Understanding God

[brokenhead]

Me and Diebert are mostly talking past each other.

Please: "Diebert and I..."

In this case it is true that I did not engage the many statements of your post, because I considered it futile.

Still you reject them en masse.

I did find your points pretty far out. Do you want me to explain? You might be slightly less impervious than Diebert, but somehow I don't think so. I have found that your thinking is quite conventional, and I get the feeling, since much of what you said doesn't seem like it ought to belong to you, that you must have a vested interest, such as a relative who is a biology professor or something.

First time I have ever been accuse of being too conventional. Still, you don't seem to see fit to expound on that assumption. By the way - how can my thinking be "conventional" if my points are "far out"?

My vested interest is my education and graduate school exposure to the physical sciences and to see people investigate nature without threat of censure, to which admitting ID studies into Biology Departments would be one step closer.

I suppose I would be interested in how Miller does his juggling act, but after all people are often not rational, and intelligence doesn't seem to help much. I doubt I would agree with his position. In general the position of theistic evolutionists is untenable and illogical.

But still you have not read it and you are disagreeing with it and categorizing it. That, I presume, is what you call rational behavior.

Your classification of Miller as a theistic evolutionist sounds like something you heard someone else say. It must be, since your exposure to him is limited.

I'm not even sure I understand what you mean by your use of the term. Is it not possible for someone to study evolution professionally and still believe in God?

If Miller does not tread a party line to your satisfaction, does that make his faith less genuine or real - or educated or intelligent - than your own, mine, or anyone else's?

And for that reason, I am quite sure you know little of ID, or of anti-Darwinian arguments in general. I find it most obnoxious to claim that one's own interpretation of data is "the findings of science" despite the long and venerable history of disagreement about that exact data from such a large number of thoughtful sources.

At some level, one does find one's own interpretation of scientific research, including the fossil record and controlled laboratory experiments. Miller is a professional in the area. If another researcher agreed with conventional ID interpretation, would he have more of a right to to consider his views the "findings of science?" If not, and Miller shouldn't, then you are saying no one should. That is silly. Everyone assumes that others disagree with one's own interpretation. At the same time, if you strip the interpretation from the data, you can very legitimately speak of the "findings of science."

Frankly, I find that both ID proponents and scientists who reject ID out of hand are both equally guilty of making "logical" conclusions where none are warranted.

One cannot simply declare oneself right by fiat, or by numbers. The majority can be wrong.

Well, of course. Needless to add, so can the minority.

Of course the real findings of science can not ever disagree with spiritual truth.

Upon which there is no general agreement.

If you read my posts carefully, you will understand that you and I seem to agree on what that may be. But again, the views of any one person, whether ID proponent or not, should not hamper scientific investigation. Bear in mind that it was not that many years ago, that those in authority - i.e., the Catholic Church - were resolute ID proponents and believed they possessed the sole spiritual truth, and would have put scientific researchers into prison or to death.

There are very real historical reasons to separate ID discussions from the science departments at universities. Consider - you yourself seem to think it is proper for the ID folk to be telling Miller to "please stop" publicly discussing and disagreeing with ID proponents. I find that chilling.

It is not enough to be familiar with the ID arguments. You should also be familiar with history. And if you have not read Origin of Species, you should. I did, many years ago as part of a course. I was surprised to find that Darwin himself was much more of a theist than is generally assumed, even by neo Darwinists, many of whom have never bothered to read the seminal work itself.

At least Miller has done that much. He is also well-versed in the ID arguments, since he has publicly debated ID adherents. I find his interpretation of ID arguments to be vastly different from my own, however. It sounds as though he concludes that arguing for a design is to argue that every species appeared by divine fiat, and it is this which he rejects. He seems to think that if any species have become extinct - and most have - that divine intervention is impossible. My way of thinking is that nature is divine in its origin, and that extinction of species is part of the plan, and that once the "breath of life" was given to the earliest life matrix, it proceeds according to plan, that is, to design. After all, when humans design a plan - intelligently - they design in flexibility, or else their plans would fail. The overall plan of Life, in my view, cannot possibly fail.

[Iolaus]

BH,

Very well, then, I have decided to answer your post, plus the one that I dismissed. But just when I had made that decision, I came across the below paragraph, which was so stunning in its - what appears to me as deliberate - twisting of what I actually said, that I again question: your sincerity, your ability to honestly engage. Here it is:

There are very real historical reasons to separate ID discussions from the science departments at universities. Consider - you yourself seem to think it is proper for the ID folk to be telling Miller to "please stop" publicly discussing and disagreeing with ID proponents. I find that chilling.

Now, I had said, twice, that he misrepresented ID. He deliberately, and in court, and in other public appearances, has persisted in making certain declarations of ID that its most highly placed proponents have corrected him on and asked him to stop putting forth. I believe he does it to win. They at no time asked him anything as absurd as to stop disagreeing with ID. Absurd!

How odd that you find it chilling, when what is actually happening is just that chilling state of affairs, with anyone in academia who acknowledges doubts about Darwinism or wants to do research, or allows someone to do research, are usually, and have been, fired. And almost impossible to get past peer review. If you were in the field, and expressed what you just did to me, your career would be in jeopardy. Don't you find that chilling?

Behe is an exception. I believe he had tenure before he took an interest in ID.

The rest later.

[brokenhead]

How odd that you find it chilling, when what is actually happening is just that chilling state of affairs, with anyone in academia who acknowledges doubts about Darwinism or wants to do research, or allows someone to do research, are usually, and have been, fired.

This is news to me. I'd need examples.

To remind you, we are on the same side. Unless you can convince me that biology departments have been explicitly anti-theist, I think they should go on "doing science" as always.

But these are just my own views, Anna.

I'd like to keep "the Wedge" out of high schools, for instance. The fact is that evolution happened. Let's teach that. In my view, science cannot eradicate God whatsoever. Let the schools teach the facts.

By the way, you know I can imagine that it happened the way the UB presents it, evolution and all. There was no quarrel with evolution when I was being taught grades 1 through 12, and I went to Catholic schools. I don't see the need for introducing Intelligent Design theories that open the door to religious discourse in what are supposed to be science classes. Especially in the US, where when parents sniff indoctrination going on, everybody starts yapping and has to get their foot in the door, and before you know it, the marvelous fact of evolution - God's own plan - gets the short shrift.

The Wedge equals politics. So right away, we are no where near the Divine.

[Iolaus]

Continued...

Yes. I'm the one who can. I'm the one who understands why there are two departments.

But ID, while it may or may not have metaphysical implications (as does scientific materialism) is not theological. Therefore I think you have erred here.

Science isn't about conclusions. It's about tentative hypotheses.

The Darwinists are fond of saying that the theory is as solid as gravity. But it isn't. And we don't understand gravity yet, either.

It's about mechanisms, It's about saying that we know something, and agreeing on it, only when it can be demonstrated to be factual.

But this is precisely where the contention lies - that the mechanisms are inadequate to explain life, that random mutations could never come up with the complex information that we find in the cell, and that the fossil record, which you mention later on, does not show the sort of gradual evolution that is required. It shows discontinuous and sudden leaps in species. The entire field is completely unable to come up with even one plausible or traceable species line, and presents for its case a very few changes within a species, such as moths changing color in the dirty city, and from this the theory extrapolates that macroevolution occurs. They state that all we have to do is multiply the tiny, incremental steps of a small mutation in a specie, and given enough time and enough such mutations, we end up with bacteria slowly evolving into fish, and reptiles, and birds. You know, if you pile a bunch of sand up, you can get a very large hill of it, but would it be reasonable to suppose that we could therefore pile sand to the moon? The amazing thing is that Darwinian evolution requires that this conjecture be correct, and there is very little evidence for it at all, while there is mounting evidence against it.

