Darwin's Last Stand

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I appreciate what Intelligent Design is trying to do, keep God in science. Not sure that’s even possible anymore since science has been defined from at least the time of Darwin as pertaining to the natural, not supernatural. To invoke “God” as the cause automatically puts this outside of the scientific method.

While there are many good books defending Intelligent Design (Dembski in particular), there are many critical books by well-known scientific and university publishers:

God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory by Shanks (Oxford Univ, 2004)

Creationism’s Tojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design by Forrest/Gross (Oxford Univ, 2003)

Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism by Young/Edis (Rutgers Univ, 2004)

Finding Darwin’s God by Kenneth R. Miller (1999)

Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism by Robert Pennock (2000)

And some books that present “both sides” like

Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics by Robert Pennock (1999)

Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA edited by William Dembski and Michael Ruse (Cambridge Univ, 2004)

Phil P
 
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PhilVaz:
I appreciate what Intelligent Design is trying to do, keep God in science. Not sure that’s even possible anymore since science has been defined from at least the time of Darwin as pertaining to the natural, not supernatural. To invoke “God” as the cause automatically puts this outside of the scientific method.

While there are many good books defending Intelligent Design (Dembski in particular), there are many critical books by well-known scientific and university publishers:

God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory by Shanks (Oxford Univ, 2004)

Creationism’s Tojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design by Forrest/Gross (Oxford Univ, 2003)

Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism by Young/Edis (Rutgers Univ, 2004)

Finding Darwin’s God by Kenneth R. Miller (1999)

Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism by Robert Pennock (2000)

And some books that present “both sides” like

Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics by Robert Pennock (1999)

Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA edited by William Dembski and Michael Ruse (Cambridge Univ, 2004)

Phil P
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How about linking some pro-ID stuff, brother? 🙂

Mel
 
Mel << How about linking some pro-ID stuff, brother? >>

Because the anti-ID stuff has been ignored by creationists?

I am satisfied by the arguments found in Kenneth R. Miller Finding Darwin’s God which I do have. As I like to point out, the biologist Miller from Brown Univ considers himself an “orthodox Catholic” and an “orthodox Darwinist.” This was one of the first major responses to the modern ID movement. Now there are plenty of good ones (above).

As for intelligent design books, I have Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology by Dembski (1999), the one published by Ignatius Press (2000), and of course Darwin’s Black Box by Behe (1996) who is basically a theistic evolutionist. Get them all, don’t just read one side which I’m afraid most creationists do.

Phil P
 
I confess I haven’t done much reading on this. But isn’t Intelligent Design simply an expansion of or a more detailed version of the Argument from Design? That is an argument for God’s existence based on the undisputed design apparent in the universe.

While modern biology and physics and cosmology can provide even more detailed evidence of design, doesn’t the basic argument remain in the realm of philosophy, not science?
The scientific method cannot, by its own rules, look outside the material evidence at hand, or seek a philosophical or teleological explanation of things.
 
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JimG:
I confess I haven’t done much reading on this. But isn’t Intelligent Design simply an expansion of or a more detailed version of the Argument from Design? That is an argument for God’s existence based on the undisputed design apparent in the universe.

While modern biology and physics and cosmology can provide even more detailed evidence of design, doesn’t the basic argument remain in the realm of philosophy, not science?
The scientific method cannot, by its own rules, look outside the material evidence at hand, or seek a philosophical or teleological explanation of things.
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I’d like to hear about an experiment that verifies ID. If there are none, then it’s not science, and I’d put it over in the philosophy section.
 
“God is dead”… Nietzche

“Nietzche is dead”… God
 
"God is outside of science. Evolution by natural selection explains the diversity of life on planet earth. However, there is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed [by the Creator] into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. " … Darwin

http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/fishfight.jpg

“I created the world in 6 days about 10000 years ago. I also designed a couple thousand kinds of animals and they evolved into the 1.5 million species we see today, in just a couple thousand years. And I made a worldwide flood kill most of my created animals a few thousand years ago, even if there is no geological evidence for that feat.” … God

Just kidding… 😃
 
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Ken:
I’d like to hear about an experiment that verifies ID. If there are none, then it’s not science, and I’d put it over in the philosophy section.
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And you have an experiment that verifies macro evolution? Could we have the details please?

