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buffalo
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Agreed.
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hecd2
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The problem with this analogy is that we are not talking about organism-made things. We are able to determine between organism-made and non-organism-made things with a high degree of precision. The hard problem that the ID folk have not even begun to address is how to determine between phenomena that are created by God’s direct intervention (outside the normal operation of nature) and those which occur naturally.
Well, if one can determine a process for unambiguously determining whether the universe or part of the universe has occurred naturally or by the the action of an intelligent agent acting outside nature, then I don’t see any reason in principle why you shouldn’t then apply that method to the data. That, however, is nothing like what these people are doing.
Well, we are talking more constructively now than we have been able to in the past, so let’s grasp the moment. I am going to try to give you a serious answer that explains my position.
I have no principled objection against looking for signs of God in nature. As a physicist, I am fascinated by the fine-tuning argument (the fine tuning of the physical laws at spontaneous symmetry breaking, and the fine tuning of apparently arbitrary physical properties such as the fine structure constant) and by the Brute Fact argument (why does something rather than nothing exist), and the Intelligibility Argument (why do we live in a universe that seems well-behaved with laws that are, in principle anyway, discernible). Although there are answers to these puzzles that do not involve a supernatural agent, they are not fully convincing, at least not yet. So, on balance, these are arguments for the existence of God (there are many arguments on the other side of course, but that’s not what we want to pursue now). (By the way, I am concentrating here on fine-tuning of fundamental properties, not the fine-tuning of the earth - it’s position etc, which is simply anthropic. To say that the earth is fine-tuned for us is like saying noses are designed for wearing spectacles.)
However, having said all that, let’s think about what it means for science. It certainly shouldn’t mean that we throw our hands up and act like these are mysterious things that God did, even if we take them as arguments for His existence. We shouldn’t do that even if we are strong theists, because we have no test to determine unequivocally what is natural and what is a supernatural act of God, and this evidence can do no more than suggest a puzzle, only one good potential solution to which is God’s act. It might well be that what appears to us now as arbitrary - the physical properties, our existence at all, the intelligibility of the universe will be shown to have deep underlying natural causes (in the same way that Darwin showed that what appeared to be an arbitrary menagerie of organisms created separately by God are all related and have come about through the process of evolution). We give up searching for natural causes at our peril.
Turning now to the ID guys - the reason that I object to them so vigorously is because, although their objective is plainly not scientific, they have adopted the language and some of the processes of science in order to persuade the unwary that they are doing science and thus get their project admitted to the canon of science (and to science textbooks and the science class) . They are not doing science, because they are already convinced of the answer, and because their answer is supernatural - they are not interested in seeking natural causes for phenomena in the world, which is the purpose of science. On the contrary, they spend their time trying (and failing, I should add) to find phenomena which they can declare are not explicable without supernatural intervention. Rather than illuminating the natural world, they seek to confuse it and cloud it. They want scientists to agree that some data represents a phenomenon whose source is so inexplicable that they should give up trying to explain it by natural means. Scientists should not do that.
Some people see design in nature, some do not. I can conceive of a situation where an acceptable scientific conclusion to a data set would be that it was caused by an intelligence, but that would require other scientific evidence for the existence and nature of the intelligence. (We do that when we identify a bird’s nest or a beaver dam, for example). The ID crowd, however, aren’t attempting to do that at all. They have a mission to put theological answers into science - not just some time in the future when they have a better methodology, but yesterday, today and tomorrow. They want God in science books now, and their entire “scientific” and media programme is designed to get Him there. That is a very bad idea, hence my resistance to it, made perhaps more vitriolic than strictly necessary by the dishonesty and misrepresentation that is central to the project of the Discovery Institute and its people.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
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hecd2
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hecd2
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A computer *is *a naturally occurring thing in a sense - it occurs within nature. It is also clear that it has come about by the action of an organism. We can distinguish between things and phenomena that are the consequence of an act of a contingent natural organism and things that have come about by other natural processes. We can do that rather well. I should say that if some phenomenon or evidence was left by the action of an organism, particularly one as intelligent or more intelligent than humans, we should be able to identify it. If life on earth was designed by aliens, we should be able to find the evidence for that (and find out a bit about the aliens). So far, we haven’t found any evidence that it was, so I don’t hold out much for that hypothesis.Good for you!
It is a matter of transcribing what we know as humans. When we see a computer we know it just didn’t evolve. Intuitively we know it is not a naturally occurring thing.
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Distinguishing between things caused within nature by organisms, and things caused within nature but not by organisms, is not the issue. What ID needs is a test to distinguish between effects that have causes within nature and those that have causes outside nature.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
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grannymh
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FACT OF SCIENCE
When one parties with the 8 year-old and younger crowd, it is difficult to open one’s eyes wide enough to read posts the next morning.
The up side is that I can ask questions, dumb or otherwise:
When one parties with the 8 year-old and younger crowd, it is difficult to open one’s eyes wide enough to read posts the next morning.
The up side is that I can ask questions, dumb or otherwise:
- Has Pluto really been banned from the planet club?
Seems to me, I read that some time ago but figured that it belonged in the category of the egg, e.g., opinion changes about its place in or out of one’s diet. - Did someone ask why people like this thread?
I know why I do. It’s like riding the Alaska Marine Highway ferry with snow on its decks. This thread is a challenge but there are plenty of extremely interesting people aboard. - Is evidence still the operative word in matters relating to science?
I was just getting used to thinking in terms of evidence… Actually, from a literary point of view, evidence would allow me to present “granny theories”. - Wasn’t there a post that said that everyone had the right to present their world view? Is this a rhetorical question?
- Finally, where did I put my Pepsi?
I really need more caffeine.
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Valke2
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The science and theology of athletes foot:
Moses supposes his toeses are roses,
but Moses supposes erroneously.
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hecd2
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Well that’s fantastic. The ID folk are in want of just such a thing. Can it be applied to the origin of life, the evolution of the eye or the assembly of the bacterial flagellum? I am not aware of these tests and am intrigued. Can you tell us more?
Alec
evolutionpages.com
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hecd2
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I don’t know - you are right that I’ve drawn a hasty conclusion about cause and effect. But I think that scientists who are also serious people will actively inform their worldview with what they learn from their science, in some cases reinforcing and illuminating what they already hold, and in other cases being converted one way or the other (and sometimes back again!).
If it is the latter explanation, (ie nontheists being drawn to science) I wonder why you think that might be, because that would be a recent phenomenon?
Alec
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The_Barbarian
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I am aware that there are ways to know about God and supernatural things.
Paul mentions them.
But science is not one of those ways. That kind of thing is forever beyond the reach of science. Which is OK. God gave us other ways to do it.
Some of you are asking way too much of science.
Paul mentions them.
But science is not one of those ways. That kind of thing is forever beyond the reach of science. Which is OK. God gave us other ways to do it.
Some of you are asking way too much of science.
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hecd2
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Hahn and Wiker purport to show, through calculating the probability of assembling a predetermined DNA sequence and a predetermined protein entirely randomly, as though in a lottery machine, that abiogenesis is impossible. Not improbable, mind, but impossible. Unless one has very strong grounds for declaring something impossible, one had better not do it, as the numbers of famous people who have run aground on that rock will attest.
The fact is that they have no grounds whatsoever for declaring abiogenesis impossible and the examples of the DNA and protein sequence are entirely bogus. No-one supposes that the first replicator was a particular DNA strand of a predetermined 100 bases, or that it is necessary at all for random assembly of proteins. They are bogus calculations that are irrelevant to the case, which they have put forward through design or ignorance to make it appear that abiogenesis is impossible.
It’s not a case for calculations of random probability at all, like some sort of cosmic lottery machine. Chemistry is not random collections of atoms - it is determined by the underlying properties of matter (which is not to say that there are no random elements at all). I predict that as we discover more about this (abiogenesis is a science in its absolute infancy and there are not many people working on it - although there is quite a lot of work on palaeo-climatology and palaeo-oceanography just now) we will find that it wasn’t so remarkable after all - that given the properties of matter and the conditions, life was bound to emerge. I am supported in this prediction by the fact that both amino acids and constituents of RNA have been detected in space and on meteorites. Now, I’m not trying to trivialise the problems in understanding the truth about life’s origin (and we might never understand it), but Hahn and Wiker are using an absolutely classic God-of-the-Gaps argument, and moreover they are supporting it with an entirely bogus probability calculation.
As I point out above, it’s not entirely a random thing.
Actually, probability is not as important to Dawkins as you think, because he, like me, would never claim that abiogenesis or evolution is purely random process. What he is seeking to show though is that the probability of an unlikely event is made less improbable by the vastness of the universe; and that what appears very improbable if one regards, say, evolution as a random walk, becomes hugely less improbable if one regards it correctly as a process guided by natural selection acting on the fecundity of organisms.
I want to give an example of these two effects working together, but it’s a little complicated so I’ll do it in another post.
And they are wrong - this is why they were ill-advised to wade in out of their depth. They even claim that the evolution of the world’s current biota in 3.5 billion years is impossible without saltation. And they use an equally bogus argument by calculating how long evolution would take to climb a mile high Mount Improbable at an inch every million years. That’s so bad it beggars belief. Is it possible that they confused Dawkins’s metaphor for a scientific conclusion?
They are not averse to misrepresenting Dawkins’s “weasel” illustration about the effect of NS in speeding up the search for a solution and laughing it away with an irrelevant and scatological account of an experiment with typewriters and monkeys. It is schoolboyish and superficial, and hugely disappointing from two guys whom I was given to understand were serious Catholic thinkers.
This is one of the worst parts of their book - they are in way over their heads.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
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hecd2
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Well, at least this thread is introducing people to books they wouldn’t otherwise have read which is no bad thing. Mind you, don’t expect too much from the God Delusion - it has its moments, but it also has some very poor sections.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
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hecd2
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cassini
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Warp, remind me, evidence for what?
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StAnastasia
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Deconi, if it is false, can you show us how it’s done? Is it a biblical passage the gives us the boiling temperture of water at 12,000 feet?" Is this a doctrinal matter? Or a conclusion drawn from sacramental or moral theology?
StAnastasia
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cassini
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I have not read this book. A friend did and told me he could not get over the FAITH Dawkins has in evolution. He said if he were Catholic and had such a faith, he would be a saint. Does that make sense? Oh by the way, An English Catholic paper (I think) reported that Dawkins has just admitted there could be a God. Is this a breakthrough? Next he will be admitting we cannot rule out geocentricism either. I look forward to that.
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ricmat
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OK - sometimes common sense does give us an answer, but I understand your point that common sense is difficult to quantify.
“these people” encompasses a lot of different people with different motives and skills. The YECers who have appropriated the ID name are not doing ID a favor.
Thank you for taking the time to respond in detail. I may need to break up my response in multiple posts…
OK - you have surprised me now. In a good way. Also, I thought you were a biologist, not a physicist, so thanks for that clarification.
In the next post you say that “The Privileged Planet” is not for you, and to see this post. I assume that you are referring to your quote above. This book goes into much more, and focuses more on “how our place in the cosmos is designed for discovery.” Perhaps you can leaf through it at the library instead of buying it.
I’ve seen this argument from others here. To paraphrase - “Those religious folks, including IDers, just want to throw up their hands and say ‘God did it’ instead of searching for underlying causes, etc.”
But this just isn’t proven out by the history of religious scientists, of which there were multitudes. A religious scientists is more likely to look at the situation and say “What a glorious thing (beautiful, orderly, elegant or whatever) God has created here. I wonder how it works?” Then he goes off to figure it out in more detail.
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard ANYBODY, religious or not, scientist or not, say that we should stop investigating things because “God did it. We can leave it at that.” There may be some, or some who might joke about it, but their numbers are few.
continued…
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ricmat
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continuing on…
Of course that isn’t true either.
Yes, perhaps the agenda of many IDers is to give people some scientific evidence that might lead them in the general direction of God. But I still maintain that so long as the science is done properly and interpreted properly, then let it be presented as science along with all the other science. The last jump from “That’s a lot of scientific evidence pointing to an intelligent designer” (assuming it reaches that point someday) to “God exists” is a philosophical jump not a scientific one.
Just out of curiosity, are there any particular Discovery Institute people that you believe are dishonest? You can send me a PM if this isn’t fit for public consumption.
I admit that there are YECers who have appropriated the label ID and are misusing it. As I pointed out previously, Aquinas had an argument from design back in the 1200’s so the idea of design in nature is not something invented by YECers to get religion taught in science class.
I agree, scientists should not do that. However, you lump too many different types of IDers together.
And the story of science is that it’s practitioners are all sadistic monsters. I know that from reading about the Nazi scientists.
Of course that isn’t true either.
Yes, perhaps the agenda of many IDers is to give people some scientific evidence that might lead them in the general direction of God. But I still maintain that so long as the science is done properly and interpreted properly, then let it be presented as science along with all the other science. The last jump from “That’s a lot of scientific evidence pointing to an intelligent designer” (assuming it reaches that point someday) to “God exists” is a philosophical jump not a scientific one.
Just out of curiosity, are there any particular Discovery Institute people that you believe are dishonest? You can send me a PM if this isn’t fit for public consumption.
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ricmat
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I haven’t read the book in question, but I’ve seen the monkey / typewriter account mentioned many times in support of evolution. “If you have an infinite number of monkeys typing randomly on an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite amount of time, they would eventually create all the works of Shakespeare.” Or something like that.
Of course, there’s a lot of matter in the universe. But way short of infinite. There’s a lot of time since the big bang. But way short of infinite. Then the response to that is usually that this can be compensated for by having an infinite number of universes (while invoking the anthropic principle).
Sure, natural selection works on existing beings. But the mutations had to occur before natural selection could work on them. It seems to me that this is where the probability calculations could start and at least put some boundaries (best case, worst case) on if the 4 billion year time line is feasible.
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buffalo
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Time for the Richard Dawkins Mutation Challenge
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grannymh
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