It is about building something from the ground up, not from the top down. Or, more accurately, dissecting something from the outside in. If you try to examine the core first, you will lose everything that has led to it. Science itself is evolutionary.

What do you mean by examining the core? ID does tend to focus on the tiny elements of life - this is where the amazing complexity lies. Wouldn't it take close scrutiny to understand a thing? Should we look only from afar?

I have no doubt that if ID is correct - and if it is, it would probably be in a way we do not yet fathom - that it eventually will be shown to be so by the methodology of science. But only if science is allowed to progress undisturbed by people who think they have all the answers beforehand.

This statement, too, is shining in its bizarreness. How can we ever get there when the very people who want to examine this, who want to be allowed to even think this way, are mocked and fired and have to hide their identities????????? Do you actually not understand that it is the power holders who are preventing this? Do you not understand how the most influental voices are dead set against this being so and do not want said research? They hold the university chairs and the grant money and control peer review. I mean, what the HELL are you talking about? And what can you possibly mean by referring to the methodology of science? In what way do ID detour from that? What methodology do you think they use?

ID can easily be addressed from a metaphysical standpoint, the the two bodies of ideas be contrasted and compared in colloquia which abound on a university campus.

But damnit all, how can you discuss complexity, mathematics, probability, linguistics as it relates to DNA and so forth, and discuss what conclusions are relevant to the data, and call it metaphysics? We are talking here about science, about how things work. Science is about how things work, no? And ID is asking how life can work, as is Darwinism. And they are arguing about whether the initial hypothesis is adequate to the data. ID says it is not. Brokenhead, I want to be polite, I really do, but have you read ANYTHING about ID from an ID person? An essay overview or anything? If you are stuck on calling ID metaphysics, you either need to read something, or we have nothing to say.

You know, I could talk about God all day long, and I have intuitive reasons why I have tended to draw certain metaphysical conclusions, and I am often seeking ways to put a big picture together that includes the findings of science with my spiritual inclinations. I could discuss the universe from the point of view that logically there must be a creator. But ID is not primarily a metaphysical subject. It is absolutely a scientific one. So completely that a few of its best writers are agnostics. Most of their writings make no spiritual mention whatsoever, nor is it necessary.

I'm amazed that you don't see through these rather silly obfuscations for what they are - a desperate ad hominem attempt to discuss anything but the actual talking points of ID! This is a constant complaint of the ID camp, did you know that? They say, "We keep wanting to discuss the science, and they just won't engage our real points about the mechanisms of evolution, they only want to talk about religion and various philosophical notions."

Are you in fact interested in this enough to read a bit? Do you like to read?

And for this same reason, ID proponents are stating personal conclusions which cannot be supported.

But for heaven's sake, hasn't Darwinism done this very thing for 150 years? Yes, they have. And how in the hell is someone like Michael Denton supposed to address the issues that he sees within the theory of Darwinian evolution when he finds them inadequate without saying so? I mean, how are people supposed to pursue their hunch, based not primarily upon spiritual inclinations but upon things like the fossil record, that current explanations of the evolution are not correct? How?

Supporting those conclusions is exactly what they are trying to do. Is there something wrong with that? Man oh man, from my point of view, this is just amazing, beyond amazing. Do you not see how absurd it is to tear up a group of scientists for trying to work on a hypothesis?

Did you know that Michael Behe, who wrote Darwin's Black Box is a Catholic also, and was a contented believer in regular evolution, and had no personal ax to grind about it, when he was astonished by reading Michael Denton's book?

In the long run, perhaps it doesn't much matter where the dialog takes place, because the truth will eventually be known.

It will happen faster without the egos who don't want their worldview altered. The truth has to be fought for, it isn't ceded easily, and ID is fighting. They will win, because they are closer to the truth. But it needn't be this hard. You are naive in your supposition that all scientists care more for truth even if it means their life work was in error and money was wasted.

But in the meantime, curricula should be based on what is known.

AAAHHHHAH!!!!!!!! But what is known??? You yourself say that your own belief does not jive with the evolution that is taught in school and that Miller insists upon putting in his textbooks - no plan or purpose to evolution. Evolution has never made a very good case, it has never been able to answer its criticisms. If it can't that is OK, but it should not be an arrogant bully.

Since ID as opposed to strict evolutionary materialism is not a settled issue in many people's minds, approaching it as such is propaganda, not science.

Is it not then also propaganda to teach kids that evolution has no plan or purpose?

No one is advocating teaching ID as a truth at this time. What they want is to stop being belittled and fired and denied publishing.

Currently, if you stick to the known facts including the most up-to-date research, the strictly materialist mechanism as a means of producing the known phenotypes has been substantiated, if not proven to be the only overarching factor.

Absolutely, categorically false. Why do you believe this propaganda? It is bluster, I tell you, and nothing more. If it were so, where would be the argument?

As to department heads who were surveyed, they know all too well that research resources are limited. Their job is to ensure they are devoted to science, and that the public at large knows that their department is not on a crusade.

But in many ways it has been a crusade, for the other side. And that is why this is a turf war. If they were devoted to science, why would they want to shout down voices which are expanding that very scientific dialogue?

If you object to the way the news gets slanted in their hands, you should also be with me in objecting to the way academia would be slanted by them if it were increasingly pro ID.

All I can say on this is that I am aware of human nature in the mainstream of society, and that new ideas are kept out, truth punished. Semmelweis went mad watching doctors kill young mothers when he saw so clearly, and proved, that they were doing it with their own hands. They wouldn't listen and hounded him. The situation is no different today. It is sad, and if ID were the entrenched people, no doubt they would be turncoats. However, the situation now is that the best and open thinkers, the more scientifically focused, are the ID people.

You cannot be hypocritical about this. If a university were known to have a biology department that treated ID on the same footing with Darwinism - and I'm sure that such places exist - you could expect to trace a large part of their endowment to the Rupert Murdochs of the world, that is, to people and concerns who want us to believe in some status quo ideology that in the long run makes us their sheep and their ideological puppets.

And Dawkins actively suppresses dissent and is a missionary for atheism. Hitler and some prior German leaders were delighted with Darwin's book and it helped justify and inflame their ideology. Even in this country, the eugenics movement was largely sparked by Darwinism. And the Russian atheistic totalitarians also needed Darwin to underpin their ideology.

********************************************

Still you reject them en masse.

I rejected them one by one!
But no, I distinctly recall a good paragraph was in there...

Your thinking is conventional in politics. You believe the 9-11 story. By 'far out' I meant very far from knowing what ID is about.

My vested interest is my education and graduate school exposure to the physical sciences and to see people investigate nature without threat of censure, to which admitting ID studies into Biology Departments would be one step closer.

Again, when active persecution is going on now against the pursuit of ID, why do you worry that ID would somehow cause science to be suppressed? In fact, please explain what it is that you do envision. Because some people have made very strange comments in newspaper editorials for example, to the effect that with ID, we would no longer have things like modern medicine, which just leaves me scratching my head.

I don't like censure at all. I don't like people to be manipulated and controlled and lied to. Why is it OK for the Darwinists to do it? Why is science and the university better served by insisting upon orthodoxy in thinking?

But still you have not read it and you are disagreeing with it and categorizing it. That, I presume, is what you call rational behavior.

You want me to have read a particular book. But I already told you what I thought of his essay, and I have read some of his testimony in court. I am not against reading his book at all, but I won't order it without looking at it. Perhaps I'll go to the bookstore and have a look. If it isn't boring, I might read it.