Incidently, I don’t know of any scientific theory that has been verified. Experiments only disprove theories.
 
JoeK << And you have an experiment that verifies macro evolution? Could we have the details please? >>

Macroevolution is an inference, just as the Big Bang is an inference from the best available astronomical evidence. But here are your details:

Observed Instances of Speciation

More Observed Speciation

And from Theobald’s Evidences, which gives both experiments that confirm and could potentially falsify macroevolution:

Observed Change and Speciation

The evidence for macroevolution falls under several categories: The Unique Universal Phylogenetic Tree (the Tree of Life), Transitional Forms (the Fossil Record), Past History (Vestiges and Atavisms), Embryology, Biogeography (the diversity of species), Paralogy and Analogy (anatomical and molecular), and the Molecular Sequences (Cytochrome-C, pseudo-genes, etc).

Cliffs Notes for Theobald’s Evidences

There is nothing like this for “intelligent design” and since it deals with the supernatural it is outside of science. But I’m all for an Intelligent Designer, it’s just evolution is the best scientific explanation for natural history.

Phil P
 
Joe Kelley:
Incidently, I don’t know of any scientific theory that has been verified. Experiments only disprove theories.
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What like Eddington observing the deviation of light by the gravitational attraction of the sun to demonstrate GR?

Like Aspect’s experiments demonstrating the violation of Bell’s inequality and the foundation of quantum mechanics?

Like the the observation of the orbital precession of Mercury demonstrating GR?

Like the radiolabelling experiment of Hershey and Chase that showed the genetic code was carried by DNA rather than protein?

Like Galileo’s experiments with balls and slopes verifying gravitational dynamics?

Like Newton using a prism to demonstrate the truth of the hypotheis that white light is a composite of coloured light?

I could go on indefinitely. You are mistaken.

Alec
evolutionpages.com
 
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hecd2:
What like Eddington observing the deviation of light by the gravitational attraction of the sun to demonstrate GR?

Like Aspect’s experiments demonstrating the violation of Bell’s inequality and the foundation of quantum mechanics?

Like the the observation of the orbital precession of Mercury demonstrating GR?

Like the radiolabelling experiment of Hershey and Chase that showed the genetic code was carried by DNA rather than protein?

Like Galileo’s experiments with balls and slopes verifying gravitational dynamics?

Like Newton using a prism to demonstrate the truth of the hypotheis that white light is a composite of coloured light?

I could go on indefinitely. You are mistaken.

Alec

[](http://www.evolutionpages.com %20[/QUOTE)]

I made a living at science for many years and hold a PhD in Physics. So if I am mistaken a lot of other people were mistaken all these years.

The gravitational attraction of the sun and the prececssion of Mercury demonstrated that GR probably described the effects better than Newtonian gravity. The results were very close to the experimental error. They did not prove that GR is more valid than any other possible theory, since we do not know all other possible theory.

The experiments in QM only proved that QM described the process better than previous threories; though you can still get an argument on it.

Any Freshman book on science will explain that the Scientific Method consists in disproving the null hypothesis; not in proving the hypothesis you want to believe.

Experience will teach you that your results are never conclusive, just highly probable, because of experimental error
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Joe Kelley:
I made a living at science for many years and hold a PhD in Physics. So if I am mistaken a lot of other people were mistaken all these years.

The gravitational attraction of the sun and the prececssion of Mercury demonstrated that GR probably described the effects better than Newtonian gravity. The results were very close to the experimental error. They did not prove that GR is more valid than any other possible theory, since we do not know all other possible theory.

The experiments in QM only proved that QM described the process better than previous threories; though you can still get an argument on it.

Any Freshman book on science will explain that the Scientific Method consists in disproving the null hypothesis; not in proving the hypothesis you want to believe.

Experience will teach you that your results are never conclusive, just highly probable, because of experimental error
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I fully agree, it’s just that your first statement, that experiments can only disprove theories, is not complete. One possible result of an experiment can certainly be to disprove a theory, but experimental results can also lend support for a particular theory.
 
Joe Kelley:
I made a living at science for many years and hold a PhD in Physics. So if I am mistaken a lot of other people were mistaken all these years…
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Nevertheless you are mistaken. Your argument above is a good example of argument from authority. Your PhD impresses me not at all, since I have a good one of my own.
Any Freshman book on science will explain that the Scientific Method consists in disproving the null hypothesis; not in proving the hypothesis you want to believe.

