The Louisiana Science Education Act a decade later: Darwin not worshipped, swamp monsters not on the loose

_{Denyse O'Leary

July 2, 2018

Darwinism, Intelligent Design, science education}

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Louisiana Science Education Act From David Klinghoffer at ENST:

This week we’re celebrating the tenth anniversary of the passage of the Louisiana Science Education Act. It was a turning point in the effort to secure academic freedom for science teachers. That effort was never going to be an overnight success, but the LSEA marked an important beginning.

Yes. Who could forget Pants-in-knot and the hysteria he generated about the dark ages emerging from the swampy Bayou?

In fact, West notes, the LSEA shattered clichés like that in several ways. For one, it enjoyed broad bipartisan support — it was not a matter of Republicans versus Democrats. That’s got to be one reason it has resisted attempts at repeal led by activist Zack Kopplin, who has since moved on to other pursuits (as Sarah Chaffee notes here). For another, it enjoyed support from scientists. It was, again, not a battle of citizens versus science.

Finally, it was not “anti-science” at all but on the contrary, pro-science: that is, if by science you mean an enterprise entailing critical, objective analysis and weighing of evidence. In fact, the LSEA took inspiration from Darwin himself, who wrote that in scientific inquiries, “a fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” More.

Podcast

See also: Pants in knot: “Creationism” in Louisiana schools

and

Pants in knot II: Creationism growth sparks concern in Ivy League

Comments

Kairosfocus @ 112 and jdk @ 113 I think the word "philosophical" definitely needs to be deleted from the first paragraph. I am giving a lot of thought to your comments above and for me to respond adequately would require more writing than I am prepared to do right now. I am trying to get a handle on exactly how a concrete methodology for MN would work -- other than just asserting that one does not personally believe in naturalism but going ahead and making inferences from it anyway. This has the effect of producing ideological confusion because many people don't realize that the assumption of naturalism is embedded in the explanations. At this point science is not acting as arbiter of truth but as advocate for naturalism. I will shortly say a little bit about a couple of senses that MN might be meaningful, but I'm going to post this now before it disappears from my screen.hnorman5_{July 11, 2018
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Using Newton's four rules has advantages over using methodological naturalism. For one it allows for the distinction between telic and non-telic processes without having to equivocate and conflate the word "naturalistic". For another it allows scientists the freedom to pursue the evidence and inferences wherever they lead.ET_{July 11, 2018
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JDK, contrary to the attempted qualification by way of bland denial, it has been shown that there is an inextricable entanglement between evolutionary materialism as worldview and scientism. Which, then finds expression in terms of methodological naturalism, so called. As a further sign of the errors at work, the notion that naturalism as methodology MAKES no truth claims glides over the well known challenge that actions often speak at least as loudly as words. That is, a policy -- and that is what this is -- pivots on often implicit (or even concealed) truth claims and is in fact an item on an institutional or cultural agenda that carries a particular view of the world and of where it should head forward into practical affairs. In this case, I am putting on the table in 92 above a direct counter-example of enormous significance, information theory. I clip:
Yes, science addresses the natural lawlike regularities and it addresses chance circumstances and stochastic phenomena, often with great success. But that is not at all that science, properly, can and does address. For we know that intelligently directed configuration is a significant feature of the world, e.g. the text in posts in this thread. Whole sciences exist to study such phenomena, starting with communication and information theory. At the heart of that theory as pioneered by Shannon, Nyquist and others lies a key concept: signal to noise [power] ratio, often expressed in decibels. That is, by empirically observable characteristics we can routinely distinguish intelligent signal from natural noise due to mechanical necessity and/or chance processes. We may then use instruments and scientific processes to measure the two, and take their power ratio, defining S/N as a figure of merit. Onward we define for example the noise figure/factor or noise temperature, etc. We may distinguish diverse kinds of noise and identify source phenomena: white or pink noise, Johnson noise due to statistical properties of a resistance, flicker noise, shot noise etc. So, already, in a major scientific discipline, information-bearing artificially produced signals are distinguished from natural noise due to mechanical necessity and/or chance. The design inference is there, and the per aspect form explanatory filter that allows attribution of effects across mechanical necessity, chance and/or intelligently directed configuration is there. We routinely quantify, calculate and measure resulting values. In an Internet era, all of this is central to the global economy and society. That was already evident c 2000, so we must ask pointed questions about imposed definitions of science that lock out things that are so well-established. And, not just established for technological fields. For, coded, alphanumerical, algorithmically functional information, since 1953, has been known to lie in the heart of the living cell, to be the key to the assembly of proteins, and