Intelligent design. Philosophy of ignorance.

Those problematic gaps and unknowns seem to factor in all of the philosophies and sciences and not necessarily so unique to ID.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW ---- Jesus said, "When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near." Luke 21:28

I think that cavediver`s point was that science cannot answer the question "why is there a universe at all?"
But given that there is a universe, I don`t see why science shouldn`t be able to answer questions like "why do we feel anything at all?"

Oh really? So why don`t you give us some prediction of an important event that will happen in 2007 based in you biblical prophecy expertise?Better yet, why don`t you give us a list of them. that way ayear from now we can test the bible`s predictive power by comparing your list with what really happened to happen. Are you up to the challenge?Edited by fallacycop, : fix confusing phrase

Buz, The problem ain`t the gaps. It`s the fact that some people seem unable to resist the temptation to stick their poor little gods in those gaps. Hear that sound? Another gap got closed by scientific progress. I hope there were no gods in that one. Man!! that`s gotta hurt...

This is off topic and I should not respond but....I have been around people all my life that have made similar claims. However whenever you lift the hood and have look at what knowledge, predictions and tenuous historical claims you realize that they are participating in self and group deception. I even personally knew a group that believe 1988 was the end being a generation past the "budding of the fig tree" (Israel as a nation). Have you read the likes of David Wilkerson? Pure unaltered ego-driven bunk. I recommend you start a thread or two on your realized prophetic derived knowledge. No offense Buzz but this knowledge is useless. Show me how this knowledge ever cured a leper, feed the poor, designed an airplane or heated the water for a morning shower?Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

I started this thread by saying that many great minds arrived at a design conclusion by means of the design inference. The design inference is basically saying 'I cannot see how this could happen through purely natural means, it must have come about by means of an intelligent agent'.This inference is often useful. For example, people rarely grow bullets in their lungs, with matching bullet shaped wounds in the appropriate tissues. Thus, infering that it was murder is perfectly reasonable. This kind of inference comes to us naturally - and we can point to evolutionary reasons why knowing the difference between things which are natural and things which had intervention from another social/intelligent animal would be useful.However, when we start using the design inference to explain unusual things that occurred before any known intelligent agent existed we have a problem. We have no evidence that an intelligent agent could have done it, because we have no evidence that intelligent agents existed. We start staring at a spiral of circularity when we try and then use the design inference to demonstrate that a designer must exist!Historically the great minds that have used the above sequence of logic have later been shown to be incorrect. Non-designer explanations have emerged later. We have seen this recently with irreducible complexity. Some said that it was a characteristic of designed systems, but it turns out that it is not only perfectly plausible through natural evolutionary processes but it was actually a prediction made using the theory of evolution (pre world war II)!Making the declaration - this enigma is best explained via an unevidenced designer - poses a dangerous risk. Having an answer is a disincentive to continuing to asking the questions. It encourages the lazy human mind to cease (or at least slow in) striving for discovery. It is a philosophy that encourages (willingly or otherwise), a certain level ignorance about the universe's mysteries. That is why I call it the philosophy of ignorance and have contrasted it to the philosophy of discovery.Because discovery relies on education standards, we should discuss the dangers of the design inference in the science class.However, the thread degraded into a defense/attack on the modern ID movement, ancillary issues and so on. At every twist and turn the supporters of the design inference made two things clear:1) They think it unecessary to have evidence that a designer actually exists before positing that a designer was responsible for something. The design inference is used as evidence in its own right for the existence of a desiger that could be responsible for the design. Horribly messy logic.2) That they are infering something purely based on a lack of knowledge (life is so complicated there is no way it could have occurred naturally according to our current knowledge...). That is - the design inference relies on a certain level of ignorance about the world.The modern ID movement encourages ignorance, since the more ignorance they can foster the more books they can sell. Horribly cynical, but that is simply what seems to be happening. The smartest proponents (ie those that should know better) are saying things which are clearly refuted by a look at the primary literature - so their attempts to obfuscate the facts in an attempt to earn money is almost self-evident.

