Nature belongs to ID

I attended a five day Intelligent Design conference to see if it really was 'religion masquerading as science'. I was impressed with the level of scientific evidence supporting ID. The arguments were robust and compelling, but I believe it's all for naught. ID in its present incarnation will not usurp current evolutionary theory for two reasons - one of which I discuss in the post.ID proponents call their opposition Naturalism and this is their first mistake. Everyone loves Nature, no matter religion or epistemological position, Nature inspires us all. Nature is where we see the glory of God. Nature is where ID finds its evidence. Nature lies dear to all our hearts. To pit yourself against Nature is not the way to win hearts and minds.And Naturalism has nothing to do with Nature. Naturalism explains our solar system and the life within it as the result of unrelated accidents - one planet smashes into the Earth and the result is the moon, meteors rain down, volcanoes erupt, even the evolution of life is a arbitrary - mutations (accidents) in DNA provide the fuel by which natural selection steers the course of evolution. It is car crash evolution - a car goes through a bush, hits a tree and ends up in a lake - the bush, the tree and the lake are objects of Nature but the car crash is not a natural process.Galileo was tried for heresy because he could not accept the received wisdom of the day that insisted the sun, the planets and stars rotated around an immovable Earth. He argued that the movement of the stars made no sense with that explanation. He said: God is perfect, God's work is perfect, Nature is God's work. If a natural phenomenon does not make sense, it is not Nature that is illogical, but rather our understanding of its processes. Nature makes sense - mathematical sense. Science, medicine, engineering are only possible because of the intelligibility, predictability and logic of Nature.If ID is to succeeds it must lay claim Nature. Nature is God's work and ID is a champion for God. By calling its opponent Naturalism, ID is giving credence to an explanation that is not a natural process. Call it what it is - Car Crash Evolution. I believe this will pique the public's interest and allow ID to better explain itself.Edited by Vanessa, : punctuation correction

Thread copied here from the Nature belongs to ID thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

Hello Vanessa, It is something of a shame you couldn't give us more information on this or on the details of the conference you attended, especially since several things in the rest of your post seems to substantially support the idea that it is 'religion masquerading as science', e.g. "ID is a champion for God". I think you need to explain in greater detail what point you are trying to make here. What is the unnatural 'car crash' part of evolution? Is it mutation? In what way is it unnatural?While were at it, in what way is a car crash not natural? You seem to be trying to conflate natural with some sort of purposive teleological concept. Why are random events and accidents not natural by your definition? Is a coin toss unnatural because I can't predict its outcome? So why do you not accept that it is this same intelligibility, predictability and logic that have led to the conclusions you seem to disapprove of, dismiss as naturalism and claim have nothing to do with nature? Volcanoes do erupt, meteors do rain down and mutations do occur; do you think they don't?TTFN,WK

When I was reading this part of Vanessa's post I assumed it was the old confusion of different meanings of the word natural. In one sense there's natural versus the supernatural (or the divine or any other synonymous label), while in another sense there's natural versus man-made or man-caused.--Percy

I'd really like to hear more about this. I don't believe there is any such evidence, but I'm quite often wrong. I find the dichotomy you are expressing here to be a bit baffling. If Intelligent Design is in opposition to Naturalism as it is explained here, then there must be some guiding designer that steers the evolution or development of life. How is that not religious? Is it simply because the designer is unnamed? Surely that position cannot be considered credible? What would constitute a success for ID?

You made a major error there.ID is supposed to be science, it goes to great lengths to pretend to be science, so you're not supposed to admit that it is religiously-based.Have to keep up the pretense, you know. Could you share some of that evidence with us?It might help though if you checked the following link first to see if that "evidence" has already been refuted. Index to Creationist Claims

It's interesting that you seem to imply that Intelligent Design is science yet post material that refutes that very position.You said: yet arguments do not make anything scientific, only evidence does.Then you go on to say: which of course makes Intelligent Design nothing but Creationism in disguise as well as being a totally false assertion that just makes god into an incompetent bungler who is a total failure.I'm not quite sure why you think the god you seem to be marketing is significant or of any value?

First of all, before I say anything, I would like to apologize ahead of time if I offended you or anyone else. There are some very important issues here that I'd like to point out, even at the cost of violating the almighty political correctness that I'm suppose to follow. May I ask what your qualifications are? The reason I ask this is because if "scientific evidence" were that easy to understand or be evaluated by laymen in just five days, everyone would be a scientist, everyone would be an engineer, everyone would be a professional, etc.I'm an engineer who has in the past worked as a cop, computer programmer, and lab researcher. And I still don't think I'm qualified to say if evolution is scientific or not. I leave that to real hard working scientists. I can only share with you what my experiences tell me about these things.Also, I highly recommend you read as much as possible on the dunning-kruger effect.My experiences tell me that ID advocates rhetorics emphasis heavily on stroking the egos of uneducated people. Again, I really don't mean to offend anyone, but I think it's important to point this out.Having worked i research for a number of years, I can tell you that scientific evidence isn't as simple as giving a five day conference and stroking people's egos. It takes years of research on a level that most people don't even know about. The data are then analysed by honest to god real live scientists.Their results are then published and be criticized by honest to god other scientists.ID proponents have published zero papers. They have made absolutely no progress in their "research". What they do really well is hold conferences and tell non-scientists to vote for them. This is exactly why we think ID is religion masquerading as science.Why couldn't nature tell us the glory of zeus? Why does it have to be the judeo-christian god?

It took 5 days?! Seriously?I can debunk everything you learned in just a few lines of text.#1) If life on Earth was "intelligently designed", it must have been designed by SOMETHING. That thing is either naturally evolved/abiogenesis life _or_ is magic. Those are the only two options. If naturally evolved/abiogenesis life can and does exist, then claiming that life on Earth isn't that but was instead created by it gets you no where in your argument. If it doesn't exist, then you are just preaching Creationism with one additional step in between.Neither argument is valid.#2) "cdesign proponentists". If you can cut and paste a term out of an entire textbook and replace it in all instances with a different term, yet the concepts, meanings and implications of the text are not altered in any way, then those two terms are equivalent. Cutting and pasting "creationists" out and putting "design proponents" in didn't change any part of the Dover textbook. Therefore the two terms mean the same thing.Total time to type this: 2.5 minutes.Five days of debunking down the drain. Laughable.

I find it laughable that the people who did the edit didn't even know how to use office correctly. Just go to edit, find/replace all, and presto. Instead, they actually went through and replaced each word at a time.

Hello Wounded KingFirst I apologise for not knowing how to copy and paste quotes in those very useful boxes - I hope to figure it out soon.In response to your questions:
The conference was held in the UK in July last year. There were 3 lectures per day over 5 days, including lectures from 2 molecular biologists, a philosopher of science, a lawyer, an astronomer and a professor of thermodynamics. There was only one lecture on religion - 'Religious implications of ID'. The attendees were of different faiths and those of no decided religion, but all were curious about ID.Without doubt religious people flow to ID like a duck to water, because it holds up evidence for God (intelligence). But water and ID exist on their own. However if you ask a duck about the qualities of water don't be surprised if he shows you his webbed feet. To know about ID ask a molecular biologist, not a Scientologist and you'll hear no mention of God.In answer to your next comments:
Evolution as explained by Naturalism claims to show how 'Nature did it' . And this is where I take exception. Nature does not develop life by arbitrary events but through systems and processes, whether it is seed to sapling to mighty oak, caterpillar to pupal to butterfly, egg to chick to eagle. We live within profoundly complex and layered systems of life, yet we choose to explain this incredible tapestry as the result of accident - cosmic or chromosomal. It simply doesn't make sense and I refer to Galileo's argument in my earlier post. Maybe evolution is a system of development and we can't see it because we're in it - can't see the forest for the trees.The birth of a child, from conception through gestation until the baby's first cry demonstrates the wondrous hand of God for the faithful, and the intelligibility of Nature for the sceptical - both sides are satisfied. I believe the true explanation for life on Earth will not require a leap of faith for the faithful nor a loss of reason for the rational.I look forward to continuing this conversation, but I'm going on holiday tomorrow. Hopefully we'll talk again soon.Kind regards
Vanessa

Your entire argument seems to boil down to just this one comment. Your find the idea that life naturally develops to be incredulous.Yet your personal incredulity doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. Your argument is called the Argument from Incredulity, and it's a logical fallacy. Whether an individual personally finds an argument to be personally convincing has nothing to do with the accuracy of that argument; you can find it "ridiculous" that adding two and two gives four, but it's still so. Who told you that anyone thinks that nature develops life through arbitrary events?The fact that chemistry is not at all random or arbitrary does not mean that it is intelligently guided. Mutation and natural selection are also not arbitrary...and do not require the interference or guidance of an intelligent agent.

Hello NoNukesI don't know whether you are being serious when you say you don't believe there is any evidence supporting ID. Do you mean you are not persuaded by the evidence you've researched or simply that you've never looked? I believe you're being facetious, forgive me if I am wrong.I explained in my reply to Wounded King that ID is an argument that supports a notion of God, but not religion. Religion is a way of worship, which varies widely between cultures - like language. ID calls itself a theory, but I don't think it is, because it doesn't offer an alternative story of evolution. This is why I think most people call it Creationism. Maybe some ID supporters do believe in the 7 days of creation (or other religious creation stories) but ID has nothing to say on the subject. ID devotes itself to usurping the notion that life is the result of accident. On that I agree.What would constitute a success for ID? An alternative explanation of evolution that was not a leap of faith for the faithful nor a loss of reason for the rational - wouldn't that make us all happy?

Sorry but belief in a god is a religion.

"Evidence" is defined as a fact or observation that directly adjusts the probability that a given hypothesis is accurate relative to competing hypotheses.In the case of ID, the evidence given to support that hypothesis usually falls into just a few categories:1) Facts or observations which do fit the predictions of ID, but which also fit just as well with the predictions of purely naturalistic evolution as well, and therefore is not really evidence in favor of ID over naturalism. In nearly all cases, these arguments also violate the principle of parsimony, and differenciate themselves from their naturalistic counterparts by simply adding "...and God did it" to the end without providing evidence necessitating the inclusion of the additional term.2) Falsehoods - we see plenty of claimed evidence that simply isn't true; claims of observations or facts that are false due to the incompetence of the claimant, and occasionally attempts at outright deception.3) Incredulity masquerading as evidence. This is usually an argument rather than actual evidence, and typically boils down to some combination of an emotional sense of wonder and curiosity at one's own ignorance of the natural world (Lord Kelvin once said that the mechanisms that drive a plant to grow from a seed or which allow the mind to cause a muscle to move are "infinitely beyond" human understanding), and a sense that alternatives "just don't sound right."I've participated in many debates concerning Intelligent Design, and I have not once seen an accurate depiction of facts or observations that actually supported the hypothesis of Intelligent Design beyond competing hypotheses. In other words, I've never seen any real evidence that would suggest Intelligent Design is in fact an accurate model of reality.Do you perhaps have some facts or observations you can share that would make Intelligent Design more likely to accurately represent reality than competing hypotheses, specifically the hypothesis that life processes including evolution are purely natural and do not require the interference of external intelligent actors?