thus to be the key to understanding cell based life. That is, information theory is directly and inextricably intertwined with the heart of life. Where, beyond doubt, the signal characteristics of DNA plainly assign it to the signal side of the signal vs noise threshold. Now, the only empirically observed and analytically plausible cause of such complex, alphanumerically coded — thus, linguistic — signals is intelligently directed configuration. Newton’s rules of scientific inference are plain on such a matter: the only causes now in operation adequate to and actually observed to create digital, complex, functionally specific, information bearing signals are causes tracing to intelligently directed configuration. Design, in one word. Where, too, search challenge in implied configuration spaces (backed up by say patterns of protein folds in AA sequence space) presents a needle in haystack search challenge that easily overwhelms the atomic and temporal resources of the observed sol system or the observed — the only actually observed — cosmos, once we exceed 500 – 1,000 bits. At a nominal 4.32 bits per AA for proteins, that kicks in at 116 – 232 AA’s. The average protein is 250 – 300 bases, and there are thousands of them in any functional, cell based life form. The signal-noise verdict of information theory is plain: the genetic information in the living cell points to intelligently directed configuration — the ART-ificial and intelligent — as its most reasonable causal explanation. But, once we impose the censorship in the NSTA’s July 2000 edict, we may only explain on or use naturalistic concepts in science and in science education. So no, we may not tell students about the import of information theory for cell based life and its origin. Or, for the origin of major body plans. (Plausibly, first cell based life needs 100 – 1,000 kbases of genetic information, and main body plans 10 – 100+ million, well beyond the threshold where blind chance and/or mechanical necessity could be even remotely plausible.) The result is a patent absurdity and instantly reduces clever arguments that try to make such censorship seem reasonable to the status of agit prop fallacies.
Are you prepared to claim that information theory does not scientifically study intelligently directed configurations constituting signals (as distinct from naturally occurring noise)? If so, then the redefinition of science being put on the table patently fails. For if information theory is not accepted as a scientific field of study per the criteria of some definition so much the worse for the definition. If not, then the definition admittedly fails directly. On either option, it is dead. Scientific work is simply not artificially confined to naturalistic concepts and explanations. And, with the failure of that definitional imposition, we further see why methodological naturalism embeds a tendentious agenda and why it fails to be reasonable. Where, too, this is not about something done in a corner or irrelevant to biology. As, the living cell embeds an information system. KFkairosfocus_{July 11, 2018
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Re 111. Yes, it does. I posted more of this in 46:
Methodological naturalism is the label for the required assumption of philosophical naturalism when working with the scientific method. Methodological naturalists limit their scientific research to the study of natural causes, because any attempts to define causal relationships with the supernatural are never fruitful, and result in the creation of scientific “dead ends” and God of the gaps-type hypotheses. To avoid these traps scientists assume that all causes are empirical and naturalistic; which means they can be measured, quantified and studied methodically. However, this assumption of naturalism need not extend beyond an assumption of methodology. This is what separates methodological naturalism from philosophical naturalism — the former is merely a tool and makes no truth claim; while the latter makes the philosophical — essentially atheistic — claim that only natural causes exist.
[my emphasis] See also #88.jdk_{July 10, 2018
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HN5, later, unannounced, they have reworded to soften the direct force. Glance at Lewontin to see the underlying ideological frame of thought. We deal with those who in the key parts have convinced themselves that the material world exhausts reality, so knowledge can only be about how that root unfolded itself into the world we see by blind chance and mechanical necessity; this leads straight to scientism. Where, the physicalism compounded by hostility to the suspect supernatural, leads to the idea that science dominates knowledge -- which is actually a philosophical claim dressed up in a lab coat. They have revisionised the history of science and have induced others to be fellow travellers. KFkairosfocus_{July 10, 2018
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Am I the only one who finds the following quote from Rational Wiki odd? -- "Methodological naturalism is the label for the required assumption of philosophical naturalism when working with the scientific method." I haven't read through the entire thread but if someone would throw some light on it I would appreciate it. So does Rational Wiki really recognize a distinction between MN and PN?hnorman5_{July 10, 2018
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JDK, yes, to ensure the actual facts are not buried under the stream of comments. KFkairosfocus_{July 10, 2018
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It really helps a lot to post the same thing for the third or fourth time, kf.jdk_{July 10, 2018
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JDK, Okay, here we go:
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. (NB: DI Fellow, Nancy Pearcey brings this right up to date (HT: ENV) in a current book, Finding Truth.)]
