You may already have seen it, but if not, have a look at this New York Times article from last weekend, “Debate Over Intelligent Design Ensnares a Journal.” It’s a sordid tale of sneering and prejudice, dressed up in the costume of academic philosophy–and of the good sense and probity of some journal editors, bless them.
It seems that two years ago the journal Synthese published a guest-edited issue online with the thematic title “Evolution and Its Rivals” (the print edition did not come out until this year). One of the articles in the issue, by philosophy professor Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University, was an attack on the intellectual output–and, read in a certain light, on the integrity–of philosopher Francis Beckwith of Baylor (a writer known to many readers here). Evidently having mastered the art of collapsing distinctions, Forrest declared that “Intelligent Design” is indistinguishable from “creationism”; that Beckwith, who explicitly parts company with ID advocates, is actually one of them; that his argument for the constitutionality of teaching ID must mean he subscribes to that school of thought in toto; and that he is the enemy of the Constitution to boot for taking a view denied in one Pennsylvania courtroom but held by large numbers of respectable constitutional scholars.
The regular editors of the journal, seemingly prompted by Forrest’s essay above all (and perhaps by it alone), published a statement in the print edition of the issue this year deploring the “tone” of some of the contents of the special issue whose editing they had handed over to guest editors. They also gave Beckwith space for a 23-page reply to Forrest’s 49-page attack on him. To read Forrest and Beckwith is like turning from Thrasymachus to Socrates, except that Thrasymachus, we know, could blush when abashed. The editors are to be commended for taking the matter in hand with both their mild-mannered statement and their provision of space to Beckwith.
But of course all heck broke loose in the village of the darned known as academic philosophy departments. Before you could say “HMS Beagle,” the pack was baying at the gates of Synthese, describing Forrest (!) as the aggrieved party and crying that the editors must take it all back and confess their sins. They have manfully resisted these silly demands, and rightly so.
The Times account is pretty fair-minded, as Times accounts go. My favorite nugget is the revelation that one of the guest editors entrusted with this special issue of Synthese is a 9/11 “truther.” Do we want to take instruction in the nature of reality from such a person?
May 20th, 2011 | 3:49 pm
A forensic pathologist can determine – scientifically – that an intelligent agent is most likely the cause of the phenomenon currently under his surveillance – that being a corpse. An archaeologist can determine – scientifically – that intelligent agents were most likely the cause of the straight rows of rectangular shaped stones he has uncovered. SETI scientists were convinced they could distinguish – scientifically – between noise and an intelligently caused signal arriving here from some distant galaxy. And so on. Science legitimately, routinely determines that an intelligent agent is the most likely cause of a given phenomenon. Determining that an intelligent agent brought about a given phenomenon is not at all controversial – unless the phenomenon under examination is *life.*
Why is that? Why don’t the atheists just admit that it is not science determining that an intelligent agent is the cause of a phenomenon that they are opposed to, it is science determining *life* was most likely brought about with the involvement of an intelligent agent. They are not defending science from being tainted by religion as they would have us believe. They are themselves doing what they accuse others of doing: tainting science with their (atheistic) religious beliefs.
Science, to remain true science, must be relentlessly objective, not letting the religious implications of scientific discoveries influence science’s pursuit of the truth one bit. Currently the best explanation of the origin of life includes the involvement of an intelligent agent. That is just the way it is, in spite of the conniption fits that science perverted by religious atheism has had in response to that state of affairs.
May 20th, 2011 | 4:07 pm
Harry, you are confusing Abiogenesis (the start of life) with Evolution (what happened after life first appeared).
May 20th, 2011 | 5:02 pm
R Hampton wrote:
“Harry, you are confusing Abiogenesis (the start of life) with Evolution (what happened after life first appeared).”
I don’t think so, my friend. Whether it be the cause of the origin of life with its astoundingly complex information content, or the cause of the increase in the complexity of information in living organisms, a theory including the involvement of an intelligent agent still has the most explanatory power. After all, the only known source of information is an intellect.
May 20th, 2011 | 6:15 pm
Beckwith has a rundown of all his posts on this matter. You can find them on his blog in a post on the Times piece. Just click my name.
May 20th, 2011 | 6:18 pm
Here’s what’s wrong with this:
“A forensic pathologist can determine – scientifically – that an intelligent agent is most likely the cause of the phenomenon currently under his surveillance – that being a corpse.”
Yes, a HUMAN inteligent agent.
“An archaeologist can determine – scientifically – that intelligent agents were most likely the cause of the straight rows of rectangular shaped stones he has uncovered.”
That woudl be another human intellgient agent.
“SETI scientists were convinced they could distinguish – scientifically – between noise and an intelligently caused signal arriving here from some distant galaxy.”
Actually this is not quite true. They attempted to do so but they were not able to do so, so they were not “convinced” they coudl do so. They could not, for example, even determine that we may have already received millions of intelligently caused signals already and just not recognized them for what they were.
Why not? We don’t know how non-human intellgiences act or their capabilities.
“And so on.” === “I ran ran out of examples.”
“After all, the only known source of information is an intellect.”
More precisely, human intellect. We have zero scientific information about non-human intellects. Despite the accusations, science does not rule out intelligence–there’s just no scientific evidence for such intelligence at our current state of knowledge.
May 20th, 2011 | 6:37 pm
“My favorite nugget is the revelation that one of the guest editors entrusted with this special issue of Synthese is a 9/11 “truther.”
Good question: How much of a flake do you have to be in one subject before your ideas in yoru professional area of expertise are worth dismissing out of hand?
May 20th, 2011 | 6:49 pm
The attempt to find an analogy between creationism, particularly ID creationism, and forensic science, and archaeology dates to the 1994 publication of “The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for the Intelligent Designer” (J. P. Moreland (ed.), Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press). Specifically, the chapter by Walter L. Bradley, and Charles B. Thaxton, “Information and the Origin of Life” advanced this notion.
It fails.
The reason it fails is that the forensic expert, and the archaeologist are both building their decisions from direct comparisons to events known to be caused by humans, to their observations from an excavation, or examination of a possible crime scene. I discuss this at some length in “The Explanatory Filter, Archaeology, and Forensics” published in “Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism” (Matt Young, Taner Edis (Editors), 2004 Rutgers University Press).
The quickest way to get the point is to read the Kizmiller v Dover trial record of Mike Behe’s cross examination starting in the afternoon of Day 12 of the trial.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day12pm2.html#day12pm475
We can never assert that the “ways of God” are known, nor subject to the same limitations as humanity’s actions. Yet without this assertion, there is no basis for the analogy of Divine creation, to “design detection.”
May 20th, 2011 | 7:17 pm
I would chime in on the side of harry. The theory of evolution by natural selection does not offer to explain how a living cell came into being out of non-living matter. It only offers to explain how already existing living cells could differentiate and diversify into increasingly complex forms. The advocates of militant atheism like Richard Dawkins tend to gloss over the inability of the neo-darwinian synthesis of genetics and natural selection to explain how an evolvable system came into being in the first instance.
The various materialist hypotheses about this transition have utterly failed to demonstrate anything beyond a little speculation and a lot of hand waving. None of them is strong enough to eliminate any of its rivals.
What any theory of life’s origin has to explain is the creation from inanimate, non-living matter of a cell that has (a) a membrane that separates its contents from the rest of the world, keeping the important stuff in and keeping the bad stuff out, meaning it has a selective capability to allow only certain materials to pass through its barrier; (b) a mechanism for operating a cell, taking in material and energy, constructing all parts of the cell, and able to reproduce all of the cell contents and mechanisms; and (c) a “computer program” that has both data that matches, one to one, the design of all the components of the cell, including the membrane and the mechanisms, and is capable of guiding the production of all of it. These are the basic components of a living cell. Without all these components, a cell cannot live or reproduce. And it cannot evolve. Yet there is no viable hypothesis as to how inanimate, non-living matter could transition into matter that is as highly organized and coordinated as a cell, with matches between its software and hardware. Anyone who has ever done any serious computer programming knows that random production of computer code does not work. It produces gridlock and failure. Unguided nature cannot write viable computer code. There is no reason to think that any random process that could create the mechanisms of a cell could also create DNA code to guide the creation of those mechanisms. A self-reproducing factory that can make copies of itself, a Von Neuman machine, is a dream of cybernetics, but it has never existed. If it ever comes into existence, it will be through intense application of human intelligence. We have avsolutely zero examples in nature of anything like a Von Neuman machine coming into existence without the application of intelligence.