I thought I had a fair handle on his approach, but why don't you give me a synopsis of it?

Your classification of Miller as a theistic evolutionist sounds like something you heard someone else say. It must be, since your exposure to him is limited.

A theistic evolutionist is someone who believes in God and Darwinian, purposeless evolution at the same time. Some of them believe in a God who guides evolution quite a bit, but there is a strong faction who insist that they can have their cake and eat it, too, i.e., they can hang out in academia and do evolutionary biology alongside atheists without any contradiction whatsoever. An untenable position.

Is it not possible for someone to study evolution professionally and still believe in God?

Yes, of course it is. But many minds keep things in separate categories, and do not follow the implications to the end. Or they quietly keep their opinion to themselves. You see, classic evolutionary theory is scientific materialism. Now, most people hold in their minds the two possibilities: either we live in a universe with a God or we do not. Hard to tell for sure. But, you must realize, that whichever one is true makes the other utterly impossible.

I think it is illogical to suppose that there is a God, which means this God is the cause of matter, and yet think that our universe looks just the same as it would if there were no God. The belief that God could deliberately leave no trace is simply illogical. If there is a God, there could not be a non-God universe for him to imitate.

If Miller does not tread a party line to your satisfaction, does that make his faith less genuine or real - or educated or intelligent - than your own, mine, or anyone else's?

Hmm, well I belong to a church of one, so I don't know about a party line. I am not sure how intelligent or real his faith is; I am not sure he is a sincere person. Being Catholic is already a sign he doesn't think too much. Or enjoys it for the nostalgia. But I don't know enough to state more.

At some level, one does find one's own interpretation of scientific research, including the fossil record and controlled laboratory experiments. Miller is a professional in the area. If another researcher agreed with conventional ID interpretation, would he have more of a right to to consider his views the "findings of science?" If not, and Miller shouldn't, then you are saying no one should. That is silly. Everyone assumes that others disagree with one's own interpretation. At the same time, if you strip the interpretation from the data, you can very legitimately speak of the "findings of science."

This paragraph was a bit unclear, but I objected to you seeming to present one side of a rather intense and detailed disagreement as "the findings of science."

But again, the views of any one person, whether ID proponent or not, should not hamper scientific investigation.

As I hope you understand by now, that is indeed happening.

Bear in mind that it was not that many years ago, that those in authority - i.e., the Catholic Church - were resolute ID proponents and believed they possessed the sole spiritual truth, and would have put scientific researchers into prison or to death.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. I do blame the Catholic Church, nor much less the Protestants, and I have tried to argue this point on the ID blogs. I get nowhere. The Christians have their heads in the sand. I got almost kicked off one blog for it. I presented it to them as, you know, why do you suppose there is this intense rejection of all things spiritual in the scientific establishment? What is it about Christianity and its history that has so turned off people? Why did Darwin say that no decent person would want Christianity to be true? What can we think of a religion that is supposed to be the one true one, so uplifting and all that, which causes such reactions?

I even defended Dawkins to them, for his comment that teaching religion to children amounted to child abuse. I thought, wow, what precipitated that? I looked into it, and it was this: A woman in her thirties related to him that as a 15-year-old she had a friend who died suddenly in an auto accident. And she wasn't Christian, or wasn't saved the way her family/ church thought she needed to be. As she was shocked and grieving at this unexpected loss, her family assured her that her friend was burning in hell, in agony.
And that's not just child abuse, it's people abuse.

I considered this a very important topic to examine, since the resistance of the establishment to ID is irrational and visceral - it comes from the memory of crap like this.

There are very real historical reasons to separate ID discussions from the science departments at universities.

But we can't, Brokie, because they aren't separate. Darwinian mechanisms are inadequate and will reach a dead end. ID is the truth. For heaven's sake, if intelligence was required, how can we insist upon pursuing a causative model that doesn't include it?

It sounds as though he concludes that arguing for a design is to argue that every species appeared by divine fiat, and it is this which he rejects.

If he thinks that, then there would be no excuse for it. He absolutely should know better. Either he's dense or a liar.

He seems to think that if any species have become extinct - and most have - that divine intervention is impossible.

Why would he think that?

My way of thinking is that nature is divine in its origin, and that extinction of species is part of the plan, and that once the "breath of life" was given to the earliest life matrix, it proceeds according to plan, that is, to design. After all, when humans design a plan - intelligently - they design in flexibility, or else their plans would fail. The overall plan of Life, in my view, cannot possibly fail.

Like I said, basically known as frontloading, and some of its proponents envision highly advanced and intelligent beings in the universe doing that, and some think of the regular God.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

We infer intelligent design when we can see that there are no patterns in nature which can duplicate those complex and information-specific ones that are the hallmark of deliberate design.

There's the catch: it's incredibly tenuous to speak about there being "no patterns in nature that..". It's impossible to back that up. There surely are simple patterns that can create complex and even some "information-specific" ones [whatever ID wants to make that word to mean, they just seem to have lifted a term from one discipline and started to apply it without any constrain to another].

This claims a little knowledge of the designer, but not much. It tells us that the designer is intelligent, has will or intention, and has some motivation to create what he created.

Totally unfounded. Perhaps he was making a super-luxurious creation elsewhere and we are the scraps falling of the table that are soon to be licked up by his dog.

Why does the spider spin its web? Why does it strike us as beautiful? Is a novelist similarly compelled?

It's exactly the type of musing you should consider. If the spider is not deliberate in creating a web, then any cosmic creator might not be either. Which would make him not more or less conscious than his own creation. Which removes the need to create a special category of intelligent designers as something of interest from the point of view of science.

This is obviously bullshit and I have already answered it. Suppose SETI is successful and receives some sort of coded radio signal. Can we detect while still knowing naught about the senders? Of course we can, and that is its intention.

But SETI assumes a lot about the senders. Their whole science is based on those assumptions: that they have developed in similar ways, using electro-magnetic radiation, using those to communicate, and also SETI uses mathematical equations on the probability that they are out there.

This is a millions time more to go on than any ID researcher has about any supposed intelligence.

Intelligent Design is the inquiry into patterns, probability, information, codes, and complexity, and whether with these one can reasonably state whether an item was deliberately assembled, or whether the ordinary forces of nature were a sufficient cause.

Well, it cannot be reasonable stated. So they should get back to just inquiring into patterns, probability, information, codes, and complexity like the rest of the scientists and not add anything to it while making that addition look like science while it really isn't.

Of course they can remain inspired by a belief in Intelligent Design and that can perfectly fuel their curiosity. Their work doesn't need to happen outside normal scientific processes and any 'outcast' status seems mostly self-invoked and self-sustained.

No, but it takes intelligence to consciously apprehend patterns, and certainly to deliberately create them.

Apprehending patterns might just as well be the description of our intelligence. The creation of them - well it would boil down to the question of free will!

We do not need to fully define cosmic or divine intellgience to see some manifestation of it.

But to see intelligence, it first has to be defined [let alone spelled] properly :) At the very least to the degree of being intelligible.

Any manifestation is already definition. And something manifests in its action, like a speaker manifest in his words. But the 'speaker' remains a construct, an artifact of language. This is why I brought up linguistics. When reading a book or painting, or examining it, the identity of the maker is often not crucial to understand the work. Many remain even anonymous, their whole existence doesn't matter to the one examining the work. Any creator lives through his work, after all.

Probably the universe as well! With science comes a certain type of humility, and what you write here implies a type of hubris that gets one kicked out of heaven!

