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grannymh
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StAnastasia
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Neat! I’ve waited out a storm in an outhouse. Never yet been to Alaska.
To clarify, I know I’ve asserted that “intelligent design” is not science and does not belong in science textbooks or classrooms. I stand by that assertion.
Nevertheless, as a theist, specifically a Christian theist, I find I have a very visceral response to God in the beauty of the world. Although I know the geological history of the Alaskan wilderness and the evolutionary history of its wildlife, in no way does this prejudice my religious response to it. I look not for a designer, but for God the creator of the dynamic universe that can bring forth all this beauty over billions of years.
StAnastasia
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warpspeedpetey
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i look forward to any proof you may have of geocentrisms validity in the light of modern observational technology.
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ricmat
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Ricmat also looks for (sees) God the creator of the dynamic universe that can bring forth all this beauty over billions of years. I’m also able to look at the precision of the fine tuning constants set before t=0 (amongst other things) and say with awe “That’s one heck of a design!” Why you would intentionally blind yourself so you cannot see the majesty of God’s design is beyond me.
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warpspeedpetey
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the fact that a universe exists is proof of G-d, aquinas’ first cause.
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ricmat
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I agree. But there are those (humans in general) to whom God has given the ability to reason, and see beauty, and see logic, and see order, but who refuse to say that God designed/intended/planned things to be that way. According to those people “it just happened, randomly”. How sad that they refuse to acknowledge that God had his hand in these works.
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StAnastasia
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Did you miss the point of my post? There is a big difference between a creator and an ID-style designer. The ID people want to find irreducibly complex phenomena or “black boxes” that stop science in its tracks. Judge Jones ruled that out in Dover.
As a Christian theist, I see beauty unfolding in the universe; I also see tragedy. I see God’s world unfolding not according to some script or design-blueprint ending with Homo sapiens, but rather freely, in response to the freedom God accorded it.
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warpspeedpetey
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yeah i find the amount of random events that fell into line to be suspicious also.
not just abiogenesis, or just the universal constants.
but rather every little factor, that if it were different than we could not be here. no matter how vast the universe, when all the the necessary factors are added up from the expansion, until now, i find it highly suspicious that the universe is indeed completely random.
but that is hard to formulate into a specific argument, and any one factor is vulnerable to the ‘massive scale argument’ but taken together they seem to add up to a design.
of course that same ‘massive scale’ argument can be a double edged sword. for instance.
why havent we found intelligent life anywhere else in the light horizon? with upwards of 1X10(24) stars in that observable sphere, one would have a good case based on the ‘massive scale’ argument that we should have some evidence.
now that doesnt factor in the time problem, but it is not the full 13.7 billion, as it took several generations of stars in order to make the heavier biogenic elements. still, extremely long odds
there are no solid arguments any where in this, but there is a lot of coincidence. there is nothing that logically excludes randomness alone as the causative agent here.
except common sense.
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hecd2
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Perhaps it’s all about nomenclature and we agree more closely than we thought. When I talk about ID, I mean the religiously motivated political movement, led by the Discovery Institute, to persuade the public and the law makers to allow “design” to be taught as an alternative to evolutionary biology in the science class as an explanation for the diversity of life. In order to do so, they have put on a thin costume of science activities and language, in the hope that people can be persuaded that a “transcendent supernatural being did it” is an alternative scientific hypothesis. I assume this is the group of YECers that you are talking about, but they are not all YECers, and although they might have appropriated the name of ID, they are pushing what most people, including me, think of as ID.
I acknowledge that there is an older teleological tradition that doesn’t seek to push into science, but that is not what most people mean by ID today, as I understand it.
Physicist by training , but have worked in life science related areas, so have also learned some biology. I keep broadly up to date in both.
OK.
No. “God did it” is expected and appropriate as an underlying belief for a Catholic, including Catholic scientists. I am not criticising a belief in God’s role in creating or sustaining the universe, or suggesting that it undermines science. It doesn’t and might well enhance it, as you say.
Where “God did it” is unacceptable is as a competing and exclusive answer (rather than a complementary answer from a different domain) to the question of the cause of a phenomenon - the ID (I am using and will continue to use ID in the sense I defined above, because that is how most people take it) position is that “God did it”, because it couldn’t have happened naturally. The evolution of various traits could not have happened, or the earth could not have got its oxygen, or life could not have started or whatever it happens to be could not have happened without a direct intervention by God that violates the normal operation of nature. That, if accepted, kills all further research in that direction, because to accept that “God did it” is the exclusively correct answer, you have to acknowledge, rightly or wrongly, that it could not happen by natural causes.