Frnakly, it seems quite possible that mankind will be able to understand enough about the structure of cells and DNA within the next century or two to be able to synthesize a simple living cell from scratch. The quantum of intelligence that is needed to make the leap from dead matter to living matter is apparently close to what mankind currently employs. It would not have to be an infinite intelligence, which is the classic definition of God for many people. But it is a degree of living intelligence, which is an essential ingredient into any rational scenario for creating life from non-life. So the unanswered problem that precedes the ability of evolution to offer answers does not necessarily demand the existence of a “God-like intelligence”. But it does rationallydemand the existence, at a time some 4 billion years ago, of an active intelligence of at keast human grade, with a knowledge and skill and tool bank at least comparable to that of the 21st Century, as a miniimum.
And once we conclude that someone at least as smart as us was around 4 billiion years ago to jump start life on earth, we have to accept the possibility that the same intelligent entity, or one of its successors, was available to act during the period of life’s evolution. Once we grant that someone was around to create life, we cannot rule out the hypothesis that the same type of person was ready willing and able to participate in the further development of life, as an additional mechanism to darwinian evolution, just as human beings have intervened in evolution of domestic plants and animals for the last 10,000 years. It need not be the exclusive or even dominant mechanism in evolution, but it would be able to take a hand when evolution needed another quantum leap, for the same mysterious motive that led it to create life in the first place.
In a universe that was already almost 10 billion years old, we cannot rule out the possibility that the origin of this actor was some other solar system. After all, as the darwinians say, with enough time and enough planets, anything is not only possible, it becomes almost certain.
Identifying this actor, whose existence at the start of life on earth is a necessary deduction, with God, a being of infinite power and knowledge, is definitely a streatch. The minimum abilities to be the “creator” in this limited sense are far below the level most people usually expect of God, and there is no logical chain linking the minimal creator with the omnipotent Creator. Giving the God of Genesis, John and Hebrews the credit for creation is due to the testimony of prophets and apostles, and is not a deduction from the facts of biology. The need for an originator of life does not lead us inexorably to the classic God of Christian and Jewish tradition.
Arguments for a more powerful Creator can be made based on the anthropic coincidences of modern physics and cosmology, but biology alone does not take us there. If we accept a Creator for the Big Bang, having one for the start of life is almost trivial. But the biological creator does not necessarily have to be the same as the cosmological creator, apart from our records of the Creator telling us this.
So the Intelligent Design movement may wish to consider a more modest claim, as to the capabilities of the creator of biology, over against the infinitely greater capabilities that are required for a designer of the galaxies.
May 20th, 2011 | 7:46 pm
Sadly, in some “professional areas of expertise,” of which there are many in the academic world, you have to be “a flake” to get a job.
May 20th, 2011 | 8:16 pm
Harry,
“In natural science, abiogenesis (pronounced /ˌeɪbaɪ.ɵˈdʒɛnɨsɪs/ ay-by-oh-jen-ə-siss) or biopoesis is the study of how biological life arises from inorganic matter through natural processes, and the method by which life on Earth arose.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
“Evolution (also known as biological or organic evolution) is the change over time in one or more inherited traits found in populations of organisms. Inherited traits are particular distinguishing characteristics, including anatomical, biochemical or behavioural characteristics, that are passed on from one generation to the next. Evolution may occur when there is variation of inherited traits within a population. The major sources of such variation are mutation, genetic recombination and gene flow. Evolution has led to the diversification of all living organisms from a common ancestor, which are described by Charles Darwin as ‘endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful’”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
And from a pro-ID source:
“Under the abiogenesis hypothesis, life arose from non-living chemicals on the early earth.”
“The Darwinian evolutionary theories are based upon the assumption of continual competition among species and among individuals of a given species.”
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?id=496
May 20th, 2011 | 8:27 pm
To continue with Joe McFaul’s point,
Within ID theory, there is no distinction between an alien intelligence or God’s intelligence in the current evidence for life on Earth. Both are equally plausible for ID’s only concern is the detection of Intelligence – not the source, quality or quantity thereof. Consequently it is equally plausible that there were/are multiple intelligences in co-operation and/or competition in the current evidence for life on Earth. Which opens the door to theories of little green men and a pantheon of Gods – something that the Christians behind ID seldom admit:
Introduction to Multiple Designers Theory
Richard B. Hoppe
Several years ago I published an early version of Multiple Designers Theory on ISCID’s Brainstorms, the web forum of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design, a mainstream ID web site. ISCID’s URL is owned by William A. Dembski, Executive Director of ISCID and a leading proponent of mainstream intelligent design . . . MDT is an exercise in extending the intelligent Design conjecture offered by such luminaries as Jonathan Wells, William A. Dembski and Michael Behe, and their Discovery Institute colleagues, who posit a single designer. As I show in “Introduction to Multiple Designers Theory” below, that is an arbitrary and unsupported assumption.”
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2004/09/introduction-to.html
May 20th, 2011 | 9:22 pm
I’m not at all an atheist, but I just don’t believe that excluding what goes by the name of intelligent design from science classes is any kind of discrimination. We’re dealing with a definitional issue here. Whether or not the universe was designed and by what or whom is simply beyond the scope of science. The purpose of science is to describe how the universe that does exist works. Science can and does investigate the origins of the universe, but that investigation has limits. Even assuming Stephen Hawkings is right about the laws of gravity etc. being sufficient to account for the existence of the universe, he still hasn’t accounted for the existence of those laws themselves, nor can he. That’s simply not his job. I’m not advocating Stephen J. Gould’s “non-overlapping magisteria.” There is absolutely no reason not to marry scientific investigation to philosophical or theological speculation, but to do so is NOT to do science. To believe otherwise is to commit a category error.
May 20th, 2011 | 10:45 pm
harry –
Define “information”. (Make sure it’s measurable!)
May 21st, 2011 | 12:06 am
Harry I couldn’t have said it better myself.
I think this analogy of yours also applies to neo Darwinism as well as OOL/origin of life. I also think that the word evolution itself is a safe word that many atheist and Darwinist (and to be fair, even some Christians use) because the real term that should be used is neo Darwinism which the modern synthesis is based on. In reality, the term evolution can encompass many things including chemical or molecular evolution/OOL.
I’m sure we can all agree that Darwinism has its place in science and can explain variation and adaptation. It is the limits of neo Darwinism that is, and has been debated since the theory was proposed even if by a minority. A persons world view can and sometimes does influence ones own views on science, and we have extremist on both sides, but the the great thing about empirical science is that we can quantify or falsify these claims.
As far as my personal metaphysical views regarding Christianity are concerned, I have no problem with the (concept) of Darwinism and never have, but as a scientific theory, I have come to the conclusion that not only is it a weak theory filled with many failed and unfulfilled predictions, but that it is also dying the death of a thousand cuts, and not because of politics or dogma, but because of empirical and observable science itself. 2011 and the Dissent from Darwin list continues to grow.
May 21st, 2011 | 11:52 am
[...] http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/05/20/nature-and-the-philosophers/ You may already have seen it, but if not, have a look at this New York Times article from last weekend, “Debate Over Intelligent Design Ensnares a Journal.” It’s a sordid tale of sneering and prejudice, dressed up in the costume of academic philosophy–and of the good sense and probity of some journal editors, bless them. [...]
May 21st, 2011 | 12:05 pm
As I wrote in my Summa Theologica I.73.1.rep3:
“…all things subsequently made had in a sense been made before in the work of the six days. … Species, also, that are new, if any such appear, existed beforehand in various active powers; so that animals, and perhaps even new species of animals, are produced by putrefaction by the power which the stars and elements received at the beginning.”
IOW, the origin of species is to be found in the powers [natures] given to matter by creation. Why do you moderns always confuse transformation [of one form to another of matter] with creation, the existence of matter and form in the first place?
