Intelligent Design: is it science?

[JustJim]

hmmmm, okay, the earth is 4.5 odd billion years old, how long before that was it that the 'matter' that I eventually was constructed from came into existence?

Ah, yes... but how long before the universe was it that your 'consciousness' was born? (heh heh heh)

Jim

[darkumbra]

Given that Wonders has left the building - replying to this might be pointless.

Well, I'm glad you replied, otherwise we wouldn't have heard you share

All I know is this, as I was being wheeled towards the operating room, and before they started to medicate me, I was not afraid of not waking up.

As I said in my reply to Wonders, I'm sure if I pushed somebody threatening to commit suicide off a ledge, I'm sure amongst their last thoughts wouldn't be an expression of "thanks!". Similarly, I bet that if, as you were being wheeled towards the operating room, somebody started to choke you (for some bizarre and inexplicable reason), I bet you'd struggle, and fight back as best as you could. What kicks into play is our primary instinct, our will to live. I don't think it's even, as you speculate,

someone taking what they have no right to take

because it occurs in all of the animal kingdom. Even a dog, howling in lament of its dead master, I'm sure would immediately fight tooth and nail if someone dunked its head under water, just as aggressively as it would at any other time in its life.

BTW, I'm very glad the operation was a success

Regards,
Ant

Agreed. The will to live is overriding for the most part. Those who commit suicide have to find ways to short circuit/defeat that instinct. The person who hangs himself struggles in the end.

That said? There is still the ability to be very stoic in the face of death. I had no choice but to undergo that operation... without it I was going to die. So, in order to avoid death, I was willing to accept the operation and the resulting chance of dying. AND I was able to do it without fear. Why? Mainly because it would be 100% painless, I would just not wake up, and because I had no other choice. The awareness that I might die, and that it didn't bother me, was one of the most peaceful feelings I've ever had. Still, if you'd started choking me while I was on the gurney? I'd have found a secondary use for the IV needle that was stuck in my arm, and for the metal toilet tray within arm's reach.

And yes - I'm also glad the operation was a sucess. As are my sons and wife and a handful of other people.

[spongebob]

This has probably already been stated, but one thing that is interesting about the ID movement is that it is equally incompatible with science and Christianity. ID proponents have resisted labeling their designer by name because of the legal implications regarding education, but it's a thin veil they wield. And yet, their designer is supposedly responsible for "fine tuning" the universe from the very moment of the big bang to make organic life possible and so that humans would eventually emerge. But evolution is refuted by IDer's because eyes and blood can't evolve, so they say. So, we have a group of geniuses saying in one breath that a "designer" fixed the universe to allow humans to emerge, not that it created the universe 6,000 years ago, and that humans were designed, not evolved. Isn't that a tad contradictory? Just what would be the point of designing the universe at a sub-atomic level so that stars and planets could form and allow for life to form and humans to evolve when you're just going to specially design humans anyway?

[OzAnt]

Bob,

I think the problem ID proponents have, is that they have in their midst, more than one Christian view. There are Christians out there who steadfastly believe the earth was created 6,000 years ago, mankind along with it. However, there's also quite a number of Christians out there who believe that evolution was the mechanism that God utilised to create man. I think that this is where the contradiction stems from.

Just what would be the point of designing the universe at a sub-atomic level so that stars and planets could form and allow for life to form and humans to evolve when you're just going to specially design humans anyway?

What would be the alternative? Bypass all the evolutionary steps and just create mankind and park a whole bunch of crates containing food, clothing and shelter nearby? We need our delicate ecosystem to survive. It's science that's now recognising that we're not going to survive as a species if we keep damaging the planet at the rate we are.

Perhaps I'm not understanding the question.

Regards,
Ant

[wondersforoyarsa]

This has probably already been stated, but one thing that is interesting about the ID movement is that it is equally incompatible with science and Christianity. ID proponents have resisted labeling their designer by name because of the legal implications regarding education, but it's a thin veil they wield. And yet, their designer is supposedly responsible for "fine tuning" the universe from the very moment of the big bang to make organic life possible and so that humans would eventually emerge. But evolution is refuted by IDer's because eyes and blood can't evolve, so they say. So, we have a group of geniuses saying in one breath that a "designer" fixed the universe to allow humans to emerge, not that it created the universe 6,000 years ago, and that humans were designed, not evolved. Isn't that a tad contradictory? Just what would be the point of designing the universe at a sub-atomic level so that stars and planets could form and allow for life to form and humans to evolve when you're just going to specially design humans anyway?

Hi spongebob,

Since I'm back in commission 'til Advent, I thought I'd weigh in here.

You need to be careful not to paint with too broad a brush. ID is a very broad movement, and includes creationists and evolutionists, and everything in between. Individual proponents tend to be pretty consistent, while you'd need to find the lowest common denominator to say things about all of them.

For myself, I am most convinced by the ID theory of front-loaded evolution. That is, life at its origin was seeded with some long term evolutionary planning. This gets around problems with evolution not being able to come up with complex systems piecemeal on pure chance and incremental advantage. I'm reading a fascinating book on the topic "The Design Matrix" by Mike Gene.

So to sum up - IDers are not necessarily saying that things like the eye and the blood can't evolve, but that they couldn't evolve without some sort of architectural planning. Put in the planning - the design, if you will - and they can evolve quite nicely.

And it really is plausible. Think for a moment - something like 30% of our genome we share with baker's yeast. The last common ancestor we had with baker's yeast was pretty darn long ago. That means that that huge portion of the genome has been there, able to work, able to influence things, without changing.

[spongebob]

For myself, I am most convinced by the ID theory of front-loaded evolution. That is, life at its origin was seeded with some long term evolutionary planning. This gets around problems with evolution not being able to come up with complex systems piecemeal on pure chance and incremental advantage.

I'm not aware of any complex problems or systems that have no proposed evolutionary mechanism to explain it. Some may not have been vetted yet, but why should they get a cold shoulder when magic gets a smile and a warm nod?

So to sum up - IDers are not necessarily saying that things like the eye and the blood can't evolve, but that they couldn't evolve without some sort of architectural planning. Put in the planning - the design, if you will - and they can evolve quite nicely.

You're right, ID seems to be too broad (read: inconsistent) to truly point to a specific model it espouses. But I don't think Michael Behe is suggesting that a designer assisted with the evolution of the eye, unless I've completely misunderstood him. His assertions sound more to me like the eye was designed from the atom up, as it is today, no evolution or change over time. Yet, as you said, there are those IDer's who propose that the designer encoded the path of evolution right in our DNA and maybe in sub atomic particles even. The two approaches are vastly different and I've yet to see any evidence to support either.

And it really is plausible. Think for a moment - something like 30% of our genome we share with baker's yeast. The last common ancestor we had with baker's yeast was pretty darn long ago. That means that that huge portion of the genome has been there, able to work, able to influence things, without changing.

Taken this way, anything is plausible if you consider that a little magic can get you over the hard parts. To me, this sounds like a warmed over "god of the gaps" argument? But aren't we suppose to be beyond that kind of thinking, Wonder? Didn't we kind of give up on that about 5 centuries ago and decide that evidence and falsafiable models were the way to go? At the end of the day, don't we need more than fanciful ideas about how things work? I think ideas are fine for inspiration, but to make use of them, we have to carry it into the scientific realm. When will ID ever enter this realm?

[wondersforoyarsa]

Taken this way, anything is plausible if you consider that a little magic can get you over the hard parts. To me, this sounds like a warmed over "god of the gaps" argument? But aren't we suppose to be beyond that kind of thinking, Wonder? Didn't we kind of give up on that about 5 centuries ago and decide that evidence and falsafiable models were the way to go? At the end of the day, don't we need more than fanciful ideas about how things work? I think ideas are fine for inspiration, but to make use of them, we have to carry it into the scientific realm. When will ID ever enter this realm?

What's unfalsifiable? What's not looking at evidence? If I suggest that the cells might have long-term evolutionary planning in them, am I making a magical claim that could never be verified or debunked? If I said that the earliest cells had such a thing, is this unfalsifiable?

[spongebob]

Taken this way, anything is plausible if you consider that a little magic can get you over the hard parts. To me, this sounds like a warmed over "god of the gaps" argument? But aren't we suppose to be beyond that kind of thinking, Wonder? Didn't we kind of give up on that about 5 centuries ago and decide that evidence and falsafiable models were the way to go? At the end of the day, don't we need more than fanciful ideas about how things work? I think ideas are fine for inspiration, but to make use of them, we have to carry it into the scientific realm. When will ID ever enter this realm?

What's unfalsifiable? What's not looking at evidence? If I suggest that the cells might have long-term evolutionary planning in them, am I making a magical claim that could never be verified or debunked? If I said that the earliest cells had such a thing, is this unfalsifiable?

Not at the outset, no. But we both know that hypothesizing is one thing, building a theory involves much more than that. I know you are suggesting that we have an open mind toward new ideas and that we should be willing to investigate them, but your language seems to lean more in the direction of accepting those ideas as they are. Right now they are just that, ideas. That doesn't mean they are unfalsifiable, but they certainly have not yet yielded the kind of evidence or even testible concepts that puts them squarely in league with science. I think about the big bang theory and the response it received early on. Nonsense, they said, and rightly so. But as time wore on and scientists worked their "magic", the rejections became less and less numerous. A few still remain; some even died rejecting big bang cosmology. But the theory is well structured, with solid scientific evidence. Strings also comes to mind. It was a darling a decade or so ago, now is seems to be dwindling. Why? No evidence and no workable model. ID is much older than strings, older than big bang cosmology, yet some people are still hanging on. How long will you hang on?

[wondersforoyarsa]

Not at the outset, no. But we both know that hypothesizing is one thing, building a theory involves much more than that. I know you are suggesting that we have an open mind toward new ideas and that we should be willing to investigate them, but your language seems to lean more in the direction of accepting those ideas as they are. Right now they are just that, ideas. That doesn't mean they are unfalsifiable, but they certainly have not yet yielded the kind of evidence or even testible concepts that puts them squarely in league with science. I think about the big bang theory and the response it received early on. Nonsense, they said, and rightly so. But as time wore on and scientists worked their "magic", the rejections became less and less numerous. A few still remain; some even died rejecting big bang cosmology. But the theory is well structured, with solid scientific evidence. Strings also comes to mind. It was a darling a decade or so ago, now is seems to be dwindling. Why? No evidence and no workable model. ID is much older than strings, older than big bang cosmology, yet some people are still hanging on. How long will you hang on?

It's an age old debate (going at least as far back as the ancient Greeks) - and the teleological side had the upper hand for a very long time. After Darwin, the non-teleological side got the upper hand, but now new evidence is emerging that gives me some confidence that the pendulum is about to swing the other way again.

[spongebob]

It's an age old debate (going at least as far back as the ancient Greeks) - and the teleological side had the upper hand for a very long time. After Darwin, the non-teleological side got the upper hand, but now new evidence is emerging that gives me some confidence that the pendulum is about to swing the other way again.

You say "new evidence"; I say "wishful thinking".

[wondersforoyarsa]

You say "new evidence"; I say "wishful thinking".

It may be "wishful thinking" that the new evidence is going to be enough to swing the pendulum the other way. But the point is that new scientific discoveries are made, and those discoveries may be more friendly to one paradigm or the other. I think that the discovery of error correction and parity in the encoding of DNA, sophisticated molecular machinery and factory production, and constant echoes of technology on the sub cellular level, are friendly discoveries to the teleological view. They certainly don't help the non-teleological view. Theories of abiogenesis didn't suddenly get easier with the discovery of these machines. You don't say "there are machines here - so obviously this is the product of undirected natural forces". It is counter intuitive. Instead you have to say - "even though these machines might make you suspicious of design, actually there are undirected forces that could account for them as well".

There are many more discoveries to be made, which may push the consensus to one side or another. The next 50 years will certainly be interesting.

[spongebob]

...But the point is that new scientific discoveries are made, and those discoveries may be more friendly to one paradigm or the other. I think that the discovery of error correction and parity in the encoding of DNA, sophisticated molecular machinery and factory production, and constant echoes of technology on the sub cellular level, are friendly discoveries to the teleological view. They certainly don't help the non-teleological view. Theories of abiogenesis didn't suddenly get easier with the discovery of these machines. You don't say "there are machines here - so obviously this is the product of undirected natural forces". It is counter intuitive. Instead you have to say - "even though these machines might make you suspicious of design, actually there are undirected forces that could account for them as well".

There are many more discoveries to be made, which may push the consensus to one side or another. The next 50 years will certainly be interesting.

Maybe I need to be reading more on the subject of ID because I really don't know of any new discoveries that are truly friendly to their cause. DNA error correction I'm aware of, though not familiar with the mechanism. Even so, I don't see that as automatically favoring ID, not without knowing something more about it. That sounds like more assumptions to me, assumptions that the origins of such a feature are non-natural. Again, this is just a continuation of god of the gaps. If we assume that anything new and mysterious is god, then it immediately turns the conversation in a supernatural way. It would seem that by this point, theists would have learned to stop making these assumptions. Even the assumption that there are many more discoveries to be made is not necessarily supportable. There's no guarantee of that. We may find ourselves stuck with unanswered questions for the next 500 years, until some new leap of technology. Will that mean that the god assumption will fill that gap?

And I also take issue with the scientific framework of evolution being labled as a "paradigm". It may fit the definition technically, but in some way it seems unfitting. Since science is the methodology man has used for over 500 years to lift ourselves out of the dark ages of superstition, I think it deserves a better moniker than "paradigm". And if ID or any other model is ever to convince us of its validity, it will be through the use of the scientific method. I would accept that the Evolutionary Model may experience changes in the future. No, I will state firmly that I expect it to experience changes, possibly drastic changes. But these changes will only come about through the application of science. No other method has been reliable.

[wondersforoyarsa]

Maybe I need to be reading more on the subject of ID because I really don't know of any new discoveries that are truly friendly to their cause.

I would recommend Mike Gene's new book "The Design Matrix". I'm reading it now, and its quite good - downright refreshing, even. If you're willing to read it, I'll order you a copy for Christmas - just send me your address on my blog email.

And if ID or any other model is ever to convince us of its validity, it will be through the use of the scientific method.

Absolutely. I am not proposing a change in methodology - though I think methodological ID has the potential to be a fantastic guide to research (as indeed it already is).

[spongebob]

I would recommend Mike Gene's new book "The Design Matrix". I'm reading it now, and its quite good - downright refreshing, even. If you're willing to read it, I'll order you a copy for Christmas - just send me your address on my blog email.

Thanks for the offer. I'll look it up myself. I need to finish 2 or 3 other books I'm already into, hopefully by Xmas. Is it a relatively new book?

[wondersforoyarsa]

Thanks for the offer. I'll look it up myself. I need to finish 2 or 3 other books I'm already into, hopefully by Xmas. Is it a relatively new book?

Very new. I have an advanced copy in my hands, signed by the author that came in the mail this week.