But why? What hubris? I could reccommend Nature's Destiny by Michael Denton. The universe as a whole appears to be designed to support life.

Wasn't that the book where he basically reversed much of his earlier 'hard core' ID position and went into full frontloading? It seems to me it's more of a philosophical issue he introduces, essentially similar to: why me? For example he assumes this universe is the only one and so certain calibrations seem like a one time wonder. But of course we don't know how many attempts to create a life supporting universe have past or are occurring right now. Also one could just as well argue that this universe is created with the purpose to make life impossible, highly tuned to freeze, radiate or burn life out of existence. Earth is then, as far we know, the 1:100000000000000000 error margin of this highly tuned life killing machine that is the universe. It all depends if one reasons life-centric or not.

But even when assumed the current physical universe is the only attempt, do we really have to question why everything exactly happened as it happened? Do we really have enough knowledge to create fully functional and explanatory models of the universe or its beginning to run all possible scenarios? We just don't know why certain constants are appearing like constants. In this area full of unknowns and uncertainty Denton likes to muse about intelligence and intentions because he just cannot see any other reasonable option.

Suffice to note that Denton supports evolution all the way and just has a difficult time, like many of us, to wrap our minds about the complexity of Nature. His notion that the universe appears to be geared toward developing life is fundamentally meaningless. Life exists and developed, evolution shows, so that the Universe supports it is no great surprise.

The precise mechanism by which Nature nurtures life, or Life begets Life, is a subject for exploration. If the body of God is the Cosmos, then he might grow and expand himself with every step on the way. This means that increasing our knowledge of specific processes would increase our knowledge of God (his body). Any other speculation about his mind, character or intention remains outside the realm of science although the study of mind, character and intention in general might be a good idea. What do we really know about them and how they come about?

[Iolaus]

Diebert,

I'm afraid that arguing with you is like arguing with a woman. A woman like Leyla. Your responses are almost entirely changes of subject and not answers to the point at hand. It's an impossible labyrinth. Many are just plain silly.

I would suggest that if you know of any random processes in nature that are known to bring about complexity like a cell or like DNA or like a bacterial flagellum, you are wasting your time with me. Go collect your nobel prize, and while you're at it, defeat Dembski, Behe, Denton, and Meyer.

As to Denton, I am puzzled that people find his second book any kind of backtracing on his position. They were written about 20 years apart, and there is some progression in his thinking. In the first book, he expressed about 20 problems with the theory of evolution. In the second book, he discusses the cosmos, the elements, the fine tuning of them, and the idea that the evolution of life forms follows some sort of intrinsic pattern which is not accidental. In other words, there is a squirrel niche, and a dolphin niche, and no accident that life forms evolve into these niches. And the human form is no accident.

Denton absolutely does not support evolution if by that you mean neoDarwinian evolution. Most ID people do believe in evolution in the sense of a gradual unfolding of life. And frontloading is not neoDarwinian evolution. Frontloading, by definition, has 180 degrees different than neoDarwinian evolution.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I'm afraid that arguing with you is like arguing with a woman. A woman like Leyla.

That's the closest thing to a compliment so far, compared to all other names and qualifications you threw at me.

Your responses are almost entirely changes of subject and not answers to the point at hand. It's an impossible labyrinth. Many are just plain silly.

They are indeed trying to pull your attention toward something I guess you've been trying to avoid as long as you've been studying ID. I suspect you have a lot invested in it while on the other hand, I've invested nothing at all in any theory. Indeed I'm healthy disinterested. Although I'm interested in your reasoning and honesty.

I would suggest that if you know of any random processes in nature that are known to bring about complexity like a cell or like DNA or like a bacterial flagellum.

You didn't get it: one only has to find a few processes that cause a tiny bit of complexity or behavior like a simple proto-virus and it becomes reasonable to suspect there are more of these to be found. For example, in mathematics and computer science this is already being explored, information-rich complexity as function of complex algebra and evolutionary programming.

As to Denton, I am puzzled that people find his second book any kind of backtracing on his position. They were written about 20 years apart, and there is some progression in his thinking. In the first book, he expressed about 20 problems with the theory of evolution. In the second book, he discusses the cosmos, the elements, the fine tuning of them, and the idea that the evolution of life forms follows some sort of intrinsic pattern which is not accidental.

Here's one guy outlining fairly well the contradiction between the two books. And he also demonstrates on his site by the way how to healthy doubt Darwinism without falling into pseudo-scientific trappings. Educational!

In other words, there is a squirrel niche, and a dolphin niche, and no accident that life forms evolve into these niches. And the human form is no accident.

In mathematics these patterns [niches] are common and to be found in complexity theory as well. Complex systems just gravitate toward a subset of viable possibilities.

Denton absolutely does not support evolution if by that you mean neoDarwinian evolution. Most ID people do believe in evolution in the sense of a gradual unfolding of life. And frontloading is not neoDarwinian evolution. Frontloading, by definition, has 180 degrees different than neoDarwinian evolution.

Don't you see what you have been doing? We started a discussion about your view that "Darwinian evolution [being true ] is one of the most unfounded faiths".

So since you have changed your critique from "Darwinian evolution" to "mainstream teaching" or the theory wielded by "atheist academics " to now more recently in the discussion: "neo-Darwinian" evolution.

And you accuse me of changing subjects...

Neo-Darwinism is all-in-all a confusing word, very inaccurate but I guess you could say it just means "modern evolutionary theory". And there's nothing I know of in Denton's work that challenges it. He plainly supports the main tenets of what is taught these days.

It seems you have created straw bogymen of wild-eyed atheists foaming at the mouth preaching how God can be discarded because of science. While I can imagine there are a few, this is not representing academic research at universities and labs, or the peer review circus. It might not be perfect and slightly too conservative but it's way more fair and measured than anything I've seen operating outside of it!

[mikiel]

Just a little housekeeping here.
My last post in the "Key to Free Thought" thread clearly belongs in this thread, tho it was in reply to a post there.
So here it is in its proper home:

Ramayana wrote:
"You will be as Gods" (Genesis 3:4,5).

So says the serpent...


I had missed this little contribution from my old Nemesis, Ram.
So... a quick bible lesson... with my commentaries in context in bold:

John Chapter 14, verse 12
Jesus:
" I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me (("I Am" in all) will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.

John 10:34
Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, "I said, Ye are gods?"
10:35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;
10:36 Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemist; because I said, I am (a Son of God?
There is no "the" in the Greek, just "son of God" which can be interpreted "a son of God."

Ref:
verse 6 of Psalm 82,
"I (God through the prophet Asaph said, Ye are Gods, and all of you sons of the Most High. Nevertheless ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.".

John 17:22
Jesus:
" And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; THAT THEY MAY BE ONE, EVEN AS WE ARE ONE."

John 14:6
Jesus:
“I am (is the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
Jesus is speaking in unity with/as God, the universal "I Am" in all. The church has always interpreted the above from egocentric perspective, as they knew no better. The result... worship of Jesus personally... missing his point entirely... the ongoing folly of Christianity.

End of sermon.
mik I el (same "I" as in quote above.)

[brokenhead]

I'm the one who understands why there are two departments.

Meaning a separation at universities between the physical sciences and departments dealing with metaphysics.

But ID, while it may or may not have metaphysical implications (as does scientific materialism) is not theological. Therefore I think you have erred here.

I heartily disagree. Presently, in most biology departments, physical research can proceed without dealing with metaphysical concerns. It is the only bastion where this is possible. In philosophy departments and in interdisciplinary symposia, metaphysical discussions abound. Biologists are free to attend and participate. Their own research should not be hindered by contemporary politics, such as the Wedge.

