Faith no more (at least not in scientific knowledge?)

It looks as though there was a slight run of creos and ID theorists coming in and boldly bragging, only to then avoid any direct conversation, before bowing out.Percy asked if evo criticism of creos was justified. While I still feel the logical answer lands more in the "no, since these are actually two different systems of knowledge", there seems to be a practical answer of "yes, because they refuse to address points of debate openly."I thought it was made very clear by Faith's answers that indeed creos are attempting to remove modern science and resurrect "old" science. They eschew advances in techniques of logic and handling evidence made over the last 300 years, and argue to go with the scientific methodology of Plato and Augustine.This is even more evident within the ID movement and the admissions can be read quite openly in much of Demsbki's writings. He specifically denounces the enlightenment period, praises the style of science practiced in Greece and the early church, and demands that Occam's Razor and the Argument from Ignorance fallacy be thrown out.He even appears to embrace Paley, without (seemingly) recognizing that Paley lost.I give credit to those within the ID movement who at least admit, or have the ability to recognize they want to change (and indeed must change) science itself, not just evolution. And I think more criticism should be lain on those creos and ID theorists who pretend (or do not put in the time to understand) this is not the case.At least if we had the subject out in the open it could be debated honestly and without some of the bottlenecks we continually get into when creos and ID theorists pretend that their definition of theory matches the current definition of theory.If it were out in the open, we could discuss what it might mean to change science, and weaken methodology. We could also discuss the importance of science in supporting faith. Or rather, ask if it is important to use science to support faith, when faith is by definition trust in something beyond what can be proven with evidence.At one time it was thought important to distinguish between Faith and Knowledge. That is what the rules which have been constructed were meant to do. It acted as a filter on beliefs, such that we knew if we could credibly say we "know" something.The equation between "being able to say we know" and "truth" is a metaphysical concept which has already been shown to perhaps never be attainable. This was worked out by the same people that gave us the tools of modern science and logic. Thus there should be no problem with people of faith, in not being able to say they know in a scientific sense... or feel that admiting scientific knowledge does not support their faith, means that they are inherently admitting it is less true.Yes, the fact that evidence and science might conflict with a faith, would test one's faith. And perhaps there are reasons for questioning or abandoning a faith with little evidentiary basis. But that is another argument altogether and does not, or should not, reflect badly on the process of gaining scientific knowledge.Weakening the rules to allow faith to creep into what we can say we know, or to argue that scientific knowledge must reflect "truth" rather than just "what we can say we know", opens the door for belief to supercede knowledge. That is what we consider knowledge to be now, with all of its rigorous testing, would be less valued than "any old theory" we might want to believe.I don't see that as a good thing.Am I just rambling? Maybe. But I guess I wanted to see if any on the creo or ID side are willing to admit they are asking for a change in science itself, and whether they think that really is a good idea for humanity? Do they not see that while it will be a bit more flexible, that flexibility would ultimately undercut knowledge... real knowledge... and thereby promote less critical thinking and general ignorance?I don't see a necessary role for faith within science.

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Hi Holmes. I was expecting you to start a thread so we could talk about some issues you'd raised off-topic on the other thread, but I have to say I'm confused about this topic. I have no notion at all of changing science. I don't claim to have much knowledge of science myself but I have appreciated some writings about science, such as Kuhn's book as I mentioned to you. I also read Popper and loved him at the time though that was a long time ago and I don't think I could even say any more what his views are. I certainly don't appeal to Plato or Augustine. I might in some contexts appeal to the bios of Roger Bacon and later European scientists who took their inspiration from the Bible for the investigation of the material universe.Perhaps you need to make it clear just what this "new" methodology is you keep referring to as I have no idea.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-30-2005 11:52 PM

Many of your points are well reasoned, holmes, but I do have a problem here:

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I give credit to those within the ID movement who at least admit, or have the ability to recognize they want to change (and indeed must change) science itself, not just evolution.

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As I see it, those people are simply the ones with more "book larnin'". The few of them who have any scientific knowledge can't be trusted to engage in an honest debate. So what if they admit that their aims go much further than eliminating the teaching of evolution? That's just manna for their masses.I think that most of the IDers who can understand enough to know that evolution deals with biology and calculus is concerned with numbers will admit that they want to change the teaching of a lot more topics than evolution. Hell, they even put it on their bumpers. I've been seeing a revival lately of a sticker I remember from a decade or so ago: "Big Bang Theory - God said it and BANG! it happened."You seem to be saying that we can trust them if only they'll admit that they can't be trusted.

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I'm going to shock and astound people. I am, more than ever, an IDist. Most of my interests have moved to logical arguments for a designer of agreed upon common knowledge within science facts. BUT, Intelligent design for me, I'm going to say is not science. Maybe I'm just honest but I just don't think it is.ID deals with science, which is an entirely different thing. My only problem which I want to whine about, is that there are good arguments from design which don't rock the boat and don't even claim to be science yet are basically ignored(edit; Ignored generally by paople, any people, even laypeople). They're not even against modern science, not even evolution in some instances, yet they are convincing arguments from design. But I think they aren't given their dues because they are philosophical arguments.The big authoritative big-hitter of our age is science, so anything else is not really given much time of day. So mine isn't an appeal to science, it's an appeal to everybody, even simply their opinion so that they take seriously these possibilities. I only say "possibilities". I don't know if there is a designer, I only believe so.This message has been edited by mike the wiz, 03-31-2005 07:27 AM

Heheheh... well that's not entirely accurate. This may be more a philosophical issue than you really want to, or are used to, dealing with.Someone in another thread had a quote that called creos "epistemological nihilists" and I thought that was an interesting and accurate characterizations. In a way I am saying I trust those that admit they want to be nihilists, more than those who keep saying they aren't and then argue straight nihilism.The fact is that they (ID in particular) are desiring a change in our scientific methodology. That is our epistemological rules. They are arguing that we reject certain rules.It is not objectively wrong to have a different set of rules. So it is not a case of them wanting to necessarily cheat everyone in some way. In fact I tend to believe they have some sincere feelings that the other methodolgy is superior.What can be argued is that the different systems have different benefits/deficiencies. Without question our current methods are extremely rigorous and restrictive. They actually and truly have the ability to cut out theories, or investigation of theories, that might be "true". That is what IDists are saying (as well as some creos) and they are 100% right. In choosing current methodology we are agreeing to the loss of flexibility in pursuing knowledge.The payoff is that our methods are less likely to come out with a false positive, or have us waste time researching "untruths".They want to increase flexibility at the cost of efficiency and potentially false validations.As long as it is recognized that this is what we are fighting about, I am less insulted. I would totally be in the opposing camp of course, as their winning would only lead to absurdities, but at least I can respect that they are talking about what they want.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

I did open a topic just for you, regarding the education issue. I believe its in the education forum area. The title is something like Splintering educational systems for Faith, or something like that. If you read Kuhn or Popper then you should know what I am talking about. If you trust in ID then you certainly are accepting other methodologies as even Dembski has written this, and it comes from platonic ideals.I will try to give you the short version, though I have already tried a couple times before...Modern science is inductive. That is it moves from evidence into models, which are then tested.In the past science was deductive, that is people started with a model and sought how to corroborate the model.You keep describing Evo and OE theories in ways that are deductive, not inductive. You also suggest that they can be competed with by other theories such as Creo, using deductive methods. That betrays that you do not understand how modern science actually operates (how ToE and OE were generated) nor the limits on how you can challenge them.You can of course argue what IDists argue and that is to make science more deductive by eliminating some of the rules which force greater induction and testing. But you cannot simply claim that Creo is scientific in the modern sense, and then discuss clearly deductive methods.Here is a more explicit "for example". You state that ToE and OE are simply stories that were created to explain the evidence, just like Creo. But that is not entirely true.First of all OE theories were generated when evidence for Creo theories were not working well. It is not that someone asked how ELSE can someone view the earth so as to exclude God, and therefore posited an OE. Heck one could be YE and still reject God, if one had the evidence. In reality it was generally pious men that could no longer see the evidence fitting a YE scenario that decided to think about a model which would fit the evidence, and did NOT view that as denying God at all.Second, the ToE was not made at the same time as OE theories. It was the acceptance of OE theories based on accumulating evidence, and continued fit with that model, which gave biologists a reason to postulate the ToE. That is they looked at how things were working now and saw that if OE were valid, time plus modern mechanisms of change could account for speciation.That was a theory, a model, which then had to have its tenets tested. So far accumulating evidence has not been challenging to the overall theory.In addition "models" in other fields have ended up creating new ways of testing the ToE and OE and the experiments have confirmed hypotheses from those theories.You have continually had to explain away why models in other fields have ended up resulting in tests which confirm predictions from the ToE and OE. Yet you have not actually used the evidence that created the models, as well as the evidence which came from the resulting tests in any sort of inductive way to explain what is actually going on in the world around you.That is the difference between using a deductive method vs an inductive method.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Hi Holmes,I feel like you're noting an important distinction between inductive and deductive approaches to science that I'm just not grasping. For example, you say this to Faith: Since I don't fully grasp the distinction you're making (though I intuitively feel I agree with it), I thought I'd tryblindly plugging this conclusion into your chain of reasoning to see if it made sense to me, but it feels like something is missing. So here's my attempted paraphrase of what you're saying:Creationists and IDists prefer a deductive approach to science. Deductive and inductive approaches to science are pretty much the same up until a theory is formulated. The deductive approach stops after the theory is formulated. The inductive approach uses the theory to infer yet undetected or unmeasured pheonmena which are then sought and measured in order to verify theory.I'm offering this not because I think I've accurately captured your viewpoint, but more because it highlights the way in which I'm probably not understanding what you're saying.--Percy

Hey Percy, maybe an example might help us a bit more.I was thinking that by inductive, Sherlock meant that one finds his evidence and then proceeds in theorizing about it. While the evidence is never complete(inductive) despite it being incomplete, predictions about what should happen make up for this aswell as a strong falsification but weak verification factor.i.e. A confirmation isn't worth much (one transitional for example) but a falsification against the theory is deemed important.For example, IF we evolution happened THEN more transitionals should be found in the fossils. The "if, then" operator helps me to see this as a prediction. I think this is just me ranting though, and probably not what Holmes is on about at all.What would be a deductive approach?

I don't get that at all from his post. Either that or I just don't understand your response. Think of logical induction in the same sense as mathematical induction (they are almost the same).Induction:

3. Logic.
a. The process of deriving general principles
from particular facts or instances.
b. A conclusion reached by this process.
​
Deduction:
4. Logic.
​
a. The process of reasoning in which a conclusion
follows necessarily from the stated premises;
inference by reasoning from the general to
the specific.
b. A conclusion reached by this process.

The way I think about it is that with induction you can only reach a conclusion based on what you have built so far. This is why mathematical induction works even though it is recursive although mathematical induction is a bit stronger than inductive reasoning.No so with deduction. Here you get to reason from a set of premises and your conclusion is only true when certain potentially unknown conditions are met.Deductive reasoning - Wikipedia And just to be complete. Alternativly, inductive reasoning:Inductive reasoning - Wikipedia Which sounds much more familiar to the type of language we use when talking about science. You take facts and reach tentative conclusions from those facts and only those facts. Nothing further needs to be found to make your conclusions true other than your original set of facts.This message has been edited by Jazzns, 03-31-2005 08:18 AM

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FOX has a pretty good system they have cooked up. 10 mil people watch the show on the network, FOX. Then 5 mil, different people, tune into FOX News to get outraged by it. I just hope that those good, God fearing people at FOX continue to battle those morally bankrupt people at FOX.
-- Lewis Black, The Daily Show

No they are not. Absolutely not.Mathematical induction is a form of deductive proof, and follows all the methods, conventions and process of deductive proof. Logical Induction is really a contradiction in terms, logic is inherently deductive.

Replying to Mike the Wiz, Jazzns and Mr. Jack...Working with better definitions now (thanks, Jazzns), would it be correct to say that deductive approaches cannot derive general principles?Perhaps an example applying both approaches to the same problem would help.--Percy

holmes writes me:

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This may be more a philosophical issue than you really want to, or are used to, dealing with.

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You've got a point, I'm not so fond of arguing philosophy. Overall, I thought your OP was good, but that particular point didn't seem to be well thought out. You've clarified yourself though, and I especially like the part about "epistemological nihilists". However, I do still have a quibble:

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It is not objectively wrong to have a different set of rules.

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Again, this is philosophy so please understand that I'm not so much challenging as inquiring. It would seem to me that you could make an objective distinction between the "science" (or "epistemology", which I suppose covers more ground, or even your phrase "set of rules") pursued by IDers and the science pursued by true scientists. One is based on ancient texts and traditional beliefs to the diminution of evidence and observation, while the other is concerned only with evidence and observation.

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The main limitation of deductive approaches is that they cannot produce any conclusion that is not implicit in the premises.So - except in a very limited domain - I dn't see any way that you could logically deduce a general principle without assuming one to start with.Induction, however, allows the creation of generalisations so long as you have adequate data.

You will have to help me understand this a little better then.1. Base Case
2. Inductive Hypothesis
3. Inductive StepIs the fact that you start with a hypothesis the same as deduction when you pose a requirment needing to be fulfilled?If that is true then I think I can see that. I don't mind my comparison being wrong. I always thought of mathematical induction as "building something up from the ground" with the ground being the base case.Thanks for further clarification.

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FOX has a pretty good system they have cooked up. 10 mil people watch the show on the network, FOX. Then 5 mil, different people, tune into FOX News to get outraged by it. I just hope that those good, God fearing people at FOX continue to battle those morally bankrupt people at FOX.
-- Lewis Black, The Daily Show