And again: We may note the US National Science Teachers' Association [NSTA] in a notorious July 2000 Board declaration:
PREAMBLE: All those involved with science teaching and learning should have a common, accurate view of the nature of science. Science is characterized by the systematic gathering of information through various forms of direct and indirect observations and the testing of this information by methods including, but not limited to, experimentation. The principal product of science is knowledge in the form of naturalistic concepts and the laws and theories related to those concepts [--> ideological imposition of a priori evolutionary materialistic scientism, aka natural-ISM; this is of course self-falsifying at the outset] . . . . [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 [--> declaration of intent to censor instructional content], 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 [--> ideological imposition of a loaded definition] 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 . . . cf UD's weak argument correctives 17 - 19, here] in the production of scientific knowledge.
Where, CED:
NATURALISM . . . 5. (Philosophy) philosophy a. a scientific account of the world in terms of causes and natural forces that rejects all spiritual, supernatural, or teleological explanations b. the meta-ethical thesis that moral properties are reducible to natural ones, or that ethical judgments are derivable from nonethical ones.
Also, SEP as highlighted:
The self-proclaimed “naturalists” [of early-mid C20] . . . urged that reality is exhausted by nature [= the physical], containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality [–> i.e. if all that is is ultimately physical, the point of knowledge is to understand how that matrix gave rise to all things we see], including the “human spirit” (Krikorian 1944; Kim 2003) [–> this of course runs into the challenge of reducing mindedness to a GIGO-limited computational substrate, thus becomes self-refuting as I and many others note. This is the historical context of Haldane’s sawing off the branch remark] . . . . 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” [–> so, naturalism, i.e. evolutionary materialistic scientism, has ruled the roost for the past century or so, and has of course had consequences] . . .
Thus, too Lewontin, speaking as a senior member of the guild but six months before the NSTA statement:
. . . to put a correct [--> Just who here presume to cornering the market on truth and so demand authority to impose?] view of the universe into people's heads
[==> as in, "we" the radically secularist elites have cornered the market on truth, warrant and knowledge, making "our" "consensus" the yardstick of truth . . . where of course "view" is patently short for WORLDVIEW . . . and linked cultural agenda . . . ]
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 [--> "explanations of the world" is yet another synonym for WORLDVIEWS; the despised "demon[ic]" "supernatural" being of course an index of animus towards ethical theism and particularly the Judaeo-Christian faith tradition], 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.]