The Darwinists are fond of saying that the theory is as solid as gravity. But it isn't. And we don't understand gravity yet, either.

True, and I do disagree with the strict Darwinists. Yet we can all benefit from the amassing of more facts and data. This is what we rely on science departments to do. BTW, gravity is very well understood, Anna, even though nearly all astrophysicists and cosmologists remain open to new ideas and theories. They would not get these new theories if religionists were to permeate their departments and symposia.

But this is precisely where the contention lies - that the mechanisms are inadequate to explain life, that random mutations could never come up with the complex information that we find in the cell, and that the fossil record, which you mention later on, does not show the sort of gradual evolution that is required.

I have been doing the homework you suggested and have been reading up on ID proponents and detractors.

What you state here is an opinion much like Behe's irreducible complexity. He himself is a researcher in the field. So far, what I have read by him does not appear to be beyond contention, even though I agree with his conclusions, more or less. The ID proponents are, by and large, religionists, or theists, and most of them are not scientists. Johnson is a lawyer, no? A born again lawyer, whose influence I want to keep as far from academia as possible. He is a blowhard and a windbag, long on opinion, short on scientific reasoning. He is the co-founder of the Wedge, right? He is someone whose stated aim is to stir things up, not to settle anything. I distrust people like that with all my being. He like a Saint Paul, who almost single-handedly led to the Dark Ages.

You know, if you pile a bunch of sand up, you can get a very large hill of it, but would it be reasonable to suppose that we could therefore pile sand to the moon? The amazing thing is that Darwinian evolution requires that this conjecture be correct, and there is very little evidence for it at all, while there is mounting evidence against it.

I'm not sure where you are going with the sand analogy, but think of the rest of what you say here. If there is mounting evidence against Darwin's main tenets, it is mounting in the Biology departments, where all legitimate scientific findings in the life sciences come from and are proposed and tested.

This is precisely why I want them to remain left alone and unhampered by people with a political agenda, and let's face it, the Wedge, and ID, is political. If ID turns out to be factual, as I believe it must, science will confirm it. This is inevitable. But letting the ID proponents have a chunk of the science budget is only going to forestall the success of ID as emerging as a valid explanation for life and its complexity.

How can we ever get there when the very people who want to examine this, who want to be allowed to even think this way, are mocked and fired and have to hide their identities????????? Do you actually not understand that it is the power holders who are preventing this? Do you not understand how the most influential voices are dead set against this being so and do not want said research?

Well, point me to resources that back this up! The influential voices understand that research is research. They rightly fear a political agenda, which will be reactionary in nature, of controlling endowments and saying that there must be a Political Correctness to science. PC means stands for DD - Dumbing Down. What would be to keep Scientologists from infiltrating Biology departments wanting a share of the resources to prove their version of where life came from? Or aborigines?

Anna, you must realize it is only in the past couple of hundred years or so that Western intellectual pursuits have been free to follow their own course. That is, to go where the facts lead.

Creationists - or other ID folk - are not invading physics departments demanding that research into alternatives to a mechanistic origin of the Universe be presented in cosmology curricula. If you permit them into the Life Science departments, it would only be a matter of time.

Can you not see that this is a very real concern with abundant historical precedent? The stated aim of the Wedge is this very development!

Brokenhead, I want to be polite, I really do, but have you read ANYTHING about ID from an ID person? An essay overview or anything? If you are stuck on calling ID metaphysics, you either need to read something, or we have nothing to say.

Like I said, I am reading up on it currently.

If ID is not metaphysics, then it is not science, either. You know very well that ID proponents are mostly not scientists, while Darwinists are. ID is a thinly disguised attempt by theists who do not believe a Darwinian explanation of life is sufficient to work its way into the educational system, ultimately not on college campuses but in the grade schools and high schools, under the heading of legitimate science. This is in direct opposition to the separation of church and state, since ID immediately implies a designer, which would be something unproven and therefore a matter of faith, and therefore properly a religious matter.

Again, if ID is ever to become a legitimate ingredient of the life sciences, the forefront of investigation must remain free of political agendas that force quasi-religious conclusions into the science classrooms.

Currently, if you stick to the known facts including the most up-to-date research, the strictly materialist mechanism as a means of producing the known phenotypes has been substantiated, if not proven to be the only overarching factor.

Absolutely, categorically false. Why do you believe this propaganda? It is bluster, I tell you, and nothing more. If it were so, where would be the argument?

Again, while I agree with the notion of ID implicitly, I have to disagree with you strongly on this one. You could be a "front loader," as you call it, and accept the materialist mechanism of the apparent diversity of species which could have developed strictly as a result of reacting to what individual organisms encountered in the environment. The majority of researchers, indeed, take this view - minus the frontloading, of course. I believe in my quote I personally leave room for the frontloading as a possible additional "overarching factor."

Do you not see how absurd it is to tear up a group of scientists for trying to work on a hypothesis?

But I am not tearing up scientists. I am resisting political interference. Period. I am, in fact, defending scientists.

Did you know that Michael Behe, who wrote Darwin's Black Box is a Catholic also, and was a contented believer in regular evolution, and had no personal ax to grind about it, when he was astonished by reading Michael Denton's book?

Didn't you say you don't like Behe's arguments...?

Evolution has never made a very good case, it has never been able to answer its criticisms. If it can't that is OK, but it should not be an arrogant bully.

Evolution is relatively very young, and has made a spectacular case in explaining otherwise inexplicable findings, such as the fossil record, which has largely been amassed after the publication of Origin.

No one is advocating teaching ID as a truth at this time. What they want is to stop being belittled and fired and denied publishing.

I disagree with this assessment completely. Darwinism is presented as a theory, not as a fact, just as most science is presented. ID proponents wish ID to be presented on an equal footing, or just as factually.

The belittlement and firing are things you assert, but as I said, you'd have to point me to cases where this happens. If ID is denied publishing, it is only being denied publishing by publishers who make their reputations and money by printing science texts and journals. ID is not a science - it is perhaps factual, as I believe it to be, but as a coherent core of factual material, it is even more in its infancy that Darwinism.

I don't like censure at all. I don't like people to be manipulated and controlled and lied to. Why is it OK for the Darwinists to do it? Why is science and the university better served by insisting upon orthodoxy in thinking?

Orthodoxy is not a four-letter word, Anna.

Think of modern medicine. Because acupuncture has a long history of documented application, it is being increasingly accepted and taught in modern medical school curricula, after initial resistance. It is becoming more orthodox. It has earned its increasingly equal footing.

ID will do the same, in due course, to my way of thinking. Right now, it is being funded by the fundamentalist right wing and fronted by people like Johnson and other Wedge architects. This makes my scrotum shrivel, which if you had one, would likely do the same to yours.

I am just afraid that scientists without a political agenda will be drowned out by organised non-scientists with a political agenda. Even now, they are under increasing pressure to defend their work to lay critics such as Johnson. It is intellectually terrifying.

Now, most people hold in their minds the two possibilities: either we live in a universe with a God or we do not. Hard to tell for sure. But, you must realize, that whichever one is true makes the other utterly impossible.

I think it is illogical to suppose that there is a God, which means this God is the cause of matter, and yet think that our universe looks just the same as it would if there were no God. The belief that God could deliberately leave no trace is simply illogical.

I do not think it is so cut and dry. But if there are only two possibilities, science left alone cannot lead to the incorrect answers. This is a strong belief of mine, but ultimately, also a measure of my faith.

