Is intelligent design a plausible theory?

[Touchstone]

Actually, I think ID matches observations to what is already known about what intelligence produces. By analogy, it uses human intelligence and recognizes that only human intelligence can create the kind of ordered complexity that is evident in the universe (software languages, for example). So, it is very similar to Paley’s teleogical argument. Paley didn’t need to know which watchmaker created that watch – but that one did. True, his reference point was more well-defined, but his subject matter was far more limited also. ID theory proposes that the only known source of specified complexity and information is intelligence. This is both a critique of evolution and the proposal that intelligence was involved in the development of life and nature itself.

My point was NOT that Paley knew which watchmaker made the watch; manifestly, it didn’t matter. What mattered that he knew of watchmakers, or even in more abstract terms, humans who had machines and skills in manufacturing things – even very intricate things – out of metal and glass. Just the knowledge of humans and their machining tools was enough to make the crucial connections needed for a design inference.

Nothing even remotely analogous is available for the putative “intelligent designedness” of biological life. We have no evidence of aliens, or any other entity that we can point to that provides such a connection. Design inferences are use and practical conlcusions, but they depend crucially on matching the capabilities of an available designer with the putative design output. This is a debilitating flaw for ID, the reason it is not a rational inference but just a (religious) intuition.

-TS

(P.S. can you define complex specified information for me in something stronger than casual terms? Dembski just seems to actively avoid any requests that he do so. Getting that figured out would be a big help for me – thanks!)

 

[reggieM]

Nothing even remotely analogous is available for the putative “intelligent designedness” of biological life. We have no evidence of aliens, or any other entity that we can point to that provides such a connection.

Again, we have evidence of human intelligence and we can see what it produces. We notice the difference between what human intelligence can design and what random chance and natural laws create. Human intelligence can direct nature itself (selective breeding).

Design inferences are use and practical conlcusions, but they depend crucially on matching the capabilities of an available designer with the putative design output. This is a debilitating flaw for ID, the reason it is not a rational inference but just a (religious) intuition.

The discussion of the capabilities of intelligence can be conducted without a reference to religion – as we just did above.

(P.S. can you define complex specified information for me in something stronger than casual terms? Dembski just seems to actively avoid any requests that he do so. Getting that figured out would be a big help for me – thanks!)

This topic is analyzed in ID theory without making a reference to religious belief. Complex-specified information is that which is defined within certain probability limits. Dembski evaluates the kind of data that is generated randomly and calculates the probability of certain patterns emerging from the process. When the content and pattern of the arrangement crosses a threshold of probability it is considered both complex and specified.

Complexity measures the bits of information in a sequence. The more bits, the greater the complexity. A language that has a total of 5 words in its vocabulary (if there was one) is less complex than the English language which has 170,000 words. Specification refers to patterns which can be recognized in the information. Themethod used in ID theory comes from communication theory and is basically the same approach as used by SETI researches who try to recognize intelligence in extra-terrestrial radio transmissions.
Patterns which occur within the data are evaluated against the norm for randomly generated noise. So it’s a question of statistical probability and recognizing what random generation normally produces versus that which is beyond the range of probable results of random processes.

So, radio transmissions which show a consistent pattern distinct from random noise are subject to a closer study to detect if there is some meaningful languge coded in the data.

Again, I don’t see the religious aspect to SETI research.

 

[rossum]

Sorry. I’m an engineer not a biologist. HS level was the extent of my training in biology.

Not a problem, we can’t all know everything.

But what arguement about the amoeba would not also apply to the organisms you mentioned? Do they have DNA? Do they reproduce? Do they have other complex functions necessary to their existence?

Bacteria and archaea are simpler than amoebae, they do not have mitochondria, nuclei and other organelles that eukaryotes have. They all have DNA, though there are some viruses that use exclusively RNA. The ability to reproduce is part of the definition of being alive so they all reproduce, though the process is simpler than for eukaryotes.

The original life on earth would have been simpler yet, potentially not using the current DNA/RNA/protein system but using a simpler RNA only system.

I see. So a car is constructed of various atoms. By the same logic it doesn’t need an outside intelligence, it merely needs chemistry.

A car does not reproduce so it cannot evolve. Abiogenesis is very much built round chemistry and is an active and open research area. Things you might want to look at are RNA world, ribozymes, liposomes and the Spiegelman monster.