KFkairosfocus_{July 10, 2018
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Yes, of course I understand the issues of substance and warrant. I, and others, disagree with you because of matters of substance and warrant.jdk_{July 10, 2018
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JDK, there we go again. The issue is that substance, not agreement or disagreement. Indeed, way above, I pointed to the case of G K Chesterton and eugenics as a more or less living memory case in point where an individual who was almost utterly isolated was right and the overwhelming consensus of the day was disastrously wrong, in their imagination on how humans could direct their own evolution. Likewise, say von Mises was prety isolated in his view on the futility of socialist central planning, back in the 20's. This of course illustrates the Athanasius contra mundum issue, which is in turn a famous case in theology of the same. That many may think otherwise is of no avail when the substance is there. And, as shown, it is, indeed right out of the horse's mouth. KFkairosfocus_{July 10, 2018
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Once again I will point out that you misstate the case: I am not ignoring the links from PN to MN. I am saying that the MN is not an "imposition" from PN, but rather a separate conclusion that many who eject PN whole-heartedly endorse. I, and they, disagree with your arguments, which is different than ignoring them. This is a distinction that you don't seem to get: that your viewpoint is not the only possible one, and that people who don't see things as you do are not "missing" or "ignoring" your points: they get them, and they disagree.jdk_{July 10, 2018
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ET, you are right about the significance of Newton's four rules of scientific reasoning. KFkairosfocus_{July 10, 2018
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JDK, you are perfectly free to ignore the dynamic, logical and epistemological links from evolutionary materialistic scientism to the imposition of methodological naturalism, as it is called, on institutional science and science education. We are also perfectly free to draw our conclusions from that fact i/l/o the state of the matter on its merits. KFkairosfocus_{July 10, 2018
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kairosfocus- it's called "having the cake and eating it too". It's just crazy to say that Stonehenge is a natural rock formation and yet that is what our detractors appear to want to do. I would love to see lawyers try that tact in CourtET_{July 10, 2018
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MN is endorsed by people who don't understand science. Newton's four rules are endorsed by people who understand science.ET_{July 10, 2018
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kf, it may be the heart of the matter for you, but it is not what I have been interested in. I'm just interested in the fact that MN can be legitimately endorsed by people who do not endorse PN: in fact, some people who endorse MN probably feel the same way you do about the absurdity of PN. So we have different interests. But I am not obligated to address concerns of yours that do not interest me.jdk_{July 10, 2018
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ET, yup. Once "natural" in the naturalistic sense is expanded in ways that blur the physicalist core, "natural" becomes meaningless, as I just pointed out again. KFkairosfocus_{July 10, 2018
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JDK, it is the worldview commitments and cultural agendas that lie at the heart of the thread's concerns. In particular, evolutionary materialistic scientism is a worldview with an agenda that seeks to take over science and education as institutions. Sometimes, its advocates call themselves the brights and those who question or challenge them as ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked. Naturalism is tantamount to such evo mat, which is demonstrably self-referentially incoherent as say Haldane summarised and Crick inadvertently demonstrated . . . and that's a Nobel Prize winner. Those who try to broaden naturalism run into the challenge I outlined: as this denotes all of reality as "nature," it then becomes meaningless, in effect redefined as a synonym for reality so that whatever is is by definition "natural." That would include, say God. And of course, super natural would be defined as non-being. In short, "nature" would then be meaningless. In that context, once "nature" has meaning, it denotes the worldview claim that views the roots of reality as physical or quasi-physical; thus the world would be what has evolved by blind chance and/or mechanical necessity from that root. Thus as science studies the physical world and its dynamics, science monopolises knowledge. Methodological naturalism -- whether or not the fact is announced -- gains traction from that connexion; that is the core reason its advocates do not see such an ideological imposition as censorship. They think this captures reality and other things are dubious imaginings or even "demons" in Sagan's and Lewontin's terms. But when the core is self refuting -- as outlined -- the system falls apart, indeed, we are looking at self-falsification -- and by definition the necessarily false cannot be knowledge. KFkairosfocus_{July 10, 2018
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a. “the demonstrated success of methodological naturalism” and the massive amount of consensual knowledge that has been obtained by utilizing it, and
Newton is used. Not MN.
b. there is no comparable method by which those who believe there is something more than the material world have been able to investigate the non-material and come to any consensual understandings, or to produce practically useful results.
Newton's four rules is much better than MN. Clearly you are just scientifically illiterateET_{July 10, 2018
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The anti-IDists are confused. Scientists use Newton and not MN.
If one is allowed to inject miracles or the supernatural into their theories, how would they be falsifiable?
By following Newton's four rules, duh.ET_{July 10, 2018
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Seversky:
I do not see that intelligent agents cannot be included as “natural” in the broad sense of the SEP entry.
Then why even use the word "natural"? Why don't people call Stonehenge a natural rock formation?