You want everyone to believe as you do in your lifetime. I do not necessarily need this, nor do I particularly want it. Remember, that such a desire is precisely what is fueling the Wedge, which I consider anti-intellectual at the core, despite the credentials of [a few] of its spokespeople.

[Iolaus]

BH,

I am glad to see your long response, but again, not sure if I should bother. I will answer Diebert first, but with this paragraph, and I did not proceed any further, I find that this is a colossal waste of time. And, it may please you to know, it is quite a long time since a response has truly made me angry.

I heartily disagree. Presently, in most biology departments, physical research can proceed without dealing with metaphysical concerns. It is the only bastion where this is possible. In philosophy departments and in interdisciplinary symposia, metaphysical discussions abound. Biologists are free to attend and participate. Their own research should not be hindered by contemporary politics, such as the Wedge.

ID has little or nothing to do with metaphysics. It does not explore or discuss metaphysics. It asks no metaphysical questions. It does not use metaphysical tools. It uses physical tools to discuss physical data.

[Iolaus]

Alright, the rest of your post is good and I will get to it soon.

[Iolaus]

Diebert,

That's the closest thing to a compliment so far, compared to all other names and qualifications you threw at me.

What? Did I?

They are indeed trying to pull your attention toward something I guess you've been trying to avoid as long as you've been studying ID.

Stop dealing in poetry and say what it is then.

I suspect you have a lot invested in it while on the other hand, I've invested nothing at all in any theory. Indeed I'm healthy disinterested. Although I'm interested in your reasoning and honesty.

You know, what I care about is truth. If I thought evolution were true, it would be fine. But now, I do believe in evolution - I just don't believe in the kind that didn't require a mind or a plan.

I would suggest that if you know of any random processes in nature that are known to bring about complexity like a cell or like DNA or like a bacterial flagellum.
_______________________
You didn't get it: one only has to find a few processes that cause a tiny bit of complexity or behavior like a simple proto-virus and it becomes reasonable to suspect there are more of these to be found.

I don't get what? You just said a tiny bit of complexity is just as good as a lot. So the Empire State Building might result from a random toss of materials?

For example, in mathematics and computer science this is already being explored, information-rich complexity as function of complex algebra and evolutionary programming.

It's a farce.

Here's one guy outlining fairly well the contradiction between the two books. And he also demonstrates on his site by the way how to healthy doubt Darwinism without falling into pseudo-scientific trappings. Educational!

I started that link, but it is very long, and without rereading Denton's book, I could not properly critique it. It may be that I will reread Denton's book. But I can tell you that I have both of his books, and have them both lovingly marked up, and anyone who says he believes in regular evolutionary processes doesn't understand him, or hasn't read him.

In mathematics these patterns [niches] are common and to be found in complexity theory as well. Complex systems just gravitate toward a subset of viable possibilities.

A meaningless sentence.

So since you have changed your critique from "Darwinian evolution" to "mainstream teaching" or the theory wielded by "atheist academics " to now more recently in the discussion: "neo-Darwinian" evolution.

And you accuse me of changing subjects...

You have worried about something trivial. I use those terms to try to further clarify what I said above - it's not that I don't think life slowly unfolded, but the tenets of Darwin, and of his followers since, is that certain processes are adequate to explain the formation of the life forms. Those processes are without any mind or purpose, and are random and accidental. This is what I don't believe. Neo-Daraawinism is the same thing, but they came up with it earlier in the last century to cope with some new findings, mostly genetics.

Denton does not accept its tenets!

[HYPNOSIS]

Anna's "thinking" is so muddled only a masochist would take it on with any degree of hope. Anna both knows and not-knows the same thing at the same time; she is both certain about and not certain about everything.

She says "God is existence." Does she forget that she elsewhere has repeatedly said she does not know what existence is, or that she doesn't quite understand it? Of course she forgets...

X=X

It just doesn't match the two of them, evolution & God. What about the Helix of earth vs. the demix of darwin that makes perfect sense. 9N

Does anyone know how well jesus speaks spanish!>

[brokenhead]

Does anyone know how well jesus speaks spanish!>

Pretty well, I'd say. He does have a Puerto Rican first name.

[Iolaus]

BH

True, and I do disagree with the strict Darwinists. Yet we can all benefit from the amassing of more facts and data. This is what we rely on science departments to do. BTW, gravity is very well understood, Anna, even though nearly all astrophysicists and cosmologists remain open to new ideas and theories. They would not get these new theories if religionists were to permeate their departments and symposia.

It is, indeed, the amassing of more facts and data which has led to ID.
You say gravity is well understood, but do they know its source, how it works, how it relates to the other three forces? It was my understanding that they do not. Predicting the functions of gravity is not the same as truly understanding it.

You think that religionists are the only danger, because they have misbehaved in the past. But I rather see that most people want answers where there are uncertainties, and want an agreed-upon doctrine, and are resistant to revising said doctrine, and react emotionally if it seems threatened. It does not matter if those in control are religious, or, as now, materialists.

Also, you should realize that most of the great scientists have been religious, and have managed to progress. The Catholic church has been a suppressor and a supporter of scientific progress.

What you state here is an opinion much like Behe's irreducible complexity. He himself is a researcher in the field. So far, what I have read by him does not appear to be beyond contention, even though I agree with his conclusions, more or less.

It is a considered opinion, yes, based on a lot of reading. I do not think anyone has answered Behe, but many pretend that isn't so.

The ID proponents are, by and large, religionists, or theists, and most of them are not scientists.

They are mostly scientists. Many are also religious. If you are a scientist, you either have to be religious or not be religious. That should not preclude your being a scientist. Now, if there is a God, then the theist ought to have at least a bit of a leg up in coming up with true hunches.

Johnson is a lawyer, no? A born again lawyer, whose influence I want to keep as far from academia as possible. He is a blowhard and a windbag, long on opinion, short on scientific reasoning. He is the co-founder of the Wedge, right?

Well, I thought he was the founder of it, I don't know who else. Certainly, he has single-handedly done a tremendous disservice to the ID movement. Yet, most of its proponents had nothing to do with the wedge. The idea behind the wedge is not entirely unfair. See, as it stands now, kids are all but taught that there really isn't a God. And despite what you and Diebert say, they are taught this as fact. Now, I don't like Johnson much, for the same reasons as you. Fundies are spiritually sick. But not every proponent of ID must be a scientist. An intelligent and educated person who has taken an interest in it, should be able to come up with an opinion. I find his book very logical and well done. As a lawyer, he should be good at that. He points up the illogical thinking and conclusions of the evoutionists. He does make one error in his book in which he criticizes Dawkins' math, but he did not understand the reference. I wrote to him and told him that, but he was a bit sour and didn't want to see my point. Nonetheless, his main point about the math was still correct.

I'm not sure where you are going with the sand analogy,

As a proof of how evolution works, we are given instances of microevolution, where a wing changes, or a beak changes, and told that eventually this can add up to a lizard turning into a bird. But this does not hold up under scrutiny, because the complexity of an organism, and the many interlocking pieces, are just too great too randomly morph like that.

If there is mounting evidence against Darwin's main tenets, it is mounting in the Biology departments, where all legitimate scientific findings in the life sciences come from and are proposed and tested.

Yes, well, ID is mostly about interpreting the data differently. For example, we have red shifted light. Most people think it supports Big Bang, others don't. When someone uses the same data on red shifting and makes an argument for the tired light theory, that isn't metaphysics and it is not an illegitimate use of scientific data.

This is precisely why I want them to remain left alone and unhampered by people with a political agenda, and let's face it, the Wedge, and ID, is political.