I've just discovered this site, so perhaps I'm late to this party. But Mr. Modulous' arguments are fascinating. I have begun to observe how destructive anti-ID reasoning is, from a purely practical viewpoint. To be an anti-ID'er you have to demean the great minds of history and you have to find flaws in life forms, in order to prove they weren't designed. Mod says It's actually quite the opposite. If evolutionists followed their theory to its logical conclusions they would see that thought itself is only an illusion, an electro-chemical phenomenon that happens to have survived through the generations. The evolved human thinks what he thinks because it works, not because it's true. It is precisely because through most of history men have believed that they were capable of objective thought, and because they believed the world to have been made, at least partially, for their discovery, that man engaged in discovery and analysis. The anti-ID'er must disregard the first piece of evidence he encounters - his own reason - in order to proceed.
But secondly, I think Modulus misunderstands Newton, and does so because he has such a prejudice against the ID-er. Newton was talking about the genesis of the planetary system, and to my knowledge no one has yet definitively explained that.
But why the prejudice against an ID'er? This prejudice is preventing you from thinking clearly about how an ID'er might work. The biblical God makes man from 'the dust of the earth', remember? You never find the rough edges of his work - everything is curved back on itself like our planetary globe. To say that God created something does not in any way detract from its naturalness. You have to confront incomprehensible things whether you believe in God or not. Is it in any way logical to think that a quart or so of grey matter can comprehend all reality? What is it that leads you to even try? That's the real question to me. I can't see why an evolved being should care about anything. The evolved being certainly shouldn't mind some tales of a creator if it helps get you through the night. Yet you do care, and deeply. Why? Perhaps you are something more than you thought you were? And if you could honor yourself this way you might then see that your internal image of the ID'er is way too small as well.
So I think you've got it precisely backwards. Just as the human who uses the power of the internal combustion engine can win a race against the runner, so the ID believing human has an unfair advantage over the naturalist who must spend all his time explaining away the obvious.

No, don't be silly. Fortunately, there are lots. That is not a logical conclusion to draw from the theory of evolution. It's a complete non sequitur. Fortunately, being right is more adaptive than being wrong. You are wrong. Pleanty of people who are not creationists manage to "engage in discovery and analysis". No. Did you just claim that there are no sharp edges in nature? No, and of course no-one claims that it can. No-one you are addressing has ever tried to "comprehend all reality". And yet you are an evolved being, and you care about the tales which get you through the night. Someone has been telling you ridiculous lies. Naturalists are not in fact obliged to "spend all their time explaining away the obvious".Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

hehe. Demeaning the great minds of history? Are these the words of someone who is demeaning somebody?

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Newton was a genius of the highest order. Nobody can realistically call his brilliance into question when it came to describing the world around him. In the Principia he covers the laws of motion and gravity - which he managed to codify before he reached 26 years old!

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If only my peers would demean me so!All I said was that Newton wasn't perfect. That is not demeaning, it is the truth. I make the same point in Message 291. Descartes did this very thing a long time ago. Axioms are needed to proceed in any philosophy to get beyond cogito ergo sum type problems. I've never denied that. That is a point entirely seperate from the one I was making. I was saying that settling on 'An unknown intelligent entity is responsible for this phenomenon in ways we cannot fully understand', hampers discovery not believing that we were put here to understand and analyse the world. A better statement is: 'An unknown entity is responsible for this phenomenon in ways we cannot fully understand - so let's try and work out what this entity is, how it came about and the laws etc etc surrounding this entity...so that we can eventually erradicate the 'unknown' part of our description' Actually the scientist has to disregard pure reason to proceed. Science is not a reason-based pursuit. It is first empirical and second reason based (that is to say, that evidence is collected and then reason is applied to infer conclusions from the evidence, which can then be used to find more relevant evidence and so on). It is clear that one of the first assumptions science makes is that we can use reason and evidence to come to conclusions about the natural world. Otherwise we end up in Descartes' shoes. see Message 11 which is the beginnings of this same thought process. Caring is a survival mechanism of intelligent beings. If an evolved intelligent being didn't care about anything, it would die without reproducing. Also it is probably a cultural thing. Culture is a very strong influence. In the culture I was raised in the pursuit of knowledge and high education standards were held in high esteem. Therefore, my feelings are a reflection of those influences. Designing something intelligently is not something I deny can happen. Naturalism is irrelevant to this discussion. I regard myself as pro-science. Science is about making conclusions from the evidence, not letting personal conclusions influence the method of interpreting the evidence.Bias is ever present, which is why the antagonistic nature of science is a superior system than the self-supporting group-think that is prevalent in ID circles.

Well, I think you're just not looking at all the evidence. If you rule out the supernatural a priori than you can't consider that evidence. Just as much as the religious person, you have a world view that you *want* to be true, a world view where science is preeminent. I'm saying that you have to assume a supernatural element to even begin science, because we must in some sense be above the evidence we examine, not merely reacting to it as natural elements ourselves.

We put ourselves "above" the evidence by comparing our observations with the observations of others. If an observation is "objective", in the sense that people with different worldviews agree, then it is a useful observation."Observations" of the supernatural are not useful because people with different worldviews "observe" the supernatural with different results.

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Hi Mystic,With only a few messages left in this thread, there isn't time to begin a discussion of the nature of science, but I will say just a little.Science is able to make progress through replication, which means that any qualified scientist can repeat an experiment and obtain the same result. Ideas or theories that can be verified through repeatable experiments (e.g., relativity) are accepted, while those that cannot are rejected (e.g., cold fusion). Observation of and experiment with the supernatural (however one does this I don't know) does not lead to replicatable results, and hence has never produced any scientifically acceptable theories.--Percy

I don't rule the supernatural out a priori. Does that reassure you? I don't even know what the supernatural really means. I simply follow whatever evidence there is. The basic conclusion I've come to is that should the supernatural exist there is no reliable method for investigating it. There is a reliable method for investigating the natural.If you want to understand my position better read the start of this thread. For reference see Message 8, and especially Message 20. You make a lot of assumptions about me without sufficient evidence. Let me assure you once more that the world view that I want to be true does not take priority over the conclusions we reach about the world through thorough investigation. Science isn't preeminent - but it is the most tried and tested methodology for discovery with regards to the world and universe we live in. It has a demonstrated utility that ID has not got. Hence the title of the thread. You don't have to assume a supernatural element at all. You just have to assume that it is possible to arrive at conclusions about the natural world by suitable reasoning with regards to a body of evidence. This assumption might be wrong. There is no apparant reason why natural beings cannot investigate and come to conclusions about the way the natural world works.

Fair enough. Same thing happens to me on these forums all the time. Now just read that over again slowly. You don't know what supernatural is yet you conclude it can't be investigated? With your above point in mind, I suspect that you may be more in love with a field of study than with truth itself. A thing is true or not regardless of our powers to analyze it. Trying to determine what really happened and preparing a court case are sometimes two very different things. I would turn that around - evolution can offer no reason why humans *should* be able to investigate; they only react to stimuli, and react in a way that tends towards the survival of the species. With regard to the evolution/ID debate, the evolutionist can only speculate on whether either theory is good for the species. If indeed humans can do more than react to stimuli, (those reaction modulated by genetics and environment) then we must look somewhere other than random mutation and natural selection to explain that phenomenon.

Indeed. Since it remains ill-defined and we know that historically, people come up with contradictory conclusions, there remains no way of reliably investigating what is titled 'the supernatural'. Not at all. I am keen on learning the truth, and I reject methodologies that can give ambigious or contradictory conclusions - since they are logically not leading us to the truth. There are many truths we will never be able to know. However, the answer is to say 'I don't know, let's continue to try and get an answer' not 'because we aren't currently able to derive an answer, it must be the result of an intelligent agent that precedes the existence of the phenomena in question'. Right. However, given that we are able to investigate we can seek to understand an evolutionary reason for that. Learning how things work makes us better hunters and more capable social animals. These kinds of things are good for survival! Not just speculate, but also provide rational and positive argument for why we should continue a voyage of discovery, not just fill the map with dragons.

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The tradition is for threads to end at 300 posts. As such let me end on this note: There is nothing inherently wrong with believing that an intelligent agent was behind phenomena x or y. It is a natural thing to believe.However, it is not good science to say that because a phenomena is difficult to solve there must exist an intelligent agent that was behind it. We must have indpendent reliable evidence that this agent exists before postulating it was responsible for a phenomenon.Otherwise we are just engaging in a variant of the God of the Gaps argument which has historically been shown fallacious again and again.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.