+ + +
[i]The theory of evolution by natural selection does not offer to explain how a living cell came into being out of non-living matter. [/i]
No surprise. The theory of gravitation does not explain how magnets work, either.
May 21st, 2011 | 12:43 pm
Hello, Raymond Takashi Swenson,
You are right. Intelligent Design advocates, as scientists, should have no interest in demonstrating that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was the intelligence involved in bringing about life on Earth. I don’t think ID advocates want that. They should want what objective science demands: the simple acknowledgment that intelligence is a reality. As a reality intelligence can be a causal factor in bringing about a given phenomenon. To insist on intelligence being ruled out as a factor in life coming about on Earth simply because that doesn’t sit well with one’s atheistic religious beliefs is a perversion of science.
It is not like there is no reason to believe an intelligence was involved. The massive amount of digital logic embedded in the DNA molecule is just that: logic. Volumes of logic are always the product of a mind, never mindlessness.
May 21st, 2011 | 12:51 pm
Hello, Ben,
You wrote:
“I have no problem with the (concept) of Darwinism and never have, but as a scientific theory, I have come to the conclusion that not only is it a weak theory filled with many failed and unfulfilled predictions, but that it is also dying the death of a thousand cuts, and not because of politics or dogma, but because of empirical and observable science itself.”
I never had a problem with the concept of Darwinism either. Its refusal to die the dignified death of a fallen scientific theory is the result of modern science having been hijacked by religious atheism.
May 21st, 2011 | 5:08 pm
Or possibly its extensive explanatory power and power to unify so many strands of biological thought?
May 21st, 2011 | 6:08 pm
Forrest cites Paul Kurtz:
Philosophically, for science to examine evidence for/against intelligent causation, it must first presuppose that:
1) Intelligent agents exist.
2) Intelligent agents can influence nature.
3) Intelligent causation is distinguishable from nature.
From archeology to cryptography, forensics, to steganography scientists practice
Until science seriously allows for and actively searches for evidence of intelligent causation, it has nothing to say about the existence and influence of intelligent agent(s).
May 21st, 2011 | 6:09 pm
Barbara Forrest asserts: “Intelligent design creationism (ID) is a religious belief requiring a supernatural creator’s interventions in the natural order.”
Forrest miss-defines and superficially conflates Intelligent Design with Creation Science:
See: ID Defined
Compare: Uncommon Descent and The Evolutionary Informatics Lab with Creation Science>; Institute for Creation Science.
By contrast,
May 22nd, 2011 | 2:31 pm
Except that science relies on methodological naturalism. There is a distinction between the two.
May 22nd, 2011 | 3:07 pm
This, of course is laughable:
“he is the enemy of the Constitution to boot for taking a view denied in one Pennsylvania courtroom but held by large numbers of respectable constitutional scholars.”
Nobody accused Beckwith of being an enemy of the Constitution. There are exactly *zero* respectable constitutional scholars that suggest it is constitutional to teach ID in public school science classes.
Beckwith made such an argument in his 2003 book. The book displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of law and philosophy. His book ignored one basic legal objection to ID. There is very strong evidence that ID is simply creationism “re-branded” to teach creationism in public schools. Beckwith dismissed this argument as an ad hominem, demonstrating that he didn’t understand what an ad hominem argument was, an elementary mistake for a philosopher to make.
He also argues that courts are required to take at face value ID’s self-designation as science and are in no position to determine what is “science” and what is “religion” and how to determine when religion being proffered as a “sham” science.
He fundamentally misunderstands the legal system. Courts face the “sham” argument on a daily basis and address sham distinctions constantly. Vito Corleone’s so-called “olive oil insurance premium” are easily recognized as extortion. The IRS is used to dealing with “structured” financial transactions resembling something they are not, such as non-profit organizations, donations or loans. “Structuring” is a legal doctrine referring in general to “sham financial transactions.”
Even religion is not exempt from sham analysis. If you form a religion and then claim your home as a “parsonage” the IRS will have no trouble treating the donations and gifts and the home as “income.” Beckwith is not a lawyer, not admitted to practice before the Supreme Court, never written a Supreme Court brief and is not a constitutional scholar as that word is understood, so I don’t expect him to have grasped these points.
In 2004, before the Dover decision, constitutional scholars and lawyers pointed out that Beckwith’s dismissal of the sham argument was a major shortcoming in his book. Unknown to all, ID made it easy. The textbook in question had numerous passages stating “creationists think “X” and evolutionists think ”Y.” In the edition of the textbook published immediately after the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning creationism, the word “creationist” had been “search and replaced” with the phrase “design proponents.” Unfortunately the search and replace function didn’t work perfectly and the textbook now contained a hilarious typo “cdesign proponentsists” in place of “creationists” or “design proponents”, demonstrating both method and motive of the sham.
The 2005 decision had the effect of “falsifying” Beckwith’s 2003 analysis and ratifying the contemporaneous criticism he had received from constitutional scholars.
Beckwith has since disassociated himself with the Discovery Institute and with the Intelligent Design movement. Good for him. I suspect that was connected to his conversion to Catholicism.
May 22nd, 2011 | 3:40 pm
John is perfectly correct. But MN does not entail the denial of formal and final causality. It just means that science concerns itself with material and efficient causality. But would it not follow from this that if the first four of Aquinas’ (my) work, then we have shown that there is an efficient and necessary cause of all contingent existence? In that case, my first four ways would be “science,” even though it apparently established an extra-natural cause. Where have I gone wrong, John?
Now, here’s how you may respond to me: metaphysical answers, though depending on empirical observations, are not themselves deliverances of science. Fair enough. But in that case, the sort of grandiosity displaced by Dawkins, Forrest, etc. on the hegemony of science to answer all questions should be as strongly rejected as is intelligent design. Is that a good way to go, John?
May 22nd, 2011 | 6:23 pm
Apparently, Joe does not believe that Kent Greenawalt (Columbia Law School) is respectable constitutional scholar: http://law.hamline.edu/files/pdfs/jlr/pdfs/LundGreenawalt.pdf
Apparently, Joe does not believe that the esteemed philosopher Thomas Nagel (who has an appointment at NYU law school) counts either. Here is Nagel’s article that appeared in Philosophy and Public Affairs, perhaps the most prestigious journal in legal and political philosophy: http://tinyurl.com/3o5zboy
The cases made by Beckwith, Greenawalt, and Nagel are nearly indistinguishable.
As for Beckwith’s “credentials,” Joe’s comments are laughable. Belonging to a bar is about as relevant to legal scholarship as an MD is to laboratory science. Beckwith’s law degree is an academic degree in law, and he wrote a thesis (on ID and the Constitution) to boot, under the guidance of one of the great philosophers of law, Stanley Paulsen. And last I checked, Joe, your alma mater is way below in rankings than the school from which Beckwith graduated. And last I checked, Joe, your academic law publication record is, compared to Beckwith’s, zip (to employ your own sophisticated lingo): http://tinyurl.com/3hp8mzp
Oh, and before I forget: The sly suggestion that Beckwith’s Italian-American ethnicity is behind this by comparing him to an “olive oil salesman” is particularly vile.
Joe, no wonder you dismiss the relevance of the ad hominem fallacy: its the coin of your realm.
May 22nd, 2011 | 6:46 pm
Joe writes:
“There are exactly *zero* respectable constitutional scholars that suggest it is constitutional to teach ID in public school science classes.”
Oops: http://kmischutte.blogspot.com/2008/09/constitutionality-of-intelligent-design.html
From Nagel’s article, quoted in the above link: “ID is very different from creation science. To an outsider, at least, it does not seem to depend on massive distortion of the evidence and hopeless incoherencies in its interpretation. Nor does it depend, like biblical literalism, on the assumption that the truth of ID is immune to empirical evidence to the contrary. What it does depend on is the assumption that the hypothesis of a designer makes sense and cannot be ruled out as impossible or assigned a vanishingly small probability in advance…Critics take issue with the claims made by defenders of ID about what standard evolutionary mechanisms can accomplish, and argue that they depend on faulty assumptions. Whatever the merits, however, that is clearly a scientific disagreement, not a disagreement between science and something else.”
