the Darwinists continue on with their social agenda. Humanist Manifesto II arrived in 1973 and Humanist Manifesto III made its debut in 2003. While the Discovery Institute decided leave the cultural problems to chance and focus solely on the science, the Darwinists continue to double down on their ideological commitments and ignore the science. They know they have not a shred of evidence to support their extravagant claims, so they rely solely on political and institutional power, both of which are founded on the same secular Humanism expressed in their continued stream of Manifestos. For the Darwinists, it is their bible. ID has nothing like it. StephenB

PPS: I again point to the summary on the design inference at 45 above: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/methodological-naturalism-31-great-scientists-who-made-scientific-arguments-for-the-supernatural/#comment-614000 kairosfocus

kf, you are amazing. I know what the "So What" document says. My only point right now is that the real title of the document is "The Wedge". I supplied documentary proof of this statement by linking to a copy of the original document. So everything you wrote doesn't pertain to this simple fact: the real title of the document is the Wedge, and the strategy described was called the Wedge Strategy. So unless you believe this is false, and can prove it, you ought to accept that I am right and let this go. jdk

JDK, You clearly have continued to refuse to read here -- as was long since linked above -- which explains and incorporates the fund raising document, which describes a "wedge" strategy of addressing the imposition of a priori evolutionary materialist scientism on science and society, through sound science and through communication and advocacy initiatives rooted in addressing that sound science. And again, you have ducked addressing the inductive, empirically grounded basis for the design inference, in favour of ideological reframing and talking points that set up and knock over a strawman. At this point, it is becoming obvious that you do not have a cogent answer to the design inference. And since, were such actually existent it would be even more prominently displayed all over the Internet than the so-called wedge document, it is a reasonable conclusion that you refuse to address that inference on its logical and empirical merits because you cannot do so yourself and patently cannot find an objection that does so cogently in a responsible fashion that you can link or cite. KF PS: Anti evolution is a hate and slander site that has spent years in the most nastily personal, irresponsible attacks constituting cyberstalking. kairosfocus

kf writes,

so-called wedge document.

No kf, it is called the Wedge document by the very people who wrote it. That is the title they gave it. There is nothing "so-called" about it. Can you at least acknowledge this simple fact? Here's a link to a copy of the original document. http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.pdf jdk

Hi Andre, You asked me about Tesla and Pasteur. Short answer: Tesla was a materialistic determinist who regarded not only free-will, but also the very concept of the self, as an illusion, while Pasteur, although Catholic, said very little about religion, and apparently believed that religion and science should be kept separate. On Tesla's determinism, see here: http://www.pbs.org/tesla/res/res_art10.html https://www.teslametamorphosis.com/p_p7_metaphysic_cosmology.html Here's what Tesla wrote in an article titled, How Cosmic Forces Shape Our Destinies (New York American, February 7, 1915):

The same law governs all matter, all the universe is alive. The momentous question of Spencer, "What is it that causes inorganic matter to run into organic forms!" has been answered. It is the sun's heat and light. Wherever they are there is life... [1.] The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea... Though it may seem so, a war can never be caused by arbitrary acts of man. It is invariably the more or less direct result of cosmic disturbance in which the sun is chiefly concerned. In many international conflicts of historical record which were precipitated by famine, pestilence or terrestrial catastrophes the direct dependence of the sun is unmistakable. But in most cases the underlying primary causes are numerous and hard to trace. In the present war it would be particularly difficult to show that the apparently willful acts of a few individuals were not causative. Be it so, the mechanistic theory, being founded on truth demonstrated in everyday experience, absolutely precludes the possibility of such a state being anything but the inevitable consequence of cosmic disturbance.

And here's a quote from the final paragraph of an article titled, Tesla's Metaphysics and Cosmology by Professor Velimir Abramovic:

Tesla's attitude to the concepts of Buddhism is that "I" is illusionary. "Really, we are some different, like waves in subjective time and space, and when these waves disappear, nothing remains from us. There is no personality. We cannot say that waves in the ocean have individuality. There is only an illusionary sequence of waves, which go one after another. We are not the same that was yesterday; I am only a sequence of relatively existences, which are not similar. This sequence is that thing, which create an effect of continuity, but not my subjective and mistaken understanding of my real life."

Re Louis Pasteur, the following articles may prove useful (bolding is mine - VJT): Louis Pasteur (Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 2008):

At the center of Pasteur’s public views on religion and philosophy lay his insistence on an absolute separation between matters of science and matters of faith or sentiment.[25] Although he was reared and died a Catholic, religious ritual and sectarian doctrine held little attraction for him. He cared as little for formal philosophy. By 1865 he had read only a few “absurd passages” in Comte, and he described his own philosophy as one “entirely of the heart."[26] Throughout his life he disdained materialists, atheists, freethinkers, and positivists... Pasteur never doubted the existence of the spiritual realm or of the immortal soul. In that sense, and in his opposition to philosophical materialism, he was a spiritualist. Indeed, in his inaugural address he spoke of the service his research had rendered to the “spiritualistic doctrine, much neglected elsewhere, but certain at least to find a glorious refuge in your ranks.”[27] Pasteur’s chief contribution to the “spiritualist doctrine” was his campaign against spontaneous generation, the religio-philosophical consequences of which he emphasized in an address at the Sorbonne in 1864 while fervently denying that these broader issues had influenced his actual research. To the extent that any question was truly scientific, he argued, neither spiritualism nor any other philosophical school had a place in it... Despite this public posture, Pasteur sometimes speculated on the origin of life and attempted to create it experimentally, as he finally confessed in 1883.[28] Footnotes 25. On Pasteur’s general philosophical and religious positions, see René Vallery-Radot, op. cit., 242–245, 342–343; Dubos, op. cit., 385–400; Pasteur Vallery-Radot, Pasteur inconnu, 221–238; André George, Pasteur (Paris, 1958); and Pasteur, Oeuvres, II, 328–346; VI, 55–58; VII, 326–339. 26. Pasteur, Correspondance, II, 213–214. 27. Pasteur, Oeuvres, VII, 326–339, quote on 326. For an English trans. of Pasteur’s inaugural address, see Eli Moschcowitz, “Louis Pasteur’s Credo of Science: His Address When He Was Inducted Into the French Academy,” in Bulletin of the History of Medicine,22 (1948), 451–466. 28. Pasteur, Oeuvres, I, 376. For the Sorbonne address of 1864, see ibid., II, 328–346. More generally, see Farley and Geison, “Science, Politics and Spontaneous Generation…” (in press).

The following extract is from the online article, Louis Pasteur: A Religious Man? by Brendon Barnett (Pasteur Brewing, 2011):

Pasteur rarely, if at all, spoke of religion explicitly. He tended to generalize the subject, but with the debate around the theory of spontaneous generation, Pasteur was forced to address it. Pasteur could not deny that he didn’t understand the origin of life, but only insisted that life comes from life, not from non-life or simple chemical reactions, as spontaneous generation would suggest. So, Pasteur never negated the possibility of life beginning from divine creation, only that the discussion and discoveries at hand were a matter of science. Debré describes Pasteur by saying that, “his attitude was that of a believer, not of a sectarian,” and that Pasteur was, “A biologist more than a chemist, a spiritual more than a religious man, Pasteur was held back only by the lack of more powerful technical means and therefore had to limit himself to identifying germs and explaining their generation.” Pasteur also spoke of his doubts regarding the creation of the universe: "The idea of God is a form of the idea of the Infinite. As long as the mystery of the Infinite weighs on human thought, temples will be erected for the worship of the Infinite, whether God be called ‘Brahma,’ ‘Allah,’ ‘Jehovah,’ or ‘Jesus’; and on the pavement of those temples men will be seen kneeling, prostrate, annihilated, in the thought of the Infinite. At these supreme moments there is something in the depths of our souls which tells us that the world may be more than a mere continuation of phenomena proper to a mechanical equilibrium brought out of the chaos of the elements through the gradual action of the forces of matter." ... Louis Pasteur did not deny religion, but was compelled to say that, “religion has no more place in science than science has in religion.” The role of religion in his mind was clear: "In each one of us there are two men, the scientist and the man of faith or of doubt. These two spheres are separate, and woe to those who want to make them encroach upon one another in the present state of our knowledge!"

Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Louis Pasteur:

Maurice Vallery-Radot, grandson of the brother of the son-in-law of Pasteur and outspoken Catholic, ... holds that Pasteur fundamentally remained Catholic.[75] According to both Pasteur Vallery-Radot and Maurice Vallery-Radot, the following well-known quotation attributed to Pasteur is apocryphal:[76] "The more I know, the more nearly is my faith that of the Breton peasant. Could I but know all I would have the faith of a Breton peasant's wife".[3] According to Maurice Vallery-Radot,[77] the false quotation appeared for the first time shortly after the death of Pasteur.[78] However, despite his belief in God, it has been said that his views were that of a freethinker rather than a Catholic, a spiritual more than a religious man.[79][80][81] He was also against mixing science with religion.[82][83] Footnotes [3] James J. Walsh (1913). "Louis Pasteur". In Herbermann, Charles. Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. [75] Vallery-Radot, Maurice (1994). Pasteur. Paris: Perrin. pp. 377–407. [76] Pasteur Vallery-Radot, Letter to Paul Dupuy, 1939, quoted by Hilaire Cuny, Pasteur et le mystère de la vie, Paris, Seghers, 1963, p. 53–54. [77] Pasteur, 1994, p. 378. [78] In Pasteur's Semaine religieuse ... du diocèse de Versailles, October 6, 1895, p. 153. [79] Joseph McCabe (1945). A Biographical Dictionary of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Freethinkers. Haldeman-Julius Publications. Retrieved 11 August 2012. [80] Patrice Debré (2000). Louis Pasteur. JHU Press. p. 176. ISBN 978-0-8018-6529-9. [81] Brendon Barnett (May 31, 2011). "Louis Pasteur: A Religious Man?". Pasteur Brewing. Retrieved 11 August 2012. [82] Brendon Barnett (May 31, 2011). "Louis Pasteur: A Religious Man?". Pasteur Brewing. Retrieved 11 August 2012. [83] Patrice Debré (2000). Louis Pasteur. JHU Press. p. 176. ISBN 978-0-8018-6529-9.

And here's a short quote from the Biologos article, Pasteur vs. Pouchet and the Demise of Spontaneous Generation: Lessons for Today from an Old Controversy (Part 2) by Larry Funck:

While he was careful to contend that his theological/philosophical beliefs did not influence his science, Pasteur was not hesitant to expound on the significance of his science on the related theological questions. Before an audience that included the elite of French society including authors Dumas and George Sand, Pasteur began with a list of the great issues confronting mankind, including “the unity or multiplicity of human races; the creation of man…; the fixity of species or the slow and progressive transformation of one species into another; the reputed eternity of matter…; and the notion of a useless God.” [4] After a brief historical sketch of the spontaneous generation controversy, he continued: “…What a triumph, gentlemen, it would be for materialism if it could affirm that it rests on the established fact of matter organizing itself, taking on life of itself;…what would be more natural than to deify such matter? What good then would it be to resort to the idea of a primordial creation….Of what use then would be the idea of a Creator-God.” [5] Pasteur thus left little doubt which side of the religious controversy he was on. In short, the scientific theory of spontaneous generation was to be viewed as a threat to the traditional religious beliefs regarding the creation of life... Pasteur concluded his talk with a denial that his scientific work had been motivated or influenced by these concerns and followed with an account of the evidence he had garnered against spontaneous generation. There is no evidence that Pasteur ever criticized Pouchet directly on philosophical or theological grounds. Nevertheless it is apparent from his comments in the Sorbonne lecture where his sentiments lay.

Finally, here's an extract from the online article, Louis Pasteur's Views on Creation, Evolution, and the Genesis of Germs by Dr. Alan Gillen and Frank Sherwin, Answers in Genesis, February 25, 2008; last featured March 12, 2008:

Thus, in a simple but elegant set of experiments, Pasteur not only struck the doctrine of spontaneous generation a “mortal blow” but also helped to establish the germ theory of disease. This was a milestone in creation microbiology. Pathogens are real. Pasteur said, "It is dumb, dumb since these experiments were begun several years ago; it is dumb because I have kept it sheltered from the only thing man does not know how to produce, from the germs which float in the air, from Life, for Life is a germ and a germ is Life. Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow of this simple experiment! No, there is now no circumstances known in which it could be affirmed that microscopic beings come into the world without germs, without parents, similar to themselves." (Vallery-Radot 1901, vol. 1, p. 142). Pasteur not only refuted the strange idea that one can get something from nothing, but he maintained life must come from other life or the Author of Life... Then, for those who are skeptical about his belief in Christ, we go to the last day of his life, September 28, 1895 (4:40 p.m.), Louis Pasteur was found holding his wife’s hand with one hand and a crucifix with the other. He tightly gripped both for twenty-four hours. Does this sound like a man who had lost his faith in the Creator and in Christ?