If it is referring to the fact that ID has gained little traction in scientific circles an alternative explanation …
Alternative to what? There isn't any scientific alternative to ID.ET_{July 10, 2018
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kf writes,
your argument points simply fail to address the significance of the worldview commitments and how ideas — including terrible ones such as evolutionary materialism — have consequences
My posts fail to address that subject because that is not the subject of the discussion.jdk_{July 10, 2018
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Headlined: https://uncommondescent.com/informatics/on-the-absurdity-of-naturalism-and-the-equal-absurdity-of-its-censorship-of-science-and-education/kairosfocus_{July 10, 2018
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JDK (& attn Sev), your argument points simply fail to address the significance of the worldview commitments and how ideas -- including terrible ones such as evolutionary materialism -- have consequences. Including, awful ones. I again point to the core issue as I marked up from SEP:
The self-proclaimed “naturalists” [of early-mid C20] . . . urged that reality is exhausted by nature [= the physical], containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality [–> i.e. if all that is is ultimately physical, the point of knowledge is to understand how that matrix gave rise to all things we see], including the “human spirit” (Krikorian 1944; Kim 2003) [–> this of course runs into the challenge of reducing mindedness to a GIGO-limited computational substrate, thus becomes self-refuting as I and many others note. This is the historical context of Haldane’s sawing off the branch remark] . . . . 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” [–> so, naturalism, i.e. evolutionary materialistic scientism, has ruled the roost for the past century or so, and has of course had consequences] . . .
It is this expansive view of naturalism, so called, which led me to observe as follows at 80 above:
if for argument “nature” is broadened to imply reality in toto, whatever it may contain [say, including God], then “nature” loses meaning, and “the supernatural” would then by definition be a term for non-being. So, we can safely hold that the term natural in praxis implies physical and quasi-physical as the substratum of reality. All else that is, comes from ultimately blind interactions of said substratum. And, as it is the sciences which give knowledge of that substratum and how it may act (through blind mechanical necessity and/or chance/stochastic processes) then indeed we see where science becomes the framework of reliable and grounded knowledge. Once one swallows the frame, in whatever vague form, the above consequences become self-reinforcing. One may speak of even religious naturalism or of “merely” methodological naturalism as a reliable and successful way to learn about the world, even stipulating that there are other ways to acquire knowledge but the end result is the same. So soon as “science” so redefined comes knocking, it takes over. The point is, leaving the underlying worldview commitments, logic and epistemology un-examined does not remove their impact. And, we see further that science has become little more than applied atheism: the best evolutionary materialistic account of the world from hydrogen to humans. Such an all-encompassing cultural agenda can seem as irresistible as the proverbial juggernaut. Especially when the alleged centuries long track record of success of such science, the squeezing out of god from gaps, the follies of pseudoscience and the over-running of domains once thought beyond science are trotted out. But the whole turns on question-begging tendentious redefinitions, half truths on scientific methods and progress [multiplied by outright falsities] and on failure to adequately assess the challenge of the gap between a GIGO-limited mechanical and/or stochastic computational substrate and insightful, meaning based contemplation and responsible, rational, free mind.
That is why methodological naturalism, so called cannot be disentangled from the logic of being [= ontology] of naturalism. Its natural sense is, the physical and/or quasi-physical (branes, multiverses and whatnot) constitute and bound reality at root and evolve through blind mechanical necessity and equally blind chance, to form all of the world that we experience. So, logically, all true and more or less reliable knowledge comes from studying how that substratum unfolds blindly from hydrogen to humans, locking out consideration of the fever-demons that haunt the deluded minds of hoi polloi. That is the direct and proper understanding of what Lewontin noted as a longstanding member of the guild making a tribute on the passing of his fellow member, Sagan, through reviewing Sagan's last book: The Demon-Haunted World. It is thus utterly unsurprising to see that lesser lights would distill such thoughts into the sort of imposition on science education that we see in the July 2000 NSTA statement, just six months later. The logic is quite plain, and we must thank Lewontin for his frankness. The name of the game is: indoctrination through institutional domination and that is exactly what for telling example played out in Kansas across seven years. When so historically, epistemologically and logically well warranted a view as that cited in 17 above:
“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.”
