Intelligent Design

[Al_Moritz]

What’s being witnessed is that if a conversation doesn’t go the way you like - if there are flaws in your claims that highlight some inconvenience or even incorrectness on your part - then the conversation comes to an immediate end. And the person bringing it up is treated as somehow being uncivil for daring to point out these problems. C’mon, man. You can do better than this.

No, through hard lessons on the internet I have learned when a discussion becomes futile, and not to waste my energy from that point on. As I said, others will understand the points that I have made.

Sorry to be so blunt, but there is no other way to say it.

 

[Al_Moritz]

What’s starting to become clear is this: If the issue is bashing ID proponents, or some vague ‘atheists’, you’re game. When it comes to pointing out the flaws in TE views, or the intellectual sins of evolutionary biologists, you don’t want to talk about this at all.

Really? Have you read my long post (broken by “cont.”) on the last page of this thread?

 

[Nullasalus]

Really? Have you read my long post (broken by “cont.”) on the last page of this thread?

Yes, I have. And it’s making numerous mistakes (the idea that science needs to operate by “methodological materialism” / “methodological naturalism”, for example, though I’m not getting into that here), though this is the key problem: It implies that scientists who treat evolution, much less “random”, in this way are somehow insignificant players in science, some modest minority making what everyone agrees is a mistaken conclusion.

The fact that their ‘minority’ doesn’t seem to be so small, or that they insist that they are not mistaken, doesn’t seem to register. ID proponents have to be gunned for again and again for THEIR ‘conflation of science with philosophy’. Dawkins, Coyne, Myers, and the rest, however? They barely get a “tsk tsk”.

By the way, regarding Monod having some great, scientific view of evolution… let’s have a few more quotes from the man.

the scientific attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity—that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe. Now, this is basically incompatible with virtually all the religious or metaphysical systems whatever, all of which try to show that there is some sort of harmony between man and the universe and that man is a product—predictable if not indispensable—of the evolution of the universe.
— Jacques Monod
Quoted in John C. Hess, ‘French Nobel Biologist Says World Based On Chance’, New York Times (15 Mar 1971), 6.

A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself.
— Jacques Monod
Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology, trans. Austryn Wainhouse (1972), 96

Chance alone is at the source of every innovaton, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, only chance, absolute but blind liberty is at the root of the prodigious edifice that is evolution… It today is the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact.
Stating life began by the chance collision of particles of nucleic acid in the ‘prebiotic soup.’
— Jacques Monod
Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology (1972), 112-113. In Holmes Rolston Genes, Genesis, and God (1999), 17.

Oh boy, Monod does not use “unguided” or “unplanned” or “undirected”. Why, he just uses “pure chance”, “absolute but blind liberty”, “totally blind”, and that the scientific attitude implies “no plan or intention in the universe”. Gosh, he sure knew how to respect the divide between science and philosophy.

If that’s a role model of scientific objectivity for you, you can keep him.

 

[edwest2]

A few words from Pope Benedict:

bringyou.to/apologetics/p81.htm

Pope Benedict XVI

"Monod nonetheless finds the possibility for evolution in the fact that in the very propagation of the project there can be mistakes in the act of transmission. Because nature is conservative, these mistakes, once having come into existence, are carried on. Such mistakes can add up, and from the adding up of mistakes something new can arise. Now an astonishing conclusion follows: It was in this way that the whole world of living creatures, and human beings themselves, came into existence. We are the product of “haphazard mistakes.”

“What response shall we make to this view? It is the affair of the natural sciences to explain how the tree of life in particular continues to grow and how new branches shoot out from it. This is not a matter for faith. But we must have the audacity to say that the great projects of the living creation are not the products of chance and error. Nor are they the products of a selective process to which divine predicates can be attributed in illogical, unscientific, and even mythic fashion. The great projects of the living creation point to a creating Reason and show us a creating Intelligence, and they do so more luminously and radiantly today than ever before. Thus we can say today with a new certitude and joyousness that the human being is indeed a divine project, which only the creating Intelligence was strong and great and audacious enough to conceive of. Human beings are not a mistake but something willed; they are the fruit of love. They can disclose in themselves, in the bold project that they are, the language of the creating Intelligence that speaks to them and that moves them to say: Yes, Father, you have willed me.”

Peace,
Ed

 

[Nullasalus]

Ed,

In my view, the very act of calling these things “mistakes” or “errors” imparts a philosophical bias to understanding evolution.