If, on the other hand, we mean ID more in your sense, then religious scientists will believe it and be motivated by it, and non-theistic scientists won’t believe it and will find their motivation elsewhere. They will all agree on the natural cause for the phenomenon under investigation (or at least they will agree to conduct a tremendous battle between two opposing schools representing different natural explanations, using only natural arguments, skill, judgement, spleen and invective). What follows, since “God did it” is a complementary explanation to the purely naturalistic science, not a competing one, is that it is unnecessary to drag the theology into the science any more than in chemistry or metallurgy or systematics or human anatomy.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
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The_Barbarian
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ID is the belief of people who are uncomfortable with God the Creator.
As IDer-in-chief Phillip Johnson says, ID says that the “designer” could be a space alien.
This is not consistent with Christian belief.
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hecd2
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I think we have covered this.
And this
Again, using my definition of ID and IDer, I’m not aware of much or any science done by the ID movement that counts. I’m not even sure I can imagine what a real scientific paper written to establish, test or use a process for distinguishing between naturally and supernaturally caused phenomena would look like. Perhaps we are trying, as someone else said, to ask too much of science.
Or perhaps you mean papers that take other people’s work and, in essence, say, “look how complicated this is. How could it have evolved? You must be mad to think it”. Of course, they would be couched in very technical terms with lots of references to statistics and probability space, and every effort will be made to split phenomena rather than create unifying theories. Nevertheless, with the technical stuff pared back, the underlying message will be the argument from incredulity. But that’s not science; it’s science journalism of a rather abject kind.
You know, the guy I really pity is Bill Dembski. He is smart as a button, and he could have been a good, maybe even a great scientist or mathematician. Instead, he has perverted his talent to this limp simulacrum of science and has wasted his talent in discovering nothing, learning nothing, achieving nothing.
Not for the Discovery Institute.
It’s not a personal thing. The whole enterprise is built on lies that are being used to attempt to get round the ban on teaching religion in science, and to get creationism back into biology text books - the lie that “God did it” is an acceptable scientific explanation, the lie that they are engaged in science, the lie that they are adding to the store of human knowledge rather than trying to uproot it at every turn.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
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hecd2
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Well it’s nonsense. Anyone who uses that analogy in support of evolution clearly doesn’t know how evolution works. It’s not a random thing that says if I wait long enough a man will self-assemble before my eyes. And it is specifically not the analogy that Dawkins was drawing with his weasel model.
The multiverse is a response to fine tuning, not the supposed improbability of evolution, isn’t it?
We know the rate that mutations occur in genomes (roughly). There are mathematical laws that tell us what probability a mutation will fix with depending on the population size and the fitness it confers; and how long it will take to fix. We now know the difference in the genomes between quite closely related (human/chimp; Africa elephant/Indian elephant; mouse:rat) species, and between distantly related species (say human/baker’s yeast). The difference between the genomes is compatible with the known rate of occurrence and fixing of mutations.
And 3.5 billion years is a long time. I wonder if you really can feel how long.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
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grannymh
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Quote:
Re: Post 404
My apology. I did not mean to intrigue you about tests as in something new. I was thinking more about tests involving the basic method of observation, comparison, and direct examination which can determine if a phenomenon is inside or outside the normal operation of nature. For example, medical professionals have observed healings which are outside the normal operation of the nature of the disease. They compare their examination of their patient with published reports of the disease to determine how ordinary or how extraordinary is the healing. However, neither the process the healing takes nor the healing itself requires a belief in God’s direct intervention.
What I find interesting about an unique extraordinary event such as an unexplainable medical healing is that it presents the possibility that there might be something beyond the realm of human sensory experience.
Blessings,
grannymh
Re: Post 404
Dear Alec,
My apology. I did not mean to intrigue you about tests as in something new. I was thinking more about tests involving the basic method of observation, comparison, and direct examination which can determine if a phenomenon is inside or outside the normal operation of nature. For example, medical professionals have observed healings which are outside the normal operation of the nature of the disease. They compare their examination of their patient with published reports of the disease to determine how ordinary or how extraordinary is the healing. However, neither the process the healing takes nor the healing itself requires a belief in God’s direct intervention.
What I find interesting about an unique extraordinary event such as an unexplainable medical healing is that it presents the possibility that there might be something beyond the realm of human sensory experience.
Blessings,
grannymh
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edwest2
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The universe has no intelligence, therefore, it cannot respond to anything. As the First Cause and Cause of Causes, God guides and is the Creative Reason. Homo Sapiens was intended as each one of us was intended. To give unintelligence the power of choice ignores the Creator and His will.
Peace,
Ed
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ricmat
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From this Discovery Institute web site:
intelligentdesign.org/education.php
It doesn’t appear to be the Discovery Institute. Yes, I’ve read the so called “wedge document.” Have you read their response? It is on their web site.