. . . becomes targetted for manufactured outrage, branding, scapegoating and holding the education of the children of Kansas hostage in order to impose the radical agenda of evolutionary materialistic scientism, that is a sobering warning as to the game that is afoot in our civilisation. Yes, science addresses the natural lawlike regularities and it addresses chance circumstances and stochastic phenomena, often with great success. But that is not at all that science, properly, can and does address. For we know that intelligently directed configuration is a significant feature of the world, e.g. the text in posts in this thread. Whole sciences exist to study such phenomena, starting with communication and information theory. At the heart of that theory as pioneered by Shannon, Nyquist and others lies a key concept: signal to noise [power] ratio, often expressed in decibels. That is, by empirically observable characteristics we can routinely distinguish intelligent signal from natural noise due to mechanical necessity and/or chance processes. We may then use instruments and scientific processes to measure the two, and take their power ratio, defining S/N as a figure of merit. Onward we define for example the noise figure/factor or noise temperature, etc. We may distinguish diverse kinds of noise and identify source phenomena: white or pink noise, Johnson noise due to statistical properties of a resistance, flicker noise, shot noise etc. So, already, in a major scientific discipline, information-bearing artificially produced signals are distinguished from natural noise due to mechanical necessity and/or chance. The design inference is there, and the per aspect form explanatory filter that allows attribution of effects across mechanical necessity, chance and/or intelligently directed configuration is there. We routinely quantify, calculate and measure resulting values. In an Internet era, all of this is central to the global economy and society. That was already evident c 2000, so we must ask pointed questions about imposed definitions of science that lock out things that are so well-established. And, not just established for technological fields. For, coded, alphanumerical, algorithmically functional information, since 1953, has been known to lie in the heart of the living cell, to be the key to the assembly of proteins, and thus to be the key to understanding cell based life. That is, information theory is directly and inextricably intertwined with the heart of life. Where, beyond doubt, the signal characteristics of DNA plainly assign it to the signal side of the signal vs noise threshold. Now, the only empirically observed and analytically plausible cause of such complex, alphanumerically coded -- thus, linguistic -- signals is intelligently directed configuration. Newton's rules of scientific inference are plain on such a matter: the only causes now in operation adequate to and actually observed to create digital, complex, functionally specific, information bearing signals are causes tracing to intelligently directed configuration. Design, in one word. Where, too, search challenge in implied configuration spaces (backed up by say patterns of protein folds in AA sequence space) presents a needle in haystack search challenge that easily overwhelms the atomic and temporal resources of the observed sol system or the observed -- the only actually observed -- cosmos, once we exceed 500 - 1,000 bits. At a nominal 4.32 bits per AA for proteins, that kicks in at 116 - 232 AA's. The average protein is 250 - 300 bases, and there are thousands of them in any functional, cell based life form. The signal-noise verdict of information theory is plain: the genetic information in the living cell points to intelligently directed configuration -- the ART-ificial and intelligent -- as its most reasonable causal explanation. But, once we impose the censorship in the NSTA's July 2000 edict, we may only explain on or use naturalistic concepts in science and in science education. So no, we may not tell students about the import of information theory for cell based life and its origin. Or, for the origin of major body plans. (Plausibly, first cell based life needs 100 - 1,000 kbases of genetic information, and main body plans 10 - 100+ million, well beyond the threshold where blind chance and/or mechanical necessity could be even remotely plausible.) The result is a patent absurdity and instantly reduces clever arguments that try to make such censorship seem reasonable to the status of agit prop fallacies. And that is before we face the stinging, saw off the branch on which we must sit force of Haldane's challenge to such evolutionary materialistic scientism:
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. (NB: DI Fellow, Nancy Pearcey brings this right up to date (HT: ENV) in a current book, Finding Truth.)]
It is time to face the reality of the sad pass that our civilisation has been reduced to. KFkairosfocus_{July 10, 2018
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JAD, as I have been arguing, many people who are not materialists - who are in fact theists and would agree with you about our minds - accept that seeing science as a limited enterprise, using MN, is a reasonable way to look for a particular kind of knowledge, but not a way to look for all knowledge. Also, I don't see Barbara Forrest declaring victory. She makes her arguments for others to consider, but I'm virtually certain that she doesn't see that PN has emerged victorious in the marketplace of metaphysical beliefs. And GUN, re 89, I basically agree with what you say.jdk_{July 9, 2018
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Earlier at #77 I wrote:
I along with other ID’ists see a lot of evidence for design in the world that has been uncovered by modern science.