My point is that very naive probability calculations tell us very little about what is happening with abiogenesis. Unless the calculations explicitly include the laws of chemistry then the results are useless, as with my example of Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms in water. Chemistry ensures that the outcome is very far from what we would expect from a random distribution. The same applies to abiogenesis, chemistry biases the result away from pure randomness.

rossum

 

[reggieM]

Some follow-up points to Greylorn’s recent posts.

He mentioned the Baltimore Catechism question on “Why did God make me?”

That answer has always been worthy of memorization for any child learning the faith.

*A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven. *

Is there a better answer than that?

God made me to *know *Him. That’s the first step. It’s not even *know about *Him, which is what you can do by reading some theology. But we have to know Him to the best of our ability.

There is a gradation of arguments in the Catholic scheme.

The move from atheism to the recognition that there is evidence of Intelligence at work in the development of the universe and of nature – that is the very first sub-step. It’s not even really Deism at that point. Spinoza’s or Einstein’s God would perhaps be the next phase – a recognition that there is a supernatural entity responsible for the obvious design in the universe. From there, the argument can move up the scale of value to more defined concepts of God – omnipotent, simple, perfect, indivisible, supreme being and then personal. As a personal God, the argument then looks to communications with human beings and mystical and miraculous events on earth.

If one finally arrives at Catholicism, the seeker has almost completed the first step. Personal communication with God through prayer brings us to the first point in the catechesim lesson “to know God”.

The second and third points are what life is supposed to be all about.

Love God – by recognizing His nature, His generosity, His mercy, His perfections and how He shared gifts with mankind and gave us the chance to experience freedom, love and hope for eternity.

Then the final step is the hardest and best – to Serve God. That means discovering God’s will every day and then having the courage to go out and do it.

Being happy with Him in the next – that is the outcome and it explains the shortness and imperfection of this life on earth.

The struggle to recognize that Intelligence is even present in the universe, as sincere and difficult a struggle it is for many – can be assisted by ID theory. But I agree with Greylorn that ID is merely a *skeleton *of an answer. The Intelligence proposed could be any number of things – as he suggested, a multiplicty of designers.

Greylorn – On that point, Walter Remine’s book “The Biotic Message: Evolution Versus Message Theory” might be a good resource for an original idea regarding the nature of the designer. I haven’t read the book, but I’ve read Remine’s posts on various blogs. His theory looks at biochemistry and the natural world proposes that the evidence indicates the work of a single Designer, not multiple designers. Of course, the book is loved and hated by the usual sources (loved by IDers and hated by evolutionists, etc). I cannot recommend the book as being good or bad - it might be terrible, but just that it takes an approach for the “next step” beyond pure ID and on to what the physical world can tell us about the nature of the Designer (or so it claims).

As ID gets more support from intelligent critics of Darwinism, I think more work like this will be done. It’s not Biblical Creationism but more like an update of Natural Theology. The starting point is not atheism, but rather that some kind of Intelligence is a given. The study would then turn to some characteristics of the Intelligence and what kind of Design we can see.

I would agree that if a person looks at nature from that starting point and has a non-religious background, then some very different ideas about the nature of the Designer will emerge. Will those ideas be logically consistent and stronger than classic Catholic philosophy’s teachings? It could be. But I think it’s a very big challenge.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Touchstone

“Unlikely” does not mean “implausible”. It’s quite unlikely that I will win the lottery if I buy a ticket, but it’s utterly plausible. It’s maximally plausible – some tickey will be chosen, and mine is as qualified as any other.

This is a point that you have consistently refused to touch with any degree of precision. You condition the winning of the lottery on the fact that lotteries are won sooner or later. Hardly the same conditions prevail for picking a lottery ticket as those that were required for creating the first living and reproducing life form.

So what is the likelihood that such a creature would be produced at random? Give us your specific statistic, and let us know how you arrived at it or on whose authority you rely.

And please get rid of the lottery analogy … which is useless.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

And please get rid of the lottery analogy … which is useless, because, as you know, lotteries are intelligently designed.

