Is Intelligent Design Religion in the Guise of Science?

Message 181 of 204 (451097) 01-26-2008 7:48 AM

Reply to: Message 175 by Percy 01-20-2008 8:11 AM

Modern geology is based on uniformatarian assumptions if it believes that what we see now is all that can be used to explain everything we see around us.
The past is the key to the present. That is a uniformatarian assumption.There are catastrophists out there in modern geology but for the most part, uniformatarian geology seems to be the most popular belief.

You're right, in general they seem to accept that.Not all of them agree with it but they are not arguing that point -they are arguing against randomness in nature.

But anything that you can't see happen is not repeatable so it can't really be science.Extrapolation may be valid for some systems but is it valid for biological systems? We don't know to what extent that is true. Are there biological limits to diversification? Will a bacteria always be a bacteria just because that is all we ever see? Or did some extrapolation of that occur in the past, an extrapolation that we can't see happening now?

If there were bacteria in the past and there are bacteria now -does that mean that bacteria stay bacteria or must we imagine that long ago and far away, some bacteria diversified into to something more complex that was no longer a bacteria?

Bad analogy.We know bacteria existed in the past, we know they exist now.Do we know they changed into something more complex in the past? No we don't. We can't extrapolate on that either. Just because the lamp is broken doesn't mean we can work out that ,given time everything else will be broken.

No actually we are being quite rational by not assuming that which we have no reason to believe is possible. You have to use materialist assumptions if you're going to believe that it is possible for a bacteria to change into something more complex, something that is not a bacteria.

So,on that note we cannot say with certainty that simple things evolved into more complex things in the past.In which case, why are we teaching as fact those things that may have other explanations?
If it conflicts with your belief system (materialism) does that mean it is not true? Shouldn't science allow for other reasonable, evidence-based possibilities? -like ID?

Theorizing about what may have happened in the past (historical science) does not mean that the theory is true.Some data may support that theory, other data may not.

But extrapolation is used and that extrapolation may not be valid.

It is a possible explanation of the evidence, has only been tested to the degree that it is possible to test and most definately has not passed every test. You have to ignore the innumerable anomalies that are not explained by the theory in order to be content with the theory. There are a lot of scientific reasons for questioning the theory.

Or you do not like their evidence or their interpretation of the evidence which goes against the consensus opinion of what the evidence means.

Message 182 of 204 (451098) 01-26-2008 9:03 AM

Reply to: Message 176 by Percy 01-20-2008 8:36 AM

So then large scale evolution is a religious explanation since it is unsupported by empirical evidence. It is a potential extrapolation but unproven since we cannot do a repeatable experiment.ID suggests that the complexity of life is such that it defies simple explanations such as simple variation adding up to major change.

One doesn't have to be a brain surgeon to see that if something is true it must fit everything in life.If everything was initially created then it did not evolve from simple unicellular organisms. Showing variation in a life form does not explain where the complexity came from in the firt place.
Showing that genetic material mutates doesn't explain the origin of the genetic code.You have to imagine that it came together by chance natural processes -you cannot prove that and to me (and others)it is not a very satisfying explanation for what we observe.

He's doing the same thing many evolutionists do -imagining something must have happened (everything is random and undirected, matter is all there is)and then making up a story of how it may have happened. Not very scientific.I didn't say he is arguing for the opposite, I said he is imagining a solution to a problem and since nobody was there and nobody can repeat the experiment, it is altogether an exercise in imagination. Is that science?

Now where have I heard that before? -in 50 000 previous posts I think -does that make it true, no - except the part that it is a widely accepted theory, that part is true.

Unless it is the truth and there is an intelligent designer in which case random undirected evolution is the religious concept.You have to believe it is true despite some of its patent absurdities.

Message 183 of 204 (451100) 01-26-2008 9:14 AM

Reply to: Message 180 by Beretta 01-26-2008 7:13 AM

Let me keep the focus on bacteria and ask you for the ID explanation for the origin of all the different types of bacteria, which just like all other life, have been classified into the groupings of kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species. How did all the different bacteria, variously estimated in number at between 10 million and a billion different species, come about?