Guys like Dawkins have one hell of an agenda. Darwinian evolution has been used by those with an agenda for a long time now.

If ID turns out to be factual, as I believe it must, science will confirm it. This is inevitable.

Well, Behe and Dembski and Denton are scientists, and they are working on it. Who the hell do you think will confirm it? As soon as someone does, they are considered to be out of the scientific community. So who will confirm it? The last scientific materialist standing? Sure science will confirm it, dragged kicking and screaming all the way...

But letting the ID proponents have a chunk of the science budget is only going to forestall the success of ID as emerging as a valid explanation for life and its complexity.

That's just plain silly. Besides, ID doesn't necessarily need separate budgets.

Well, point me to resources that back this up! The influential voices understand that research is research.

Two forums you could go to and ask this question, and someone will quickly get the info to you, unlike me who is a shitty googler, is Uncommondescent.com and Telicthoughts.com
Now, Uncommon Descent is Dembski's blog, it is highly censored and run by a snot, but there are some very good and smart people there, and you could get that question answered. There are several fundies on the blog, yet the snot who runs it is an agnostic.

Telic Thoughts, run by Mike Gene, who has written the best material on the flagellum and I believe he is a scientist, is a very open minded and eclectic group. I think you'd really like them.

They rightly fear a political agenda, which will be reactionary in nature, of controlling endowments and saying that there must be a Political Correctness to science. PC means stands for DD - Dumbing Down.

Did you hear about that professor at a very prestigious university who a couple of years ago suggested that maybe women and men are not completely equal in certain aptitudes? He was no raving maniac. I read his piece. But he had to resign. I am surprised you don't think universities are troubled by PC.

Creationists - or other ID folk - are not invading physics departments demanding that research into alternatives to a mechanistic origin of the Universe be presented in cosmology curricula. If you permit them into the Life Science departments, it would only be a matter of time.

There is tremendous progress in this area, mostly not from institutional type religious folks. They are too closed minded. But there is a whole lot of "alternative science" that I think is making great progress toward what I have intuitively felt would ultimately have to happen - that science and spirituality will meet. And when it does, the separatist mentality of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions will take a beating.

You are leading a kind of schizophrenic existence. If we live in the God universe that you yourself believe in, then scientific materialism is deliberately pursuing an avenue of explanation that must ultimately prove false.

This is in direct opposition to the separation of church and state,

But the separation of church and state has gone too far. Now, a kind of atheism prevails, and atheism is a metaphysical position, too. What the separation of church and state is about, is that the state should never have a state-recognized religion. It does not mean that acknowledgment of a creator should be taboo.

Again, while I agree with the notion of ID implicitly, I have to disagree with you strongly on this one. You could be a "front loader," as you call it, and accept the materialist mechanism of the apparent diversity of species which could have developed strictly as a result of reacting to what individual organisms encountered in the environment. The majority of researchers, indeed, take this view - minus the frontloading, of course.

But frontloading requires deliberate and highly intelligent input. So I am not sure what materialist mechanisms you have in mind.

But I am not tearing up scientists. I am resisting political interference.

Why do you see ID as political? ID states that certain components of living things (and now some are looking into the underpinning of the whole cosmos, such as Denton) indicate that an intelligent input was required. Is that a political statement?

Didn't you say you don't like Behe's arguments...?

Oh, no! I said that I found Miller's attempt to answer his flagellum challenge pretty lame. Behe apparently has a sort of blog at Amazon.com where he defends the challenges to his latest book, the Edge of Evolution (which I have not read) I also read some of his court testimony. I find him a wonderfully even-tempered, well-spoken, and all around likable person. Very intelligent and knowledgeable.

Evolution is relatively very young, and has made a spectacular case in explaining otherwise inexplicable findings, such as the fossil record, which has largely been amassed after the publication of Origin.

But the fossil record is one of the biggest problems for evolution theory. That is why punctuated equilibrium had to be invented by Stephen J. Gould. He does a good job of ripping up the idea that the fossil record shows a gradual evolution and tries to come up with a way for evolution to occur in little bursts.

Darwinism is presented as a theory, not as a fact, just as most science is presented.

Then why do they get so incensed when its detractors say that they don't buy the mechanisms and after all, it is only a theory?

If ID is denied publishing, it is only being denied publishing by publishers who make their reputations and money by printing science texts and journals. ID is not a science - it is perhaps factual, as I believe it to be, but as a coherent core of factual material, it is even more in its infancy that Darwinism.

Was that paragraph logical? Or emotional? How would Darwinism ever get published if sciences in their infancy can't get published? Why must journals defend their reputations by blockading new ideas and allowing only orthodoxy? Isn't that a form of bullying and how is it different than the Catholic Church trying to intimidate those who proposed heliocentrism (minus the rack)?
How do you suppose that a theory about science that you find to be factual, is somehow not science? If it is closer to the facts???

But you know, all this human drama, we could look at it another way. Christian thinking was too entrenched, Darwinism pissed it off and shook things up, forcing them to be on the defense all these decades with the creationists snapping at their heels, and so the data comes pouring in, which ultimately leads to greater understanding and lots of new knowledge.

Orthodoxy is not a four-letter word, Anna.

Certainly not when it is capitalized. :-)

But if there are only two possibilities, science left alone cannot lead to the incorrect answers. This is a strong belief of mine, but ultimately, also a measure of my faith.

I agree with you most strongly - but where I disagree is that you imagine that science is without agenda. That is the ideal, and many fit the bill, but it is not only religion which causes mischief to the pursuit of truth.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

it's not that I don't think life slowly unfolded, but the tenets of Darwin, and of his followers since, is that certain processes are adequate to explain the formation of the life forms. Those processes are without any mind or purpose, and are random and accidental. This is what I don't believe. Neo-Daraawinism is the same thing, but they came up with it earlier in the last century to cope with some new findings, mostly genetics.

Denton does not accept its tenets!

Iolaus, this is the thing: at the core this issue is not about processes being without mind or purpose, or being random and accidental. For science a process appears to behave randomly or it doesn't. It's given a purpose by its relation to a larger but still limited and well defined system, or it's not.

What the real beef is here, the real tenet that's not accepted appears to be naturalism as principle that underlies the scientific method as so commonly is applied. Some good approach I found via that wiki:

methodological naturalism must be adopted as a strategy or working hypothesis for science to succeed, since the various methods and necessary underlying epistemologies of science cannot operate in a supernaturalistic framework.. We may therefore be agnostic about the ultimate truth of naturalism, but must nevertheless adopt it and investigate nature as if nature is all that there is. This is methodological naturalism.

One other consideration would be that the moment one realizes God, God's mind or any other higher intelligence manifests itself to us necessarily through nature [being the subject of science], it's doing that according to nature's laws. If not, this will lead to unpredictability [unlawfulness] and with that simply unreliable knowledge - in which science is not interested for I hope obvious reasons [it won't tell us anything of scientific interest].

And anything manifesting, expressing itself through nature's laws becomes thereby completely natural and venues open up for increasing deterministic and reliable knowledge. It has worked so far pretty well because the issue of a designer of ultimate purpose was ignored, left out. Science might be completely godless, at its best and by design, but a scientist will never be even while some might suggest it erroneously.

[Iolaus]

Diebert,

Iolaus, this is the thing: at the core this issue is not about processes being without mind or purpose, or being random and accidental.

You have said this before, but the core of evolution theory is indeed that the process is as above. That many people don't quite believe it is another matter.

For science a process appears to behave randomly or it doesn't.

well, there you have it. Some are insisting it appears random, and others are saying it does not.