My own conclusion is that Pasteur died a Catholic, and was genuinely concerned about the theological implications of abiogenesis and Darwinism. However, he seemed to believe that science and religion should be compartmentalized, and he never used his scientific discoveries to publicly argue for belief in God. Consequently, I cannot include him in my list of great scientists who flouted methodological naturalism. Perhaps I should have included Francesco Redi, however. vjtorley

JDK, the intellectual integrity of design thought pivots on the empirically based inductive reasoning that drives the design inference. By refusing to address this while making all sorts of suggestions about ideological motivations and agendas is tantamount to attacking the integrity of millions of people and thousands educated in scientific disciplines, without addressing the grounds for their thinking. I point out to you that such behaviour -- including assertions and suggestions about the so-called wedge document etc -- can very reasonably be understood as constituting an attack- the- man- instead- of- address- the- issue rhetorical gambit. I suggest that you change the approach you have taken, to a more reasonable one. KF kairosfocus

Mung, I plead guilty. Andre said "here" and I quoted people not here. Got it: I accept your reprimand. jdk

at 107, in response to my statement that "there is an important distinction between science and science-related metaphysics", UB wrote

There certainly is, my friend, and you are on the metaphysics side of that distinction, arguing from a position that is irrelevant to the science.

I'm not quite sure I'm your friend, although I'm willing to be a civil participant in a discussion with you. But I will say, again, that yes, I am interested in metaphysics, and the role it plays in human belief systems, quite a bit more than I am in arguments about the scientific evidence for design. I don't think the metaphysical issues are "irrelevant to the science", but I recognize that they are different. jdk

Yet you offered it as if gave an answer to a question posed about people here at UD. Guys, all I did was quote the Wedge document and a Johnson speech in response to Andre’s question “who here has ever claimed they want to prove a divine designer or even device design?” Mung

to Mung at 92: you are correct that the quotes are offered from the Wedge document and Johnson are not by anyone "here" at UD. jdk

I understand your question now, UB, and see how you are using the word "specify". As to your statement, "So now answer the question, does the existence of the wedge document (or anything else like it) invalidate any part of the physical evidence presented by ID, or is it irrelevant to that evidence?", I answered that question at #80, when I wrote,

I think I am being clear that my comments were about the goals and purposes of the ID movement, not about “the evidence for ID”, such as it is. It is true that right now I am not interested in discussing the latter issue.

I'm not sure I could answer your question any more directly: the Wedge document is about the purpose and goals of the Wedge movement, not about actual evidence for ID. jdk

I agree with Axel, there is nothing at all natural about the natural. And there's nothing natural about our abilities to produce theories about nature and test those theories against reality. It's about the most unnatural thing I can think of. Mung

jdk,

...there is an important distinction between science and science-related metaphysics

There certainly is, my friend, and you are on the metaphysics side of that distinction, arguing from a position that is irrelevant to the science. Upright BiPed

It is the YEC approach that drags religion into the discussion. YEC literally takes its cues from materialistic assumptions of unguided evolution. God would not do it that way. Mung

Mung, sadly, you may have a point. KF kairosfocus

kairosfocus:

PS: Notice, how the pivotal issue of the design inference as an application of scientific, inductive reasoning on empirically grounded signs, is not being addressed. And yet, that is the pivotal question.

I beg to differ my friend. The pivotal question is, how can I avoid addressing ID on the scientific merits. Mung

jdk

I have supported Josh’s point that there is an important distinction between science and science-related metaphysics, and that much of the arguments that go on in relationship to materialism, atheism, theistic evolution, and design are metaphysical and philosophical.

Josh says a lot of things he can neither explain or defend, as this thread has made clear. It is the TE approach that drags philosophy into the discussion as is evident from my comments @50. TE literally takes its cues from materialistic assumptions of unguided evolution. ID is based solely on scientific methods that do not draw on any metaphysical assumptions at all (except for the rules of right reason). TE is ideology based; ID is empirically based. That is why both Ted and Joshua flee the scene when their ideas are subjected to rational scrutiny. StephenB

SB (attn JDK), and the inductive, scientific inference to design on empirical signs fails because _________________, on the grounds that _________________ . KF kairosfocus

jdk

All of ID is primarily aimed at philosophy,

I am going to ask that you defend that claim. Just fill in missing blank: ID's inference to the best scientific explanation aims at philosophy because............ StephenB

And UB, your italicized question still doesn’t make sense to me. What do you mean by “specify objects among alternatives.” What do you mean by “a universe where no object specifies any other object”? How are you using the word “specify” here?

jdk, if you are going to have protein-based self-replicating life, and if those proteins are going to be constructed of amino acids, and if the order of those amino acids is going to determine the function of each of those individual proteins, then you are going to need the capacity to specify those amino acids and place them in the proper order. Capiche? My question was how does this happen in a universe where no object inherently specifies any other object. But we already know how this little trick is accomplished in nature. It uses one arrangement of matter to act as a representation, and a second arrangement of matter to establish what is being represented. Do you understand this? So my point to you is that this physical system required to 'specify objects' can be positively and exclusively identified by science, and as it turns out, it's a universal correlate of intelligent action. No amount of mud-slinging, sociopolitical hand-wringing, or deliberate avoidance is going to change that fact. Biosemiosis.org So now answer the question, does the existence of the wedge document (or anything else like it) invalidate any part of the physical evidence presented by ID, or is it irrelevant to that evidence? . Upright BiPed

'The “supernatural” is just science we don’t understand yet.' Almost right, sagebrush gardener. Just inverted. Science is the routinely supernatural. A strange thought that the supernatural could be mundane, in a sense, even banal, but that's the reality, as quantum physics pellucidly demonstrates - were it necessary. Axel

PPS: Pardon my repeating the annotated clip from Lewontin in NYRB Jan 1997:

. . . to put a correct view of the universe into people's heads [==> as in, "we" have cornered the market on truth, warrant and knowledge] we must first get an incorrect view out [--> as in, if you disagree with "us" of the secularist elite you are wrong, irrational and so dangerous you must be stopped, even at the price of manipulative indoctrination of hoi polloi] . . . the problem is to get them [= hoi polloi] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations,

[ --> as in, to think in terms of ethical theism is to be delusional, justifying "our" elitist and establishment-controlling interventions of power to "fix" the widespread mental disease]

and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth

[--> NB: this is a knowledge claim about knowledge and its possible sources, i.e. it is a claim in philosophy not science; it is thus self-refuting]

. . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists [--> "we" are the dominant elites], it is self-evident

[--> actually, science and its knowledge claims are plainly not immediately and necessarily true on pain of absurdity, to one who understands them; this is another logical error, begging the question , confused for real self-evidence; whereby a claim shows itself not just true but true on pain of patent absurdity if one tries to deny it . . . and in fact it is evolutionary materialism that is readily shown to be self-refuting]

that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality [--> = all of reality to the evolutionary materialist], and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test [--> i.e. an assertion that tellingly reveals a hostile mindset, not a warranted claim] . . . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us [= the evo-mat establishment] to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes [--> another major begging of the question . . . ] to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute [--> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door . . . [--> irreconcilable hostility to ethical theism, already caricatured as believing delusionally in imaginary demons]. [Lewontin, Billions and billions of Demons, NYRB Jan 1997,cf. here. And, if you imagine this is "quote-mined" I invite you to read the fuller annotated citation here.]

I suggest that there is need to look again at what is said, implied and suggested in that, about the agenda presented as having a right to rule and to indoctrinate hearts and minds while wearing the holy lab coat. Then ask, what was going on 20 years ago that would have made a respectable publication put forth an article like this? Didn't warning bells that this was way over the top go off? Why not? Something was going seriously wrong in our civilisation 20 years ago and more. It is much worse today. Demonstrated, domineering and ruthless are in my considered view, entirely warranted by the words and deeds that Lewontin's remarks as cited point to. kairosfocus

PS: Notice, how the pivotal issue of the design inference as an application of scientific, inductive reasoning on empirically grounded signs, is not being addressed. And yet, that is the pivotal question. kairosfocus

DS, it is not a matter of empty accusation when the facts are there. Facts, you have not addressed. Start with what Lewontin wrote in NYRB Jan 1997, at just about the time the DI fund-raising letter came out. The context in which an eminent scientist could write like that in a serious medium, NYRB, alone is quite enough to raise serious questions that would provoke a whistle-blowing response from Johnson, and there is a lot more out there. KF kairosfocus

KF,

Only then did I point out that the Wedge Document tactic is a motive mongering strawman tactic that is driven by a demonstrated domineering and ruthless agenda.

There it is again. Accusations of motive mongering while simultaneously engaging in, err, motive mongering. jdk was simply responding to a post by Andre above. She is not required to address other issues which you raise. I'll let you have the last word. daveS

JDK, nope, you have already been directed to the corrective by DI; which you should read. And, again, the pivotal issue is the design inference as an application of scientific inductive reasoning, where the point of the OP, on 31 examples, is that the perception that so-called methodological naturalism is a proper part of the definition of science and its methods is ill-founded. I should add for record that substantiating cites from relevant times and figures are material. Similarly, it is easy to say something is incoherent (especially when it cuts across your views . . . ), it is a bit harder to actually show it. To do the latter, kindly start with, the inference to design on empirically tested, reliable sign. And yes, I know, you wish to set that aside the better to get on with the usual side tracks that work elsewhere such as see, Wedge Document. Reminds me of the old cold war Russian agit prop trick: see American military forces here there everywhere. Neatly omitted, the Russian forces which were why a cold war had to be fought in the first place. KF kairosfocus

DS, Look carefully, you will see I asked for a response to the focal issue on something longstanding in the thread. This was repeatedly refused. Only then did I point out that the Wedge Document tactic is a motive mongering strawman tactic that is driven by a demonstrated domineering and ruthless agenda. In short, your turnabout fails. And notice, I again called for a return to the focal substantial issues. KF kairosfocus

Let’s at least get the facts straight about that. Who here wrote the Wedge document? Mung

KF,

I suggest that it is time to set aside the red herring of the Wedge Document as willfully distorted and twisted into a motive mongering accusation.

Heh. In the same post, while complaining about motive-mongering, you refer to "the worldview and cultural agenda of evolutionary materialism". To be blunt, many (if not most) of your own posts contain restatements of the wedge-document passages that jdk posted. daveS

kf writes,

labelled the wedge document by those who pounced on it.

No, it was labelled the Wedge document by the people who wrote it - that's the title of the document, and the strategy was explicitly named and described by Philip Johnson. Let's at least get the facts straight about that. jdk

JDK, no you did not "merely" quute what has been labelled the wedge document by those who pounced on it to twist it into a strawman caricature for the purposes of a massive smear. You are carrying on with enabling behaviour for a notorious deceitful smear. Kindly stop it, and instead deal with the focal issue, the design inference as an empirically grounded, inductive and even scientific argument. Where, part of that issue is that the definition of science and its methods has been warped by a distortion of the history of ideas and of approaches connected to science, which is what VJT addressed in his OP. As in, Judge "copycat" Jones' ACLU and NCSE influenced assertion that so-called methodological naturalism has been a centuries-long well-grounded premise of science. VJT is documenting, on 31 cases, not so. KF kairosfocus

F/N2: In The Laws, Bk X, 2355 years ago now, Plato long ago exposed the worldview and cultural agenda of evolutionary materialism:

Ath [in The Laws, Bk X]. . . .[The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art . . . [such that] all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only [ --> that is, evolutionary materialism is ancient and would trace all things to blind chance and mechanical necessity] . . . . [Thus, they hold] that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.-

[ --> Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT, leading to an effectively arbitrary foundation only for morality, ethics and law: accident of personal preference, the ebbs and flows of power politics, accidents of history and and the shifting sands of manipulated community opinion driven by "winds and waves of doctrine and the cunning craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming . . . " cf a video on Plato's parable of the cave; from the perspective of pondering who set up the manipulative shadow-shows, why.]

These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might,

[ --> Evolutionary materialism -- having no IS that can properly ground OUGHT -- leads to the promotion of amorality on which the only basis for "OUGHT" is seen to be might (and manipulation: might in "spin") . . . ]

and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [ --> Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality "naturally" leads to continual contentions and power struggles influenced by that amorality at the hands of ruthless power hungry nihilistic agendas], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is,to live in real dominion over others [ --> such amoral and/or nihilistic factions, if they gain power, "naturally" tend towards ruthless abuse and arbitrariness . . . they have not learned the habits nor accepted the principles of mutual respect, justice, fairness and keeping the civil peace of justice, so they will want to deceive, manipulate and crush -- as the consistent history of radical revolutions over the past 250 years so plainly shows again and again], and not in legal subjection to them [--> nihilistic will to power not the spirit of justice and lawfulness].

I suggest that it is time to set aside the red herring of the Wedge Document as willfully distorted and twisted into a motive mongering accusation. Deal with the issue in 45 above: the grounding of the design inference as an application of inductive reasoning. Failing that, a much more serious motives and agendas case can be made against evolutionary materialistic scientism and its fellow travellers. KF kairosfocus

Guys, all I did was quote the Wedge document and a Johnson speech in response to Andre's question "who here has ever claimed they want to prove a divine designer or even device design?" I haven't made any statements whatsoever about what I think about the arguments for design. I have supported Josh's point that there is an important distinction between science and science-related metaphysics, and that much of the arguments that go on in relationship to materialism, atheism, theistic evolution, and design are metaphysical and philosophical. And UB, your italicized question still doesn't make sense to me. What do you mean by "specify objects among alternatives." What do you mean by "a universe where no object specifies any other object"? How are you using the word "specify" here? jdk

F/N: Richard Lewontin lets the cat out of the bag on a priori evolutionary materialistic scientism in institutions of science, in education, in public policy, and in society -- NYRB, Jan 1997:

. . . to put a correct view of the universe into people's heads [==> as in, "we" have cornered the market on truth, warrant and knowledge] we must first get an incorrect view out [--> as in, if you disagree with "us" of the secularist elite you are wrong, irrational and so dangerous you must be stopped, even at the price of manipulative indoctrination of hoi polloi] . . . the problem is to get them [= hoi polloi] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations,

[ --> as in, to think in terms of ethical theism is to be delusional, justifying "our" elitist and establishment-controlling interventions of power to "fix" the widespread mental disease]

and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth

[--> NB: this is a knowledge claim about knowledge and its possible sources, i.e. it is a claim in philosophy not science; it is thus self-refuting]

. . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists [--> "we" are the dominant elites], it is self-evident

[--> actually, science and its knowledge claims are plainly not immediately and necessarily true on pain of absurdity, to one who understands them; this is another logical error, begging the question , confused for real self-evidence; whereby a claim shows itself not just true but true on pain of patent absurdity if one tries to deny it . . . and in fact it is evolutionary materialism that is readily shown to be self-refuting]

that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality [--> = all of reality to the evolutionary materialist], and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test [--> i.e. an assertion that tellingly reveals a hostile mindset, not a warranted claim] . . . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us [= the evo-mat establishment] to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes [--> another major begging of the question . . . ] to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute [--> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door . . . [--> irreconcilable hostility to ethical theism, already caricatured as believing delusionally in imaginary demons]. [Lewontin, Billions and billions of Demons, NYRB Jan 1997,cf. here. And, if you imagine this is "quote-mined" I invite you to read the fuller annotated citation here.]

If JDK wants to play at motive mongering, let us show that there is a reason why someone such as Philip Johnson may have had excellent reason to be very concerned circa 1996 - 1997 to correct the impacts of a runaway, manifestly self-referentially incoherent, self-falsifying (thus necessarily false) and inescapably amoral atheistical agenda in science and society. And it is notorious that the easiest way to get rid of whistleblowing complaints is to attack and use insitutional power to seek to smear and discredit the man. Deal with the issue of the design inference, or there is every reason to conclude that there being no good answer to the design inference itself, there is an intent of an entrenched domineering ruthless and in some cases amoral elite to marginalise and discredit the people who dare to ask questions. Thus, silencing opposition to the domineering agenda. Enough is enough. KF kairosfocus

Try writing short, coherent sentences, without name-calling and hyperbolic categorizing, and without long quotes from others.

You mean like this: jdk, if there is going to be life on this planet, you’ll have to specify objects among alternatives. How do you specify an object in a universe where no object specifies any other object? Let's not pretend that KF is the reason you won't engage evidence, and he certainly isn't the reason your arguments (such as they are) are irrelevant. Upright BiPed

JDK, then you are guilty -- by your own admission -- of speaking with disregard to the truth, in the hope of what you have said or suggested being taken as true. That is a grave moral offence and in context constitutes a willfully insistent smear. The issue is whether inductive reasoning is a legitimate exercise in general, and in that context, whether the design inference on empirical signs and linked analysis is reasonable and responsible. That, you choose not to even address, even as you set about smearing millions with an insinuation of hidden deceitful agenda. On the strength of a loaded misreading of a 20-year-old document, despite that misreading being corrected on record any number of times, including here at UD. That speaks saddening volumes, and as the underlying rhetorical tactics are all too commonplace among typical design objectors, it speaks to the nature of the rhetorical agenda against design thought. It is high time to do better, sir. KF PS: DI response on the Wedge document agit prop talking point agenda: https://www.discovery.org/f/349 kairosfocus

No thanks, kf. Why in the world would I expect a productive discussion, even if I wanted to take the time to do it, with someone who begins their challenge with

Otherwise, you are doing little more than dragging a red herring away to a motive mongering strawman strawman caricature that you are then pummelling and acting as though this is the real issue (when all the while we see clear demonstration of atheistical ideological imposition on even the definition of science and its methods, which is the focus of the OP).

Try writing short, coherent sentences, without name-calling and hyperbolic categorizing, and without long quotes from others. That would improve the possibility that discussing things with you would be a worthwhile use of anyone's time. jdk

jdk, I assume you're a good soldier for attacking ID. You'd never be caught answering the question of why you're motivated to attack ID with irrelevant arguments. So there is no need for us to belabor the point. But just so you know, your politics don't matter. Phillip Johnson's politics don't matter. The "ID movement" doesn't matter. To the design inference, the only thing that matters is the evidence -- the very thing being avoided. Upright BiPed

JDK, I challenge you to address on the merits the points I made in 45 above: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/methodological-naturalism-31-great-scientists-who-made-scientific-arguments-for-the-supernatural/#comment-614000 Otherwise, you are doing little more than dragging a red herring away to a motive mongering strawman caricature that you are then pummelling and acting as though this is the real issue (when all the while we see clear demonstration of atheistical ideological imposition on even the definition of science and its methods, which is the focus of the OP). The inductive inference to design is the pivotal real issue, the warrant for there to be a design theory view in the first place. Kindly, address it. KF kairosfocus

I think I am being clear that my comments were about the goals and purposes of the ID movement, not about "the evidence for ID", such as it is. It is true that right now I am not interested in discussing the latter issue. jdk

So ... Your comments about ID weren't about the simple fact that your comments are completely irrelevant to ID arguments. Furthermore, you have no intention of answering the question I asked, thereby acknowledging the fact. Got it. Good to know. Upright BiPed

My comment really wasn't about that. The Wedge document was about the purposes of the ID movement, which is/was primarily to combat the metaphysical view of materialism. All of ID is primarily aimed at philosophy, although the ID big tent (as expressed in the Johnson quote I offered) includes a large range of views about the state of the scientific theory of evolution and/or what exactly the "theory" of ID includes. jdk

Does this mean that you won't be answering the question as to whether or not the wedge document is irrelevant to ID evidence? Upright BiPed

UB, my quote of the Wedge document was in response to Andre's question at 62:

who here has ever claimed they want to prove a divine designer or even device design.

jdk

Amazing post by VJTorley

Professor Swamidass asks whether I’d like to take science back to the 1600s, theologically speaking. I certainly wouldn’t be sorry if science became avowedly theistic at some future date, although I think that step would require a further tightening of the fine-tuning argument,

One doesn't need to show these things in order for science to be theistic. Science would only be atheistic if atheism was the correct position. Scientists can be atheists but that doesn't translate into science being atheistic. One only needs to point out that the opposite of theism/deism is atheism and atheism is fully dependent on the god of chance, a silly position based on false extrapolation and anti-common sense reasoning. The god of chance/serendipity is not a scientifically verified position. One can make a case for micro-serendipity in various contexts but they do not translate into macro explanatory context. computerist

Dr Torley Like you Pasteur was a devout Catholic. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11536a.htm So when you say the following;

Andre also asked about Pasteur. However, Pasteur never claimed that he’d disproved abiogenesis, and he was always very circumspect about the theological implications of his work. He was also against mixing science and religion, and seems to have held a view similar to Stephen Jay Gould’s NOMA. So frankly, he wasn’t much help to me, in making my case.

May I inquire where you got your information from? Andre

Dr Torley In Regards to Louis Pasteur, some quotes 1. "Nothing is lost and nothing is created in the operations of art as those of nature." 2. "Posterity will one day laugh at the sublime foolishness of the modern materialistic philosophy. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory." 3. "The controls of life are structured as forms and nuclear arrangements, in a relation with the motions of the universe." 4. "The universe is asymmetric and I am persuaded that life, as it is known to us, is a direct result of the asymmetry of the universe or of its indirect consequences. The universe is asymmetric." 5. "Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment." Also see if you can find the English translation of The Life of Pasteur, published in 1900. I'm sure you will change your mind after you have read it. Over time our opponents have eroded many facts about Pasteur and your response seems likely that you have embraced these erroneous "facts". Here is where you can start https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100538617 Andre

“Thus says the Lord who made the earth, the Lord who formed it to establish it—the Lord is His name: Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known. [Jeremiah 33:2-3 (ESV)]

Dionisio

I honestly think that the only people who don't know where or how to separate science from philosophy is our materialist friends. It appears to me rather blatantly that they don't know the difference. I also observe it is like this because of their emotional commitments to materialism. Andre

jdk, Your comments on this thread seemed to suggest that ID proponents should somehow be cut off from their senses and reasoning abilities, and should seek out the validation of those who are forcing science to conform to their personal metaphysics. This is consistent with the belief that ID arguments aren't science (i.e. demarcation derby). You then came back and presented the wedge document without comment. People on this forum who present the wedge typically do it because they feel like it helps discredit the evidence that ID people present. Thus, my question about the evidence: ”jdk, if there is going to be life on this planet, you’ll have to specify objects among alternatives. How do you specify an object in a universe where no object specifies any other object? We know how it’s done in nature. Is that off limits? Is that evidence made void by anything any person has ever said or done?” If your answer to this question is that the evidence is not off limits, and of course, nothing anyone could ever do would ever make any evidence invalid, then your presentation of the wedge is irrelevant to ID arguments, and I would ask you why you are doing what you are doing? Upright BiPed

Sorry, UB, I have no idea what comment of mine you are referring to, or what you mean??? jdk

jdk, if there is going to be life on this planet, you'll have to specify objects among alternatives. How do you specify an object in a universe where no object specifies any other object? We know how it's done in nature. Is that off limits? Is that evidence made void by anything any person has ever said or done? Upright BiPed

jdk referring to the Wedge Document:

, Governing Goals • To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies. • To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

Sounds like a good idea to me. Those are my goals as well. Do you have a problem with that? What does that have to do with IDs scientific methods. Nothing. But thank you for playing. Jdk referring to Johnson's speech:

This is a way of phrasing the issue that ought to bring together Protestants of different views, young-earth believers in the scriptures, old-earthers who interpret Genesis differently, even the people who take the whole thing allegorically. Again, they should have a common interest in the issue. In the beginning was the Word – in the beginning God created: true or false.

I love it. Christians should unite to challenge the atheists (and their TE lapdogs) by using good science to counter their bad science. Do you have a problem with that? StephenB

kairosfocus @29, 45, 47, 48 Very insightful comments. Thank you. Dionisio

From a speech about ID and the Wedge strategy by Philip Johnson in 2001 in Kansas:

This is a way of phrasing the issue that ought to bring together Protestants of different views, young-earth believers in the scriptures, old-earthers who interpret Genesis differently, even the people who take the whole thing allegorically. Again, they should have a common interest in the issue. In the beginning was the Word - in the beginning God created: true or false.

jdk

Governing Goal #1 from the DI "Wedge" Diocument:

Governing Goals • To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies. • To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

jdk

They know exactly what they are doing, and so do you.

^ ^ ^ | | | What he said. Mung

Prof Swamidass I am gutted who here has ever claimed they want to prove a divine designer or even device design? It is at this point that you confirm my suspicions about your very own commitment to truth. Andre

Hi Dr Torley Thank you for your reponse. I actually asked about Pasteur and Tesla. Regards Andre

Professor Red Davis writes:

The really big question here, IMO, is this: who gets to define science? The answer is, scientists get to do that, not philosophers or historians. The definition of what counts as science and what doesn’t changes over time, for reasons that are not always simple and certainly defy my ability to spell them out in a few hundred words.

My response would be: it's fine by me if scientists define their enterprise. Why shouldn't they? But if scientists get to define it, then they can also redefine it, in a way that dispenses with the principle of methodological naturalism, if they so choose. Professor Swamidass asks whether I'd like to take science back to the 1600s, theologically speaking. I certainly wouldn't be sorry if science became avowedly theistic at some future date, although I think that step would require a further tightening of the fine-tuning argument, and a more rigorous demonstration that even the multiverse must have been fine-tuned - which would leave room for only a Transcendent Designer (which you might call God). Currently I'd say that a good case can be made that the multiverse would have to have been fine-tuned, but I'd like to see it further generalized. (Right now, I believe it's tied to a particular model of physics.) vjtorley

Andre asked why William Paley wasn't included in my list of 31 great scientists who flouted the principle of methodological naturalism in their writings. Short answer: Paley wasn't a scientist, although he was quite an accomplished philosopher. Andre also asked about Pasteur. However, Pasteur never claimed that he'd disproved abiogenesis, and he was always very circumspect about the theological implications of his work. He was also against mixing science and religion, and seems to have held a view similar to Stephen Jay Gould's NOMA. So frankly, he wasn't much help to me, in making my case. vjtorley

Hi everyone, I'd like to thank Kairosfocus for his very helpful quotes from Isaac Newton, which add to the body of evidence showing that methodological naturalism is a novelty, in historical terms, and that it only goes back to the nineteenth century. Regarding Professor Swamidass's quotes from Professor James Tour: it is true that he does say, "I do not know how to use science to prove intelligent design although some others might. I am sympathetic to the arguments on the matter and I find some of them intriguing, but the scientific proof is not there, in my opinion." But the key words are "prove" and "proof." Not even I would say that science can prove Intelligent Design. In his recent talk, "The Origin of Life: An Inside Story," Professor Tour decided to focus on the origin of just one of the four basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates. He then proceeded to list eleven enormous hurdles faced by any blind, unguided process, in generating these compounds, before concluding:

Therefore, small changes in ultimate functioning require major rerouting in the synthetic approaches. All changes, when doing chemistry, are hard and cannot be done by the usual hand-waving arguments or simple erasures on a board. Laborious and intentional elements of forethought are required.

Next, Professor Tour explained why chemists need to engage in reverse engineering, when trying to synthesize desired products:

Why do synthetic chemists use retrosynthetic approaches to build complex molecules? Because without the retrosynthetic approach, discerning one’s way to desired products is far too complex, leading to dead-ends that are overwhelmingly abundant, generating massive amounts of undesired products, and exhausting precious supplies that might have taken huge efforts to prepare. But Nature cannot perform retrosynthetic analyses, if we presuppose that the starting points progressed to a non-predefined endpoint. Again, this is utterly perplexing for the synthetic chemist. How could this have happened in prebiotic chemistry? How do you go from a starting material to a product that’s a complex product? What we do is we work our way back slowly. But Nature doesn’t know what its product is going to be at the end! It doesn’t know! It’s just blindly going along.

OK, it's not proof, and he never mentions the phrase "Intelligent Design" in his talk. Nevertheless, it seems to me that he makes a pretty good case that intelligent design of some sort was required in order to produce life. Wouldn't you? I know that Professor Swamidass shares Professsor Tour's skepticism regarding abiogenesis, and that he also believes life was designed. So perhaps we are not so far apart on this one. Professor Swamidass also wrote:

I understand you are trying to say in science that “design” exists, without considering anything about the designer, or even articulating design principles to explain anything about that design (other than natural processes cannot produce it). But this is not ever how “design” is ever considered in science. In every case where design is considered, we think about the capabilities and identity of the putative designer.

Hmm. Right off the top of my head, I can think of two exceptions to this claim. Consider the following quote from Fred Hoyle:

Would you not say to yourself, "Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question." ("The Universe: Past and Present Reflections." Engineering and Science, November 1981, pp. 8–12.)

The other example that springs to mind is the prime number sequence in Carl Sagan's novel, Contact. In the story, Ellie realizes that the sequence of primes could only have come from an intelligent source, but until she receives instructions from the aliens, she is frustratingly unable to say any more about them:

"Finally, what's being sent seems to be a long sequence of prime numbers, integers that can't be divided by any other number except themselves and one. No astrophysical process is likely to generate prime numbers. So I'd say - we want to be cautious of course - but I'd say that by every criterion we can lay our hands on, this looks like the real thing." (p. 79) She tried to make a bigger leap, into the mind of someone who was enormously, orders of magnitude, more intelligent than she was, smarter than Drumlin, say, or Eda, the young Nigerian physicist who had just won the Nobel Prize. But it was impossible. She could muse about demonstrating Fermat's Last Theorem or the Goldbach Conjecture in only a few lines of equations. She could imagine problems enormously beyond us that would be old hat to them. But she couldn't get into their minds; she couldn't imagine what thinking would be like if you were much more capable than a human being. Of course. No surprise. What did she expect? It was like trying to visualize a new primary color or a world in which you could recognize several hundred acquaintances individually only by their smells...She could talk about this, but she couldn't experience it. By definition, it has to be mighty hard to understand the behavior of a being much smarter than you are. (p. 87) (Excerpts from Contact, Simon & Schuster, 1986.)

I'd say that's where we're at currently, with the biological and cosmological evidence for Intelligent Design. Thoughts? vjtorley

I am still waiting for Ted Davis, who claims that methodological naturalism is historical, to provide even one example from another era in which the scientific community imposed a universal methodology on its members as a "rule" of science. StephenB

Joshua Swamidass

Of course I believe that evolution is (in fact) purposeful and with forethought. However, as far as science can tell it is not.

So, in your judgment, there is no conflict between science and religion, except for the fact that religion says evolution is guided and science says that it is not. In other words, you think that there is no conflict between religion and science, except for the fact that they produce opposite conclusions about evolution. Is that what you tell your students? StephenB

Professor Swamidass

Hello all, some of us are continuing the conversation on BioLogos. You are welcome to join.

You and Ted are welcome to remain here are defend your claims in front of a larger audience, which is also the same audience to which you first made those claims. StephenB

Joshua Swamidass

Your quotes are of scientists making ill fated forays into philosophy, without realizing it. And, their position is now outside the mainstream any ways. So, on several levels, they are wrong. Just ask Eugenie Scott of you doubt me.

You and Ted just said that it is the scientists themselves who define the science. My quotes are from scientists defining evolutionary science. You will note that I referenced 41 people, including 39 nobel laureates. It is, by your own admission, the majority of evolutionary biologists who define evolutionary biology. Since you say that the consensus opinion rules, your dissent (however sincere or insincere it might be) is irrelevant. I know all about Eugenie Scott. (You have one name, I have at least a hundred) She scolded some scientists for telling the truth, explaining that it is bad PR and makes it more difficult to recruit Christians and help TEs like yourself. So she changed the language in one document. That has nothing to do with the majority of evolutionary biologists (your standard, not mine), who ignore her when they write their textbooks. If you think that all these scientists are "outside the mainstream," you need to provide some evidence. Provide examples from just one or two biological textbooks that are neutral about purpose in evolution. StephenB

Your quotes are of scientists making ill fated forays into philosophy, without realizing it.

They know exactly what they are doing, and so do you. Upright BiPed

For the record, I do dispute many design arguments on merit. Just not interested in making that case now. Besides, I am a Christian that believes God created us. I’m not trying to prove God was unnecessary. He was.

At this stage, this comment is no less than a complete concession. Just speak the words: I, Joshua Swamidass, am aware of ID arguments that I cannot reconcile on either evidentiary or philosophical grounds. I choose to avoid those arguments, and will stand outside the ring and shout with materialists at the advocates of that evidence. Enjoy the faculty lounge professor. Upright BiPed

@50 Wow, I think I have explained this at least 2 times to you in past posts. Of course I believe that evolution is (in fact) purposeful and with forethought. However, as far as science can tell it is not. Your quotes are of scientists making ill fated forays into philosophy, without realizing it. And, their position is now outside the mainstream any ways. So, on several levels, they are wrong. Just ask Eugenie Scott of you doubt me. If you want to rehash this conversation yet again, please join us on the other site. Prof. S. Joshua Swamidass

Ted and Joshua, I know that you both believe that the "scientific community" is responsible for defining the science of evolution. I am, therefore, going to share with you the science of evolution as presented by that same community. From Miller & Levine: Biology Evolution works without either plan or purpose … Evolution is random and undirected. Douglass Futuyma: This experiment conveys the essence of natural selection: it is a completely mindless process without forethought or goal. In 2005, 39 Nobel Laureates wrote the Kansas State Board of Education to inform them that “evolution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection.” Since you have granted this body of scientists the authority to define evolution, I must assume that you also believe that evolution is not the result of a purpose or plan. Is that a fair assumption? Do you agree that your community's description of evolution includes non-scientific, metaphysical presumptions that rule out God in principle? Don't get me wrong. I don't expect an answer. I just wanted to put it out there so that readers can draw their own conclusions about your sincerity. StephenB

One last comment, then you guys are welcome to join me at BioLogos. For the record, I do dispute many design arguments on merit. Just not interested in making that case now. Besides, I am a Christian that believes God created us. I'm not trying to prove God was unnecessary. He was. @46 Barry, I understand exactly what you are trying to do. My use of your forbidden word (God) when discussing the obvious is not because I do not understand ID. I understand you are trying to say in science that "design" exists, without considering anything about the designer, or even articulating design principles to explain anything about that design (other than natural processes cannot produce it). But this is not ever how "design" is ever considered in science. In every case where design is considered, we think about the capabilities and identity of the putatutive designer. This gives us limits as to what is possible by design, so as to protect us from a "Design of the Gaps" fallacy. Of course ID resists the notion of considering the designers identity, but only because this would be a clear violation of MN. (Reaching back to Phil Johnson's reasons for artificially limiting ID to exclude consideration of the Designer.) At least he was clear that he wanted to argue for God so that is why he refused to discuss the designers identity in science. Of course, Phil's lawyerly strategy continues to this day. In this way, I'm much more like the scientists in this article. I'd rather make a clear case for "God" in science-engaged philosophy (as most of these references are), rather than arguing for "design" in "science" using my own idiosyncratic rules. But to each his own. ID has been trying this for over 25 years now. Maybe it will take another 25 years to try something new. Prof. S. Joshua Swamidass

F/N 2: The General Scholium of Newton for Principia, which perhaps should have been cited in the OP, illustrating just how far removed Newton was from the Methodological naturalism constraint:

. . . This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centres of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of the sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems: and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those systems at immense distances one from another. This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God pantokrator , or Universal Ruler; for God is a relative word, and has a respect to servants; and Deity is the dominion of God not over his own body, as those imagine who fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over servants. The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect; but a being, however perfect, without dominion, cannot be said to be Lord God; for we say, my God, your God, the God of Israel, the God of Gods, and Lord of Lords; but we do not say, my Eternal, your Eternal, the Eternal of Israel, the Eternal of Gods; we do not say, my Infinite, or my Perfect: these are titles which have no respect to servants. The word God usually signifies Lord; but every lord is not a God. It is the dominion of a spiritual being which constitutes a God: a true, supreme, or imaginary dominion makes a true, supreme, or imaginary God. And from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being; and, from his other perfections, that he is supreme, or most perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, his duration reaches from eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity to infinity; he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. He is not eternity or infinity, but eternal and infinite; he is not duration or space, but he endures and is present. He endures for ever, and is every where present; and by existing always and every where, he constitutes duration and space. Since every particle of space is always, and every indivisible moment of duration is every where, certainly the Maker and Lord of all things cannot be never and no where. Every soul that has perception is, though in different times and in different organs of sense and motion, still the same indivisible person. There are given successive parts in duration, co-existent puts in space, but neither the one nor the other in the person of a man, or his thinking principle; and much less can they be found in the thinking substance of God. Every man, so far as he is a thing that has perception, is one and the same man during his whole life, in all and each of his organs of sense. God is the same God, always and every where. He is omnipresent not virtually only, but also substantially; for virtue cannot subsist without substance. In him are all things contained and moved [i.e. cites Ac 17, where Paul evidently cites Cleanthes]; yet neither affects the other: God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies; bodies find no resistance from the omnipresence of God. It is allowed by all that the Supreme God exists necessarily; and by the same necessity he exists always, and every where. [i.e accepts the cosmological argument to God.] Whence also he is all similar, all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm, all power to perceive, to understand, and to act; but in a manner not at all human, in a manner not at all corporeal, in a manner utterly unknown to us. As a blind man has no idea of colours, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things. He is utterly void of all body and bodily figure, and can therefore neither be seen, nor heard, or touched; nor ought he to be worshipped under the representation of any corporeal thing. [Cites Exod 20.] We have ideas of his attributes, but what the real substance of any thing is we know not. In bodies, we see only their figures and colours, we hear only the sounds, we touch only their outward surfaces, we smell only the smells, and taste the savours; but their inward substances are not to be known either by our senses, or by any reflex act of our minds: much less, then, have we any idea of the substance of God. We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final cause [i.e from his designs]: we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion: for we adore him as his servants; and a god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things. [i.e necessity does not produce contingency] All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing. [That is, implicitly rejects chance, Plato's third alternative and explicitly infers to the Designer of the Cosmos.] But, by way of allegory, God is said to see, to speak, to laugh, to love, to hate, to desire, to give, to receive, to rejoice, to be angry, to fight, to frame, to work, to build; for all our notions of God are taken from. the ways of mankind by a certain similitude, which, though not perfect, has some likeness, however. And thus much concerning God; to discourse of whom from the appearances of things, does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy.

Notice, how Newton uses the trichotomy as well known and not in dispute. It is worth underscoring that in looking at the world of life as we observe it, modern design thinkers have consistently argued from the very first technical work by Thaxton et al, that inference of design on signs is not an inference to a designer within or beyond the cosmos. In my case (as discussion at UD is relvant here at UD), I have typically suggested that a molecular nanotech lab some gnerations beyond Venter et al would suffice to account for cell based life. Where a cause beyond the cosmos is material would be the fine tuning of the cosmos. And, arguably, to explain the world of responsibly and rationally free mind such as we arguably have and exhibit, another "big bang." KF kairosfocus

F/N: Plato in The Laws, Bk X, c 360 BC:

Ath. . . . we have . . . lighted on a strange doctrine. Cle. What doctrine do you mean? Ath. The wisest of all doctrines, in the opinion of many. Cle. I wish that you would speak plainer. Ath. The doctrine that all things do become, have become, and will become, some by nature [--> mechanical necessity], some by art [--> design], and some by chance [--> cf to a fair die, a biased one, a loaded one, a quantum noise process such as Zener noise, etc]. Cle. Is not that true? Ath. Well, philosophers are probably right; at any rate we may as well follow in their track, and examine what is the meaning of them and their disciples. Cle. By all means. Ath. They say that the greatest and fairest things are the work of nature and of chance, the lesser of art, which, receiving from nature the greater and primeval creations, moulds and fashions all those lesser works which are generally termed artificial . . . . . fire and water, and earth and air, all exist by nature and chance [--> classic elements of the world] . . . The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them . . . After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only [--> ancient statement of evolutionary materialism, here revealed to be at root a philosophical assertion] . . . . Nearly all of them, my friends, seem to be ignorant of the nature and power of the soul [i.e. mind, LATER DISCUSSED AS THE SELF MOVED, AS LIFE WITH AGENCY OF SOME RELEVANT DEGREE], especially in what relates to her origin: they do not know that she is among the first of things, and before all bodies, and is the chief author of their changes and transpositions. [--> he goes on to a first cause argument] And if this is true, and if the soul is older than the body, must not the things which are of the soul's kindred be of necessity prior to those which appertain to the body? [--> he will speak of an onward chain of cause-effect bonds, as second, third etc] . . . . if the soul turn out to be the primeval element, and not fire or air, then in the truest sense and beyond other things the soul may be said to exist by nature; and this would be true if you proved that the soul is older than the body, but not otherwise.

Thus, the explanatory trichotomy (and lest there be a rabit trail, we can see chance and/or necessity and/or degisn at work in various aspects of an entity or process; the issue is whether design in particular has characteristic and reliable signs] has long been on the table, in a well known work of one of the top ten thinkers of our civilisation. KF kairosfocus

Prof. S. Joshua Swamidass @ 42: I give you points for efficiency. You managed to pack a lot of error into a small space. 1. "I know you are not trying to “prove God” per se. Rather, you are trying to demonstrate divine design in nature." No and no. We are not trying to prove God per se or otherwise; nor are we trying to demonstrate the divine. For someone who comments on ID from an assumed position of authority, you don't seem to understand the first thing about it. ID posits that some aspects of nature are best explained as the result of design. Period. Full stop. Certainly many people go on to nominate God as the designer. But ID has always taken great pains to make clear that proving God is beyond the ID project as such. 2. "Of course you want to do this to point to this as evidence for God." No. See 1 above. See also "the principle of charity." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity 3. "So sometimes we just group steps 1 and 2 into the same activity." I don’t know who this “we” is. It is certainly not ID proponents. 4. “Unless you legitimately believe some non divine being other than God is the designer” Why is this such a leap for you? You believe that blind, unguided natural forces can produce life through sheer dumb luck filtered through natural selection. Yet you strain at the suggestion that life might be the product of a super-sophisticated technology directed by an intelligence as if you know for a certainty this could not possibly have been the case. How strange. 5. “and have a mechanism for design that would be reachable for this mere mortal” Oh, I can help you here. Please describe the mechanism you employed to post your comment. When you do, you will have described the same “mechanism” that a designer uses to produce any product of design. Barry Arrington

Professor Swamidass: I can only address briefly [--> it grew of its innate nature as an issue . . . ] a snippet:

I know you are not trying to “prove God” per se. Rather, you are trying to demonstrate divine design in nature. Of course you want to do this to point to this as evidence for God. So sometimes we just group steps 1 and 2 into the same activity. Unless you legitimately believe some non divine being other than God is the designer, and have a mechanism for design that would be reachable for this mere mortal, you fall into this pattern.

Pardon, but this erects and knocks over a strawman, changing the subject from a matter of inductive inference on tested, empirically reliable sign to a contentious debate over worldviews. One, in which -- as I pointed to at 29 above -- there has been an ideological, question-begging imposition of evolutionary maerialistic scientism on the very definition of science. I suggest instead that as far back as Plato in The Laws, Bk X, we see a very different contrast of alternatives from the "natural vs supernatural" one commonly imposed by champions of evolutionary materialistic scientism and/or fellow travellers. Namely, that:

a --> per observable, testable signs, b --> one may inductively and properly infer that, c --> material causal factors credibly at work or potentially at work in an aspect of an object, process or phenomenon d --> include natural [= blind chance and/or mechanical necessity] and/or ART-ificial [= intelligent action] forces. Where, e --> The default is first that mechanical necessity and/or blind chance acting on plausible initial and intervening circumstances have led to an observed result. Thus, f --> Per Newton's rules of reasoning, to infer to a plausible causal explanation of an object or phenomenon whose origin we did not directly observe, we must revert to factors demonstrated to be causally adequate to produce the like or sufficiently like in the here and now . . . a common-sense control on empirically unjustified, ideologically loaded speculation. Also, g --> such an inductive inference is inherently subject to onward further evidence and argument, per Newton's remarks in his 1704 Opticks, Query 31. To wit:

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

The pivotally relevant issue regarding the design inference is that functionally specific, complex organisation and/or associated information [FSCO/I] and especially digitally coded functionally specific complex information dFSCI, is a commonplace, where we have literally observed trillions of cases of its cause. In EVERY observed case, its cause is purposeful, knowledgeable and skilled, capable intelligent action. For simple instance, consider text strings in English in this thread. (Which are actually adding to the observation base.) When it comes to something where functionally organised specific components must be properly arranged to get a result, such as say the Abu 6500 C3 fishing reel I have commonly used as a case in point, the pattern of part selection, arrangement and coupling can be represented as a string of yes/no questions in some description language. That is, FSCO/I patently has associated quantifiable information. Comparing the atomic resources of the observed solar system [~10^57 atoms] or the observed universe [~10^80 atoms] and fast chemical reaction rates, about 10^-13 - 10^-15 s, we may then readily show that 500 - 1,000 bits of FSCO/I specifies a configuration space of 3.27 x 10^150 - 1.07 x 10^301 states across 13.7 - 13.8 BY, so that islands of function based on specific configuration will be maximally unlikely to be discovered by blind chance and/or blind mechanical necessity. This is because the fraction of states that may be scanned by a random walk, or a dust or a combination or the like, of possible configurations, will be maximally small relative to the scope of search required to credibly find such islands. Where, a search is a sample of a config space by some means. Therefore, the set of possible searches is tantamount to the power set of the space. That is, for a space of scale n, the set of possible searches is of order 2^n. This implies that the search for a golden search is in a far harder space than the direct search. This is the issue pointed out by Dembski when he spoke of search for search, S4S. So, it is reasonable to focus on the direct search as the search for a golden search will be exponentially harder. But of course, intelligent actions routinely produce phenomena that exceed this threshold, 72 - 143 ASCII characters worth of information. As a result, it is reasonable -- absent the sort of a priori ideological lockout shown in 29 above -- to infer that such FSCO/I beyond such a threshold is a reliable sign of design as material causal factor. On both the trillion member observational base and the search space analysis. The problem of course is that on origins, cell based life is replete with FSCO/I and dFSCI well beyond the 500 - 1,000 bit threshold. The inductive inference, then, is reasonable that cell based life, from the root up to the major branches -- body plans clearly require increments of 10 - 100+ mn bits of additional information beyond the 100k - 1 mn bits for a plausible first functional cell based life form -- has but one empirically reliable causal explanation: design, working by art, as opposed to blind chance and mechanical necessity. This is independent of debates over common decent degrees up to and including universal common decent. This is controversial, not because it is inductively unsupported, but because there is an acting ideological a priori as was pointed out at 29 above, that patently seeks to lock it out. Let me clip again from the NSTA of the USA, Board declaration of 2000:

The principal product of science is knowledge in the form of naturalistic concepts and the laws and theories related to those concepts . . . . [S]cience, along with its methods, explanations and generalizations, must be the sole focus of instruction in science classes to the exclusion of all non-scientific or pseudoscientific [--> loaded word that cannot be properly backed up due to failure of demarcation arguments] methods, explanations, generalizations and products [--> declaration of intent to ideologically censor education materials] . . . . Although no single universal step-by-step scientific method captures the complexity of doing science, a number of shared values and perspectives characterize a scientific approach to understanding nature. Among these are a demand for naturalistic explanations supported by empirical evidence that are, at least in principle, testable against the natural world. Other shared elements include observations, rational argument, inference, skepticism, peer review and replicability of work [--> undermined by the question-begging ideological imposition and associated censorship] . . . . Science, by definition, is limited to naturalistic methods and explanations and, as such, is precluded from using supernatural elements [--> question-begging false dichotomy, the proper contrast for empirical investigations is the natural (chance and/or necessity) vs the ART-ificial, through design] in the production of scientific knowledge.

Nor, does the matter stop there. As I recently cited from Luke Barnes:

Today, our deepest understanding of the laws of nature is summarized in a set of equations. Using these equations, we can make very precise calculations of the most elementary physical phenomena, calculations that are confirmed by experimental evidence. But to make these predictions, we have to plug in some numbers that cannot themselves be calculated but are derived from measurements of some of the most basic features of the physical universe. These numbers specify such crucial quantities as the masses of fundamental particles and the strengths of their mutual interactions. After extensive experiments under all manner of conditions, physicists have found that these numbers appear not to change in different times and places, so they are called the fundamental constants of nature. These constants represent the edge of our knowledge. Richard Feynman called one of them — the fine-structure constant, which characterizes the amount of electromagnetic force between charged elementary particles like electrons — “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man.” An innovative, elegant physical theory that actually predicts the values of these constants would be among the greatest achievements of twenty-first-century physics. Many have tried and failed. The fine-structure constant, for example, is approximately equal to 1/137, a number that has inspired a lot of worthless numerology, even from some otherwise serious scientists. Most physicists have received unsolicited e-mails and manuscripts from over-excited hobbyists that proclaim, often in ALL CAPS and using high-school algebra, to have unlocked the mysteries of the universe by explaining the constants of nature. Since physicists have not discovered a deep underlying reason for why these constants are what they are, we might well ask the seemingly simple question: What if they were different? What would happen in a hypothetical universe in which the fundamental constants of nature had other values? There is nothing mathematically wrong with these hypothetical universes. But there is one thing that they almost always lack — life. Or, indeed, anything remotely resembling life. Or even the complexity upon which life relies to store information, gather nutrients, and reproduce. A universe that has just small tweaks in the fundamental constants might not have any of the chemical bonds that give us molecules, so say farewell to DNA, and also to rocks, water, and planets. Other tweaks could make the formation of stars or even atoms impossible. And with some values for the physical constants, the universe would have flickered out of existence in a fraction of a second. That the constants are all arranged in what is, mathematically speaking, the very improbable combination that makes our grand, complex, life-bearing universe possible is what physicists mean when they talk about the “fine-tuning” of the universe for life . . . . we can calculate all the ways the universe could be disastrously ill-suited for life if the masses of these [fundamental] particles were different. For example, if the down quark’s mass were 2.6 x 10-26 grams or more, then adios, periodic table! There would be just one chemical element and no chemical compounds, in stark contrast to the approximately 60 million known chemical compounds in our universe. With even smaller adjustments to these masses, we can make universes in which the only stable element is hydrogen-like. Once again, kiss your chemistry textbook goodbye, as we would be left with one type of atom and one chemical reaction. If the up quark weighed 2.4 x 10-26 grams, things would be even worse — a universe of only neutrons, with no elements, no atoms, and no chemistry whatsoever. The universe we happen to have is so surprising under the Standard Model because the fundamental particles of which atoms are composed are, in the words of cosmologist Leonard Susskind, “absurdly light.” Compared to the range of possible masses that the particles described by the Standard Model could have, the range that avoids these kinds of complexity-obliterating disasters is extremely small. Imagine a huge chalkboard, with each point on the board representing a possible value for the up and down quark masses. If we wanted to color the parts of the board that support the chemistry that underpins life, and have our handiwork visible to the human eye, the chalkboard would have to be about ten light years (a hundred trillion kilometers) high. And that’s just for the masses of some of the fundamental particles. There are also the fundamental forces that account for the interactions between the particles. The strong nuclear force, for example, is the glue that holds protons and neutrons together in the nuclei of atoms. If, in a hypothetical universe, it is too weak, then nuclei are not stable and the periodic table disappears again. If it is too strong, then the intense heat of the early universe could convert all hydrogen into helium — meaning that there could be no water, and that 99.97 percent of the 24 million carbon compounds we have discovered would be impossible, too. And, as the chart to the right shows, the forces, like the masses, must be in the right balance. If the electromagnetic force, which is responsible for the attraction and repulsion of charged particles, is too strong or too weak compared to the strong nuclear force, anything from stars to chemical compounds would be impossible. Stars are particularly finicky when it comes to fundamental constants. If the masses of the fundamental particles are not extremely small, then stars burn out very quickly. Stars in our universe also have the remarkable ability to produce both carbon and oxygen, two of the most important elements to biology. But, a change of just a few percent in the up and down quarks’ masses, or in the forces that hold atoms together, is enough to upset this ability — stars would make either carbon or oxygen, but not both.

And more. For instance, a super-law that forces the cosmos to be at such a deeply isolated operating point would itself cry out for fine tuning as explanation, i.e. there pushing back of the tuning by stages does not eliminate it. In other words, the physics of the observed cosmos shows credible signs of being fine-tuned for C-chemistry, aqueous medium, protein using, terrestrial planet cell based life. Fine tuned in a way that sets the local operating point in a deeply isolated zone of the space of plausible parameter values etc. This too is FSCO/I and it raises issues of design as best explanatory cause. It matters not whether intelligent designers are postulated to be within or beyond the cosmos, the issue is, do they often leave reliable signs such as FSCO/I or dFSCI. If so, we have epistemological entitlement to infer empirically and inductively from observed tested sign to signified meaning. A meaning, here, of credible cause by intelligent design acting through ART, as opposed to blind chance and/or mechanical necessity acting on plausible initial conditions that are not particularly special [i.e. a sort of extended so-called Copernican principle]. That is the pivotal issue, and it is not going 6to go away. Not even by making debates over common descent. Indeed, that raises issues of the origin of the FSCO/I-rich root of the tree of cell based life, and of the cause for jumps in such FSCO/I to explain major novel body plans up to and including our own. Where this one includes our linguistic capability as a major issue to be soundly and empirically explained. Which is self-referential. That is, if the generally imposed a priori evolutionary materialistic scientism is found wanting to explain intelligent, linguistically capable, credibly responsibly and rationally free humans, it fails at the outset. Fails irrecoverably by self falsification. Which is exactly what is on the table today, e.g. as Nancy Pearcey recently summarised:

A major way to test a philosophy or worldview is to ask: Is it logically consistent? Internal contradictions are fatal to any worldview because contradictory statements are necessarily false. “This circle is square” is contradictory, so it has to be false. An especially damaging form of contradiction is self-referential absurdity — which means a theory sets up a definition of truth that it itself fails to meet. Therefore it refutes itself . . . . An example of self-referential absurdity is a theory called evolutionary epistemology, a naturalistic approach that applies evolution to the process of knowing. The theory proposes that the human mind is a product of natural selection. The implication is that the ideas in our minds were selected for their survival value, not for their truth-value. But what if we apply that theory to itself? Then it, too, was selected for survival, not truth — which discredits its own claim to truth. Evolutionary epistemology commits suicide. Astonishingly, many prominent thinkers have embraced the theory without detecting the logical contradiction. Philosopher John Gray writes, “If Darwin’s theory of natural selection is true,… the human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth.” What is the contradiction in that statement? Gray has essentially said, if Darwin’s theory is true, then it “serves evolutionary success, not truth.” In other words, if Darwin’s theory is true, then it is not true. Self-referential absurdity is akin to the well-known liar’s paradox: “This statement is a lie.” If the statement is true, then (as it says) it is not true, but a lie. Another example comes from Francis Crick. In The Astonishing Hypothesis, he writes, “Our highly developed brains, after all, were not evolved under the pressure of discovering scientific truths but only to enable us to be clever enough to survive.” But that means Crick’s own theory is not a “scientific truth.” Applied to itself, the theory commits suicide. Of course, the sheer pressure to survive is likely to produce some correct ideas. A zebra that thinks lions are friendly will not live long. But false ideas may be useful for survival. Evolutionists admit as much: Eric Baum says, “Sometimes you are more likely to survive and propagate if you believe a falsehood than if you believe the truth.” Steven Pinker writes, “Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes the truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.” The upshot is that survival is no guarantee of truth. If survival is the only standard, we can never know which ideas are true and which are adaptive but false. To make the dilemma even more puzzling, evolutionists tell us that natural selection has produced all sorts of false concepts in the human mind. Many evolutionary materialists maintain that free will is an illusion, consciousness is an illusion, even our sense of self is an illusion — and that all these false ideas were selected for their survival value.

[--> that is, responsible, rational freedom is undermined. Cf here William Provine in his 1998 U Tenn Darwin Day keynote:

Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent . . . . The first 4 implications are so obvious to modern naturalistic evolutionists that I will spend little time defending them. Human free will, however, is another matter. Even evolutionists have trouble swallowing that implication. I will argue that humans are locally determined systems that make choices. They have, however, no free will [--> without responsible freedom, mind, reason and morality alike disintegrate into grand delusion, hence self-referential incoherence and self-refutation. But that does not make such fallacies any less effective in the hands of clever manipulators] . . . [1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address, U of Tenn -- and yes, that is significant i/l/o the Scopes Trial, 1925]

So how can we know whether the theory of evolution itself is one of those false ideas? The theory undercuts itself. A few thinkers, to their credit, recognize the problem. Literary critic Leon Wieseltier writes, “If reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? … Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.” On a similar note, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks, “Is the [evolutionary] hypothesis really compatible with the continued confidence in reason as a source of knowledge?” His answer is no: “I have to be able to believe … that I follow the rules of logic because they are correct — not merely because I am biologically programmed to do so.” Hence, “insofar as the evolutionary hypothesis itself depends on reason, it would be self-undermining.” [ENV excerpt, Finding Truth (David C. Cook, 2015) by Nancy Pearcey.]

I think you will understand why a significant and growing number of people find the evolutionary materialistic scientism orthodoxy of our day decidedly wanting. And, why we find the imposition of such by the back door of a pretended simple and centuries deep established methodological constraint, a serious piece of distortion of actual history and a case of ideological question begging imposed by institutional power not credibility on the merits. Where VJT's OP is a case of documenting the point that the alleged centuries deep principle of methodological naturalism is anything but that. KF kairosfocus

Prof Swamidass, My question in #19 stands unanswered. Since you clearly do not attack ID arguments on their merit, what motivates you to attack ID at all? It seems odd that someone who wraps themselves in the flag of science would be so reluctant to engage physical evidence - particularly given that you appear so certain to have the upper hand, and so motivated to carry on the attack. Perhaps erecting strawmen reflects something about the true character of your attack. Upright BiPed

. Prof. S. Joshua Swamidass

@41 No misunderstanding. I am just quoting James Tour, one of the ID heroes. You have heard of him, right? https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/a-world-famous-chemist-tells-the-truth-theres-no-scientist-alive-today-who-understands-macroevolution/ I know you are not trying to "prove God" per se. Rather, you are trying to demonstrate divine design in nature. Of course you want to do this to point to this as evidence for God. So sometimes we just group steps 1 and 2 into the same activity. Unless you legitimately believe some non divine being other than God is the designer, and have a mechanism for design that would be reachable for this mere mortal, you fall into this pattern. Sometimes people will describe the effort as "proving God" though I do agree you are trying split this effort into two steps. And, if you do not like the quote, you could always dispute it with Tour. @23 yes, a random process can design things: https://discourse.biologos.org/t/defense-of-di-in-debate-with-swamidass/5336/131 @16 Thanks for the invitation, but I am staying out of that one. I'm not as interested in arguing for or against design as I am in explaining the strong evidence for common descent. Maybe another day... @26 and @27, cute but your translator is broken =). Prof. S. Joshua Swamidass

Prof Swamidass There is a gross misunderstanding on your part here. Where has ID ever tried to prove God using science? Andre

I wonder what Blaise Pascal would have thought about the protein based nano-technology operating inside biological cells, coded information of DNA, origin of life difficulties, etc. mike1962

@38 JDK I think that would have been better received in the 90s, and it is not to late if that is what th ID shifts to now. I'd also point out to those that are so offended by me, my position on ID not being science is virtually identical to Dr. James Tour, one of the heros of the ID movement. He writes, "I have been labeled as an Intelligent Design (ID) proponent. I am not. I do not know how to use science to prove intelligent design although some others might. I am sympathetic to the arguments on the matter and I find some of them intriguing, but the scientific proof is not there, in my opinion. So I prefer to be free of that ID label. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal), one of the finest scientists, mathematicians and inventors that the world has ever enjoyed, and also among the most well-respected and deepest thinking Christian apologists, wrote in his Pensees 463, “It is a remarkable fact that no canonical [biblical] author has ever used nature to prove God. They all try to make people believe in him. David, Solomon, etc., never said: ‘There is no such thing as a vacuum, therefore God exists.’ They must have been cleverer than the cleverest of their successors, all of whom have used proofs from nature. This is very noteworthy.'” As Kreeft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kreeft) points out in his commentary on Pascal’s Pensees, “If the Scripture does not use nature to prove God, it can’t be the best strategy. Notice that Pascal does not say that there are no good proofs of God or that none of them begin with data from nature. Elsewhere, he specifies merely that such proofs are psychologically weak, but he does not say they are logically weak. More important, they are salvifically weak, [meaning that] they will not save us. If nature proved God clearly, we would not have to search for him with all our hearts.” Pascal further writes in his Pensees 429 , “This is what I see that troubles me: Nature has nothing to offer me that does not give rise to doubt and anxiety; if there is a God supporting nature, she should unequivocally proclaim him, and that, if the signs in nature are deceptive, they should be completely erased; that nature should say all or nothing so that I could see what course I ought to follow.” Though 350 years since Pascal penned his dilemma, as a modern-day scientist, I do not know how to prove ID using my most sophisticated of analytical tools. I share Pascal’s frustration. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if, when scientists had obtained the first molecular resolution images of human DNA, it had self-assembled (a thermodynamic process) into the Hebrew script to say, “The God of Heaven and Earth was here.”? But it did not, and I suppose that the wonder would have elicited no love from the skeptic anyway. Therefore, God seems to have set nature as a clue, not a solution, to keep us yearning for him." http://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/the-scientist-and-his-%E2%80%9Ctheory%E2%80%9D-and-the-christian-creationist-and-his-%E2%80%9Cscience%E2%80%9D/ I agree with Tour here. If you are going to fight with me on this, please explain also why you disagree with Tour. Prof. S. Joshua Swamidass

Josh says,

Even if you can’t be science, there might be value in moving forward as “science-engaged philosophy.

This is a good point. In Kansas and elsewhere, the attempts to get ID ideas into the science standards back in the 2000's was an attempt to validate ID by getting it considered science. In my opinion, this was clearly disengenuous: the more straightforward thing to do would have been to be upfront about the theological and metaphysical goals of ID, and work explicitly to convince people that accepting non-material metaphysics was a reasonable philosophical thing to do. One of the ironic things about the ID movement is that in trying to justify ID as science, many IDists seemed to implicitly accept that in fact science is the only truly valid form of knowledge. In my opinion, again, striving to defend the view that people adopt metaphysical interpretations that lie on top of the scientific body of knowledge, so to speak, would be a more effective and appropriate strategy than continuing to claim that ID inferences are in fact science. I appreciate all Josh's thoughts on this subject. jdk

Prof. S. Joshua Swamidass @36, Intelligence is a known reality. Like other realities it can be a causal factor in a phenomenon coming into being. If it is "clearly outside the bounds of science" to acknowledge this self evident fact regardless of who the intelligent agent may be, then science is no longer rational, which means it is no longer science. So, actually, MN isn't science, ID is. harry

Hello all, some of us are continuing the conversation on BioLogos. You are welcome to join. https://discourse.biologos.org/t/davis-swamidass-and-methodological-naturalism/5441/ @20 origens, I should clarify. I should have said: "In today's world, [divine] design inferences are entirely allowed and encouraged in science-engaged philosophy, but science has disallowed it entirely." Al the examples you point to are inference to design by humans, or (presumably) intelligent but not divine life. In my view MN is a restriction away from making statements about God's action, because to do so requires theology, something clearly outside the bounds of science. Yes, I know that ID tries to restrict itself to the "design inferences" without considering the nature of the designer. This, however, is a strange line. In no other area of science do we arbitrarily limit our inquiry into the nature of the designer. This also creates a great gap in explanations in ID theories. Most are very reticent to explain why the designer (God) designs the way He does. Of course, in every other field of science where design is considered, we start from a model of the designer's psychology. So ID is really an outlier here. Regardless, even if it isn't consistent (which I believe it is), the scientific community has already kicked ID out of science in very clear terms. I have no say in this, nor does anyone posting on this board. As it is in all fields (like philosophy, medicine, history, theology, etc.) the practitioners decide together what the rules are. Right now, ID (and also Dawkins) runs afoul the rules. Even if you can't be science, there might be value in moving forward as "science-engaged philosophy". That might be just as effective in making your case. In fact, you might find friends among many outside the ID movement. You are welcome to join us =). Prof. S. Joshua Swamidass

A 21st century methodological naturalistic limitation on science assumes that there is no god, no intelligent designer that had any direct recognizable impact on the origin or development of our universe, world and life. Joshua and Ted and others argue that in their understanding of science it does not and cannot come to any conclusions regarding the existence or non-existence of a god or intelligent designer. However, their science does in fact conclude that if there is a god or intelligent designer of our universe and life that this being did not and could not have used any means of creation outside of the understanding of 21st century science involving the known laws of nature that this god may have set in motion, presumably at the time of the big bang which is a theory in deep space trouble right now with 95 percent of the universe missing. To be sure it is still believed, but it is faith and not science. It is not wise to jump to conclusions based on a very limited amount of information, some of which will be based on faulty human understanding. Their assumptions limit the intelligent designer to working within the laws of nature as they are presently understood by 21st century scientists, which is a very limited understanding with more mysteries than answers, and not a wise foundation upon which to base conclusions about origins. It places the creator into a 21st century methodological naturalistic box. That assumption is not based on any data, but on their methodological naturalistic presuppositions. The Christian understanding of GOD has always been that although He has created the universe, world and life to be governed by certain laws of nature, many of which we do not yet understand, that according to His own testimony He created it all by His wisdom and power and in His sovereignty can and does intervene by using a higher unknown wisdom for His Holy and gracious purposes. Anyone who puts a limit on the power, wisdom or freedom of GOD to act according to His will does not know Him and does not hold to a Christian understanding of GOD. As JESUS said: “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of GOD.” Matthew 22:29 JESUS was not implying that they had not heard or read the testimony of the Scriptures, but rather that they had chosen not to believe them, and therefore were indeed ignorant of GOD’S power and wisdom. 21st Century methodological naturalistic science fits in well with deism or atheism, but not with a Christian understanding of the living GOD. I believe the evidence of the testimony of creation around us is all about devolution or corruption of the created order, and not evolution. aap

Hi everyone, In response to Charles' requests in #4, I've supplied the Boyle reference he asked for, as well as documenting Boskovic's opposition to methodological naturalism. I've also removed a couple of typos. That took me a few hours, as the quotes from Boskovic were rather long, and I had to get them from an archived edition of his work, online. I have to get up in an hour-and-a-half to go to work, so I must get some shut-eye. I'll be happy to take part in the discussion here (and on Biologos) in about 18 hours. I hope Professor Swamidass will be kind enough to inform the people over at Biologos that I will be getting in touch with them. Thank you very much. vjtorley

VJT, I saved your article for future reference. Great stuff! harry

VJT Josh I have been having a long discussion regarding common descent at TSZ. We have been going through the detail of how tree nodes are formed etc. It appears that common descent is an inference argument based on observed similarities of DNA. If you ask for data that will test if one node that claims the two species descended from a common ancestor you get a blank stare. An inference argument means that the best hypothesis is selected. So you have common descent which is not testable against what competing hypothesis? I guess it cannot be design because it does not follow the rules of MN. Darwin's original argument for evolution was against creationism as the competing hypothesis. ref

Van Fraassen’s Critique of Inference to the Best Explanation Samir Okasha*

So now we have a theory of evolution that is an inference argument with no competing hypothesis and takes up 10% of high school biology text books. Does anyone else believe this situation is badly broken. bill cole

Ted Davis: who gets to define science? The answer is, scientists get to do that No they don't. When it comes to work-a-day, practical application of policy - and that's what really matters - it is politicians who define what science is. And that is subject to the whims of the electorate, at least in democracies. And of course, individuals are free to accept whatever definition they choose. Scientists are much farther down on the totem pole than they think. mike1962

Ted and Joshua, have you informed the big bang cosmologists that they are breaking your self serving "rule" and had better stop it? Have you informed the medical scientists at the Lourdes commission to cease and desist from offering their expert opinion about the limits of nature to heal? Ted, have you told your associate Robert Russell that he, too, is breaking your rule by positing Non Interventionist Objective Divine Action? Have you told yourself, Ted, that you are violating your own rule by citing his work and proposing a similar solution to rescue and retain Darwin's purposeless, mindless mechanism? While you are at it, can you provide even one historical example of the scientific community imposing a universal methodological rule on other scientists and ostracizing them for refusing to play ball? StephenB

PS: As a telling example of definitional failure by ideological imposition with significant educational and thus policy and cultural impact, we may note the US National Science Teachers' Association [NSTA] in a notorious July 2000 Board declaration:

The principal product of science is knowledge in the form of naturalistic concepts and the laws and theories related to those concepts . . . . [S]cience, along with its methods, explanations and generalizations, must be the sole focus of instruction in science classes to the exclusion of all non-scientific or pseudoscientific [--> loaded word that cannot be properly backed up due to failure of demarcation arguments] methods, explanations, generalizations and products [--> declaration of intent to ideologically censor education materials] . . . . Although no single universal step-by-step scientific method captures the complexity of doing science, a number of shared values and perspectives characterize a scientific approach to understanding nature. Among these are a demand for naturalistic explanations supported by empirical evidence that are, at least in principle, testable against the natural world. Other shared elements include observations, rational argument, inference, skepticism, peer review and replicability of work [--> undermined by the question-begging ideological imposition and associated censorship] . . . . Science, by definition, is limited to naturalistic methods and explanations and, as such, is precluded from using supernatural elements [--> question-begging false dichotomy, the proper contrast for empirical investigations is the natural (chance and/or necessity) vs the ART-ificial, through design] in the production of scientific knowledge.

kairosfocus

Folks, could I take a moment to suggest there is a considerable body of historical practice (some of which VJT gives above) which is material to understanding science. Further, what is sci is inherently a phil of sci question, and the discussion cannot properly be monopolised by a guild. Especially, one notoriously dominated by evolutionary materialistic scientism. Which, BTW is multiply self referentially incoherent. Where also as science is concerned with truth and warrant regarding truth about our common world, with huge impacts, what science is and how it grounds conclusions will be of absolutely general interest.Gotta go. KF kairosfocus

Ted Davis:

who gets to define science? The answer is, scientists get to do that

Translation: We must never allow the hoi polloi to infringe on the power, prestige and prerogatives we scientists reserve unto ourselves and guard vociferously. After all, when one is the beneficiary of a cultural hegemony, it is imperative to stamp out even the slightest challenge. Thank you for joining your colleague in showing us the ugly authoritarian underbelly of the scientific community prof. Barry Arrington

Prof. S. Joshua Swamidass

arguments in science have to follow the rules of science, as defined by the scientific community of discourse (scientists)

Translation: Oh dear, in comment 5 I got dangerously close to sanctioning an attempt by the hoi polloi to infringe on the power, prestige and prerogatives we scientists reserve unto ourselves and guard vociferously. Now I will walk it back. After all, when one is the beneficiary of a cultural hegemony, it is imperative to stamp out even the slightest challenge. Thanks for showing us the ugly authoritarian underbelly of the scientific community prof. Barry Arrington

Science is a set of practices guided entirely by philosophy. Everything anyone infers from raw scientific data and empirical fact is a philosophical interpretation. Every experiment is constructed according to a philosophical framework. Calling other frameworks that employ science and infer accordingly "philosophy", while attempting to sneak one's own ideological naturalism in as if it is a non-philosophical part of science, is at best a case of cognitive bias. Perhaps VJTorley's very impressive post here can put to rest the bogus conflict thesis once and for all. William J Murray

Maybe we can resolve this all peacefully :-). Joshua says that scientists may be exempted from the constraints of methodological naturalism when engaging in "science-informed philosophy" to promote metaphysical materialism or atheism. But we all know that they sometimes do that without being aware of the niceties of the distinction (ie they think they speak as scientists not realising they do not speak as science, which is in some way a Platonic universal distinct from actual scientists). So, for example, we might think of Lewontin writing his book review, Dawkins speaking out of turn as Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, Ken Miller writing metaphysically-loaded science textbooks for schools, or John van Wyhe writing a feature in New Scientist this month about evolution's irrefutable denial of both human exceptionalism and God. For some reason these people are all less aware than they should be that they're doing philosophy, not science, and so the public gets confused about the distinction too and wrongly thinks that science itself is in conflict with their religion. Very well, it seems that ID proponents too may well often be doing science-informed philosophy , and making the same error as these leading scientists in calling it "science". If so, they are following a hallowed precedent indeed. That surely means, then, their philosophical writings should be treated in exactly the same manner as these others. That is, in an ideal world neither type of discourse should be called "science", and all the criticisms about lack of peer review, failing to identify the designer and so on would fall to the ground together with the criticisms of the unscientific nature of claims that science should be atheistic on the other side. But in the meantime in our imperfect world, as quid pro quo, we should expect to see ID science-informed philosophers offered articles in *New Scientist*, Chairs in Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, authorship of school textbooks on biology, and so on. The only flaw in that which I can see in that scenario is that these decisions may turn out to be made by the same scientists who sit loose to the category distinctions between their disciplines and their beliefs, rather than by the more dispassionate Science, wherever he may live. Jon Garvey

Prof Swamidass

are design arguments true? We will all embrace good design arguments if they are made correctly in philosophy and are based on good science.

Can I ask you a simple question? Can any unguided or unintelligent process create this? Do we have any examples? https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=382410&d=1433385631 How about this? http://www.kreedmd.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Hip-joint.jpg In our uniformed experience we know with absolute certainty that natural processes are incapable of generating or creating these, why? Because this is an engineering solution to a modal problem. Natural processes will never be able to figure this out, ever! Andre

Ted Davis

The really big question here, IMO, is this: who gets to define science? The answer is, scientists get to do that, not philosophers or historians.

Really? And if there is a group that leans towards a certain point of view and they have the majority their collective might, makes it right then? Andre

Ted Davis

Otherwise, IMO, the barbarians (and I leave it to my readers to attach that label to specific individuals or groups) will soon be at the gates, and science becomes just one more example of political or religious warfare.

This is the case already, the materialistic creation story is forced down the throat of every child, and yet there is simply no evidence that absolutely verifies that man is from an ape. There are many assumptions but concrete facts? Show me..... Science was hijacked by materialists in the 19th century and its been unable to recover from its former glory of what it means to gain knowledge. Lastly people that try and complicate science are the real problem, it's a simple enterprise and it goes like this; What causes what? Andre

Swamidass @13,

Swamidass: In todays world, design inferences are entirely allowed and encouraged in science-engaged philosophy, but science has disallowed it entirely.

This statement is simply false. Archaeology, forensics, cryptology, informatics, SETI and SEETI are all sciences which employ the design inference. This has been pointed out to Swamidass in the thread “In defense of Swamidass”. In response Swamidass chose to focus on SETI and claimed that SETI uses an entirely different methodology than ID:

Swamidass: Of the top of my head, I can come up with about five material differences. Now you try. What are the differences? For each difference, why do you think they are immaterial or material? After a few people post on it, I’ll show you why I think the differences are so substantial as to make the original argument unconvincing.

Needless to say that no one came forward to assist Swamidass, because there are no methodological differences.

StephenB: ID’s methodology is formulated to detect physical patterns in nature that appear to have been arranged for a purpose. SETI uses the same methodology. (…) ID, does, indeed, use the scientific method: Observation>>Hypothesis>>Experiment>>Conclusion. If that isn’t the scientific method, then what is? Please be specific.

Upright BiPed: SETI’s methodology uses an operational definition of intelligence based on a measurable artifact of intelligence. The exact same methodology is available to ID, and is valid for the same reasons. Your comment is mistaken.

Swamidass never responded to the corrections, nor did he list any of the alleged “five material differences” between the methodology of SETI and ID. Maybe now the time has come that he does. Origenes

Post #13 betrays a ... (speechless) ... a massive and pervasive misunderstanding/misrepresentation of ID. I'm not trying to be disrespectful here, but c'mon professor. For crying out loud. At some point rational people have to put away the strawmen and actually deal with the reality on the table. You apparently believe that the inference to design in biology violates methodological naturalism (i.e. is inconsistent with methodological naturalism as it is practiced in science), but it does no such thing. ID is attacked in science not because it breaks the rules (such as they are) but because it's consistent with theism. If you are unable to critique ID on the merit of its arguments, then what motivates you to say anything at all? Upright BiPed

Dr. Torley Also Pasteur. Afterall he proved abiogenesis impossible. Andre

May I ask why Rev William Paley is not included in this list?? Anaxagoras

Prof. S. Joshua Swamidass @5 & @13 Glad to see you back here. FYI - Please note that your highly appreciated comments have been kindly requested in this recent discussion thread started by gpuccio: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/the-highly-engineered-transition-to-vertebrates-an-example-of-functional-information-analysis/#comment-613672 By now the discussion has transcended this UD site and has spilled over into the TSZ blog too. The discussion is very technical, above the pay grade of biology-illiterate folks like me. But I still enjoy it and can learn from it. Perhaps you could offer some insightful comments on the ongoing discussion? Thank you. Dionisio

Prof Swamidass I am trying my best to understand your point, so we can infer design but we may not conclude it? Is that what you are saying? Andre

Dr Torley Thank you for a wonderful post. If I may ask is there any reason why Nikola Tesla did not make the cut? Andre

On some reflection, I think an important distinction needs to be made between "science-engaged philosophy" and "arguments within science" ("science" or "scientific arguments") for this post. Science-engaged philosophy has never been required to follow the rules of science. It has never been subject to MN. Scientists regularly engage in it, even in the current moment. Sometimes (usually?) our forays into philosophy are flawed (just like most philosopher's forays into science are flawed). Ultimately, this should be subject to the rules of philosophy, and this gives authority to people like VJ to push back on Dawkins to tell him that he is doing really bad philosophy when he claims science disproves God. In contrast, arguments in science have to follow the rules of science, as defined by the scientific community of discourse (scientists). Many early scientists (including Boyle and Bacon) held to versions of MN (without using that name) when doing what we could call their "scientific" work (the word "science" didn't exist in current form till later). In todays world, design inferences are entirely allowed and encouraged in science-engaged philosophy, but science has disallowed it entirely. At this point the ID movement faces a decision: accept the current situation or fight it? Right now, they appear to be devoted to fighting it. Why? The restriction from science itself doesn't matter if the primary question is: are design arguments true? We will all embrace good design arguments if they are made correctly in philosophy and are based on good science. However, if other questions and goals dominate (i.e. political action against evolution), then the current situation will not do for the ID movement. The ID movement does not appear content with science-engaged philosophy. So what are the goals that motivate them? Why isn't science-engaged philosophy enough? To reiterate, a large number of references in this article do not actually violate MN because they are actually examples of science-engaged philosophy (which is allowed and encouraged), not science. It is true that some early philosophers appear to violate the modern notions of MN, but many (most?) of these references do not qualify. Prof. S. Joshua Swamidass

I like Robert A. Heinlein's thoughts on the supernatural:

One man's "magic" is another man's engineering. "Supernatural" is a null word.

The "supernatural" is just science we don't understand yet. What would a primitive man think of a device he could hold in his hand that allows him to talk to (or even see) other people anywhere in the world, to view a map of the globe and see his own exact location on it, or to access the accumulated knowledge of mankind just by typing a few words on a screen? Even fifty years ago -- within many of our lifetimes -- such a thing would have been barely imaginable. Today it is commonplace. Isn't "natural vs. supernatural" a false dichotomy? The same book that says "The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding He established the heavens" never uses the word "supernatural", but invites us to seek out that wisdom and understanding. The supernatural is a short-sighted materialist concept that says not only is a thing unknown, but it is beyond knowing. Now who is "anti-science"? sagebrush gardener

It just hit me. What about Darwin? Didn't he at least propose the origin of life to be ...... you fill in the dots? J-Mac

VJ, I think you may have missed one scientist, though not really considered to be great by the large majority; Richard Dawkins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoncJBrrdQ8 J-Mac

Swamidass @5,

S: However, in modern science (i.e. today’s mainstream science), the rules are very fixed against considering God as a cause. It is not to deny God, but to limit scientific inquiry into what natural things can do on their own.

If it is not to deny God, then would do we make of the following admission by Professor Richard Lewontin:

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen. [Professor Richard Lewontin, in a memorable review (New York Times, January 9, 1997) of Carl Sagan’s book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark]

As to “limit scientific inquiry into what natural things can do on their own”. Assuming that by ‘natural things’ you mean matter governed by natural law, then natural things, embarrassingly, fail to ground rationality — an obvious prerequisite of scientific inquiry. Origenes

An ambitious OP, but my thanks to Josh and Ted for their responses. I really don't see how the religious and philosophical beliefs of people, many who lived centuries ago, bears very much on the idea that today science looks for natural explanations for natural phenomena, even though many (all of us, really) also have beliefs about the world that are not scientific in nature. jdk

Hi everyone, I very much appreciate the kind comments by Professors Joshua Swamidass and Ted Davis. I'm off to work in a few minutes, but I'll respond at further length in about 16 hours. Thanks for pointing out the missing references, Charles. I'll try to fix those tonight. vjtorley

I commend VJ for the very careful work on display here. To the best of my knowledge, none of the quotations is taken out of context, and every one is correctly interpreted. Given my prior experience with his work, I’m not surprised, but a commendation is still in order. Lots of people have written things about MN and/or its history that are either silly or just plain wrong, so this collection of important statements, accurately understood, is a solid contribution to the history of a topic whose full history has not yet been written. As I say, we don’t yet have a proper history of MN, although a large group of accomplished historians is presently working toward that goal and perhaps will get us closer to it: http://hps.fsu.edu/News-and-Events/Ron-Numbers-Conference. That conference convened at Florida State in honor of Ron Numbers, a distinguished historian of science who earned a master’s degree at FSU. Early this century Numbers wrote one of the few good accounts of MN that we already have. VJ briefly quotes that piece, particularly a sentence in which Numbers quoted a few famous words from Galileo’s “Letter to Christina.” In VJ’s opinion, “he completely misinterprets Galileo, even making him out to be a disbeliever in miracles,” simply by quoting Galileo’s words that nature “never violates the terms of the laws imposed upon her.” Numbers used the translation of Galileo’s Italian by his friend Maurice Finocchiaro, not the older translation by the late Stillman Drake that I prefer and is probably more familiar to most of us. Drake’s version is at http://inters.org/Galilei-Madame-Christina-Lorraine, and this is his rendition of the longer passage in question: “I think that in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages, but from sense-experiences and necessary demonstrations; for the holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word, the former as the dictate of the Holy Ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of God’s commands. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is concerned. But Nature, on the other hand, is in¬exorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men.” The paragraph in which Numbers quotes Galileo opens with this topic sentence: “Enthusiasm for the naturalistic study of nature picked up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as more and more Christians turned their attention to discovering the so-called secondary causes that God employed in operating the world.” The rest of the paragraph is all about Galileo and no one else. I don’t agree that Numbers “completely misrepresents Galileo.” Nowhere does he say or imply that Galileo didn’t believe in miracles; rather he is making the pertinent point that Galileo stressed the need to understand the regularities of nature on their own terms, apart from biblical passages. This aspect of early modern science—the perceived need to keep the Bible out of scientific arguments—was not limited to Galileo and is an important piece of the history of MN. Otherwise I think VJ’s analysis is on target. This does not mean, however, that his analysis is without its limits. The same could be said of any piece of scholarship, including my own, no matter how carefully done. So, this isn’t a criticism at all. I simply want readers without VJ’s academic background and expertise to understand that his account of the history of MN is incomplete, and that to take it as the last word would be a mistake. There’s so much more that needs to be said, and I hardly have the time or space to say it here (or anywhere else for that matter, at least in the near future). Thus I will nuance VJ’s account by drawing attention to some places where he and I agree or (perhaps) would differ if we both had time to have a more extensive exchange. (1) VJ says: The term “methodological naturalism” is defined variously in the literature. All authorities agree, however, that if you put forward scientific arguments for the existence of a supernatural Deity, then you are violating the principle of methodological naturalism. I fully agree with this, as far as it goes. This is a statement in the present tense that about science as we find it today, and that is indeed how things are done. All things considered, it’s probably good that modern science leaves the existence of God (the word I prefer for a “supernatural Deity”) outside of the bounds of scientific discourse and competence. This leaves both Richard Dawkins and ID, not to mention AiG or BioLogos, on the “outside” of scientific discourse. I defend that practice here: http://biologos.org/blogs/ted-davis-reading-the-book-of-nature/reviewing-creatorgate-is-god-a-scientific-proposition (2) Immediately after this, VJ says, “The 31 scientists whom I’ve listed below all did just that. I’ve supplied copious documentation, to satisfy the inquiries of skeptical readers.” I’ve already affirmed almost entirely his presentation of that information. MN is a very modern concept with very long historical roots, going back to the pre-Socratic philosophers, but it’s hardly an unbroken chain from then to now, and until relatively recently science was not defined quite so narrowly. VJ’s timeline is basically right: it’s really in the nineteenth century that “God” mostly disappears from scientific discourse. I’ve held that view for decades (though it’s not something I’ve said much about in print), and it’s basically the position argued in a famous paper by Andrew Cunninghan and Perry Williams: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=2940568&fileId=S0007087400031447 In their view, “natural philosophy” (what many of VJ’s 31 scientists were doing) prior to the nineteenth century was about God, whereas “science” since then is no longer about God. As I keep saying, the whole story hasn’t yet been told and is likely to be even more complicated and nuanced than we think, but this much at least seems well established. VJ pulls together some lovely examples of God language in early modern natural philosophy (and some also from nineteenth century scientists), but one can also pull together lovely examples of natural philosophers and scientists carefully separating God from scientific practice. Here’s a recent paper to that point: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2013/PSCF3-13Bishop.pdf Overall, my sense is that a stricter naturalism became the norm in various scientific fields at different points in history, ending with natural history in the nineteenth century. Since I have a plane to catch soon, I’ll cut to the chase. (3) The really big question here, IMO, is this: who gets to define science? The answer is, scientists get to do that, not philosophers or historians. The definition of what counts as science and what doesn’t changes over time, for reasons that are not always simple and certainly defy my ability to spell them out in a few hundred words. (Perhaps I can attempt that someday, but unfortunately not on this day.) But the bottom line can be briefly summed up as follows: Science as we find it today is a worldwide enterprise, carried out by men and women with highly diverse fundamental metaphysical and religious beliefs. Just like the founders of the Royal Society, they can agree to leave religion and politics to one side (as the founders of the Royal Society usually did in their scientific discourses, even if there are many obvious exceptions), in order to try to create a kind of knowledge that transcends such differences of opinion. They aren’t always going to succeed, but it’s important to try to do that, as far as possible. Otherwise, IMO, the barbarians (and I leave it to my readers to attach that label to specific individuals or groups) will soon be at the gates, and science becomes just one more example of political or religious warfare. As I say, we can’t achieve this fully, but surely we ought to try. That’s my twenty-five cents. Ted Davis

Hello VJ, Thanks for your long and thoughtful piece. I appreciate your work here. As you know, I am not part of the ID movement, and do support methodological naturalism in current scientific work. I had the privilege of going over your article with Ted Davis, a leading historian of science. A few brief thoughts... 1. He largely (entirely?) agrees with all the references here. Your quotations seem to be correct and within context. Though Ted didn't look at everything in precise detail, this is really high praise coming from him. 2. We think it is important to distinguish between statements made by scientists and statements made by science. There is a very big difference between philosophizing about design, final causes and God, and including this as the scientific conclusion of a body of empirical study. In contrast, many of the references you give here are of scientists to scientific bodies, reflecting philosophically about their understanding of science. These references have no real bearing on the debate. This, even by today's standards, does not run afoul of methodological naturalism at all. Of course, some references you make are to God in scientific studies too, but only those references are relevant to the methodological naturalism debate. 3. We would also emphasize that many scientists agree with you (and for example Lord Kelvin) in making an inference to design in our philosophical reflections of science, even today. Maxwells argument is a great example. I can, in principle, agree with him (it is a type of fine tuning argument), and I can see why he makes it to his colleagues. However, it reads to me as a "science inspired" argument not a "science" arguement. He appears to be philosophically reflecting on meaning of scientific discoveries, not doing science per se. Similarly, Polkinghorne, Owen Gingerich, and myself are all critics of the ID movement, but make design inferences regularly outside of science in the same way. None of us are violating methodological naturalism (and neither is Maxwell in your quote). These distinctions are important, and I fear that many of your examples do not actually violate MN. (though certainly, some of the actually do). 4. As another example of a strange categorization. You write: > Along with 85 other Fellows of the Royal Society, he also signed a remarkable manifesto entitled The Declaration of Students of the Natural and Physical Sciences, issued in London in 1864, in which the signatories affirmed their confidence in the scientific integrity of the Holy Scriptures. How exactly is this violating MN? I could sign that same statement. It is a statement of personal religious belief, not a violation of MN in any way. While most of your quotes are correct, in most cases (but not all) I do not see these as violations of MN. I haven't had a chance to go through and categorize everything, but even this one example raises real questions about the significance of this list int he MN debate. 5. We also do agree that something changed during the enlightenment in science. Before this point, science and philosophy had very fluid boundaries, as can be seen in all that you have quoted. However, in modern science (i.e. today's mainstream science), the rules are very fixed against considering God as a cause. It is not to deny God, but to limit scientific inquiry into what natural things can do on their own. 6. This raises a question. Are you arguing to, in this one respect, "turn back the clock" so that science would operate now in the same way it did in the 1600s? 7. You also raise the point: who gets to set the rules of science? Our answer is not what you will like. We think, in the same way that philosophers set the rules of philosophy, scientists (a community) get to set the rules science. Science, like all disciplines, is defined for sociological reasons more than to be philosophically consistent. Frankly, very little in science is philosophically consistent. One last thing. Today I did a video-taped interview with Ted Davis where some of this is touched on. I mentioned one of your questions directly VJ. Hopefully this will all be a useful part of the dialogue. Josh Prof. S. Joshua Swamidass

Dr. Torley; at

(8) Robert Boyle (1627-1691) (a) Boyle put forward Intelligent Design arguments in his works According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: .... URL = .)

the url is missing. and at

(16) Ruder Josip Boskovic (1711-1787). Where’s the evidence? The following is a quote

the quote is missing. I presume you'd want to fix those. I only saw them because I was archiving your (typically) excellent post on my computer for future reference, and I saw the ommissions as I reformatted each section. Charles

Hi Barry and Truth Will Set You Free, My pleasure. Thank you for your kind words. vjtorley

Wow! Great work. Thank you. Barry Arrington

Excellent post. Thank you! Truth Will Set You Free