 

[edwest2]

It is obvious the Biology textbook gives the impression that everything happened by itself. I remember watching TV and hearing the following: “Scientists tell us that if a planet was the right distance from its sun and had water and the building blocks of life [amino acids] then life would likely arise there.” I never critically examined this idea until recently.

Peace,
Ed

 

[hammerbaz]

Evolution of the universe, evolution of animals, evolution of man (if you chose to believe it) in science do not include god into their systems, and rightly so because unfortuately god is not a proveable hypothesis.

To deny alot of the facts within science would be wrong, but just because there is no god in the scientists model, does in on way say god couldnt fit into the model. God would fit, infacts fits perfectly into every part of the model.

I think clever, rational believers in god appreciate that the work science does not need include god into the equation on issues of the universes design, but scientists have to realise this does not prove god does not exist.

 

[edwest2]

Leading Scientists still reject God

stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html

Peace,
Ed

 

[Peepers]

A few words from Pope Benedict:

bringyou.to/apologetics/p81.htm

Pope Benedict XVI

"Monod nonetheless finds the possibility for evolution in the fact that in the very propagation of the project there can be mistakes in the act of transmission. Because nature is conservative, these mistakes, once having come into existence, are carried on. Such mistakes can add up, and from the adding up of mistakes something new can arise. Now an astonishing conclusion follows: It was in this way that the whole world of living creatures, and human beings themselves, came into existence. We are the product of “haphazard mistakes.”

“What response shall we make to this view? It is the affair of the natural sciences to explain how the tree of life in particular continues to grow and how new branches shoot out from it. This is not a matter for faith. But we must have the audacity to say that the great projects of the living creation are not the products of chance and error. Nor are they the products of a selective process to which divine predicates can be attributed in illogical, unscientific, and even mythic fashion. The great projects of the living creation point to a creating Reason and show us a creating Intelligence, and they do so more luminously and radiantly today than ever before. Thus we can say today with a new certitude and joyousness that the human being is indeed a divine project, which only the creating Intelligence was strong and great and audacious enough to conceive of. Human beings are not a mistake but something willed; they are the fruit of love. They can disclose in themselves, in the bold project that they are, the language of the creating Intelligence that speaks to them and that moves them to say: Yes, Father, you have willed me.”

Peace,
Ed

I have great respect for Benedict XVI, but all that he has said here is that he does not understand the theory of evolution and the theory of natural selection.

There are no “mistakes” in genetic evolution. The universe has formed in a process which is pretty well understood from about 13 billion years forward. At various points, “Goldilocks conditions” - or the conditions for the next degree of complexity - have occurred. Not too cold, but just right. I won’t bore you with the specific transition points, unless you ask. But they are very clear.

With life, the great differentiating condition was that instead of the replication of the molecule, the replication of the replication template occurs. This is DNA. DNA replicates with a fairly constant error rate of one error per billion. This is not a “mistake”. It is the error rate in replication built into DNA by God. This provides the diversity of life on the planet. Without it, we would all be identical, and there would be no individual species. I don’t see this as a mistake. Rather, it is essential to life as it exists.

There is no evidence that homo sapiens inhabited the Earth 65 million years ago along with the dinosaurs. There is evidence that the dino’s died off from and asteroid strike near the Yucatan at that time. When the dino’s disappeared, the opened the biological niches for the primates and mammals to flourish. Somewhere around 4 million years ago hominids evolve. Somewhere between 30,000 and 200,000 years ago homo sapiens evolved. There is some genetic evidence to show that an original “Adam” existed in that period.

 

[hammerbaz]

yes they do Ed, and they have the right to do so, and as much right to state so as any Catholic.

I was merely saying some are maybe unwise to say that scientific systems that dont involve god disprove god as i have heard many do.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Oh boy, Monod does not use “unguided” or “unplanned” or “undirected”. Why, he just uses “pure chance”, “absolute but blind liberty”, “totally blind”, and that the scientific attitude implies “no plan or intention in the universe”. Gosh, he sure knew how to respect the divide between science and philosophy.

If that’s a role model of scientific objectivity for you, you can keep him.

You are right on Monod, and I was wrong.

I freely admit it. Thank you for pointing it out.

Yes, I have. And it’s making numerous mistakes (the idea that science needs to operate by “methodological materialism” / “methodological naturalism”, for example, though I’m not getting into that here),

Oh oh.