One of the best evidences that Theism is true and naturalism/materialism is false if the fact that we have minds that can give us factually true knowledge about the world within which we find ourselves. It is not a matter of what one believes about the reliability of his own reasoning (truth detecting) capabilities but whether one can explain such capabilities on the basis of his world view. Naturalists/ materialists like Dawkins begin with the assumption that our minds-- our reasoning/ truth detecting capabilities-- are the result of non-teleological mindless process. Theists, on the other hand, begin with the assumption that our minds are a creation of a Mind. The burden of proof is on those who try to explain on a mindless process, like Darwinian, naturalistic evolution can “create” minds in the first place and the minds with reliable truth detecting capabilities. Remember, a committed Darwinian like Richard Dawkins is arguing that his world view is based on empirical science. Therefore, he should be able to give me a compelling and objective science based explanation (“proof”) of how mindlessness creates minds. Frankly, this is something that the naturalist relying on science and “methodological naturalism,” cannot answer. I would argue that the theist doesn’t have that problem. How could he? For the theist the ultimate ground of being is an eternally existing transcendent Mind. It appears then that naturalists like Barbara Forrest are a bit premature in declaring victory.john_a_designer_{July 9, 2018
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jdk,
re the Barbara Forrest comments in 77 and 82: First, that there are in fact philosophical naturalists in itself isn’t an argument that they are right. As I’ve said before: yes there are materialists. So what?
I agree. Obviously there are materialists – and obviously many of them are going to try to get people to buy that MN logically means PN, as JAD points out. Most people – including theists – believe in using MN in science, and so if materialists can sell that MN = PN, they’ll see it as a major victory. That’s why it’s surprising to me (especially as an atheist) to see so many non-atheists jumping to agree with them. For me, the importance of MN is linked to the importance of falsifiability. Most people believe in MN not because they believe in PN, but because they believe in the principle of falsifiability. If one is allowed to inject miracles or the supernatural into their theories, how would they be falsifiable? It has nothing to do with whether one believes the supernatural or miracles occur or not. Because of the importance of falsifiability, even IF PN was somehow disproven tomorrow, it wouldn’t change the role of MN in science.goodusername_{July 9, 2018
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I spent more time on this than I wanted to, but anyway ... re the Barbara Forrest comments in 77 and 82: First, that there are in fact philosophical naturalists in itself isn't an argument that they are right. As I've said before: yes there are materialists. So what? The question before us is whether accepting science as the search for natural explanations of natural phenomena necessarily entails or endorses PN, not whether there are people who think this is the case. As kf said, this is not about counting heads: it's about the merits of the arguments. Second, Barbara makes an important distinction in her reasoning, which I would like to describe (although it is stated well in her quotes, for anyone who reads closely without thinking they can read between the lines.) But before doing that, I want to point out that a) I am a friend of Barbara's and b) I don't agree with her about her final conclusion. I will write as if I can somewhat represent her thoughts, although I know I really can't speak for her, and may misrepresent her. But her argument is: 1. MN does not logically entail PN because it is a logical possibility that something other than the material world exists. Barbara (and Genie Scott), in my experience accept that people with whom they agree strongly about the nature of science also have religious beliefs that they don't share. So many people accept for various reasons, logical and otherwise, that other than the material world exists, and this can not be disproven, even though Barbara and others are not at all moved, much less convinced, by those arguments. 2. However, for reasons described below, she reaches the conclusion for herself that the only reasonable metaphysical conclusion is that in fact the material world is all there is. The two main reasons are: a. "the demonstrated success of methodological naturalism" and the massive amount of consensual knowledge that has been obtained by utilizing it, and b. there is no comparable method by which those who believe there is something more than the material world have been able to investigate the non-material and come to any consensual understandings, or to produce practically useful results. 3. Therefore, she states that adopting PN is neither an a priori commitment nor a logically necessary conclusion, but rather a reasoned conclusion. As she states very well,
Adopted in the sciences because of its explanatory and predictive success, methodological naturalism is the intellectual parent of modern philosophical naturalism as it now exists, meaning that philosophical naturalism as a world view is a generalization of the cumulative results of scientific inquiry… It is neither the a priori premise nor the logically necessary conclusion of methodological naturalism, but the well grounded a posteriori result.
