Well Doc, I think we agree on three things:
(1) What you see depends on where you’re standing.
(2) No matter how good your vantage point, no matter how great your eyesight; you can still only see one wee part of the whole picture.
(3) Beer is always good. 
Tom, the only two definitions of “proof” I personally accept as valid (ignoring the legal usage of the term), is the mathematical/logical meaning, and the determining of alcoholic content of booze.
I don’t think there are any empirical proofs in science. But I’ve explained my reasoning behind that before, so no point in repeating myself.
As for; “it seems to me that you’ve defined ID too narrowly”, yes, that might well be true.
However, if ID means that the human race is the product of some sort of plan by a planner, then no, I don’t think I have.
However, before I continue with my argument, perhaps it’d be better for me if you gave an example of a form of ID that you consider compatible with scientific and logical methodology.
Ali
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| Well Doc, I think we agree on three things: (1) What you see depends on where you’re standing. (2) No matter how good your vantage point, no matter how great your eyesight; you can still only see one wee part of the whole picture. (3) Beer is always good. |
I’m buying the next round…
Not all beers are created equal.
Ali, FWIW most people use the words “proof” and “prove” in a context in which they clearly mean “the empirical evidence supports as a warranted belief…” I agree with you, “proof” is better restricted to logical or mathematical inferences. But not all people use the term that way, unfortunately.
Also, “compatible with” to me means only that the specific ID theory at hand does not contain any claims that conflict with the results of good science. Consider Erasmus Darwin’s position on evolution:
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| Would it be too bold to imagine that, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions and associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end! |
Right now, that is as compatible with the present state of scientific knowledge as anything is. We might think it not entirely plausible, we might suspect that supernatural explanations are themselves not justified, but that’s not the issue here: one can accept the idea of a “great First Cause” and Darwinian evolution (even the Charles-D variant) without involving ourselves in any logical inconsistency. And as science changes, and some plausible scientific account of the origin of life is offered, we can at that point retreat a step, and simply say that God created the universe to work that way. God is never a testable scientific hypothesis, but that doesn’t make explanations that rely on God incompatible with science, unless they conflict with some specific, well-grounded scientific claim. In which case the supernatural explanation has to go.
This reminds of the history of types of evidence accepted as proof of a miracle, used by the Catholic church to identify saints. As science has progressed, and as more apparently miraculous phenomena have been explained scientifically, the range of acceptable evidence has narrowed. These days it’s mostly inexplicable cures of cancer.
How’s that?
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| This reminds of the history of types of evidence accepted as proof of a miracle, used by the Catholic church to identify saints. As science has progressed, and as more apparently miraculous phenomena have been explained scientifically, the range of acceptable evidence has narrowed. These days it’s mostly inexplicable cures of cancer. |
This hits at the root of something that gets my goat (and a few other animals).
Many of my Southern Baptist relatives use this way of thinking as “proof” that the Catholic Church is nothing more than a cult, worshiping idols (The Pope, Virgin Mary, many Saints) and not the One True God. As part of their proof they bring up their belief that there are NO modern day miracles happening and have not happened for hundreds or years. It’s at the root of their dismissal of the Catholic Church in general.
I don’t know if this is just them or a Southern Baptist thing.
Doesn’t a dismissal of modern day miracles as a general rule seem counter to what God’s teaching should be, that they can happenat any time and without any obvious reason (or not happen)? My opinion is that it’s not that they don’t believe in miracles. It’s that they seem to be so skeptical of anything that might be a “miracle” that they’d never believe a real one if it did happen…or if it ever has.
That seems SO narrowminded…and this is a group that qute vocal in ID-anti-evolution movement.
I think just I lost another goat.
Tom, I think I’m not making myself clear here.
I do not say that the “creation” of mankind, the universe, whatever, is incompatible with science, but, I do claim that “design” is.
It’s a subtle difference, but an important one.
I for example, am responsible (with a wee bit of help from my ex-wife) for the creation of two human beings, but I didn’t design them.
But it seems that old Erasmus there is talking about design. And if so, then it is indeed in conflict with science and mathematics.
And I’d go further, and say that ID is incompatible with Christianity too.
Supposedly, God created man in his own image; in other words, he copied, not designed.
And given that God is defined to be “omniscient and omnipotent”, then if he had designed Adam and Eve, why didn’t they operate to the design parameters?
Why did God feel the need to exterminate the descendants of Adam and Eve by flood? Why did he need to reset the program by his 10 commandments?
So it seems to me that either the human race was not designed, or God is fallible.
See, it is not possible to include randomness as part of a design, (unless we chose to redefine the word “design” that is.)
Consider a roulette wheel; very carefully designed, very ordered. No randomness in its design whatsoever. They are built to be as ordered as possible.
The fact that they exploit random factors in the universe is neither here nor there, the roulette wheel has no randomness in its design.
And the same is true for any other device or system designed to produce a random output, the randomness lies not in the device, but in “something else”.
But as God supposedly created the “everything else” too, then it was not designed.
And perhaps that is why the Jesuits, who’s members are not only expert theologians but scientists, mathematicians and philosophers too, discount ID.
(Just a wee thought, a theological aside: Is it possible, that God created man “in his own image” so that he could understand himself? God may know all things, but could he know himself? Is mankind and the universe merely an experiment so that God may gain understanding of himself? If so, what happens to the experiment after it’s yielded its data? )
Anyway, if we do live in a deterministic universe, and all randomness is illusory, then there’s no point discussing it. We have no free will, we have no will of any sort, we are just pre-programmed robots operating as per our design.
Or, if the universe is not deterministic, or even if a tiny part of it is not deterministic, then whether there was an initial design or not is totally irrelevant, for whatever original design there was, is now lost.
If we believe in science, then we can only believe in ID by using an amount of double-think that I for one am not capable of.
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| See, it is not possible to include randomness as part of a design, (unless we chose to redefine the word “design” that is.) |
I wish I had more time to research “randomness”. I have read several articles in the past where scientists have been discussing the idea that “random” is NOT so random. If you know what I mean.
Interesting stuff…
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| As part of their proof they bring up their belief that there are NO modern day miracles happening and have not happened for hundreds or years. |
Have they been living under a rock? They have never heard of terminally ill patients going to the doctor for pre-surgical exams and the doctor finds their ailment has disappeared? I have witnessed this several times myself. It is one of the reasons I DO believe in God. Because I and a whole BUNCH of other people were calling out their names in prayer and these are people of great faith.
Was it a miracle or did the doctors and laboratory people screw up? “Oh, we thought it was cancer. It was just a zit!” “Our mistake!!” I don’t think so…
D
It is indeed Tim, and as I said before, randomness is a subject for debate.
It’s often used as a synonym for “unpredictability”.
And that’s what slot machines are, unpredictable.
But, they produce a sequence of numbers, and every succeeding number is actually pre-determined, not random.
And in the early days of quantum mechanics it was claimed by some (including Einstein), that the Heisenberg principle was indeed mere unpredictability, and with better knowledge we could overcome that.
But experimental evidence, theoretical scientific thought, and mathematics, now strongly indicate that randomness is a fundamental quality of the universe.
Reality seems to be a fairly fuzzy thing.
And as sound engineers we know that from experience.
We know the equations for sound waves, pressure fields, etc., that enable us to listen to our monitors, but, if we’re 3 miles away from a rock concert, then those equations start to fail.
The sound fades, its qualities vary, and no matter how good a mike or amplifier we have, the signal starts disappearing into noise.
And if we’re 100 miles away, it’s gone completely.
Order, rules, laws, are merely local things, not universal.
It’s called coherence length or coherence time in physics. We know the laws that govern a simple pendulum, but if we have two identical pendulums (pendulapottimi? ), and in identical conditions, then, sooner or later, they’ll get out of sync.
Same rules, same laws, govern them both, but eventually, chaos rules.
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Actually, I think “pendulapottimi” is the act of having a pendulum surgically removed from er… “sensitive” areas.
D
PS Maybe that’s what they call the surgery where they make a he a she and his dangler don’t dangle no more!
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| Many of my Southern Baptist relatives use this way of thinking as “proof” that the Catholic Church is nothing more than a cult, worshiping idols (The Pope, Virgin Mary, many Saints) and not the One True God. |
As someone who spent 12 years in Catholic school, raised catholic, having read the Jack Chic comics as to why Catholics are the devil incarnate etc, I have a few comments on Catholocism. Catholocism is a very, for lack of a better word, intellectual denomination. Catholocism has the longest history of any Christian denomination and as a result, they have the longest tradition. THis means volumes of writing and theological thought. Catholocism also had many events that caused this… the monastic movement, middle ages, etc. These led to a very educated theological elite that turned religion into a quasi science, poly sci, reason, and academic pursuit. I think becuase of the nuance and depth of teachings, it is easy for those outside (or those ignorant inside for that mater) to not understand and be quite intimidated by words like transubstantiate and ex cathedra, not to mention the confusion caused by the concept of intercession. Also, the face of the Catholic church has changed drastically in the past 50 years. Much of the old fish on Friday type things have been done away with, yet the stereo type remains. All that to say, I think folks get scared of Catholics as they are the book worm nerd denomination out there with all kind sof big fancy words that folks get scared by.
Not to turn this into a bash fest and totally OT, though along the lines of goat getting, as a boy in Catholic school we were taught that all life is sacred… Abortion AND capital punishment are no no’s. Why are some of the protestant denominations seemly contradictory here? Pro Life! Abortion bad… let’s put abortion doctors in the electric chair…
Just an odd juxtopostion to me.
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| Not to turn this into a bash fest, as a boy in Catholic school we were tught that all life is sacred… |
Except presumably, fish on Fridays?
Sorry Bubba, I’m not mocking.
I was raised Presbyterian, and that meant that the bible, and the bible only, is valid.
Of course, the Minister, being much more wise and holy than any of us could ever hope to be, was the only one qualified to tell us what God actually meant!
But the Catholic Church does seem to be trying to answer questions of conflict between theology and science, unlike radical Protestant fundamentalism.
But, they gotta dump that whole “papal infallibility” thing.
I think it was only in the 1970’s that they admitted that they’d fucked up over the whole Galileo issue.
And, they gotta start serving larger cups of wine, and forget those chips, they’re nasty!
Don’t get me wrong, I am not defending… there is a reason I don’t go to Catholic church… Those are just my thoughts on why there is the stigma. That and we tend to be a greasy haired batch of Irish, Italians, and the rest of eastern Europe. Greasy haired Slovenian in Italian Folk Dance sponsored by a Catholic church here. 
It seems to be the Slavic and Romantic countries that are Catholic, and the Germanic ones who are protestant Bubba.
Then there’s the Celtic Welsh, who’re mostly Methodist (just to spite the English), and the Gaelic Irish, who are only Catholic so that they can celebrate St Patrick (the patron saint of parades and booze ups).
However, Scotland is one of those areas like Ulster and Liverpool where the split between Catholicism and Protestantism is fairly even.
That means of course, that we’re able to gain a broad religious perspective and encompass religious tolerance.
Like H e ll we do! LOL
But I blame it all on King Martin Luther (who was American apparently, which explains a lot).
If he’d only managed to get laid while in Rome, the world would be a whole different place.
But, probably not very different.
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| Tom, I think I’m not making myself clear here. I do not say that the “creation” of mankind, the universe, whatever, is incompatible with science, but, I do claim that “design” is. It’s a subtle difference, but an important one. I for example, am responsible (with a wee bit of help from my ex-wife) for the creation of two human beings, but I didn’t design them. But it seems that old Erasmus there is talking about design. And if so, then it is indeed in conflict with science and mathematics. And I’d go further, and say that ID is incompatible with Christianity too. |
Hmm. I feel stupid. Isn’t ID about creation? It’s a close cousin (some woudl say a doppelganger) of creationism.
I’m going to have to think about your argument that ID is incompatible with Christianity. You come up with that? Looks interesting.
Not to go off topic, T. G. Diogenes, but you know Hume’s argument against miracles?
And, finally, speaking of the great King Luthier of Martins, I have been reading the best book on the reformation I’ve ever come across - curiously titled “The Reformation” - by Diarmaid MacCulloch - unbelievably beautiful writing - is that common to Scottish Episcopalians? “Reverently cynical and patiently serious” is how he describes his attitude. Wonderful book.
Tom, I take the blame for virtually all the crap I come up with, and including that wee bit.
But perhaps I’m being pedantic about the distinction between a Creator and a Designer (wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been guilty of that. )
So, if Creationism and ID are synonymous in the minds of those who support them, then please ignore my whole argument.
I know nothing about Diamaid MacCulloch Tom, but thanks for the pointer, I’ll look him up.
But, I may have gotten a wee bitty confused about BB King, the Martian Luthier…
It seems he said “one day, all men will brothers be” (or summat like that anyway), and that doesn’t sound very German to me.
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| So, if Creationism and ID are synonymous in the minds of those who support them, then please ignore my whole argument. |
No need to ignore anything you say. It’s wonderful reading intelligent posts. That’s all I got to say about that.
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| So, if Creationism and ID are synonymous in the minds of those who support them, then please ignore my whole argument. |
In courts of law those trying to push aside traditional science and amend it with ID in are using the argument that Creationism (Christian teaching) and ID (anyone’s guess teaching) are not the same. Anyone with any sense (common or otherwise) knows that’s complete BS. Creationism and ID are not the same, but these folk treat them as is they are and in their minds ARE the same.
Spew on…
I’ve said this before and I spew forth again: To say that ID is not an attempt at putting Christian doctrine in public schools is to deny Christ. These good Christian folks are willing to say in court that ID is the theory – that “some unknown intelligent force” did all this, but when asked in that same court, they will not acknowledge that it is God. The only way that stand a chance of getting this into the schools is to deny the very Entity they “so strongly” believe in.
That’s religious BS at its best. God’s got some big eyes and I bet they are rolling rolling rolling. He gave us free will and he is very pleased at comedy we’ve created for his enjoyment.
…spew off.
One of the most fascinating parts of the recent trial was Barbara Forrest’s testimony (BTW, whe’s a philosophy professor ) - in which she traced the history of the ID book Of Pandas and People. Turns out that early drafts discussed creationism, but then a US Supreme Court case held that “creation science” has no place in public school science classroom b/c it is religion and not science, so…the next draft of Pandas had pretty much each instance of “creationism” replaced with “intelligent design.” I predict not only that the ID people will lose in the Dover case, but that the whole strategy has been blown by the ID people, since it is now very obvious who is trying to sell it and why.
Additionally, it was also made obvious that nearly every claim in that book (which is mostly about why Darwin was wrong, very little positive support of ID) is false, and some are just plain silly.
Hmmm, so it seems in this context at least, Design and Creation are synonymous.
So although I think the supporters of it should learn a wee bit about science and logic, it appears that they should study semantics first!
(There again, I’m still wondering what Non-intelligent Design would mean. )
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| it appears that they should study semantics first! |
What start now? They got the whole deal into the courts without relying on facts.
Ponder these two sentences:
Maybe we are seeing non-intelligent design in action.
Maybe we are seeing non-intelligent design inaction.
The English Language is proof of non-intelligent design.
It has been my experience that FACT and TRUTH seldom come into play when dealing with the US “justice” system…
D