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.
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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.
Truth is a pathless land.