Beckwith and Greenawalt say the same thing. See also, the comments of Larry Arnhart, Darwinian critic of ID: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/12/13/arnhart/
Joe, I am actually with you on many of these issues. I do not think ID should be taught in public schools. But, as Greenawalt, Beckwith, and Nagel point out, it’s not creationism. The fact that one can believe in ID and deny the truth of Scripture pretty much proves that. If that’s possible, then they are not the same thing. Perhaps an illustration will help. Think of the difference between genus and species: both ID and creationism are species of the genus, non-materialisms, just as German Shepherd and poodle are species of the genus, canine. As Franck has adeptly pointed out, folks like you collapse these sorts of distinctions in ways that are intellectually unfruitful. So, if ID and creationism are the same, so are German Shepherds and poodles. But we know that’s not true.
I don’t think anyone wants to see the latter two mate. It can get ugly.
May 22nd, 2011 | 7:39 pm
Dear Joe McFaul: You wrote: “Beckwith dismissed this argument as an ad hominem, demonstrating that he didn’t understand what an ad hominem argument was, an elementary mistake for a philosopher to make.”
Ad hominem arguments attempt to sidestep genuine argument by name-calling, whether the name-calling is directed at a person or at another argument.
If someone does not engage ID in argument, but dismisses it by referring to it as “creationism” as if that settled the issue, then this is a form of ad hominem, and Beckwith is correct in calling it that.
You are also correct, however, in saying that not understanding the nature of ad hominem argument is an elementary mistake.
May 22nd, 2011 | 10:37 pm
John Farrell
Except that science relies on methodological naturalism. There is a distinction between the two.
YOS
Let’s see what Christian philosophers had to say back in the Age of Faith:
William of Conches:
“[God] is the author of all things, evil excepted. But the natures with which He endowed His creatures accomplish a whole scheme of operations, and these too turn to His glory since it is He who created these very natures.”
St. Augustine of Hippo
It is therefore, *causally* that Scripture has said that *earth* brought forth the crops and trees, in the sense that it received the power of bringing them forth. In the earth from the beginning, in what I might call the roots of time, God created what was to be in times to come.
(On the literal meanings of Genesis, Book V Ch. 4:11)
St. Albertus Magnus
“In studying nature we have not to inquire how God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures to work miracles and thereby show forth His power; we have rather to inquire *what Nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass.*”
(De vegetabilibus et plantis)
Adelard of Bath
“[T]he natural order does not exist confusedly and without rational arrangement, and human reason should be listened to concerning those things it treats of. But when it completely fails, then the matter should be referred to God. Therefore, since we have not yet completely lost the use of our minds, let us return to reason.”
(Quaestiones naturales)
St. Thomas Aquinas
Nature is nothing but the plan of some art, namely a divine one, *put into things themselves, by which those things move towards a concrete end*: as if the man who builds up a ship could give to the pieces of wood that they could move by themselves to produce the form of the ship.
(Commentary on Physics II.8, lecture 14, no. 268)
By golly, John, you’re right. The medieval Christians demanded it.
May 23rd, 2011 | 12:38 am
Craig, Your definition of ad hominem is correct.
But the argument being made is not an ad hominem argument. The argument is that ID is claiming to be something other than what it is, specifically that ID was re-branded creationism and that re-branding occurred not coincidentally immediately after the Aguilard decision as evidenced by, among other things, the “cdesign proponentsists” Proving evidence that ID is a sham is not an ad hominem
If you can’t understand the difference between ad hominem and “callign a spade a spade” then then I can’t help you. You do seem to have the red herring fallacy handled pretty well, though–kudos.
“And last I checked, Joe, your alma mater is way below in rankings than the school from which Beckwith graduated.”
Now, that’s an ad hominem. However, let me reiterate. Beckwith did not graduate from any law school. He’s not a lawyer and got an intermediate academic degree that..well let’s just say it’s not a law degree. His publication list is not for the most part in legal journals nor are the subejct matters “constitutional law.” Sorry, he’s not a constiutional scholar.
“Oh, and before I forget: The sly suggestion that Beckwith’s Italian-American ethnicity is behind this by comparing him to an “olive oil salesman” is particularly vile.”
Are you getting treated for your paranoia?
“both ID and creationism are species of the genus, non-materialisms, just as German Shepherd and poodle are species of the genus, canine. As Franck has adeptly pointed out, folks like you collapse these sorts of distinctions in ways that are intellectually unfruitful. So, if ID and creationism are the same, so are German Shepherds and poodles. But we know that’s not true.”
They’re both the same species of dog. Sometime that distinction is important and sometimes it’s not. Old Earth Creationism, Young Earth Creationism and ID are all the breeds of the same species, “Creationism.” There are other breeds of creationism as well.
For religious purposes those distinctions may be important. For teaching science in public schools those distinctions are not important and, for all practical purposes, ID can be treated as a form of creationism.
As for “respected Constitutional scholars,” the only one who might qualify is Greenawalt. He wrote a 2005 article that posters here googled (it’s the first hit) and triumphantly accused me of overlooking without actually reading the article itself or determining what Greenawalt actually thinks today.
In 2005, before Dover, Greenawalt suggested that ID was not science but could be taught in public schools as an example of comparing science and non-science. That was the same point that Arnhart made and it’s a different point than Beckwith was making.
After Dover, Greenawalt acknowledged the force of the sham argument. See Religion and the Constitution (2009) pp. 151-152.
So, to various posters’ disappointment, Greenawalt agrees with me. Here, he addresses the judge’s decision in the Dover case, “An otherwise acceptable theory should not be indefinitely tainted by religious roots, but the court reasonably took the history of this theory’s development as a strong indication of its character.”
My point stands. No reputable constitutional scholar currently argues that teaching ID in science class is constitutional. Greenawalt does not make that argument. I don’t even think Beckwith would make that argument today.
May 23rd, 2011 | 1:33 am
“… science relies on methodological naturalism.”
Then science must fail miserably if the simple truth is that life was necessarily the result of an intelligent configuration of lifeless matter, that having been the only way it could have come about initially. Why should science restrict itself to boundaries imposed upon it by methodological naturalism when that makes it impossible for it to discern where intelligence is a causal factor in the phenomenon under examination? It is irrational to proceed as though intelligence cannot be a causal reality when it most certainly can. Science has to be rational to remain science.
The simple truth is that life is nanotechnology that is way beyond anything we know how to construct from scratch ourselves. Ruling out the possibility that an intellect was involved in its development is like jungle savages insisting the laptop computer they have found somehow came about mindlessly and accidentally. Actually that analogy is flawed because laptops are far less complex than a primitive, single-celled, reproducing life form and are therefore more likely to come about mindlessly and accidentally than is such a life form. Laptops are simple enough we know how to build them.
The technology of life is way beyond us. It is farther beyond us than manufacturing laptops is beyond jungle savages. So why is it that we see so clearly that there is no naturally occurring sequence of events that is going to assemble a laptop computer, yet so many otherwise reasonable people are convinced there is some mindless, naturally occurring sequence of events that accidentally assembled that first reproducing life form, even though it was a much more intricate and complex machine than is any laptop in terms of mechanical functionality as well as in terms of information processing software?
Only a rational mind composes volumes of intricate, logical arrangements of information. That seems clear to those who aren’t blinded by religious atheism. As our jungle savages learned about the information processing functionality of the laptop, at some point they would admit that the laptop couldn’t have come about without the involvement of intelligent agents. Science purged of its perversion by atheistic religious zealots will eventually reach the same conclusion regarding the origin of life.
May 23rd, 2011 | 9:33 am
harry –
Do laptops reproduce with occasional errors?
(Oh, and I’m still wondering if you’re going to define ‘information’ in a rigorous and measurable manner.)
May 23rd, 2011 | 7:53 pm
Hi, Ray,
See if this provides a sufficient discussion of biological information:
http://www.discovery.org/a/14251
May 23rd, 2011 | 10:13 pm
“As our jungle savages learned about the information processing functionality of the laptop, at some point they would admit that the laptop couldn’t have come about without the involvement of intelligent agents.”
Human beings, again–the only intelligent agents that have ever been encountered, so far.