ID is religious in nature because the answer to this question is religious in nature. If ID insists that life could not have arisen naturally, then either the designer was God, or the designer's designer was God, or the designer's designer's designer was God, and so forth. It's an infinite regression that at some point has to end at God, and that's why ID is religious.

What disqualifies ID as science is not its inherently religious nature but its almost complete lack of evidence. The best that can be said of ID as science is that it is a theory in search of evidence. The fact of the matter is that ID is religion posing as science that is promoted through political machinations instead of scientific research.

--Percy

Message 184 of 204 (451104) 01-26-2008 10:07 AM

Reply to: Message 178 by bluegenes 01-20-2008 2:41 PM

But bacteria 600 million years ago and bacteria now are not very different -the same applies to so many life forms. If some barely changed over so much hypothetical time,can we conclude that others did manage to break the bacteria barrier and end up as brain surgeons? Stasis is the general rule in the fossil record and variation with limitations is what we observe now on this planet.

Can consensus be considered to be a measure of truth? So many consensus opinions have turned out to be untrue so perhaps the geologists have been brainwashed into believing the consensus opinion.ID is here to counter the dogma -it makes people think outside the box for a change.

And in all too many cases, imagined.

Yes and we never get anything but a dog. So 'time' is the way of imagining what cannot be proven.If 600 000 year old bacteria remain pretty much unchanged and blue-green algae remain pretty much unchanged, the rest is imagination and 'time' may not be able to change that.

Variation within limits.They're never going to grow wings.They vary -they have the genetic material to produce legs and tails of varying proportions but not wings or feathers or anything foreign to the basic ingredients.Selection only selects from that which is genetically possible.

Selected not added -only mutations which are genetic mistakes are added -in most cases that is not an advantage. In very few, there may be a slighlty advantageous side effect -like malarial resistance in a mutational condition. No complex new organs are going to build up due to mutation.

No, selecting what already exists, choosing the attributes one prefers, not adding characteristics.

If that were true they would have carried on trying but they didn't because all they ever got was useless mutants.And they were all fruit flies.

Perhaps they selected for intelligence???

Much like your belief that small changes can add up to large changes that we will never see happen because of 'time constraints'.
Your large changes with time may be true but my creator may be the one that's true.How would we know???

Perhaps you should apply a greater level of cynicism to the 'consensus' opinion but that might conflict with desire.

You measure, and examine bones and then you can remeasure and re-examine -that's hardly the point of repeatable experimentation.You cannot prove relationship by observing (and reobserving) that something looks like it might have changed into something else.I want to see it change into that something else and defy what we observe with nature and its apparent limitations.Then I too will be a believer!

Or maybe varieties of brain sizes exist just like people have a variety of size and shape heads which is not to say that we are related to apes at all.

Why are apes not turning into humans as we speak? Why are they apes and we are clearly humans and all the supposed hypothetical inbetween stages are no longer happening. Your imagination is just so much stronger than mine!
I understand why you could imagine what you imagine -I just don't happen to agree, and imagining that it happened is not the same as proof that it did.

They don't 'shout' evolution -you are imagining the shouting as well -you are a product of the energetic brainwashing of previous generations of believers.

Mutation -will tend to be weeded out by natural selection which tends towards maintaining integrity of the human kind.
Our lungs and bones are not identical, they vary within a range - but we will never have wings because we do not have the complex genetic information required to produce them.

Bad analogy -airplanes require an intelligent designer -not random breakdown of parts to form new innovative features.

Believing that random undirected mutation can conceivably result in such incredible creatures, organs, biochemical integration, fine tuned systems -that to me is belief in magic. Just like believing that an airplane could arrange itself into a flying machine by way of random parts lying around a junkyard in a wind storm.

Message 185 of 204 (451105) 01-26-2008 10:13 AM

Reply to: Message 181 by Beretta 01-26-2008 7:48 AM

Geology isn't the topic of this thread, I was just trying to offer a very brief correction. You can either get your information straight by reading up on uniformitarianism (e.g., the Wikipedia article) so you don't make mistakes like getting Buffon's "The present is the key to the past" backwards or like using an incorrect definition of uniformitarianism, or you can propose a new thread.

Then you misunderstand the nature of science, which like geology is also not the topic of this thread, so either read up (.e.g., the Wikipedia article) or propose a new thread. But perhaps it will suffice to simply point out that your incorrect definition of science would rule out ID as science, since the designer's design efforts can't be seen occurring and can't be repeated.

The bottom line is that if a designer truly created life on this planet, then we should be able, scientifically, to find the evidence telling us that that's what happened.

This is a question about evolution. The only way it is on-topic is if once I answer the question you respond with, in effect, "I can't believe it could happen that way, therefore a designer did it," which of course contains a couple significant fallacies. So I'll just stay on-topic and ignore the question.

I won't get in the way of this freight train of irrationality and illogic, but will simply point out once again that if nothing that happened in the past can be figured out by looking at evidence in the present, then ID can't be figured out either. Obviously your views are contradicted by almost all ID arguments. For example, most of Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box, argues that a designer operated in the past based upon evidence from the present. Specifically, Behe offers his observations about the modern bacterial flagellum and blood clotting in humans as arguments that a designer designed and manufactured these structures and processes in the past.

I don't know what "materialist assumptions" you're talking about, but science is definitely focused on the material. Science is based upon methodological naturalism or materialism. If ID is science that it must be also be based upon methodological naturalism. To require a different definition of science in order to qualify as science would be as if to argue, "My Volkswagen is actually a Ferrari, but I have a special definition of Ferrari."

You've already been offered several fairly accurate descriptions of the tentative nature of science, and since the nature of science is not really the topic of this thread I don't think much more time should be spent on this. Suffice to say that the tentativity inherent in evolutionary theory is also inherent in all other scientific theories, from relativity to quantum mechanics to the Big Bang to the standard model of particle theory to the germ theory of disease. Nothing in science is ever 100% certain.

These "innumerable anomalies" of evolution would be a great topic for another thread. Why don't you draw up a list and use it as the basis for a new thread over at Proposed New Topics?

Same here. Why don't you draw up a list of these "scientific reasons" and use it as the basis for a new thread over at Proposed New Topics?

ID declares, "It is impossible for such complex biological structures to have evolved naturally, therefore they must have been designed," then they call that evidence. There are two problems with this. First, it is an unsupported assertion, not evidence. Supported by lengthy arguments from people like Behe, true, but not evidence. But second and much more important, any designer must be at least as complex as anything he designs, right? So by the same logic, the designer could not have come about naturally and so must have been designed, and now we're into the infinite regression I mentioned in my previous post.

If ID is to become science by the same definition of science that scientists use, then they must do science, which means they should definitely avoid proposing a theoretical construct that contains the incredibly obvious flaw of an infinite regression or appeal to a religious deity (your choice). Actually conducting scientific research that gets written up in papers submitted to and published in quality peer-reviewed journals and that is subsequently replicated by other scientists is the only way ID will ever become accepted as science. To put it simply, to be science you actually have to do science. Political efforts directed at school boards and text book publishers are not science.

--Percy

Message 186 of 204 (451108) 01-26-2008 10:40 AM

Reply to: Message 184 by Beretta 01-26-2008 10:07 AM

The topic is the nature of the Intelligent Design movement. Please stick to that here.

You various objections to biology and geology can easily be taken to the appropriate threads. Please refrain from being them up here.

I'm not sure you have much left to say about the topic actually. You're personal view and position on ID is that it is, in fact, religious as you've said here.

Do you want to now either argue that the rest of the proponents of ID are not espousing a religious position or that they are also? If you settle that you will have finished making what contributions you can to this thread.

Message 187 of 204 (451109) 01-26-2008 10:55 AM

Reply to: Message 182 by Beretta 01-26-2008 9:03 AM

You're again arguing in the wrong direction. If ID is science it isn't because evolution isn't science.

And as I just pointed out in my previous post, you misunderstand the nature of scientific investigation. All scientific investigation is of past events. Even when you see something happen before your very eyes, you're actually observing something that happened in the past. If the event took place 20 feet away, then you're observing something that happened 20 nanoseconds in the past. If you instead take a picture and look at it tomorrow, it's still valid evidence capable of interpretation. And other people can examine that evidence, too, which is what replication means, not the impossible repeating of history. If your definition of science were correct, then not only is evolution not science, but neither is ID nor any other field of science is science. In other words, if you're right, there's no such thing as science.

If everything was initially created, then we should be able to uncover evidence of the means and mechanisms of that creation. ID should be focusing their efforts at uncovering this evidence, instead of on convincing laypeople that ID, an idea shared by less than 1% of scientists and almost no biologists, is actually science. To qualify as science the people IDists have to convince first are scientists, not school board members.

Of course I can't prove it to you. Science is tentative. All I can do is support theory with evidence. If you're unconvinced, then fine. The task for any scientist with a new theory is not to convince everyone, because that never happens, not even for theories like relativity and quantum mechanics. The task is merely to construct a consensus.

So all ID needs to do is present evidence to the scientific community that is sufficiently persuasive as to form a consensus, and then poof! ID will be in the next edition of every biology textbook.

As I just explained, Gould is not doing that at all. You've completely misinterpreted that passage. He's doing something very simple and common, presenting an idea for the purposes of showing it isn't true. Here's a simple example of what he's doing: "Imagine that Mars' orbit is actually closer to the sun than the Earth's. But if that were true then we would never see Mars on the opposite side of the Earth from the sun, but we do, quite often in fact. Therefore the initial premise is wrong and Mars' orbit must be further from the sun than the Earth."

Clear now? I know Gould's prose is more complex than this, but if you reexamine the passage you should be able to see now that that's what he is doing.

But the main point was the irony of quoting Gould out of context, thereby making him seem to be saying something he wasn't, while you were in the middle of arguing that creationists don't quote scientists out of context to make them seem to be saying something they weren't.

The evidence for my statement is the mountains of technical literature that reports the 100+ years of research into evolutionary topics and the accompanying evidence.

Science isn't about truth, so if ID wants to be about truth then that's fine. Science only tries to create models of the natural world that are true (notice I say "true", meaning accurate reflections of reality, not "truth", which concerns ultimate meanings in a religious sense).

Once again you're repeating the mistake of thinking it is an either/or. We accept evolution because of the mammoth amounts of evidence supporting it. If new evidence or insights invalidates evolutionary theory that doesn't make ID the winner. It means we seek a theory which *does* explain the evidence.

--Percy

Message 188 of 204 (451329) 01-27-2008 9:40 AM

Reply to: Message 187 by Percy 01-26-2008 10:55 AM

The difference is in whether you observed it or not.
Science observes variation and natural selection.Therefore that is science.
Science has never observed a reptile turning into a bird -therefore to conclude that it happened is not science.
Large scale evolutionary change and Intelligent design are both historical concepts - which one happened? or did neither happen? -neither can be proven because we can observe neither.
Real science is the stuff we can observe happening.We use real science to decide what can happen.Real science -observable science is what we use in technology.Nobody has a problem with real science being taught in the classroom.
The problem comes in with the philosophy of methodological naturalism which is being taught as fact in the classroom.
This says that 'matter is all there is' -even if it is not true -and 'random undirected evolutionary processes produced everything we see' -even if it is not true.
So in essence what I am saying is science should stick to what is truelly scientific which excludes those things which are not observable by virtue of the fact that they may have occurred in the past but we cannot see them happening today,so we cannot say with certainty that it happened at all .

Religion is something you believe happened -you have faith that it did happen but you have never observed it happening.
That would include both large scale evolution and ID.
So ultimately macro-evolution and ID are both religious concepts -which means evolution is religion in the guise of science and ID is religion in the guise of science SO either
(1)neither should be taught as fact OR
(2)both should be discussed (with their supporting evidences) in the science classroom.

The problem that ID has with macro-evolution is that it may not be true and the problem that evolutionists have with ID is that it may not be true.In fact they are both sure the other one is not true.

Both should be taught as philosophy (possible scenarios) but neither should be taught as fact to the exclusion of the other otherwise you are teaching your religion, not science.

No, not true.Factual observable things are science.Technological advance relies on that kind of real science.
When you push something it moves, push it with greater force, it moves faster -you can use that observation and produce something according to that universally observable scientific principle.
Doctors use knowledge of anatomy and biochemistry and pathology and pharmacology in their work and advancements. They can fix a broken toe but imagining that the toe developed through mutational processes from the simple one-celled organisms doesn't help your practice of medicine in the least.You don't have to be sure of where it came from in order to fix it.
Engineers use facts in their engineering.That is science.

IDers spend a lot of time trying to drum in the difference between historical and evidence-based science but evolutionary scientists seem to have a block of understanding where that is concerned.
The general public, less brainwashed, does not seem to have a problem understanding the difference.
Evolutionary scientists refuse to have ID concepts in peer-reviewed magazines, they go ape like they did with Stephen Meyer's article after it was published.What is their problem? Why do they feel so threatened by alternative explanations to their favorite 'consensus' opinion? There have always been paradigms in science and to change that paradigm involves fighting the entrenched paradigm because people resist change especially when they want to retain their monopoly on knowledge.It's like trying to take down a corrupt government when they own the media and other ideas are not allowed to be heard.

I think the biggest problem is the misconceptions that abound about what ID is trying to achieve- they are trying to get a fair hearing and to allow children to hear both sides of the origins debate as well as to explain to them where science and philosophy must be separated.

If you tell children that they arrived via random mutational changes from a common single-celled organism, you are not telling them a fact, you are pushing your religion about what you believe happened in the past.

Ultimately yes, maybe we will -but teaching what is not fact as fact in the meantime, is not going to advance knowledge about those means and mechanisms.

The percentage quoted here is an indication of how much more severe the brainwashing is amongst scientists than in the general public.'Matter is all there is, everything can and must be explained by purely material processes'.What if that is not true? There are plenty intelligent people out there that are not actively working in the universities.Are people in universites the only ones that know anything? That makes scientists like a priesthood in a religion of their own.They have decided that matter is all there is, that everything can be explained without a creative intelligence -therefore they are right and everyone that objects is wrong?
There are a lot of people within the universities that believe in a God that created us, but dare they mention it or steer their research in that direction? -no.The priesthood will not allow them to think outside the box, they will not get funding, their websites will be shut down, they will be shunned and vilified.That's like being a Christian in a Muslim country - shut up or face the consequences say the Imams -so also say the evolutionists to the IDers. They get away with it now but the opposition is growing and rightly so. You can't protect a bad idea from criticism and if ID is such a bad idea, it will crumble on its own, if evolution is the bad idea, it will have to make way for a paradigm shift.

So don't teach it as fact when it is not.Only teach facts as fact.An eye works like this. An ear works like this.FACT.An ear is a residual structure in the evolutionary process -no, not fact.Learn to discriminate between fact and theoretical possibilities.

And allow the consensus to be exposed to valid criticism so that science can advance.

Well that's an interesting comment. Science should be about truth.
The truth about evolution is being tested and science, in the pursuit of truth, should welcome that testing, not resist it.

No but insisting that evolution is fact does not invalidate ID either.

Message 190 of 204 (451372) 01-27-2008 1:47 PM

Reply to: Message 188 by Beretta 01-27-2008 9:40 AM

I tried to address your misconceptions regarding the nature of science as briefly as I could. Obviously you still disagree, but that issue is off-topic, and I don't think we can justify spending more time on it in this thread. If you'd like to explore that off-topic issue further you should probably propose a new thread over at Proposed New Topics.

You also introduce additional off-topic issues, such as the public understanding of science, the brainwashing of scientists, the publication of the Meyer article in the BSOW journal, the religious nature of evolution, the error of methodological naturalism, the priesthood of science, censorship by scientists, teaching evolution as fact, and that science should be about truth.

You've addressed everything but the topic, so let's return to the topic.

If a designer truly created life on this planet, then we should be able, scientifically, to find the evidence telling us that that's what happened. If ID is to become science by the same definition of science that scientists use, then they must do science, which means they should definitely avoid proposing a theoretical construct that contains the incredibly obvious flaw of an infinite regression or appeal to a religious deity (your choice). Actually conducting scientific research that gets written up in papers submitted to and published in quality peer-reviewed journals and that is subsequently replicated by other scientists is the only way ID will ever become accepted as science. To put it simply, to be science you actually have to do science. Political efforts directed at school boards and text book publishers are not science.

--Percy

Message 191 of 204 (451395) 01-27-2008 3:39 PM

Reply to: Message 190 by Percy 01-27-2008 1:47 PM

We all know that ID and creationism science related papers rarely if ever get into quality peer-reviewed journals. That word quality aka majority mainline ideologically accredited, as with alternative vs conventional in healthcare etc excludes about anything nonconventional.

That is not to say some (I say 'some') of mainline/conventional ID creationist science is not up to par scientifically due to the fact that a lot of YEC arguments are neither scientific or Biblical in their hypotheses.

Imo, my unique Buzsaw hypotheses on origins relative to the Genesis record and scientific laws as I have put forth over the years works to correct some ot the misconceptions of conventional YEC creationists. I strive to consider both observable scientific laws relative to observable data and the literal fundamentals of the Biblical record in formulating hypotheses.

So far as the science debate forums, go, if your standard for participation is quality scientific journal sanctioned, you essentially disqualify any ID creationist from the science debates. That's the dilema you must decide upon relative to EvC guidelines.

Message 192 of 204 (451398) 01-27-2008 3:47 PM

Reply to: Message 191 by Buzsaw 01-27-2008 3:39 PM

What's the single most important/significant piece of ID research work currently occuring?

Message 193 of 204 (451402) 01-27-2008 3:54 PM

Reply to: Message 192 by CK 01-27-2008 3:47 PM

quote:

---

The organization that last year opened a US$27-million creation museum in Kentucky has started its own 'peer-reviewed' scientific research journal.

On 9 January, Answers in Genesis, a Christian ministry run by evangelical Ken Ham, launched Answers Research Journal (ARJ ), a free, online publication devoted to research on “recent Creation and the global Flood within a biblical framework”. Papers will be peer reviewed by those who “support the positions taken by the journal”, according to editor-in-chief Andrew Snelling, a geologist based in Brisbane, Australia.

“There have been these kinds of publications in the past,” says Keith Miller, a geologist at Kansas State University in Manhattan, who follows creationism. For the most part, he says, the work is ignored by the scientific community. But those without a science background, including some policy-makers, may not be able to judge the difference in value of a paper in ARJ and a genuine science journal.

---

From here.

Apparently, the Creationists have taken out criticism of the lack of published papers seriously...so now they will publish their own "peer-reviewed" journal.

Of course, there still wont be any actual science involved, and it's not going to be a respected journal. neither will it be reviewed by actual, objective scientists. But the attempt is funny. The Wedge Strategy progresses!

Message 194 of 204 (451406) 01-27-2008 4:00 PM

Reply to: Message 191 by Buzsaw 01-27-2008 3:39 PM

--Percy

Message 195 of 204 (451411) 01-27-2008 4:20 PM

Reply to: Message 194 by Percy 01-27-2008 4:00 PM

www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=msg&f=25&t=3444&m=1 -->www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=msg&f=25&t=3444&m=1">http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=msg&f=25&t=3444&m=1