4. I think there is a great deal of strength in her argument, but I personally don't reach the same conclusion as she does about PN being the only reasonable metaphysical conclusion: I have made it clear here that I am not a materialist. I think the fact that there is something rather than nothing, that it is "fine-tuned" to have the full range of substances and forces that it does, and that consciousness exists all point to a possible non-material "something" or "somethings" that are beyond/behind/concomitant with the material world. Therefore, I think that science, as the search for natural explanations, is a limited enterprise: it can only investigate certain types of things in the world, but not everything. I am not interested once again discussing my own views about the nature of the world. I mention myself, however, as an example of someone who endorses MN, but not PN. I hope this discussion puts Barbara's thoughts in context: to summarize, 1) MN does not logically entail PN. 2. Some people feel (Barbara, for instance), however, that the conclusion that the material world is all there is is the most, indeed the only, reasonable conclusion. 3. Many others (myself, for instance, and my Christian friends, for another example) believe that science is correct to limit itself to searching for natural explanations, but that science, in doing so, cannot address many important issues in the lives of human beings.jdk_{July 9, 2018
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kairosfocus @ 42
I actually demonstrated in 33 above from the SEP remarks that there is an agreed core meaning of naturalism across the past 100 + years, which is tantamount to the descriptive summary phrases I have long used. Namely, [1] evolutionary materialism and [2] evolutionary materialistic scientism. That summary also fits the CED definition, which will pivot on summarising typical usage of terms by those who exhibit exemplary standard of English speech or writing. So, appeal to other usages or to vagueness or to differences peripheral to that core will fail.
The common ground amongst philosophers according to the SEP is that "reality is exhausted by nature" or I suppose you could also say that nature is exhausted by reality. In other words, if something is real rather than imaginary, even if it is ghosts or a god, then they are by that understanding part of the natural order of things. So the supernatural, if it refers to anything at all, is simply that category of real things about which we have no knowledge as yet. As for contrasting "natural" with "artificial" you can certainly do that as long as you make it clear that "natural" in this sense is referring to non-teleological phenomena, which is a more limited usage that excludes teleological phenomena or artefacts which are real and therefore natural according to the philosophers usage. "Evolutionary materialism" is a metaphysical claim about the nature of biological reality being entirely material. But "materialism" does not necessarily exhaust "naturalism". This depends on what we mean by "materialism" so, again, we come up against usages. Is it limited to the classical concept or is it being used interchangeably with "physicalism" in these discussions? "[E]volutionary materialistic scientism" is a pejorative term for what is regarded by the critic as an irrational and unjustifiable commitment to the belief that reality is material in nature and that science is the only method for generating reliable knowledge about said reality.
Next, I went on to show the connexion, where if reality is a priori deemed evolutionary materialist, then it will seem appropriate to censor scientific thought, forcing it to become the “best” evolutionary materialistic account of our world from hydrogen to humans.
This is implying that there is a conspiracy amongst scientists to "censor" any thought which is held to be inconsistent with some established materialist orthodoxy, one victim of this conspiracy being the neo-Paleyist conjectures of the Intelligent Design movement. Yet ID has been able to publish numerous articles, blog posts, books and videos about their claims so it is hard to see where it is being suppressed. If it is referring to the fact that ID has gained little traction in scientific circles an alternative explanation could be that, thus far, it has failed to substantiate its claims in any scientifically significant way.
Artificial causes are intelligent and purposeful, often leaving observable characteristic and reliable traces which may therefore be studied by scientific investigations that are not straightjacketed and blinkered by a priori evolutionary materialistic scientism. But of course seeing such to be reasonable pivots on willingness to accept the possibility of intelligent causal agents at relevant times and places, and/or to be open to the demonstrated reliability of key characteristic signs of intelligently directed configuration as a relevant causal factor. Which is precisely what is being locked out a priori on worldviews grounds as is implied by SEP.
I do not see that intelligent agents cannot be included as "natural" in the broad sense of the SEP entry. But such agents cannot help us on the question of origins without an arbitrary declaration of necessity.
We are back to imposition of a worldview that censors possibilities that should sit at the table by right.
That raises the question of what should be allowed to sit around science's table "as of right". Should it be any conceivable claim, such as flat Earth or fairies at the bottom of the garden or should it be restricted to those claims that meet certain standards of scientific merit, given that imposing such standards is automatically vulnerable to complaints of censorship against the claims that are excluded?
The attack on a historically well-warranted school level understanding of science and its methods is a red flag warning on what has gone wrong.
If you are referring to the attempted and actual teaching of creationism in high school science classrooms then I entirely agree.Seversky_{July 9, 2018
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