Survival of the Sickest, Why We Need Disease

_{Salvador Cordova

April 27, 2009

Darwinism, Intelligent Design}

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“It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”

This is a phrase a software engineer will use to jokingly confess his software has a defect.

When Sharon Moalem wrote the NY Times Bestseller, Survival of the Sickest: Why We Need Disease, he probably did not intend to make a joking confession of flaws in Darwin’s theory, but he succeed in doing so.

Recall the words of Darwin:

Natural Selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good.

C.DARWIN sixth edition Origin of Species — Ch#4 Natural Selection

If Darwin’s claim is true, why then are we confronted with numerous, persistent, hereditary diseases?

Can it be that Darwin was wrong? The obvious answer is yes. But in the face of an obvious flaw in Darwin’s ideas, Moalem argues that what appears to be a flaw in Darwin’s theory is actually an ingenious feature! Moalem extols the virtues of disease, and since disease is virtuous, natural selection will favor it.

It is accepted that sickle-cell anemia persists because of natural selection, but what about other diseases? Moalem explores many other diseases like diabetes, hemochromatosis, high cholesterol, early aging, favism, obesity, PANDAS, CCR5-delta32, xenophobia, etc. showing how natural selection incorporated these “virtuous” diseases into our species.

Moalem is not alone in arguing that natural selection creates through the process of destruction. For example, Allen Orr suggests that natural selection is the cause of blindness in Gammarus minus. In the world of Darwin, what happened to Gammarus minus isn’t the loss of vision, it is the creation of blindness. And since selection favors blindness in Gammarus minus, blindness is a functional improvement! Once again, Darwinism is immune to any testability through the process of constantly redefining what is considered “good”.

The net result is that Moalem’s book becomes an unwitting critique of Darwinian evolution. It highlights numerous empirical examples of how natural selection actually goes against Darwinian ideas of constant progress, and instead demonstrates how natural selection can be an agent of demise.