 

[antunesaa]

At the time of the Big Bang, any number of possible universes could have come into being if the theory of evolution was applied to the birth of the universe. The universe at first could have come into being as pure chaos. However, it did not. It came into being and immediately began to program all kinds of results, the existence of which, if chance alone was operating at the time of the BB, would hardly have happened. Why are hydrogen and helium the dominant elements of the universe? Without them, life and evolution would not even be possible. If the universe was a random event, at evolution is considered random, why did the universe immediately program itsdelf to be capable of evolution?

Is there a Mind behind the universe? A Creative Intelligence at work? Newton, Darwin, and Einstein thought so. Atheists search with their imagination everywhere for an alternative explanation. Abandoning their precious *Occam’s Razor *(the simplest explanation should suffice), they conceive multiple universes, hoping thereby to restore infinity and the statistical probability that everything is going to happen sooner or later without intelligent design behind it. But there is no alternative in random theory to explain why the universe came into being in such a way as to contain the elements and the gravitation force necessary to expand the universe (the only universe we know) and give the planets sufficient time to complete the program … the creation of a creature able to understand something the universe as a whole cannot even begin to understand … itself … and even more than that … in wonder and awe … the Creator.

I think our Catholic vision of God is compatible both with the existence of multiverses (totally unproven, merely speculative) or darwinian evolution, or any other scientific theory about our origins. I do not believe the divine nature of reality is “proven” by the improbability of our existence. There could be other universes; there could be other incarnations of God in other universes or dimensions. Jesus did not mention them, but neither did He rule them out. In my view the Catholic view has more to do with a sense of purpose than of physical causality. That is a question for scientists. So any attempt to prove that the world was created by God using experimental reasoning is missing the point. The scientific method cannot assess purpose, only causality. So in the end all people are invited to look beyond reality: is there a reason why we (or other intelligent beings in this or other universes) are all here and can even pose this question? Or there is no reason at all and we are just meaningless organizations of atoms dancing pointlessly in the Cosmos? The second hypothesis looks contradictory with the fact that I can ask the question, so I go for God. I do believe that reality is so incredibly complex and rich that it is a product of God, Who embodied all the laws that we now partially uncover (and sometimes use as supposed proofs of His inexistence) in His creation.

 

[antunesaa]

Since everyone knows that the teaching of evolution in high school is a loaded question both for atheists and theists, I for one would not mind if the following quotations prefaced the science book chapter on evolution, so that students and parents would not feel that they were being manipulated by what has become sadly an atheistic science.

“… although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” Richard Dawkins, Biologist

“… I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.” Charles Darwin, Biologist

What say you?

Why are people so obsessed about Richard Dawkins? He’s just a poor soul who, like all of us, will revert to dust and to complete oblivion in a couple of centuries. He’s fighting his demons; we, Catholics, have a sense of purpose for our lives and deaths. We have Faith and Hope; he doesn’t, and that makes quite a difference.

 

[reggieM]

In the lottery analogy, it’s true that someone will win it eventually because it is intelligently designed so that there will always be a winner. But even aside from that, the lottery is a discrete event. The evolutionary idea proposes a series of improbable events occuring.

So, while one person will necessarily win, it’s not true that the same person will necessarily win twice or three times, etc.

 

[antunesaa]

I certainly do think Einstein’s opinions are informed by his scientific work. But not only by that, not nearly, and as a matter of science, it’s a moot point, anyway. Einstein is not advancing this idea in scientific terms. Even scientists have a right to their opinions on a personal, subjective level, don’t they? It seems you are reluctant to let scientists speak as humans outside of scientific epistemology, and feel their every word must somehow carry weight *as science. *If you told my Einstein’s favorite color was ‘blue’, I wouldn’t consider that some kind of authoritative recommendation of blue as the “best” color, would you?

Einstein is certainly an authority on some subjects, as are Dawkins and Darwin. Each of them have demonstrable expertise in some domain or another (or several). But none of them have a whit of authority on the subjects you are invoking them for, it’s blatantly fallacious as a bit of reasoning. It’s fine to say “what you think of this?”, but you might as well give me a Yogi Berra quote to chew on, it’s JUST as authoritative in support of your point.

I recommend a thorough hearing of Darwin and Einstein to all. I’m just pointing out that there are areas where their ideas carry demonstrable weight and authority, as established by the performance of those ideas in science, and there are other areas where they are giving their private, subjective opinions that have no such weight or authority. That goes for Dawkins just as much as it does for Einstein or Darwin. That you think a prootext quote of Darwin is some kind of “antidote” to Dawkins, or vice versa, it what I’m identifying as a problem. I’m all for hearing these guys out, and any other relevant thinkers.