But no matter what the personal motivations of ID folks might be, religious or not, if they do science with the proper method and interpretation, then why not teach it as science? Why should motivation fit into this? I understand why atheists might be upset, but not scientists.
But finding the root cause or underlying factors doesn’t impinge on religion. Of course God did it (from the religious perspective). After all, who designed the laws of nature to work like they do.
Again, I’m not aware of anyone who says that God did it and that’s that - no further research required. I think this is an urban legend in the atheist community or something.
Sounds reasonable to me.
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ricmat
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What you describe above probably happens.
If the criticisms are of a scientific nature, do battle with them.
Again, I know of not a single person who believes that “God did it” is an acceptable scientific explanation. Not one. Of course I don’t know everybody, but I don’t think the DI are the bad guys that you are identifying here.
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ricmat
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Yes.
The monkey/typewriter thing seems to have started out as an attempt to explain how random mutations, plus natural selection could account for evolution, and/or abiogenesis. You’ve got so much time that everything and anything can occur. The multiverse theory is based on the same argument as the monkeys. If you have enough of them, eventually one will accidentally and randomly “come out right for life” - or in the case of the monkeys, the works of Shakespeare.
I’d be more impressed if instead of tracking 2 current species back to some presumed common ancestor, you could take 1 current species and track it back to a known ancestor. What mutations occurred, in what order, and most imporant of all - how long did it take, even assuming best case scenarios. But the response I get when I ask for this is usually something like “Evolution did it, somehow. And we know that evolution did it because here we are!” And it’s unreasonable to ask for details (because we don’t have them).
Sorry, I just put myself in a cranky mood
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The_Barbarian
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Why would you take a random process as a model for a non-random process? Darwin’s discovery was that evolution is not random.
O. gigas from O. lamarkana. Observed by DeVries 1904.
Polyploidy. One generation.
If an atheist demanded you tell him what color robe Jesus was wearing when he preached the sermon on the mount, would you think he was being unreasonable?
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cassini
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grannymh (Where do you guys and gals get your titles?) here is a little info on Pluto:
Finding Pluto
The second ‘planet’ supposedly p(name removed by moderator)ointed by Newtonian maths was Pluto. After the discovery of Neptune (and the discovery of Uranus by chance observation), astronomers found more ‘unexplained perturbations’ in their elliptical orbits, as one might expect (orbits are not ellipses by the way, Kepler compromised with his ellipse conclusion).
‘As time passed it was found neither Uranus or Neptune followed their computed paths precisely indicating the possibility of a 9th planet further out.’— Duncan Steel: Target Earth, Time Life Books, 2,000, p.11
The story goes that using the Newtonian principle of gravitational perturbations of Neptune, Professor Percival Lowell ( of the canals on Mars fame) made some calculations and predicted yet another unknown planet must be out there.They say his ‘Newtonian’ figures led to the finding of Pluto. Then, in 1930, after Lowell died, astronomers at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona found the tiny ‘planet’ (called Pluto) 4,000,000,000 miles away, a ‘planet’ that has an orbit ‘out on its own’ in that its orbital inclination is at a 17 degrees tilt to the other planets, a huge difference in direction. Word got out fast and as far as the academic world was concerned it was QED Newton, until the truth came out that is. Can we even imagine the pen and paper Newtonian calculations that would have been necessary to p(name removed by moderator)oint such a tiny ‘planet’ with its severe tilt four billion miles away using Newton’s formulae for compromised elliptical orbits? It seems that upon checking Lowell’s data it was found to be unintelligible, all now agree to that, but as LIFE’s The Universe says, it still ‘secured’ Newtonian mechanics once again’ (p.16).
But now let us take this farce to its ultimate conclusion. Without a shadow of doubt, using the Keplerian/Newtonian elliptical path for Pluto, that planet in turn has to show MORE perturbations, thus indicating, according to their way of thinking of course, yet another planet (10th) even further out to explain these ‘anomalies’. So, did they continue their quest using Newton’s formula for finding planets, the same one they claimed found Neptune and Pluto? No they didn’t. In the 1990s two astronomers began a simple grid-by-grid search looking for some new planets. They simply reasoned that there could be more out there so started to look for them. Well, low and behold, in 2003 they found UB313, a body even bigger than Pluto. Then more huge asteroids were discovered until it was agreed they all, including Pluto, belonged to what they now call the Kviper Belt, made up of hundreds of pieces of cosmic debris. As a result of all these discoveries Pluto was demoted from a planet to a ‘lesser planet’ or ‘Ice Rock’ as I’ve seen them called. Throughout no one mentioned demoting Newton, nor his perturbation formula, the tool that supposedly found Pluto in the first place, but missed the whole Kviper belt dominating all with its ‘mass’.
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