“http://www.discovery.org/a/14251″
It doesn’t answer Ray’s question at all. It does not rigorously define information in biological systems at all nor does it provide a method to quantify information in biological systems.
Here’s a chance to demostrate “information.”
What is the information content of a methane molecule, if any? Use any units you like.
What is the information content, if any, of a type III secretion system?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_three_secretion_system
Use same units of measure. Please explain any differnces in the information content of the T3SS and the methane molecule.
What is the information content of a bacterial flagellum?
If different from the information content of the T3SS, please explain how you calculated the difference.
thanks in advance.
May 23rd, 2011 | 10:37 pm
As Joe notes, it does not, in fact, define information at all. So how can you make a statement like “the only known source of information is an intellect” when you’re leaving your terms undefined?
And the positive definitions advanced by ID proponents have more fundamental problems: http://recursed.blogspot.com/2009/10/stephen-meyers-bogus-information-theory.html
May 24th, 2011 | 5:00 pm
Joe had easily dispensed the reference above to Greenawalt. I would merely point out that Greenawalt made his pre-Dover position with the restriction that the arguments of fact presented by ID creationist supporters must be found to be true.
They are not.
More interesting is the position taken by Thomas Nagel. He argues similarly to Greenawalt that if the so-called evidences for intelligent design are true, then ID creationism should be taught. Nagel goes beyond this and argues that ID creationism is inherently scientific, and as such could be taught in US public schools regardless of its factual truth. He seems to never consider that this implies we ought to also teach demon possession as a counter argument to germ theory.
Two much better, and milder criticisms of Nagel than I would produce are available;
Michael Ruse wrote a short article, “Philosophers Rip Darwin” http://chronicle.com/article/What-Darwins-Doubters-Get-/64457/
and, Scott F. Aikin, Michael Harbour, and Robert B. Talisse draw specifically on Nagel in “Evolution, Intelligent Design, and Public Education: A Comment on Thomas Nagel” http://spontaneousgenerations.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/SpontaneousGenerations/article/viewFile/6103/8224
What I found most remarkable about Nagel’s essay, “Public Education and Intelligent Design” is how little he seems to have learned about the history of evolutionary biology, or the extent of scientific refutations of creationism generally, and ID creationism specifically.
May 25th, 2011 | 12:20 am
Hello, Ray and Joe,
I thought you guys would enjoy the information at
http://www.discovery.org/a/14251
much more than you seemed to do so judging from your remarks. I had hoped you would at least find the “Gene Evolution Game” to be mildly entertaining. ;o)
For a more formal discussion of biological information Google up:
information “Functional Sequence Complexity”
To explain it in terms of digital logic found in computer programs: You could have two binary files on a computer, one an executable program and the other a randomly generated series of bytes the same size as the former. The executable would have meaningful, or functional, information. It would contain bytes that corresponded to the instruction set of the computer’s CPU. Not only would the CPU instructions execute, but taken together, all the instructions that executed would perform a larger function, like enabling the user to do word processing, or communications of some kind, or some other application. The randomly generated file would do no such thing. This is because it contains no functional information, even though it may have the same capacity for Shannon information as the executable.
Just as there is nothing about the computer’s disk drive that forces the contents of the bytes written on it to be functional, there is nothing in the DNA molecule that makes what is written there functional information. It could be as functional-information free as was our randomly generated file. But it isn’t. It contains the instructions to build the protein machines necessary to execute the cell’s metabolic functionality.
When you can explain how we could come up with Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel mindlessly then maybe you can make a case for how the much more complex software written in the DNA molecule got there mindlessly. Until then I will ponder the differences in the information content of a type III secretion system and a methane molecule. ;o)
May 25th, 2011 | 1:01 am
Hi Harry,
Both Ray and I are extremely familiar with all of the Discovery Institute propaganda. There’s a reason why Beckwith is no longer associated with the Discovery Instititute.
You draw an analogy to a computer program. Analogies are not evidence or facts. They are rhetoric only. An analogy is useful to simplify a difficult subject for those who may be unfamiliar with the subject, for example.
I don’t need the analogy. I have an understanding of computer programs and biological systems and am very aware of all of the places that the analogy breaks down.
One particular instance of ID equivocation is the term “information” which is why both Ray and I asked the questions we did. “Information” in the computer setting is a well understood concept. Information in computer programs is measured in bits and bytes. There is no biological analog to that “information.” DNA is not a computer program.
Because DNA is not a computer program, it is an organic molecule, as is methane. [Hence, my question above] The ID suggestion that such molecules contain some measurable meaningful “information” has not been demonstrated–chiefly because no meaningful definition of “information” is offered and no method of computation of biological information has been provided [Hence, Ray's questions and mine]
Apparently, according to ID theory, if a biological system has complex specified information then such a system is designed and not evolved. Almost every ID proponent agrees that evolution explains a lot of biology, to a greater or lesser extent. ID proponents argue, however, that the presence of complex specified information is an indicator of “design” and allows us to separate the designed biological systems from the “background noise” of evolved biological systems.
Whenever I have asked ID proponents to “show their work” in calculating the information that distinguishes “designed” systems from evolved systems, I get an analogy–either the “computer program” analogy or the “Mt. Rushmore” analogy.
As I said, analogies are not scientific evidence, so I must respectfully reject your discussion of a computer program as evidence for intelligent design.
May 25th, 2011 | 8:32 am
Hello, Joe,
You wrote:
“Information in computer programs is measured in bits and bytes. There is no biological analog to that “information.” DNA is not a computer program.”
Those bits and bytes are a stream of zeros and ones, or on and off indicators, however you want to think of it. In the DNA molecule instead of just an on and off state there are four possible states the smallest unit of memory can be in, but the idea is the same. Just as a stream of zeros and ones of itself has no meaning without an intelligence arranging them such that they correspond to some reality exterior to the medium they have been stored in, so it is with the A,C,G and T states of memory in the DNA molecule. They have not only been thoughtfully arranged, in the case of humans, such that the overall functionality includes word processing, but also such that the overall functionality is a being that can write word processing software. A profoundly intelligent being wrote the software in the DNA molecule.
You ought to read Dr. Donald Johnson’s works. I think you would find a couple of his books to be very interesting. They are: “Programming of Life” and “Probability’s Nature and Nature’s Probability.” Dr. Johnson has Ph.D.s in both Computer & Information Sciences from the University of Minnesota and in Chemistry from Michigan State University. He was a senior research scientist for 10 years in pharmaceutical and medical / scientific instruments fields and taught for 20 years in universities in Wisconsin, Minnesota, California and Europe. His intellectual journey took him from scoffing at those who did not embrace contemporary science’s explanations of the origin and evolution of life as “flat earthers” to being a proponent of ID. He would disagree with you that DNA does not contain software.
May 25th, 2011 | 11:28 am
Harry –
Feel like continuing the conversation we had here? http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2010/10/04/fine-tuning-an-argument-and-a-universe/
May 26th, 2011 | 12:01 pm
Hi, Ray,
Sure, we can continue that discussion.
I suspect that if somehow there could have been a bodiless intelligence there to observe the Universe before there was life in it, that being would have never predicted that life would eventually, mindlessly and accidentally, come about based on what it could see. (I say “bodiless” because having a body would bias one’s opinion regarding the possibility of living bodies coming about. ;o)
That is the thing about life – it is a spectacular exception to what lifeless matter seems able to do on its own, so much so that it seems highly unlikely that lifeless matter accidentally assembled itself into life on its own. It is not like there are all kinds of phenomena in nature that approach the complexity of life but aren’t quite there yet. There is nothing even close. Yet it seems that if life came about naturally and accidentally, there should also be many other naturally and accidentally occurring phenomena with growing complexity that is approaching that of life. That is not the case at all. You find in nature that which is nowhere near being life and appears to have no chance at all of ever accidentally assembling itself into life, and then you find life with a functional complexity light years beyond everything else, and nothing between the two.
That is why, on the other thread, I asked about the criteria for distinguishing between naturally occurring phenomena and intelligently designed phenomena, criteria that would have to be used in a situation where we didn’t know what “life” looked like (as in being on a planet in another galaxy, for example). What criteria would we use if we observed strange phenomena of varying complexity and had to figure out which were designed by intelligent aliens and which were naturally occurring?