Experience will teach you that your results are never conclusive, just highly probable, because of experimental error
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Your mistaken statement to which I reacted was: ‘Experiments only disprove theories.’ This is plainly not true. It might be true in some sort of Popperian or Fisherian paradise, but in the real world of science in practice, experiments are conducted that have the consequence of supporting hypotheses - indeed experiments are often designed not to disprove a hypotheis but to give positive support to one. Science would make little or no progress if we designed experiments only to disprove hypotheses.

If you read the reports of experimental work in, let’s say, Science or Nature, you will see that most are couched in positive terms. In the premier scientific journals authors state that their work supports a particular hypothesis not that it disproves some other.

eg last week in Nature, we have, just as a random sample:
Parental care in an ornithischian dinosaur
Superfast muscles control dove’s trill
The ring of life provides evidence for a genome fusion origin of eukaryotes
Impications for hydrologic processes on Mars from extensive bedrock outcrops…
Coherent dynamics of a flux qubit coupled to a harmonic oscillator
The transition to a sulphidic ocean ~1.84 billion years ago
Genetic variation increases during biological invasion by a Cuban lizard
Epigenetic regulation of translation reveals hidden genetic variation to produce complex traits
Recollection-like memory retrieval in rats is depedent on the hippocampus
Restricted growth of Schwann cells lacking Cajal bands slows conduction in myelinated nerves
Calcium transients in astrocyte endfeet cause cerebrovascular constrictions
Absence of SK61 protects against age- and diet-induced obesity…

I could go on. You get the point. Now if you had said ‘Experiments cannot *prove *hypotheses’, I would agree with you.

Alec
evolutionpages.com
 
Gee, is there a way to verify each Pope’s historical view on a possible evolution and/or a possible literal six-day creation?

Douay-Rheims Bible
EXODUS 20:11
“For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them, and rested on the seventh day: therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.”

Again, from the time that this current Pope expressed his views, are all of the next successions bound to follow suite - no matter what?

(For example, say one or more of the past Popes expressed that it was in literally six days, like it says in the Scriptures.)

Oh! What inconsistency!

Who’s then, The Heretic?
 
Science and God…

Science deals with mechanisms - The hows of things.
Even when they are answering a “Why” question it is usually a “How” answer.
For instance, "Why is the sky blue? Because of the way that light is refracted in the atmosphere. In other words the refraction of light in the atmosphere is “How” we get blue skys. (I think that’s right anyway)

Anyway science must always reached a point where they have to say, I don’t know" - And There My Friends is God in Science. God is always on the other side of the “I don’t know”.

May God Bless the scientists who seek knowledge for the Glory of Him who created it. And may God enlightened the scientists who haven’t yet figured out that they are looking at and studying Him in His own creation.

Pax
James
 
Wow, this is an old thread…

Anyways, why don’t we ask the primates?

Three monkeys sat in a coconut tree
Discussing things as they are said to be.
Said one to the others, "Now listen, you two,
There’s a rumor around that can’t be true
That man descended from our noble race!
The very idea is a great disgrace!

"No monkey has ever deserted his wife
Starved her babies and ruined her life;
And you’ve never known a mother monk
To leave her babies with others to bunk.
Or pass from one on to another
Till they scarcely know who is their mother.

"And another thing you’ll never see:
A monk build a fence round a coconut tree,
And let the coconuts go to waste,
Forbidding all other monks to taste;
Why, if I put a fence around a tree,
Starvation will force you to steal from me!

"Here’s another thing a monkey won’t do:
Go out at night and get on a stew.
Or use a gun or club or knife
To take some other monkey’s life.
Yes, man descended, the ornery cuss,
But, brother, he didn’t descend from us!"

—Gilliam S. Weaver.
 
Then there was the monkey in the zoo that read Darwin and asked in distress, “Am I my keeper’s brother?” 😃
 
Ironically, apes have been observed to do all the things denied in that poem. (Monkeys, maybe not, but then, humans didn’t evolve from monkeys.

The cartoon was interesting. Even 150 years ago, there were people who thought that the theory said man evolved from gorillas.
 
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