It’s NOT usually excised in modern editions. I have several copies, and the first edition of course, has no “Creator”, because Darwin didn’t put that word in there until the first edition created a religious furor that prompted him to apply a little political diplomacy in the second edition, which reads as you have quoted. But look here at the Google Books online version of the book, and you can see it’s there as you’ve quoted:

books.google.com/books?id=LDrPI52uFQsC&printsec=frontcover#PPA396,M1

The other printed copies of the book I have have the quote as you have it. In fact I’m not aware of any versions of the printed book which are excised in the way you say; the first edition of Origin did not have that phrase, so if we find a printed first edition, it should not have the “Creator” in there, as it wasn’t put there by Darwin until the second edition. If you have a copy of the sixth edition, or any edition after the second that has that phrase removed, I’d be interested to see the specifics on that – publisher information, etc. Each of the editions had other edits, too, so if we find a copy that is missing “Creator”, we can check other parts of the book to see if the text has been changed in accordance with the changes introduced in the second and subsequent editions. If not, then you are simply looking at a first edition printing of the book, and nothing untoward has happened.

If you go buy a copy at Barnes & Noble, off the shelf, tonight, you are much more likely to find the conclusion with “the Creator” in it, as editions after the first edition are by far more numerous on retail shelves (check the editions for sale on Amazon, for example, if you don’t want to go visit your local book store).

What’s your understanding, by the way, of why Darwin didn’t mention the Creator in the first edition of Origin, and put it into the second edition?

-Touchstone

Darwin, Einstein, Dawkins, you, me, we are all clueless about the reasons for our existence. We all have opinions but they must be, by their own nature, unscientific. So trying to diminish or augment the relevance of Einstein’s or Darwin’s views about God is pointless: they know no more and no less than you or me. You know, it’s a lot like love. I would say that there is no obvious correlation between your capacity to love and the grade of your intelligence. Who knows if the humblest plummer in some lost place has a more profound grasp of true love than me or you or the finest shrink in the whole United States? I must admit that; I am persuaded that many uncultivated people know more about love than I do. Moreover, love seems independent of one’s will. We cannot fool ourselves into saying that we love someone when we don’t. It’s beyond our power. The same for God. There are some words in the Gospels about this. This is a subtle question; feelings have their place in it. Just like with love.

 

[Touchstone]

Touchstone

“Unlikely” does not mean “implausible”. It’s quite unlikely that I will win the lottery if I buy a ticket, but it’s utterly plausible. It’s maximally plausible – some tickey will be chosen, and mine is as qualified as any other.

This is a point that you have consistently refused to touch with any degree of precision. You condition the winning of the lottery on the fact that lotteries are won sooner or later. Hardly the same conditions prevail for picking a lottery ticket as those that were required for creating the first living and reproducing life form.

I was pointing out that you are confused about the meanings and concepts behind “unlikely” an “[im]plausible”. The lottery was not offered as an analogy to evolution, but just a clear demonstration where what you said is shown to be false.

So what is the likelihood that such a creature would be produced at random? Give us your specific statistic, and let us know how you arrived at it or on whose authority you rely.

A posteriori, it seems the probablility is very near 1.00, problematic terms like “produced at random” notwithstanding (law figures in there somewhere, doncha know). A priori, I have no idea, and I can’t think how we would begin to even roughly establish the parameters for any pre-event probabilities. We don’t even know what number or scope of similar events would have qualified to produce organic life in some other configuration, let alone what all the background information was from the environment. It’s a non-starter in terms of probabilities. But we’ve got nothing in front of us in the cell that appears implausible in terms of the materials and physic involved. It appears quite plausible that cells formed from more rudimentary components.

And please get rid of the lottery analogy … which is useless.

It was just pedagogy toward the terms you were (ab)using.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

In the lottery analogy, it’s true that someone will win it eventually because it is intelligently designed so that there will always be a winner. But even aside from that, the lottery is a discrete event. The evolutionary idea proposes a series of improbable events occuring.