Due to life on planet Earth being nanotechnology way beyond anything we know how to build ourselves, we should determine that the phenomena on that distant planet which were technology vastly exceeding our own are what came about mindlessly and naturally, right? After all, our experience with life here on planet Earth makes it clear that mindless, lifeless, dumb matter is far more skilled at assembling functionality of mind-boggling complexity than our best scientific minds, right? Or would we assume such phenomena were brought about by intelligent aliens using technology vastly superior to our own, surpassing even that arrived at by mindless, lifeless, dumb matter?
I know you think the phenomena which are “life” can be determined by looking for signs of replication and descent with modification. I don’t think that works. I think it is a matter of getting a grip on what mindless, lifeless, dumb matter, restricted by the laws of physics, will be able to accidentally produce on its own. If something other than that comes about, it should be obvious that more than matter, energy, physical laws and chance caused it. That is how we can tell man-made objects from naturally occurring lifeless objects, and is how we should be able to tell that life on Earth, much more than man-made objects, is way beyond what mindless, lifeless, dumb matter is able to do on its own.
May 26th, 2011 | 3:06 pm
“It is not like there are all kinds of phenomena in nature that approach the complexity of life but aren’t quite there yet. There is nothing even close. Yet it seems that if life came about naturally and accidentally, there should also be many other naturally and accidentally occurring phenomena with growing complexity that is approaching that of life. That is not the case at all.”
Are prions and viruses alive?
May 26th, 2011 | 6:38 pm
Hi, Joe,
You wrote:
“Are prions and viruses alive?”
Your question led to some interesting reading. It seems prions are clearly not alive but the “life” of viruses seems to be the subject of debate.
Here is a link to a Scientific American article that seemed to provide a fair analysis of the subject:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=are-viruses-alive-2004
Here is an excerpt:
“… most evolutionary biologists hold that because viruses are not alive, they are unworthy of serious consideration when trying to understand evolution. They also look on viruses as coming from host genes that somehow escaped the host and acquired a protein coat. In this view, viruses are fugitive host genes that have degenerated into parasites. …”
That indicates to me that viruses aren’t an example of complexity that was arrived at on the way to arriving at life, or complexity that developed independently of life, but are rather a degeneration of life after it had already come about. What do you think?
May 27th, 2011 | 10:15 am
harry wrote, “That indicates to me that viruses aren’t an example of complexity that was arrived at on the way to arriving at life, or complexity that developed independently of life, but are rather a degeneration of life after it had already come about.”
Several points to note.
First, Luis Villarreal, the author of the SiAm article harry partially read, went on to describe data that shows the “degenerate” idea of virus origin was mistaken.
Second, is has been discovered that the Mimiviruses, large marine viruses in a variety of hosts, have full sets of functioning enzyme genes and even their own parasitic viruses. The mimivirus Acanthamoeba polyphaga is exploited by a small “satellite” virus to reproduce. See: “How to Infect a Mimivirus” Hiroyuki Ogata, Jean-Michel Claverie (Science 5 September 2008: Vol. 321 no. 5894 pp. 1305-1306).
Third, it is necessary to keep the distinction between RNA and DNA viruses very clear in your mind.
Fourth, it is well understood that obligate parasites, and symbionts shed duplicate genes. This is true for viruses as well as bacteria, yeast and even “higher” organisms such as amoeba and nematodes. The ultimate example might be endosymbiosis joining mitochondria, or chloroplasts with their nucleated “hosts.” It is this “gene shedding” that produced viruses which suggested the “escaped gene” model. The 2003 discovery of Acanthamoeba polyphaga demonstrated that this model invalid.
With this in mind, there seems an emerging picture that very early in life there are diverse communities of interacting micro-organisms mostly using RNAs as both genetic “memory” and enzymes. DNA is then seen as the “invention” of viral organisms, which replaced the RNA genetic material of membrane bound RNA cells. The variants today in transcription enzymes probably result from that time. (See for example; “Extrachromosomal element capture and the evolution of multiple replication origins in archaeal chromosomes” PNAS April 3, 2007 vol. 104 no. 14 5806-5811, “Did DNA Come From Viruses?” Science 12 May 2006: Vol. 312 no. 5775 pp. 870-872).
May 27th, 2011 | 3:14 pm
Hello, Dr. Hurd,
You wrote:
“First, Luis Villarreal, the author of the SiAm article harry partially read, went on to describe data that shows the “degenerate” idea of virus origin was mistaken.”
I read the whole article. ;o) It seemed obvious from the Googling I did that there was no scientific consensus on viruses. The excerpt from the article I cited seemed to sum things up:
“ … most evolutionary biologists hold that because viruses are not alive, they are unworthy of serious consideration when trying to understand evolution.”
If Villarreal “went on to describe data that shows the ‘degenerate’ idea of virus origin was mistaken,” that was his *opinion,* which he expressed after he admitted that “most evolutionary biologists hold that … viruses … are unworthy of serious consideration when trying to understand evolution.” Again, that indicates to me “that viruses aren’t an example of complexity that was arrived at on the way to arriving at life, or complexity that developed independently of life, but are rather a degeneration of life after it had already come about.”
You wrote:
“… it has been discovered that the Mimiviruses, large marine viruses in a variety of hosts, have full sets of functioning enzyme genes and even their own parasitic viruses. The mimivirus Acanthamoeba polyphaga is exploited by a small “satellite” virus to reproduce.”
How does that indicate that viruses are not a degeneration of life after it had already come about?
You wrote:
“… there seems an emerging picture that very early in life there are diverse communities of interacting micro-organisms mostly using RNAs as both genetic “memory” and enzymes. DNA is then seen as the “invention” of viral organisms, which replaced the RNA genetic material of membrane bound RNA cells.”
Donald Johnson (I mentioned him previously) wrote:
“Because of Shannon channel capacity that previous (first) codon alphabet had to be at least as complex as the current codon alphabet (DNA code), otherwise transferring the information from the simpler alphabet into the current alphabet would have been mathematically impossible.”
So the RNA-based organisms had codon alphabets as complex as the current DNA code? It seems then that if this is indeed what happened it was not a case of lesser complexity evolving into greater complexity. We would still have mysteriously and mindlessly (miraculously) leaped to complexity that was light years beyond lifeless matter.
Thanks.
May 27th, 2011 | 7:29 pm
harry wrote, “Donald Johnson (I mentioned him previously) wrote: “Because of Shannon channel capacity that previous (first) codon alphabet had to be at least as complex as the current codon alphabet (DNA code), otherwise transferring the information from the simpler alphabet into the current alphabet would have been mathematically impossible.”
Here is why I never believe a creationist (like Johnson, or harry) about science;
Trifonov, Edward N.
2004 “The Triplet Code From First Principles” Journal of Biomolecular Structure &
Dynamics, ISSN 0739-1102 Volume 22, Issue Number 1, (2004)
S N Rodin & A S Rodin
2008 “On the origin of the genetic code: signatures of its primordial complementarity in tRNAs and aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases” Heredity aop, doi:10.1038/sj.hdy.6801086
Elsberry, Wesley, Jeffrey Shallit
2011 “Information theory, evolutionary computation, and Dembski’s “complex specified information” Synthese “EVOLUTION AND ITS RIVALS” Volume 178, Number 2, 237-270, DOI: 0.1007/s11229-009-9542-8
(Which actually brings this ‘discussion’ back in spitting distance of the original topic).
May 27th, 2011 | 11:47 pm
Hello, Dr. Hurd,
Yes. I am indeed a creationist in the sense that I believe that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” That doesn’t mean I take the creation accounts in Genesis literally as though they were a scientific account of how God did that. I am certainly not a “young earth” creationist. I think it is quite reasonable to believe that if the Universe had a beginning (as in the “Big Bang”) and there was nothing before that, then there was no natural way to get something – the Universe – from nothing. The origin of the Universe then would be necessarily rooted in something beyond nature – something *supernatural.* That would be God. If there is anything in this thinking that makes me worthy of being referred to as “creationist” in a pejorative sense, feel free to let me know what that is.