Being a scientist myself, I can tell you that methodological naturalism (the search for natural causes for effects in nature) is essential to my everyday work, as it is for all scientists worldwide. Methodological naturalism is the very bedrock foundation upon which science rests.

Let me repeat:
Methodological naturalism is the very bedrock foundation upon which science rests.

This has nothing to do whatsoever with philosophical inclinations of individual scientists. It is an essential tool of science. Telling scientists to abandon methodological naturalism is the same as telling an accountant that he has to stop crunching numbers, or tell a plumber that he should keep his toolbox at home.

Don’t forget: the first scientists that started the scientific revolution and introduced methodological naturalism into the method of science were all explicit believers in God. Methodological naturalism is not an ‘atheistic invention’.

And a warning to atheists: Methodological naturalism does not implicitly assume metaphysical naturalism. The former is a tool of science, the latter a philosophical position that is an option but, again, does not follow automatically. The constant conflation of the two, and thus of science with philosophy, is one of the reasons why I have a problem with taking a lot of atheist argumentation seriously.

 

[Al_Moritz]

I was merely saying some are maybe unwise to say that scientific systems that dont involve god disprove god as i have heard many do.

I agree.

 

[Al_Moritz]

I have great respect for Benedict XVI, but all that he has said here is that he does not understand the theory of evolution and the theory of natural selection.

I very much respect the current Pope as well, but as much as I hate to say it I am afraid you are correct on this point.

There are no “mistakes” in genetic evolution. The universe has formed in a process which is pretty well understood from about 13 billion years forward. At various points, “Goldilocks conditions” - or the conditions for the next degree of complexity - have occurred. Not too cold, but just right. I won’t bore you with the specific transition points, unless you ask. But they are very clear.

With life, the great differentiating condition was that instead of the replication of the molecule, the replication of the replication template occurs. This is DNA. DNA replicates with a fairly constant error rate of one error per billion. **This is not a “mistake”. It is the error rate in replication built into DNA by God. This provides the diversity of life on the planet. **Without it, we would all be identical, and there would be no individual species. I don’t see this as a mistake. Rather, it is essential to life as it exists.

(Emphasis added.)

You have said that very well indeed. This also comes down to the picturability vs. conceivability issue in the link

uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/of-pegasus-and-pangloss-two-recurring-fallacies-of-skeptics/

that had been posted on p. 62 of this thread. Mutations are essential to evolution, and thus to our existence. Mutations, which can cause cancer, also drive evolution. Atheists who complain why God did not make the world free of cancer basically suggest (even though they are not aware of that mistake) that the human race, including themselves, should not exist. A cancer-free world is not conceivable with the laws of nature that we have, and with evolution that they enable and which is so essential to the development of life.

 

[hammerbaz]

Being a scientist myself, I can tell you that methodological naturalism (the search for natural causes for effects in nature) is essential to my everyday work, as it is for all scientists worldwide. Methodological naturalism is the very bedrock foundation upon which science rests.

Let me repeat:
Methodological naturalism is the very bedrock foundation upon which science rests.

This has nothing to do whatsoever with philosophical inclinations of individual scientists. It is an essential tool of science. Telling scientists to abandon methodological naturalism is the same as telling an accountant that he has to stop crunching numbers, or tell a plumber that he should keep his toolbox at home.

Don’t forget: the first scientists that started the scientific revolution and introduced methodological naturalism into the method of science were all explicit believers in God. Methodological naturalism is not an ‘atheistic invention’.

And a warning to atheists: Methodological naturalism does not implicitly assume metaphysical naturalism. The former is a tool of science, the latter a philosophical position that is an option but, again, does not follow automatically.

this is a fantastic piece of well worded reasoning.

 

[Al_Moritz]

It is obvious the Biology textbook gives the impression that everything happened by itself. I remember watching TV and hearing the following: “Scientists tell us that if a planet was the right distance from its sun and had water and the building blocks of life [amino acids] then life would likely arise there.” I never critically examined this idea until recently.

Actually, I think this is correct. My hypothesis, given the scientific data so far, is that microbial life is very common in the universe, but that higher life forms are relatively rare, given the sheltered conditions that are necessary for their development and which are found on our own Earth. And venturing into philosophical terrain, I believe that rational life on another planet somewhere in the universe is only possible if God decides to imbue a rational soul into a higher species living there.

 

[Michael_Francis]

Sticky: Temporary Ban on Evolution/Atheism Threads