I don’t think this changes anything inter terms of plausibility. Probability is not plausibility. Taking a coin out of my pocket and flipping it 40 times is fantastically unlikely to produce this pattern:

HHTHHTTHHHTHHHHHTHHTTTHTHHTHTHTHTHHTTHH

Something like one in a trillion odds for that pattern. Nevertheless, it’s 40 discrete events, and it’s extremely improbable as a specific result, but it’s also perfectly plausible, as plausible as any other outcome.

So, while one person will necessarily win, it’s not true that the same person will necessarily win twice or three times, etc.

No, it’s not necessary that the same person will win twice or three or *n *times in a row. But a lottery winner who just one, and then goes to but a ticket for the next lottery has the same plausible path to win as the next guy who’s just bought a ticket form the same lottery. Similarly, the same person winning three (or more) lotteries in a row is just as plausible as different people winning each. It’s more probable that some one different wins the second lottery from the first, as there are so many “other” choices available, compared to the single “same person” choice. But in terms of plausibility, winning all three (or more) in a row is perfectly plausible (assuming the person bought a ticket for each, etc.).

-TS

 

[ricmat]

I don’t think this changes anything inter terms of plausibility. Probability is not plausibility. Taking a coin out of my pocket and flipping it 40 times is fantastically unlikely to produce this pattern:

HHTHHTTHHHTHHHHHTHHTTTHTHHTHTHTHTHHTTHH

Something like one in a trillion odds for that pattern. Nevertheless, it’s 40 discrete events, and it’s extremely improbable as a specific result, but it’s also perfectly plausible, as plausible as any other outcome.

So if you were to repeat the experiment above, which is more plausible…
a) The pattern above.
b) Any of the other patterns.

Let’s make a bet before you toss the coins. I’ll bet on b).

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Even scientists have a right to their opinions on a personal, subjective level, don’t they? It seems you are reluctant to let scientists speak as humans outside of scientific epistemology, and feel their every word must somehow carry weight as science.

This is typical of the way you take quotations from someone else and abuse them to the point where they are hardly meaningful at all. In both the quotes from Darwin and Einstein I never represented them as scientific opinions, but as opinions of the men who were scientists. Show me the passage where I said they were part of a scientific paper. One from Darwin was in a letter to Gray, the other was in from Darwin’s autobiography. These views represent the views of men who were of the highest intelligence, almost but apparently not quite as high as yours, since you have drawn the opposite conclusions. Their conclusions were plausible, even if not absolutely proven.

Your persistent lack of attention to detail and your persistent put-downs of the people you dialogue with makes it unlikely that you and I have anything else to say to each other. You may continue your long-winded, irrational, and often unintelligible diatribes, but they will be for the benfit of others, not for me, as I will no longer read them.

Good luck, as I know you truly believe in luck to the nth degree!

Darwin’s comment in 1860:

”I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe & especially the nature of man, & to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me.” (Letter from Darwin to Gray, 22 May 1860) (bold words added by me for emphasis)

Within ten years, in his autobiography, he would write:

“[Reason tells me of the] extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capability of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting, I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.” from The Autobiography of Charles Darwin.

From Albert Einstein:

“My religiosity consists of a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.”

 

[Touchstone]

So if you were to repeat the experiment above, which is more plausible…
a) The pattern above.
b) Any of the other patterns.

All of the possible patterns are equally plausible. It’s only as a matter of grouping patterns that one arrives at probabilistic differences. If someone tells you the pattern supplied is not plausible, you are justified in supposing that person doesn’t know what he’s talking about, no matter what the a priori probabilities are for that pattern.

Let’s make a bet before you toss the coins. I’ll bet on b).

Ah, now you are confusing probabilities with plausibility again.

-TS

 

[rossum]

So if you were to repeat the experiment above, which is more plausible…
a) The pattern above.
b) Any of the other patterns.

Let’s make a bet before you toss the coins. I’ll bet on b).

However, evolution does not “repeat the experiment”, instead it starts from the new position reached. Old beneficial results are preserved in the population while old deleterious results are eliminated from the population. Because the genome of the population is changing you can never repeat the old experiment but must start from a new base, which incorporates any beneficial mutations.

Raw probability calculations may well be able to measure coin tosses or lotteries, but they do not model evolution correctly. Unless the model includes natural selection then it is not a model of evolution.

rossum

 

[ricmat]

However, evolution does not “repeat the experiment”, instead it starts from the new position reached. Old beneficial results are preserved in the population while old deleterious results are eliminated from the population. Because the genome of the population is changing you can never repeat the old experiment but must start from a new base, which incorporates any beneficial mutations.

Raw probability calculations may well be able to measure coin tosses or lotteries, but they do not model evolution correctly. Unless the model includes natural selection then it is not a model of evolution.

rossum

Each step in the evolutionary process has a probability associated with it. And of course, depending on the state already reached, there may be billions or trillions or thousands (e.g. proto-humans) of parallel opportunities for the next step to take place.

Evolution does not repeat the experiment, but since we can’t directly do repeatable scientific experiments in the evolution world, we must sometimes resort to “mind experiments.”

If the outcome of H/T described in the post above somehow describes one necessary step on the path to complex life, it is useful as a mind exercise to pretend we go back to just before it happened, and then predict the probability of that event occurring.

Natural selection obviously has nothing to work with if that necessary step on the path to complex life never takes place. Or if ANY of the necessary steps don’t happen.

And countering with “Well, we know the probability is 100% because ‘Here we are.’” isn’t an argument that says anything about the original probability of how we got here.

As we discussed previously, it would be really cool if someone could do a best case / worst case, or even “one example using XXX assumptions” and see how the probabilities turn out. BTW - even if you let the natural filter selector be 100% (all road-to-complex-life-mutations are transmitted successfully), I think such a calculation would be useful.

 

[o_mlly]

… The scientific method cannot assess purpose, only causality. …

The scientific method is powerful but limited in its ability to discover reality. Since it cannot prove its own validity, the scientist begins, as do religious inquirers, with faith in their framework of inquiry. Both scientist and religionist agree that their data must cohere within the framework of logic.

A logical paradigm regarding causality, the specialty of science, is that an effect may not have a property or attribute not present in one or more of its causes. The phenomena of intelligence, defined as the ability to manipulate nature to one’s own purpose, exists. If a thing exists, it has a cause. What is the cause of intelligence? Would you have us believe intelligence is the spontaneous effect of some random combinations of non-intelligent causes? I think that would be rather unscientific.

The scientist who cannot answer such cause and effect questions and holds (on faith) that such questions can only be answered reliably by science promotes scientism – the belief that science has cornered the market on truth and, therefore, only science can provide meaning to observed phenomena.

Peace,
O’Malley

 

[tonyrey]

I want to emphasize again that the question of this thread is whether intelligent design of the universe and of life is plausible. For an idea to be plausible it does not have to be proven absolutely. There may be sufficient evidence to regard the idea as certainly not impossible, or contradictory, or specious (intentionally false).

I entirely agree with you but “plausible” suggests superficiality. A plausible explanation is often offered by criminals! Why not simply say “intelligent design is the best explanation” - which challenges the sceptic to produce a better explanation. If none is forthcoming he is in a very weak position. Any explanation is better than none, provided it is intelligible, consistent and fertile. .

 

[reggieM]

The scientific method is powerful but limited in its ability to discover reality. Since it cannot prove its own validity, the scientist begins, as do religious inquirers, with faith in their framework of inquiry. Both scientist and religionist agree that their data must cohere within the framework of logic.

A logical paradigm regarding causality, the specialty of science, is that an effect may not have a property or attribute not present in one or more of its causes. The phenomena of intelligence, defined as the ability to manipulate nature to one’s own purpose, exists. If a thing exists, it has a cause. What is the cause of intelligence? Would you have us believe intelligence is the spontaneous effect of some random combinations of non-intelligent causes? I think that would be rather unscientific.

The scientist who cannot answer such cause and effect questions and holds (on faith) that such questions can only be answered reliably by science promotes scientism – the belief that science has cornered the market on truth and, therefore, only science can provide meaning to observed phenomena.

Peace,
O’Malley

Good points. When confronted with many of the unsolved mysteries of the development of nature, scientism falls back on only one possible solution – unintelligent natural laws acting on matter. This is the “Darwin of the Gaps” idea – where evolution supposedly fills in everything that is unknown, even when there is zero or contradictory evidence.

The embrace of scientism is a choice that some people make - it’s the acceptance of a philosophical position. It’s interesting to try to find out why people make that choice. It’s not a result of scientific processes but rather, some personal conviction.