If you believe the Universe had no beginning but always was, as in a pulsating Universe for example, you must take that on faith, as it cannot be proven scientifically that the Universe had no beginning, and we are both basing our beliefs on what we hope is a reasonable, not irrational, faith. I could then refer to you as an “always was’er” as you refer to me as a “creationist” but that really wouldn’t be adding anything significant to the discussion.
Intelligence is a reality. To deny that is to exhibit its deficiency in one’s own instance. Since it is a reality it is legitimate for science to consider the possibility that it could be a factor in bringing about a given phenomenon. If science is going to remain science by being relentlessly objective, not allowing theistic or atheistic religious beliefs to pervert it, it has to be open to considering the possibility that intelligence was a factor in the origin of life. Sorry. That is just the way it is.
I feel quite good about the way it is because I am not in the position of a jungle savage insisting technology he doesn’t understand well enough to build himself, like a laptop computer, came about mindlessly and accidentally. Until one knows at least one way to bring about a given phenomenon intentionally, one quite obviously can’t explain how it could have come about mindlessly and accidentally, much less insist that that is the case. That is the position the scientific establishment is in regarding the origin of life.
When members of that establishment cite each other to “prove” those with views outside the establishment are wrong they make, in my opinion, a case for their position that is not as strong as it should be. For example, if I claimed the sun was only 50 million miles from the earth, a scientist should be able to just explain to me how establishment science has arrived at the fact that it is 93 million miles from the earth. If instead the scientist just cited those who take the establishment view he would not be making the strong argument he should be able to make. You no doubt think that those you cited make that strong argument and that will be evident to all those who refer to their works. I suspect that there are those who won’t see it that way. So do me a favor and just explain to me why Dr. Johnson is wrong. ;o)
May 28th, 2011 | 12:45 pm
harry, if you cannot read the articles I cited for you, you cannot be taught on a chat room.
May 29th, 2011 | 4:12 pm
“For example, if I claimed the sun was only 50 million miles from the earth, a scientist should be able to just explain to me how establishment science has arrived at the fact that it is 93 million miles from the earth.”
“So do me a favor and just explain to me why Dr. Johnson is wrong. ;o)”
The problem with your discussion above is that you haven’t even established that Dr. Johnson has achieved the level of “wrong.” He’s a crackpot. Not surprisingly, math types and physics types seem to attract crackpots and a mathematics professor, John Baez, has developed a crackpot index to evaluate levels of crackpottedness.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
Here’s some examples from the list that appear in the above comments or from Dr. Johnson’s website:
5 points for each such statement that is adhered to despite careful correction.
5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment.
10 points for each new term you invent and use without properly defining it.
10 points for arguing that while a current well-established theory predicts phenomena correctly, it doesn’t explain “why” they occur, or fails to provide a “mechanism”.
20 points for talking about how great your theory is, but never actually explaining it.
20 points for each use of the phrase “hidebound reactionary”.
40 points for claiming that the “scientific establishment” is engaged in a “conspiracy” to prevent your work from gaining its well-deserved fame, or suchlike.
50 points for claiming you have a revolutionary theory but giving no concrete testable predictions.
Dr. Baez’s crackpot index only requires 50 points to achieve crackpot status. Johnson exceeds 100 points.
Here’s how it works in real life. Scientists are busy. Science is cumulative. Scientists spend decades of study to become proficient. It is very unreasonable to demand that a scientist drop what he’s doing and provide you a free education.
Before somebody can just announce that they have discovered some previously overlooked scientific theory that has been completely overlooked by all levels of sciences, that person has a good faith obligation to have become educated in the field to carry on an intelligent discussion regarding current scientific thought and why the proposed theory addresses perceived difficulties in the current theory.
So, if you’re going to assert that earth is only 50 million miles form the Sun, you need to explain why Venus and Mercury shows phases and how you reconcile the earth’s year with the known masses of the bodies involved and the known strength of gravitational forces. Otherwise, a simple demand to “show it to me” is a waste of everybody’s time. You have to do your homework first and show a willingness to really engage with the subject.
You have to do all that before you even ask for an explanation for the 93 million mile distance. Otherwise it’s simply an obstinate and, in the end, an intellectually dishonest discussion.
So before anybody starts talking about programming of the cell, they need to explain how known rates of mutations are addressed and the entire field of genetics is affected. Otherwise they just haven’t done their homework to even be wrong.
Johnson falls into this category. Time is short–he’s a crackpot and let’s move on.
Gary Hurd can tell you why Johnson is wrong right after you demonstrate the basics of evolution enough so that he can be assured that he isn’t wasting his time on the detailed explanation that’s required and that you can understand the material. You made a flatly incorrect statement on biology and when offered the correct information, still don’t seem to appreciate why that correct information presents a challenge to what you say is Dr. Johnson’s thesis.
Or perhaps a lurking medical doctor can explain brain surgery to you in the next comments box.
May 30th, 2011 | 8:56 pm
Hi, Joe McFaul,
Let’s say a parking lot empty of cars is covered with Scrabble pieces. We want to determine if the pieces were thoughtfully arranged on the parking lot, or if they were arranged in a mindless fashion.
What should we conclude if the pieces are arranged in grammatically correct sentences? What if those sentences are grouped into meaningful paragraphs? What if groups of those paragraphs describe a particular topic, and not just describe them, but *correctly* describe the given topic like an encyclopedia article would? What if there are thousands of such articles?
Given that there are no properties in Scrabble pieces and concrete that make such an arrangement inevitable, and we know of no properties in any mindless process we can think of that might have arranged the pieces that would make such an arrangement likely, would it be unreasonable to assume an intelligent agent was involved in their arrangement?
There is nothing in DNA that makes it inevitable that its alphabet “spell” three dimensional assemblages. Yet it does. There is nothing that makes it inevitable that those assemblages are functional. Yet they are. Each performs a function that, in coordination with the others, accomplish various metabolic functions, like processing nutrition, hydration and oxygen. Other functions get rid of waste. The cellular machinery also does repair of damage and is able to reproduce the entire cell. There are no properties of DNA that make this inevitable. Yet the information in DNA is such that something much more intricate than a correct encyclopedia is inscribed there. The overall functionality is a being, in the case of human DNA, that is capable of writing encyclopedia articles, building Scrabble piece factories, and creating cars and parking lots. Why is it so unreasonable to assume an intelligent agent was involved in creating the information in DNA? On what basis is it reasonable to assume the information got there mindlessly?
May 31st, 2011 | 1:52 am
harry,
No “parking lots.
No “scrabble.”
No, “What if DNA was like English: “Sentences,” “Paragraphs,” “Alphabet.”
DNA is like DNA. If you cannot ask your questions properly, you are not ready for a proper answer. Community colleges are the best educational bargain in America, so I hope you will take advantage of one soon.
May 31st, 2011 | 11:40 am
Hello, Dr. Hurd,
There is a DNA “alphabet” and it is analogous to the English alphabet in that the number of possible meaningful/functional arrangements of an encyclopedia-sized amount of “letters” is infinitesimally small relative to the number of possible *meaningless* arrangements of that many letters. My assertion is that it is unreasonable to just assume that a meaningful arrangement of such a large amount of DNA “letters” was arrived at mindlessly, just as it would be to assume an encyclopedia was written mindlessly. If you know of a mindless, natural process that could have composed the instructions we find in DNA please give us a brief, plausible description of that process. If you can’t do that, go ahead and make some more snide remarks. That speaks volumes.
May 31st, 2011 | 8:20 pm
“There is nothing in DNA that makes it inevitable that its alphabet “spell” three dimensional assemblages.”
Factually incorrect. It is inevitable that DNA creates three dimensional assemblages. It is not the only molecule to do so. Sorry.
Analogies are not “arguments.” Analaogies are not evidence.
DNA does not speak in a “language.” It is not a “code.” There are no “instructions” in a DNA molecule. Those terms are analogies only with very limited usefulness.
The chemical structure of DNA and other macromolecules is well known.
I have to agree with Dr. Hurd. Please take a college level biology course. DNA is fascinating but you’ll also see why the analogies break down.
June 1st, 2011 | 8:58 am
Sorry, harry, I didn’t see your response until recently.