Comments

I’ve returned to find this thread has moved on...but…I have to respond to Allen at 181. You must be kidding. You post a quote from a paper, calling it the “current” “last month” falsification of Abel. Well hallelujah, the information paradox was solved and no one knew it! Oddly enough, I read that paper about 10 years ago. I really have to wonder if you even read it when you posted it. By the authors own conclusions they could not find a physical relation beyond the trivial. This is what you call a falsification? Allen, even for you, this is weak.Upright BiPed_{April 30, 2009
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Democritus may also not have been the first to articulate this particular version of "naturalism" (Leucippus comes immediately to mind), but unfortunately we don't have written records that go much further back than that. So, was Democritus prescribing a "supernaturalist" viewpoint, or a "naturalist" one? And if your answer is the second, how do you square this with your assertion that scientists and philosophers have only been using "naturalist" assumptions to guide their investigations into nature since the 1980s?Allen_MacNeill_{April 30, 2009
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Here's a place to try to put your goalposts, stephenB:
"Nothing exists except atoms and the void.
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"All things are the fruit of chance and necessity."
- Democritus of Abdera 7th century BCAllen_MacNeill_{April 30, 2009
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Where does it do that?
Have I misunderstood? I thought the core idea was that natural phenomena such as variation sifted by differential survival and reproduction was insufficient to explain the observed diversity of life on Earth, and that additional information had to be injected into the system by some unobservable process. If the process is observable, then the problem goes away.Alan Fox_{April 30, 2009
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----Alan Fox: "My case is that Intelligent Design, by proposing supernatural input, excludes itself from scientific scrutiny. It is a matter of definitions. There may be a way forward. I can’t imagine what it might be, but it is not my problem." No, your case was that methodological naturalism is historical, which it obviously is not. That was the context of my remark, "you have no case." If you are going to respond to my comments, then please honor the context. With regard to natural/supernatural, see my commmet at 239.StephenB_{April 30, 2009
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stephenB: You consistently and relentlessly confuse the motivations of scientists and natural philosophers of the past with their methods. Science is founded on the empirical method, and none of the scientists and natural philosophers whom you have cited have used a non-empirical method to conduct their research. Ergo, the fact that they may have been motivated by their beliefs in the supernatural ultimately had no effect on the method with which they studied the natural. This is all that "methodological naturalism" is prescribing: that the most fruitful way to study nature is to observe it, and to ground one's conclusions in one's observations and solely in one's observations. Hypotheses non fingo! Longer quote (translated from the Latin):
"I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction. - Isaac Newton (1726). Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, General Scholium. Third edition, page 943 of I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman's 1999 translation, University of California Press ISBN 0-520-08817-4, 974 pages.
Oddly enough, that was written in the 18th century, not the 19th. But you keep trying, stephenB, those goalposts aren't that heavy...Allen_MacNeill_{April 30, 2009
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If there were supernatural input into our universe, begging the question of just what supernatural means, this could mean that there may be phenomena that would have no explanation through natural laws or chance. So when we see such phenomena we don't cease to study them on the chance that they could be explained by natural laws, but "admit" that they may not have an explanation that is due to the operation of known natural laws. How hard is that. Nothing changes in science except this "admission."jerry_{April 30, 2009
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My case is that Intelligent Design, by proposing supernatural input, Where does it do that?tribune7_{April 30, 2009
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---Alan Fox: "It is all a matter of definitions. {natural, supernatural} Yes, of course. You do get it. When ID defines reality in terms of law, chance, and agency, then the natural, supernatural paradigm is inappropriate [and even maliciously applied] because the methodology, as formulated, does not incorporate natural, supernatural as definitions, because in that context, natural cannot be defined. Science employs definitions, constructs, and assumptions. Once they are in place, the ground cannot be shifted as in, shifting law, chance, agency to natural, supernatural. On the other hand, when the natural vs. supernatural paradigm is employed in other contexts, as in ordinary healing vs. miraculous healing, then the terms can be employed because natural, by definition, means without Divine assistance, or extraordinary. Everything does turn on definitions and the practice of being consistent with them IN CONTEXT.StephenB_{April 30, 2009
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"It has been suggested by others here before, and by me elsewhere, but an avenue for ID research would be to look for the interface where the supernatural input impinges on the real world. There you must see discontinuity, a reaction without an opposite. Why isn’t anyone trying this?" One reason is that ID says nothing about the supernatural, only intelligence or agency. Second, ID is doing research into the involvement of agency but it is research that other scientists who are not pro ID would also do. See the work of Abel and Durston. Third, as I said above, ID researchers would not do things much different than what other researchers would do. It is only the conclusions that would be different. In fact you could take all the research done to date in the history of the world and it would be ok with ID. ID would just come to more reasoned and logical conclusions on some of the studies. You seem to want to start some special discipline but ID does not want to do something different from what other scientists have been doing, only do it more intelligently. Somebody who believe in ID could study dark matter and dark energy, genetics, mutations to microbes over time, plate tectonics, string theory etc. Why shouldn't they? Tell me what an ID scientist can not do or would not do. There is nothing.jerry_{April 30, 2009
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How often do I have to say this. You have no case. Give it up.
My case is that Intelligent Design, by proposing supernatural input, excludes itself from scientific scrutiny. It is a matter of definitions. There may be a way forward. I can't imagine what it might be, but it is not my problem.Alan Fox_{April 30, 2009
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If you mean by supernatural: everything inaccessible to science, then by definition it cannot be directly measured in the lab.
Well, exactly!Alan Fox_{April 30, 2009
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Alan Fox, this same worn-out example that you allude to [Buridan as a defense of historical MN], and which has already been attempted on this thread, does itself prove the point. That you can navigate through the entire history of science and find only one instance of what you hope to be the case, dubious on its own merit, does itself refute your point. You cannot hope to compete with names, times, and places, which is the substance of the debate. I have already provided three counter examples, and can provide a hundred more. Even the Buridan example is suspect. Wikipedia and Panda's Thumb draw everything from Ronald Numbers, who, as I have already shown contradicted himself in his discussion with Paul Nelson, confessing that MN cannot be traced any further back than the mid-nineteenth century, which in itself is a stretch. Let's get back to reality with two more examples: (numbers #4, #5 and counting) John Ray, scientist and author of “The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation,” [1691] believed that nature was a worthy subject for study and reason, and that such activity was pleasing to God. He believed that living things showed adaptations to their environments, which for Ray were signs of God's design. Temple Chevallier wrote, "Of the proofs of the divine power and wisdom derived from the study of astronomy in 1835." Does that sound like methodological naturalism to you? If those who claim to be educated on this matter would simply think the matter through, we would not be having this discussion. The Catholic Church, for example, when it initiates is canonization process, calls on medical science to verify miracles attributed to saints. During the process, these same medical scientists are called on to distinguish natural healings from supernatural healings. Has anyone from your group informed them that they must cease and desist from that tradition because it violates your 1980ish rule that you have dubbed, "methodological naturalism." How often do I have to say this. You have no case. Give it up.StephenB_{April 30, 2009
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And what does “useful” mean? Useful for guiding further empirical investigations; nothing more (and nothing less).
Yes, and using Allen's definition, Intelligent Design would advance if someone could demonstrate that it was useful!Alan Fox_{April 30, 2009
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It has been suggested by others here before, and by me elsewhere, but an avenue for ID research would be to look for the interface where the supernatural input impinges on the real world. There you must see discontinuity, a reaction without an opposite. Why isn’t anyone trying this?
If you mean by supernatural: "extraodinary", then by definition it cannot be directly measured in the lab. If you mean by supernatural: everything inaccessible to science, then by definition it cannot be directly measured in the lab. So it would seem futile to try to directly investigate this interface except through circumstantial, indirect arugments. Besides, that would be closer to creationism than ID. An ID oriented creation would by "Biotic Message" or PEH. A circumstantial case can be made. Such as: 1. origin of the universe 2. origin of life 3. Heisenberg Uncertainty
This [quantum uncertainty] is something biologists, almost universally, have not yet come to grips with. And its consequences are enormous. It certainly means that we should wonder more than we currently do about the saying that life is made of “mere” matter…. This means that absolute materialism, a view that control and predictability and ultimate explanation are possible, breaks down in a way that is biologically significant. It means that after we have obtained understanding of so much of the world around us, the ultimate mastery of even the tiniest bit of matter in the universe will always elude us…. [Thus] The core assumptions supporting the “scientific” disbelief [atheism] of the absolute materialist are wrong, even by the terms of science itself… What matters is the straightforward, factual, strictly scientific recognition that matter in the universe behaves in such a way that we can never achieve complete knowledge of any fragment of it, and that life itself is structured in a way that allows biological history to pivot directly on these tiny uncertainties. That ought to allow even the most critical scientist to admit that the breaks in causality at the atomic level make it fundamentally impossible to exclude the idea that what we have really caught a glimpse of might indeed reflect the mind of God. …. In the final analysis, absolute materialsm does not triumph because it cannot fully explain the nature of reality. –Ken Miller pages 208-209, 214, 219 Finding Darwin’s God
and
We thus see how quantum theory requires the existence of God. Of course, it does not ascribe to God defined in this way any of the specific additional qualities that the various existing religious doctrines ascribed to God. Acceptance of such doctrines is a matter of faith and belief. If elementary systems do not "possess" quantitatively determinate properties, apparently God determines these properties as we measure them. We also observe the fact, unexplainable but experimentally well established, that God in His decisions about the outcomes of our experiments shows habits so regular that we can express them in the form of statistical laws of nature. this apparent determinism in macroscopic nature has hidden God and His personal influence on the universe from the eyes of many outstanding scientists. F.J. Belinfante department of Physics Purdue University
and
Something peculiar has been going on in science for the past 100 years or so. Many researchers are unaware of it, and others won’t admit it even to their own colleagues. But there is a strangeness in the air. What has happened is that biologists, who once postulated a privileged role for the human mind in nature’s hierarchy, have been moving relentlessly toward the hard-core materialism that characterized nineteenth-century physics. At the same time, physicists, faced with compelling experimental evidence, have been moving away from strictly mechanical models of the universe to a view that sees that mind as playing an integral role in all physical events. It is as if the two disciplines were on fast-moving trains, going in opposite directions and not noticing what is happening across the tracks. …. During the period in which psychologists and biologists were steadily moving toward reducing their disciplines to the physical sciences, they were largely unaware of perspectives emerging from physics that cast an entirely new light on their understanding. Toward the close of the last century [the 1800s], physics presented a very ordered picture of the world, in which events unfolded in characteristic, regular ways, following Newton’s equations in mechanics and Maxwell’s in electricity. These processes moved inexorably, independent of the scientist, who was simply a spectator. Many physicists considered their subject as essentially complete. Starting with the introduction of the theory of relativity by Albert Einstein in 1905, this neat picture was unceremoniously upset. The new theory postulated that observers in different systems moving with respect to each other would perceive the world differently. The observer thus became involved in establishing physical reality. The Scientist was losing the spectator’s role and becoming an active participant in the system under study. With the development of quantum mechanics, the role of the observer became an even more central part of physical theory, an essential component in defining an event. The mind of the observer emerged as a necessary element in the structure of the theory. The implications of the developing paradigm greatly surprised early quantum physicists and led them to study epistemology and the philosophy of science. Never before in scientific history, to my knowledge, had all of the leading contributors produced books and papers expounding the philosophical and humanistic meaning of their results. Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of the new physics, became deeply involved in the issues of philosophy and humanism. In Philosophical Problems of Quantum Physics, he wrote of physicists having to renounce thoughts of an objective time scale common to all observers, and of events in time and space that are independent of our ability to observe them. Heisenberg stressed that the laws of nature no longer dealt with elementary particles, but with our knowledge of these particles - that is, with the contents of our minds. Erwin Schrodinger, the man who formulated the fundamental equation of quantum mechanics, wrote an extraordinary little book in 1958 called Mind and Matter. In this series of essays, he moved from the results of the new physics to a rather mystical view of the universe that he identified with the “perennial philosophy” of Aldous Huxley. Schrodinger was the first of the quantum theoreticians to express sympathy with the Upanishads and Eastern philosophical thought. A growing body of literature now embodies this perspective, including two popular works, The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra and The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav. The problem faced by quantum theorists can best be seen in the famous paradox, “Who killed Schrodinger’s cat?” In a hypothetical formulation, a kitten is put in a closed box with a jar of poison and a triphammer poised to smash the jar. The hammer is activated by a counter that records random events, such as radioactive decay. The experiment lasts just long enough for there to be a probability of one-half that the hammer will be released. Quantum mechanics represents the system mathematically by the sum of a live-cat and a dead-cat function, each with a probability of one-half. The question is whether the act of looking (the measurement) kills or saves the cat, since before the experimenter looks in the box both solutions are equally likely. This lighthearted example reflects a deep conceptual difficulty. In more formal terms, a complex system can only be described by using a probability distribution that relates the possible outcomes of and experiment. In order to decide among the various alternatives, a measurement is required. This measurement is what constitutes and event, as distinguished from the probability, which is a mathematical abstraction. However, the only simple and consistent description physicists were able to assign to a measurement involved an observer’s becoming aware of the result. Thus the physical event and the content of the human mind were inseparable. This linkage forced many researchers to seriously consider consciousness as an integral part of the structure of physics. Such interpretations moved science toward the idealist as contrasted with the realist conception of philosophy. The views of a large number of contemporary physical scientists are summed up in the essay “Remarks on the Mind-Body Question” written by Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner. Wigner begins by pointing out that most physical scientists have returned to the recognition that thought - meaning the mind - is primary. He goes on to state: “It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.” And he concludes by noting how remarkable it is that the scientific study of the world led to the content of consciousness as an ultimate reality. A further development in yet another field of physics reinforces Wigner’s viewpoint. The introduction of information theory and its application to thermodynamics has led to the conclusion that entropy, a basic concept of that science, is a measure of the observer’s ignorance of the atomic details of the system. When we measure the pressure, volume, and temperature of an object, we have a residual lack of knowledge of the exact position and velocity of the component atoms and molecules. The numerical value of the amount of information we are missing is proportional to the entropy. In earlier thermodynamics, entropy had represented, in an engineering sense, the energy of the system unavailable to perform external work. In the modern view, the human mind enters once again, and entropy relates not just to the state of the system but to our knowledge of that state. The founders of modern atomic theory did not start out to impose a “mentalist” picture on the world. Rather, they began with the opposite point of view and were forced to the present-day position in order to explain experimental results. We are now in a position to integrate the perspectives of three large fields: psychology, biology, and physics. By combining the positions of Sagan, Crick, and Wigner as spokenmen for various outlooks, we get a picture of the whole that is quite unexpected. First, the human mind, including consciousness and reflective thought, can be explained by activities of the central nervous system, which, in turn, can be reduced to the biological structure and function of that physiological system. Second, biological phenomena at all levels can be totally understood in terms of atomic physics, that is through the action and interaction of the component atoms of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and so forth. Third and last, atomic physics, which is now understood most fully by means of quantum mechanics, must be formulated with the mind as a primitive component of the system. Harold Morowitz Director of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study
scordova_{April 30, 2009
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Nakashima-san: Your analogy between Occam's Razor and "least squares" method of line-fitting is one I have never read before, but one that seems quite useful. With your permission, I would like to use it my forthcoming book on evolution. Occam's Razor is widely misunderstood, even by scientists. There is a tendency to think that it's equivalent to a "natural law", when in fact it is only a "useful rule of thumb" for scientists who are trying to focus on a particular empirical problem. Nothing at all in standard (i.e. Aristotelian) logic rules out the infinite number of possible explanations of any observable phenomenon. One can hypothesize that solar eclipses are indeed caused by giant dragons eating the sun, who then regurgitate it upon being propitiated by priests interceding on behalf of their congregations. Nothing prohibits the construction of a fully logical syllogism concerning such an explanation of solar eclipses. Furthermore, one can study the various explanations that people in different cultures have proposed for such phenomena. When one does so, one notices immediately that there is a virtually infinite variety of such explanations, ranging from giant dragons to angry gods to competing sky deities. However, when one uses purely empirical methods to investigate such phenomena, one generally discovers that, despite the variation in proposed explanations,there is an underlying similarity (i.e. regularity) in those empirical observations. This is what Occam's Razor focuses our attention upon: those underlying regularities that "cut through" all of the varieties of culturally-based explanations and point to the simple, unadorned nature of nature itself. Does Occam's Razor ever "prove" anything in science? No, and neither does science "prove" anything at all in the Aristotelian/mathematical sense. All we ever have in science (and all we can ever have) is a tentative explanation that is "good enough" and "simple enough" that anyone, from any culture, using any form of inductive logic, can agree upon as a useful (i.e. not absolute) explanation. And what does "useful" mean? Useful for guiding further empirical investigations; nothing more (and nothing less).Allen_MacNeill_{April 30, 2009
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Hayden-san, The natural repetitions, which I think is more accurate than calling them “laws,” are like first principles, in a way. You have to assume them from the outset, and work forward. They do not have prior premises, and by “premises” I mean any “reason behind” the repetitions where we can see or understand the “chain of reasoning” leading up to them that makes them what they are. I fnd it difficult to agree with this. It may be that the first phase of scientific inquiry is the stamp collecting phase, in which a large number of measurements are made. And then a second phase, in which a line is fitted to this set. Engineers might be happy to stop there. Science does want to get at what underlies the regularity - why is that line a better fit than another? In the Boyle's Law example earlier, we can hypothesize at least two explanations for the pressure/volume relationship. 1 - that a gas is a continuous entity than is infinitely compressible 2 - that a gas consists of a large but fixed number of small particles that are themselves incompressible Experimentation would show that the line ceases to be a good fit in some range of high pressure, leading to a preference for one hypothesis over the other. Accepting the fitted line as the ultimate description of an arbitrary reality is not the natural end-state of scientific inquiry. This is why QM irritates so many people! Very few people are happy that QM is the most useful and precise engineering description of reality. Science still wants to know "why?" In this sense, scientists are like anorexics. An anorexic teenage girl is never happy being thin, she is obsessed with "thinner". Similarly, the scientist is never happy with the line fitted over a range of values. It can always be fitted over a wider range, or with more precise measures, etc. Thinking about science as line fitting also gives a clear definition to what is called Occam's Razor. We know that it is possible to draw an infinite number of lines through any set of observations. Occam's Razor is the preference for the lowest order polynomial in that infinite set.Nakashima_{April 30, 2009
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It has been suggested by others here before, and by me elsewhere, but an avenue for ID research would be to look for the interface where the supernatural input impinges on the real world. There you must see discontinuity, a reaction without an opposite. Why isn't anyone trying this?Alan Fox_{April 30, 2009
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This whole discussion would go away if one group admitted that there are some phenomena that science may not be able to explain. I use the word "admit" because that is issue. No one is saying not to use scientific processes to investigate any phenomenon but that only that there may be some that may not be the result of the laws of nature and chance. And that there is a third possibility of agency which is actually investigated by many scientific disciplines but limited arbitrarily to certain things. So what we have is an arbitrarily declared stricture that a certain subset of phenomena can not be due to agency. And any conclusion that these phenomena are due to agency is forbidden. And in addition specious conclusions are substituted in place which have no basis in fact. This is what the discussion is about. Short and simple. So we argue over the belief or lack of belief of some scientists in God or not when the real issue is over this arbitrary dictum on the possible range of conclusions to the methods and findings of science. I have said here many times what would an ID scientist do differently from a non-ID scientist and answered little would be done differently. But what they would differ on is the conclusions of the findings and not necessarily the methods and phenomena examined.jerry_{April 30, 2009
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19] Science does not address the “Supernatural”
But this is not correct. A better statement would be "Science has no tools with which to examine the supernatural. Of course science can look at natural results produced by supernatural inputs". It is all a matter of definitions.Alan Fox_{April 30, 2009
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Sal--It is standard practice in mathematics to assume for the sake of argument a hypothesis you actually believe to be untrue in order to prove the argument you believe to be true. And there is nothing wrong with this, as long as the false position doesn't become the norm. My view is that Allen feels ID is outside of empirical science, and prefers to be realtively quiet on the question ultimate causes. And this would be my concern, albeit not necessarily directed at Allen. ID is argued not to be science due to the meth-nat definition i.e. it's arbitrarily rejected due to semantics. For instance, ID does not even address a cause. Granted it raises questions it cannot answer, but so does the Big Bang (or neo-Darwinism for that matter). Trying to argue if methodological naturalism is good or bad Actually, I think there are times when the standard is quite appropriate. For instance, if you want to learn why the bridge collapsed you want to reject before hand the possibility of angry leprechauns. OTOH, to use it as the arbiter of all truth is a perversion of it as is the demand that it be applied to descriptions of nature rather than causes. And I have no problem with dialoguing with Allen, although both parties should endeavor to understand the positions of the others. For instance, is Idist synonymous with creationist? And I certainly hope Allen and Dr. D. have hooked back up and begun to dialogue.tribune7_{April 30, 2009
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Mr Fox: As of this point, you are simply rep[eating the already adequately answered. for instance, one does not study "the supernatural" empirically, but one may freely study signs of art or intelligence; as was already pointed out. I suggest that you review from 16 on in the WACs above, and in particular no 19. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{April 30, 2009
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Oh BTW, Mr M., How does Professor Delfino propose that scientists should study the supernatural, which, by definition, is invisible to the scientific method? I ask because I saw nothing in his article that suggested a practical way forward.Alan Fox_{April 30, 2009
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As to the idea that the contrast is made between “natural” and “supernatural, I must add that it is at least as well warranted to draw the contrast natural vs artificial [or intelligent]. And, much less metaphysically or rhetorically loaded.
A definition of something natural that makes sense to me is "available to scientific scrutiny" It is a foible of human thinking to assume dichotomies, and it seems to follow there must be something "non-natural, super-natural imaginary". By definitions any of these things may be there, but as they are invisible to scientific scrutiny, there's an end of it.Alan Fox_{April 30, 2009
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We are dealing with the implications — or at any rate, warranted inferences therefrom — of that longstanding discovery in light of the significance of signs of intelligence.
?Alan Fox_{April 30, 2009
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And, the pathway in which said investigations of DNA as data storing entities have now long been undertaken.
I think you may have omitted a word or two, as this statement makes no sense to me.
Alan Fox_{April 30, 2009
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Scientists may and often do study empirical phenomena that — per abundant direct observation — show reliable signs of design.
If this were true, Intelligent Design would already be science. But it is just wishful thinking, unfortunately.Alan Fox_{April 30, 2009
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Mr Fox The mere denial of the sad facts of imposition of methodological naturalism and its resulting censorship as Mr Lewontin so clearly documented, does not disestablish them. And, the pathway in which said investigations of DNA as data storing entities have now long been undertaken. We are dealing with the implications -- or at any rate, warranted inferences therefrom -- of that longstanding discovery in light of the significance of signs of intelligence. As to the idea that the contrast is made between "natural" and "supernatural, I must add that it is at least as well warranted to draw the contrast natural vs artificial [or intelligent]. And, much less metaphysically or rhetorically loaded. And, we have many many methods of investigating what is spontaneous in nature from what is art that stands above the probabilistically credible reach of undirected chance and necessity. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{April 30, 2009
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Mr Fox: Scientists may and often do study empirical phenomena that -- per abundant direct observation -- show reliable signs of design. That is not a study of "the supernatural" [whatever that is], but of the empirical and the observationally warranted: signs of intelligence. On the case of life and its origin, the cell strongly suggests design as just discussed, but we have no basis on currently available empirical -- i.e properly scientific -- evidence to infer to a designer as being within or beyond the observed cosmos. [remember, I am an advocate for research towards the creation of real artificial intelligences and if we can mange it, self-replicating ones, though under control so we don't do a Frankenstein.] On the origin of said cosmos, we see a finetuning for life that suggests that a designer beyond our observed cosmos is a credible candidate, but that is different from inferring to that there is design. [Whodunit is different from seeing that tweredun.] Taking the two together it is a reasonable worldviews conclusion that the author of the cosmos intended to create cell based life and so is the most credible candidate for that, but that is not a scientific conclusion. (Which does not mean that is is an unreasonable one.) GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{April 30, 2009
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...MN is being imposed as a censoring rule on science. And that, in a context where if it were not so imposed, there would be excellent reason to see that the evidence of — say — the data structures and contents of DNA, with associated codes and implementing mechanisms are strong indicators of design.
Nobody is prevented from conjecture that the DNA code etc. is too complex to to have come about other than with some supernatural input. Suggest a scientific way of examining the hypothesis.Alan Fox_{April 30, 2009
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