What the real beef is here, the real tenet that's not accepted appears to be naturalism as principle that underlies the scientific method as so commonly is applied.

I used your link, and found the below:

Many modern philosophers of science[3][4] use the terms methodological naturalism or scientific naturalism to refer to the methodological assumption that explanations of observable effects are practical and useful only when they hypothesize natural causes (i.e., specific mechanisms, not indeterminate miracles). In other words, methodological naturalism is the view that the scientific method (hypothesize, predict, test, and repeat) is the only effective way to investigate reality.

So it appears you or others may think that ID people would not use the scientific method? Or would not proceed with things as though an explanation would be found that is natural? There isn't any danger of this, so far as I can see. We can only proceed with science exploration by using the scientific method. How we interpret data, whether we think we have reached a wall beyond which lies the divine, is another matter. And if someone wants to attempt to breach that wall (such as studying the origin of life) while others think it fruitless, so be it.

One problem is in viewing anything divine as 'supernatural.' This is word I no longer find useful. God would not be outside of nature, or for that matter able to act against nature's laws. If God did act in a way outside the norm, such as a miracle (and I am not professing a belief in such) then it would still not mean that God acted outside the laws of nature, but simply that God has knowledge of nature that would allow him to perform something that does not ordinarily happen on its own.

Discussions of a divine creator do not mean that this creator acts in time and then stops, in discrete events, and that nature then proceeds without him/her, and that those acts are not part of the process. I do realize that this is the old religious creationism idea.

So if reality works as I think it does, studying nature and studying God are nondifferent. there isn't any point in time or place where one is and the other isn't.

But if it is also true that not matter but mind - awareness - is the bedrock of reality, and if we insist upon a kind of methodological naturalism that must deny this, then we will lead science up a blind alley and make wrong hypotheses.

One other consideration would be that the moment one realizes God, God's mind or any other higher intelligence manifests itself to us necessarily through nature [being the subject of science], it's doing that according to nature's laws. If not, this will lead to unpredictability [unlawfulness] and with that simply unreliable knowledge - in which science is not interested for I hope obvious reasons [it won't tell us anything of scientific interest].

Yes, I quite agree and it is more or less what I have said above. However, let us take one puzzle in evolution - the discrete nature of the fossil record, such that Stephen Jay Gould came up with punctuated equilibrium. I think it's nice try, but really cannot account for the emergence of all the species.

Suppose for example that there is a divine mind out of which matter arises, and suppose that there is a frontloaded start to life, and it might be that species get upgraded on a periodic basis due to natural rhythms in the cosmos, such as our solar system aligning with the light and energy of the galactic core, and that this is the true mechanism which drives sudden DNA rearrangements:
If the scientists are stuck with the idea that the emergence of species absolutely MUST have a naturalistic explanation, then they WILL NOT and CAN NOT find the truth. They will waste decades pursuing random accidental mutations as far more important than it is.

[brokenhead]

If the scientists are stuck with the idea that the emergence of species absolutely MUST have a naturalistic explanation, then they WILL NOT and CAN NOT find the truth. They will waste decades pursuing random accidental mutations as far more important than it is.

Then let them.

And it will not be a waste, it will be an accumulation of knowledge.

However, let us take one puzzle in evolution - the discrete nature of the fossil record, such that Stephen Jay Gould came up with punctuated equilibrium. I think it's nice try, but really cannot account for the emergence of all the species.

Anna, as I do the homework you noodged me into, I find it amusing that they refer to punctuated equilibrium as "punk-eek."

Maybe I'm not seeing something, but why is the discreteness of the fossil record a puzzle? How else could it have formed? Do you see what I mean?

[Ataraxia]

One problem is in viewing anything divine as 'supernatural.' This is word I no longer find useful. God would not be outside of nature, or for that matter able to act against nature's laws. If God did act in a way outside the norm, such as a miracle (and I am not professing a belief in such) then it would still not mean that God acted outside the laws of nature, but simply that God has knowledge of nature that would allow him to perform something that does not ordinarily happen on its own.

.

"Laird-God"!

(I wish I could remember what he called it)

[Iolaus]

Maybe I'm not seeing something, but why is the discreteness of the fossil record a puzzle? How else could it have formed? Do you see what I mean?

There should be all sorts of transitional fossils. Instead, each tyype seems to exist fully formed.

[Ataraxia]

You can't seriously think thats an argument Iolaus,surely.No wonder you take Behe seriously.All fossils are 'transitional'.All animals are. You are!

What do you think the appendix is 'for'? What would you expect a transitional animal to look like?

Here you go.Transistional animal: http://www.landbigfish.com/images/fish/ ... ounder.jpg

[Jason]

What would you expect a transitional animal to look like?

???



!!!

[brokenhead]

Maybe I'm not seeing something, but why is the discreteness of the fossil record a puzzle? How else could it have formed? Do you see what I mean?

There should be all sorts of transitional fossils. Instead, each tyype seems to exist fully formed.

But say there were some transitional fossils. Wouldn't they be "snapshots" as well, and thus also part of a discrete fossil record? I don't see how it could appear any other way than it does now.

Obviously a record of morphologies of organism types has to be discrete, because organisms themselves are discrete.

My point is that no matter which side of any ID debate is the actually correct one, the fossil record is necessarily discrete, so the discreteness cannot prove either side of the debate.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

One problem is in viewing anything divine as 'supernatural.' This is word I no longer find useful. God would not be outside of nature, or for that matter able to act against nature's laws. If God did act in a way outside the norm, such as a miracle (and I am not professing a belief in such) then it would still not mean that God acted outside the laws of nature, but simply that God has knowledge of nature that would allow him to perform something that does not ordinarily happen on its own.

It doesn't matter what knowledge of nature God has or not. That would be like discussing the amount of angels partying on a pinhead. If God doesn't operate outside natural laws toward us then the only way we can examine his influence is by assuming natural law-abiding causes for everything we see. Which is exactly what methodological naturalism is about and why it has to exclude metaphysical positions.

It's like you're saying God is the mover and blaming science for limiting itself to study movement only. What I'm saying is that science is exactly that - the study of movement, effects and the laws that govern them. It's rather presumptuous to claim these movements are better understood by assuming an intention behind it. This might be so in a human world but science attempts to be less anthropocentric.

But if it is also true that not matter but mind - awareness - is the bedrock of reality, and if we insist upon a kind of methodological naturalism that must deny this, then we will lead science up a blind alley and make wrong hypotheses.

The matter is the dualism of the mind, its operating mechanism. There are not so many physicists around any more who are thinking of matter as 'bedrock of reality'. That's so ... 19th century. These days it's all about energy which might very well be always a form of movement, as wave or probability, potential or kinetic. The movement of a thought, the movement of the Earth or the movements of God - what is there to deny?

Perhaps we are more diametrically opposed here than you even realize: you think scientists should incorporate more metaphysics into their theories to make them stronger, I think the reverse: too many scientists are still clinging to some hidden form of metaphysics in their work, like a belief in some material 'bedrock of reality'.

If the scientists are stuck with the idea that the emergence of species absolutely MUST have a naturalistic explanation, then they WILL NOT and CAN NOT find the truth. They will waste decades pursuing random accidental mutations as far more important than it is.

The moment some meaningful truth will be found here, it will become naturalistic, as the set of causes and effects will be incorporated into what is understood to be nature. Methodological naturalism is capable of handling something like "natural rhythms' of a cosmos if enough evidence arises to found such assumption.

[Iolaus]

It seems we all reached an impasse over the idea that there is nothing wrong with the fossil record. I just haven't had time to put forth an explanation, but hope to soon.