Except that we have good evidence, in lots of ways, that replication with modification can produce increasing complexity. It really is a key distinction, one that makes an enormous difference.
Nuclear reactors require some fine-tuning as well. You need material with a particular composition, arranged a particular way, with a moderator of some kind. They don’t happen accidentally.
Except, at least one did. In Oklo, Gabon, Africa. It couldn’t happen now – U-235 concentrations have decayed too much – but conditions two billion years ago were different.
Replication plus mutation is a game-changer, like reaching critical mass, or undergoing a phase transition (ice to water, water to steam, etc.).
June 1st, 2011 | 12:03 pm
I wrote:
“There is nothing in DNA that makes it inevitable that its alphabet “spell” three dimensional assemblages.”
John McFaul wrote:
“Factually incorrect. It is inevitable that DNA creates three dimensional assemblages. It is not the only molecule to do so. Sorry. “
There is nothing in DNA that makes it inevitable that its alphabet “spell” three dimensional assemblages. It is a storage medium. The state of a string of bits on a disk drive aren’t forced to be what they are by a reality exterior to the drive to which they correspond. They don’t have to correspond to anything. A storage device is that because the values of its smallest units of memory are unconstrained. In so far as it is a storage device, the state of memory in DNA does not depend on its correspondence to three dimensional assemblages.
John McFaul wrote:
“DNA does not speak in a “language.” It is not a “code.” There are no “instructions” in a DNA molecule.”
Yes. DNA does not speak in a language. Who says it speaks a language?
It is a code and there are instructions in it. Bill Gates’ remarks pointing out the similarities between DNA and computer software but admitting that the software in DNA is more complex has been famously quoted. The exact wording is disputed. Here are a couple of versions:
“DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.”
- Bill Gates
“DNA is similar to a software program but more complex . . .”
- Bill Gates
The correspondence of the state of memory in DNA to realities exterior to it is the same thing that is going on with the state of a block of memory on a disk drive we call “software.” Out of a seemingly infinite number of nonsense states it could be in, it is in a particular state that corresponds to realities exterior to it, and is not forced to be in that state because of those exterior realities. The only reasonable explanation for its being in the state it is in is its being purposefully arranged that way by an intelligent agent.
June 1st, 2011 | 1:27 pm
I debunk the creationist use of that Bill Gates “quote” in the TalkOrigins Quote Mine Project.
It is Quote #4.18
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part4.html#quote4.18
June 2nd, 2011 | 12:44 am
Hi, Ray,
The article about natural nuclear fission reaction was quite interesting. Thanks for that.
You wrote:
“… we have good evidence, in lots of ways, that replication with modification can produce increasing complexity.”
I am not convinced of that, but if that is the case, for the sake of discussion, do we have good evidence that an environment that allows for that can come about mindlessly? Do we have good evidence that a life form that is able to reproduce in that environment (so there can be modifications) can come about mindlessly? If the metabolic and reproductive ability of that life form is DNA based, can we arrive at the information in DNA mindlessly?
If you are referring to software that “demonstrates” replication with modification can increase complexity (I believe we have discussed this before), I don’t think intelligently designed software executing on intelligently designed hardware running on energy provided by an intelligently designed power system can ever demonstrate that life could have mindlessly come about or mindlessly increased in complexity. One must first demonstrate that the intelligently designed software, hardware, operating and power systems truly emulate a natural, mindless scenario. That is hard to do as the entire artificial scenario is intelligently designed. It might demonstrate that increasing complexity requires an intellect, but that is not what you are after. ;o)
June 2nd, 2011 | 1:16 am
Hello, Dr. Hurd,
In your “debunking” of the “creationist use of that Bill Gates ‘quote’” you made the following remark:
“… there is nothing in the sentence or the idea behind it that attacks science or backs supernaturalism.”
Bill Gates’ sentence was:
“Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.”
I was just wondering, my friend, if you would expound on how science acknowledging that intelligence is a reality that can be a factor in bringing about a given phenomenon “attacks science or backs supernaturalism,” if that is indeed what you meant. ID does not depend on the intelligent agent being supernatural or insist that that is the case. Of course, theists would assume that the intelligent agent was God, just as many atheists assumed that Darwin had demonstrated that God was not necessary for life as we know it to have come about. As Richard Dawkins put it: “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”
It seems to me that science must carefully disregard the religious/philosophical implications of theories and just follow the evidence wherever it leads.
June 2nd, 2011 | 9:18 am
harry –
We have some suggestive evidence – I’ve linked to some before – but at the moment that’s a hypothesis, not a theory. Looking at the trends, though, it sure seems to me that the objections are getting less tenable with time.
There are two issues – first, I notice that this objection is often raised in the abstract; no one ever seems to offer positive reasons to believe the exact same processes can’t happen ‘mindlessly’. (Beyond ‘it doesn’t seem likely to me’, I mean – nothing concrete.)
Secondly, controlled biological experiments also demonstrate it. Even uncontrolled biological experiments demonstrate it. Witness the sad proliferation of antibiotic-resistant germs due to overuse of antibiotics.
Mutations that counteract antibiotics usually are impairments or detriments when antibiotics aren’t around; bugs that survive well against antibiotics don’t tend to compete well against normal strains in the absence of antibiotics. For example, the bug might have an increased rate of excretion that has the effect of pumping away the medicine; but this also wastes energy on the pumping, and wastes raw materials in the excretion.
However, compensatory mutations arise, too. A switch that only turns on the increased pumping when the cell is under stress, for example. And when there are a lot of resistant bugs around, the odds increase that the twain shall meet – the resistance mutation and the compensating mutation that lets the bug compete against unmutated fellows.
And now we’ve got ‘superbugs’ that are not only resistant to a broad spectrum of antibiotics but also compete just fine when the antibiotics aren’t around. A highly unfortunate increase in complexity that arises contrary to – in the face of – intelligent intervention.
June 2nd, 2011 | 9:20 am
The fact that atheists can ‘take solace’ from some findings of science is not prima facie evidence the science is wrong…
June 2nd, 2011 | 10:40 am
Bill Gates, a man who knows lttle of nothing about biology, reads a book about DNA and related it to computer programing- the only thing he did understand. Creationists then take a remark made by Gates about High School science teachers out of context, and treat it as if it were one of their “evidences” for God’s creation of mankind.
Does that make Gates a profit maker, or a prophet?
It does make creationists appear either ignorant, or dishonest.
June 3rd, 2011 | 12:38 am
Hi, Ray,
You wrote:
Exactly. And the fact that theists can ‘take solace’ from some findings of science is also not prima facie evidence the science is wrong. In both cases science, if it is to remain true science, must be completely neutral regarding the religious/philosophical implications of such findings and just follow the evidence wherever it leads.
You wrote:
If software the final results of which are to demonstrate what can happen naturally and mindlessly has logic programmed in that tests the ongoing results such that different instructions are executed depending on the outcome of the test, the final process results might not demonstrate what can happen naturally and mindlessly. Each such test and the resulting change in the flow of the program must truly emulate a naturally occurring condition and the naturally occurring events that particular condition would bring about, otherwise the process results have been intelligently guided.
Since we don’t yet understand how a primitive, reproducing life form could be intentionally brought about from scratch, nor if we did, how to induce mutations in it such that new, beneficial functionality is brought about, as the nanotechnology of life is beyond our own, it must, for now, remain debatable whether we are anywhere near emulating such processes, as we don’t yet know precisely what it is we should emulate. If we did know how to intentionally bring about a reproducing life form and induce mutations in it such that new, beneficial functionality was brought about we wouldn’t need to emulate those processes. The task would become demonstrating that the equivalent of our intelligently designed processes could have occurred mindlessly and naturally. This will be far more difficult than demonstrating how a laptop computer could have come about mindlessly and naturally since the nanotechnology of life is light years beyond that of laptop computers.
As for superbugs, are you sure their resistance to antibiotics isn’t the result of a loss of genetic information, instead of an increase in complexity? Or could it be that a small number of the germ population was already resistant and so they are the only ones to survive the antibiotics, their descendants inheriting the resistance and creating a “superbug” population without there really being any genuine increase in complexity?
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact