Barry Arrington was astonished to find that Larry Moran agreed with him that it would be possible for some future biologist to detect design in a Venter-designed genome.
He was further astonished to find that REC, a commenter at UD, agreed with Larry Moran.
Barry expresses his epiphany in a UD post REC Becomes a Design Proponent.
Has Barry finally realised that those of us who oppose the ideas of Intelligent Design proponents do not dispute that it is possible, in principle, to make a reasonable inference of design? That rather our opposition is based on the evidence and argument advanced, not on some principled (or unprincipled!) objection to the entire project?
Sadly, it seems not. Because Barry then gives some examples of his continued lack of appreciation of this point. Here they are:
For example, consider this typical objection: “All scientific claims must employ methodological naturalism, and you violate the principle of methodological naturalism when you make a design inference in biology.”
If that objection is valid (it is not, but set that aside for now), it is just as valid against REC’s and Dr. Moran’s design inferences as it is against any other design inference.
Yes, indeed, Barry. It is not a valid objection, and if it were, it would be as valid against REC’s and Dr. Moran’s as against ID. There is nothing wrong with making a design inference in principle. We do it all the time, as IDists like to point out. And there’s nothing wrong with making it in biology, at least in principle. There is certainly nothing that violates the “principle of methodological naturalism when you make a design inference in biology”. I wonder where Barry found that quotation?
The point sailed right over REC’s head. He responded that the objections were not valid as to his design inference, because his design inference (opposed to ID’s design inferences) was “valid and well evidenced.”
I doubt it sailed over REC’s head. I expect it was the very point he was making – that there is no reason in principle why one cannot make a valid design inference in biology, but whether the inference is valid or not would depend on the specifics of the evidence and argument.
But that is exactly what ID proponents have been saying for decades REC! We have been saying all along that the various “typical objections” are invalid if the evidence leads to a design inference.
REC, the only difference between you and us is that you are persuaded by the evidence in a particular case and not in our case. But you are missing the point. If what is important is the EVIDENCE, then th “typical objections” lose all force all the time.
Barry, consider the possibility that you have been misreading the “typical objections” the entire time. That the yards of text that are spilled daily at UD railing against Lewontin and us benighted “materialists” are entirely irrelevant. The objection to ID by people like me (and Moran, and REC, and any other ID opponent I’ve come across, including Richard Dawkins in fact) is not that it is impossible that terrestrial life was designed by an intelligent agent, nor that it would be necessarily impossible to discover that it was, nor even, I suggest, impossible to infer a designer even if we had no clue as to who the designer might be (although that might make it trickier). The objection is that the arguments advanced by ID proponents are fallacious. They don’t work. Some are circular, some are based on bad math, and some are based on a misunderstanding of biochemistry and biology. They are not bad because they are design inferences, they are bad because they are bad design inferences.
In other words, the objection “all scientific claims must employ methodological naturalism” is invalid in principle, not in application, if it is even possible to make a valid design inference based on the EVIDENCE.
And here is where Barry steps on the rake again. Of course all scientific claims must employ methodological naturalism. It’s the only methodology we have in science – it is another way of saying that scientific claims must be falsifiable. That doesn’t mean we can’t infer design. Design is a perfectly natural phenomenon. If Barry means that we can only infer natural, not supernatural, design, he is absolutely correct, but that is simply because a supernatural design hypothesis is unfalsifiable. The reason Lewontin was correct is not that science is terrified of letting the supernatural in the door of science lest we have to face our worst nightmares, but that if you accept the supernatural as a valid hypothesis, you throw falsifiability out of the window.
You agree with us that it is the EVIDENCE that is important, and objections thrown up for the purpose of ruling that evidence out of court before it is even considered are invalid.
Yes, it is the EVIDENCE that is important, But on the other side of the EVIDENCE coin are the predictions we derive from the theory that we are testing against that EVIDENCE. If there are no predictions – and a theory that can predict anything predicts nothing – then we have no way of evaluating whether our EVIDENCE supports our theory. In fact, the word EVIDENCE only makes sense in relation to a theory. I’m no lawyer (heh) but doesn’t there have to be a charge before there is a trial?
Of course, by the same token, nobody can claim that ID is false – it may well be true that life was designed by a supernatural designer, whether at the origin-of-life stage as some claim, or at key stages, such as the Cambrian “Explosion” (scare quotes deliberate), as others claim; or for certain features too hard to leave to evolution such as the E.coli flagellae that enhance their ability to maim and kill our children. Or even to design a universe so fine-tuned that it contains the laws and materials necessary for life to emerge without further interference. Science cannot falsify any of that – nor, for that matter the theory that it was all created ex nihilo Last Thursday.
That’s why nothing in evolutionary biology is a threat to belief in God or gods, and why the paranoia surrounding “methodological naturalism” is so completely misplaced.
What is a threat to us all, though, I suggest, is bad science masquerading as science, and that is my objection to ID. Not the “broader” project itself as stated in the UD FAQ:
In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection — how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose. Design detection is used in a number of scientific fields, including anthropology, forensic sciences that seek to explain the cause of events such as a death or fire, cryptanalysis and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). An inference that certain biological information may be the product of an intelligent cause can be tested or evaluated in the same manner as scientists daily test for design in other sciences.
but its fallacious (in my view) conclusion that:
…that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.
Fallacious not because I assume that the “intelligent cause” is supernatural, but because the math and biochemistry simply do not support that inference. Even if it’s true.
I’m not sure I could convince an objective observer I was an English speaker. 😉
peace
So you would define “supernatural” as not reasonably regular/predictable?
I would probably call something that was not regular random?
Supernatural is definitely not a synonym for random
peace
I’m not going to attempt to define “supernatural” at all. It’s not a word I use, because I see no usage of it that I find coherent, as I said. That’s why I refused to categorise “English speakers” as you asked me to do. I would categorise “human English speakers” as “natural” as opposed to “imaginary”, which is how I would categorise English speaking teddy bears, for instance, as in Winnie-the-Pooh.
But “supernatural” is not a category that I can see would even hold anything.
If something causes stuff to happen in “Nature” (the world we observe) then I don’t see any reason not to call it “Natural”. If it doesn’t cause stuff to happen in “Nature” then we wouldn’t know about it, so it would be a term that could only refer to something we imagine, not something we observe.
fifth,
Sorry, fifth. If you don’t already understand the value of evidence in science, I’m not going to undertake your remedial education.
Please, less time regurgitating bible verses and more time studying science and philosophy of science.
Lizzie,
Instead, you’re arguing that your usage should supplant the accepted usage. It’s why I keep asking these questions (now for the fourth time):
Why won’t you answer?
Lizzie,
And:
You still haven’t explained what’s incoherent about it. (That was another of my questions upthread that you left unanswered.)
The closest thing I’ve seen to an answer is this…
…but that just expresses a personal preference. It doesn’t point to any incoherence or inconsistency in the concept of the supernatural.
Let’s take Yahweh again. Believers see him as separate from nature, and in fact they see him as the creator of nature. In the Venn diagram of Reality, Yahweh is outside the “nature” circle, yet he can still interact with it.
I disagree with their beliefs, of course, but I see nothing incoherent about the idea of a creator God outside of nature. Why do you think it is incoherent?
No, I am not. I’ve said that it’s a word I rarely even use, because to me, its referent is incoherent at best, and usually undefined by the user.
If you want to use it in a way you can define clearly, I’m happy to accept your usage, and if that includes things we can do science on, then fine.
My point is, and always has been, that the reason Lewontin excluded “the Divine Foot” from science was not because of materialistic bias against “the supernatural” but because scientific methodology works by predicition, and if a thing can’t be predicted (as many Divine Feet can’t) then you can’t test for its effects scientifically.
I’d say it’s incoherent (apologies for missing your question) is because it usually refers to something that is capable of affecting what we observe in nature (healing the sick, starting a famine, curdling the milk). And normally, if we don’t know what causes an effect in nature, we call it an “unknown” cause, not a “supernatural” one. And so we can make hypotheses to find out something about its patterns of effects, and thus find more about what kind of thing it.
Sometimes we end up concluding that something is simply a fundamental property of the universe (a fundamental force, for instance), but we still don’t know “what” it is, or even whether “what is it?” is a coherent question. But we don’t call it “supernatural”.
So why should we call something that is supposed to be an unknown but animate agent (a ghost, demon, spirit, alien) an “supernatural” force, and not simply an unknown but animate natural agent?. Why declare the first three to be “supernatural” and the fourth “natural”? What putative properties would the fourth have that would render it a “natural” animate agent, but the other three “supernatural”? Other than arbitrary distinction?
I think the term is incoherent because it seems impossible to apply in any way that matches general usage but is not arbitrary when examined closely. Perhaps ghosts will turn out to be “real” – in which case, why continue to call them “supernatural”?
OK.
Well, I think it is incoherent to argue that a god can interact with nature (and thus make scientifically detectable changes to what we observe) and still insist that that god is not part of nature. Why do that for a god, but not for, say, a magnetic force, or an alien using advanced cloaking methods?
Sure you could argue that our souls, or god, but not the alien, also exist beyond natural world. But such existence is a matter of belief, not something we can test with science. Science is limited to things that produce an effect in nature.
And I see no good reason to call those effects “supernatural”. But you can if you want.
.
🙂
That might be so if it were the case.
All very fine. Why are you telling me?
I’m saying what I’m saying honestly because I think I’m right. You can disagree with what I am saying or what you interpret, in effect, as what I am saying.
I’m open to anything. You didn’t bring me an example of a way to test a hypothesis that includes a supernatural element.
If I have time and inclination this evening, I’ll try and put this into an OP.
keiths:
Alan:
It is the case. You’ve told us to equate “natural” with “real” and “supernatural” with “imaginary”, and you’ve declared the imaginary to be off-limits to science, relegating it instead to philosophy and apologetics:
keiths:
Alan:
Because you don’t seem to get it.
keiths:
Alan:
Sure, and like you, I also think that supernatural entities are unreal, based on the (lack of) evidence to date. The difference is that because I recognize that we might be mistaken, I am willing to examine new evidence and arguments for the supernatural — scientifically.
keiths:
Alan:
Sure I did — the hypothesis that God favors patients who are prayed for. The hypothesis includes a “supernatural element” — God — and it can be tested (and has been) by comparing medical outcomes for patients who have been prayed for versus those who haven’t.
As I wrote to newton:
Alan Fox,
Er … HAARP? I don’t think the link could be much clearer, matey.
Lizzie,
I’ll respond in more detail tomorrow, but for now I’ll just address this:
How is it incoherent for a believer in Yahweh to regard him as separate from nature, which he created? Separating the creator from the created seems quite coherent to me.
Fine.
My point is simply that “methodological naturalism” is not a method that rules out, a priori, putative “supernatural” entities, however those are defined by the person usig the category.
It is simply a method that requires the derivation of predictive hypotheses. If people are happy to posit a supernatural causal agent that behaves in a particular hypothesised manner, then that can be tested.
However, if it tests positive, that still will not tell you that the agent was “supernatural”. Whether you call it so depends entirely on what you believe, not on the science.
We can detect, in other words, any effects of a putative creator, outside-nature god as long as we hypothesis some characteristic of that god (answers prayers, is benign towards humans etc) can be tested by the methods of methodological naturalism because what that method requires is a hypothesis that predicts observable effects in the natural world.
What we can’t do is infer that the putative agent is “supernatural” by your definition – i.e. is a god who created Nature and is somehow outside it as well as interfering within it.
I understand the value of empirical evidence in science. What I don’t understand is how you decide “empirically” that empirical evidence is important in science.
I hope you can see the clear difference in those two things
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
By seeing that it works.
Like I so often say. This whole discussion boils down to the question of other minds. There is no way to empirically prove that there is a mind behind the words that I read from EL rather than simply a sophisticated chat bot.
I choose to believe I am interacting with a real person but I am not compelled to do so empirically.
peace
“It works” is not equivalent to “it’s true” or “it’s good” or “its important”.
If you disagree please provide empirical evidence for your claim so I can evaluate it and please be specific.
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
‘It works’ is pretty much the essence of empirical. Perhaps, by putting one ’empirical’ in ‘scare quotes’, you meant something else. In which case, you should perhaps pick a better word.
Ok but the question is not what empirical means but why empiricism is important to science and how that is determined. Keiths thinks it is determined empirically rather than definitionally. I’d like to see emperical evidence for that claim.
what do you got?
peace
I profoundly disagree 🙂
Why? You have many claims that don’t have such evidence, and you demand it of others for theirs?
I’m not saying that asking for evidence is a bad thing, rather that to hear that coming from you is a joke.
Where is the empirical evidence that species are defined by god? You don’t have any, yet that’s not a problem for that to be a “fact” for you.
What you demand from others you should also demand from yourself.
I see some real problems with all of this. Say I posit the existence of the causal agent ‘Froopz’ (leaving aside for now if he is ‘natural’ or ‘supernatural’). A characteristic of Froopz is that he makes the leaves turn brown in autumn.
Now we observe that every autumn the leaves turn brown. Therefore I have scientifically proven the existence of Froopz?
I don’t think so.
faded_Glory,
Sort of puts a thorn in the side of the “theories don’t need to be falsifiable” concept doesn’t it?
That was my point?
That is exactly what I mean about theories being usually unfalsifiable, because what we do in practice is to derive testable hypotheses from them, and then test the null.
If we reject the null (“leaves will show no change in colour in autumn”) that doesn’t tell us that Froopz changed them, merely that something did.
Which is, of course, why Popper talked about risky predictions.
We could, for instance, if we thought that Froopz was an intentional and powerful agent open to human entreaty, derive the hypothesis that trees for whom the experimenter had prayed to Froopz NOT to turn brown would not turn brown, whereas others did. We could also run control conditions in which trees were not prayed for at all, were prayed for to some putative godling other than Froopz, were prayed for to some imaginary godling that nobody thought existed.
If only the Froopz-prayed-to trees remained green, that would support the hypothesis that some being called Froopz turns trees brown, but it would not prove it.
Some quite different mechanism related to Froopz-praying activities might be responsible. So one would go on, with further disambiguating experiments.
And it certainly wouldn’t prove that Froopz was supernatural (by your definition), even if a lot of evidence supported the case for her existence, leaf-browning powers, and susceptibility to human prayer.
Fifth:
Some of us run ‘bot software in brain tissue, which further blurs the distinction.
Actually, some internet presences seem more limited than chat bots.
The idea that anyone “believes in other minds” is really problematic, because it distorts our understanding of the experience of other people. Our lived experiences with other people — “intersubjectivity” — has a very specific structure that’s been explored by various phenomenologists over the years. It’s not a “belief” in the sense of an intellectual abstraction, and it’s not something grounded in “evidence” in the same way that scientific claims are.
Put otherwise, one’s experience of other persons is neither abstract (like one’s belief that justice is the same thing as fairness) nor empirical (like’s one’s belief that quarks are smaller than protons). Rather, it is an aspect of how we experience the world and our place in it. (Several phenomenologists have argued — convincingly, in my view — that intersubjectivity and objectivity are interdependent structures of experience.)
I would say we are wired to “believe” other minds exist, in the same way that we are wired to learn language.
We are rough hewed by evolution and shaped by experience.
And “mind” is a perfectly good word to describe a perfectly real and natural property of animals like ourselves with complex brains subserving complex behaviour.
fifthmonarchyman,
The fact that it works … !
It rather is about what ’empirical’ means, if you’re using the word in various sentences. You want empirical evidence for the claim that the fact that empiricism is important to science is determined empirically? The work of Galileo, Newton and a gazillion scientists since demonstrate that empirical investigation is important. How did they do that? Empirically. They applied a methodology – experimentation – that worked. So what are you asking?
Elizabeth,
It’s a perfectly cromulent word.
Not only that, FMM’s objections are both eristic, and otiose.
“Empiricism” is the name of a philosophical thesis.
“Science” is what scientists do.
Many scientists manage to do good science without any formal study in philosophy. Philosophers may characterize that as using empiricism. But I remember somewhere seeing the claim that scientists are mostly rationalists.
So maybe the question that you asked is contentious.
Neil Rickert,
Ah, maybe that’s where I was going wrong. ‘Empirical’ does not perhaps mean the same to me as to fmm.
Hard to see how one (if one is a scientist) can be either a rationalist or an empiricist.
Actually, in principle, there are several ways, using technology.
For example:
One could log her key strokes.
One could call her up and ask her pointed questions.
(I’m assuming that by “mind” you mean a person.)
After no small level of hypocrisy by TAMSZ mods/admins (all atheists, no surprise), I’ve edited a previous post that didn’t pass their atheism-promoting Guano-meter. This site is a very unfriendly place for theists, obviously, and intentionally (yes, based on Lizzie’s own comments too).
~~
Too many people here don’t distinguish between ‘ID’ and ‘IDT’ (T = theory, for those uninitiated into the conversation).
And lo and behold, KN is practising philosophistry again. 😉 He might want to check out the book “The Nature of Nature: Examining the Role of Naturalism in Science” eds. Dembski & Gordon (2011). The IDists in that rather large volume, which grew out of the controversial “Nature of Nature” conference at Baylor while the Michael Polanyi Center still functioned there, make clear their rejection of naturalism.
Irish-USAmerican philosopher Ernan McMullin made the distinction in that book between Strong Methodological Naturalism and Qualified Methodological Naturalism. But he was not an IDist (http://magazine.nd.edu/news/10179-questions-that-won-t-go-away-darwin-and-intelligent-design/). While someone like Canadian-USAmerican Bruce Gordon, not often mentioned among IDist leaders, but very active behind the scenes, writes this “naturalism is irremediably deficient as a worldview and must be rejected not just as inadequate, but as fundamentally false.” (205)
Now, why would people listen carefully to ‘Kantian Naturalist’ (wink, he’s promoting, not critiquing naturalism!) posting on a blog at the TAMSZ as if he is a reliable source of knowledge about IDists’ views when he often and quite obviously just makes stuff up and writes as if it is true?
The ‘light’ of naturalism, the ideology that KN holds, is very dim and dehumanising indeed. If his point is simply that because he holds naturalistic ideology, he therefore acknowledges nothing non-natural, then it just shows how flat and depressing his worldview is; nothing more than that. And no one other than atheists (major shrinkage) need pay any attention to him.
This is just fluffy talk with no basis in reality. Have you actually read Paul de Vries’ article, which (apparently) coined the term MN, KN? You’re conflating several definitions of MN into one and seem not to realise it. Your ‘nothing other’ comment reveals very weak and thin PoS. It makes sense to read such comments from you since you are not trained in PoS, which everyone here surely knows already.
Check-in: ALL varieties of ‘naturalism’ are ideologies. Period. There is no such thing as a non-ideological naturalism. (Yet watch the few professional ‘scientists’ here, who have no training in the topic of ideologies, deny their own pants off – ‘no, we are not ideologists, we just neutrally as ‘objective’ observers study a very narrow and specialised area of knowledge!’)
‘Methodology in natural science’, or ‘methods used’ as Lizzie prefers, however, need not be ideologically ‘naturalistic.’ Methodology differs from ideology. That’s where the pro-naturalism worldview starts to break down. But atheists at TAMSZ largely try to avoid this problem by sticking their heads deep down in the dirt of scientism, materialism & other clustered ideologies as if they offer a combined solution and sound basis for their methodology or methods, when they actually don’t.
Ok, maybe this question will help shed ‘light’ on KN’s philosophistic approach to this topic: please give us 3 examples, KN, of what is ‘real’ and at the same time ‘not natural.’ Just 3 will be enough. Does anyone think he’ll try?
Yes, that’s obvious. But you’re wrong in your retrodiction. And as I said above, you’re unqualified to make such an unsubstantiated (without hand-waving philosophistry) claim. Pretending otherwise is just silly.
KN is sadly lost in the ideology of naturalism. Music-architecture-schizophrenia scholar and Catholic apostate Lizzie is too (though she seems at least superficially ‘happy’). She blames (or praises) Daniel Dennett for this. Who or what does KN blame? Apparently it is only Sell-ars-out.
I think of mind as an evolved computer. If electronic computers can ever be said to be or have minds, it will be because they evolved.
That is not an axiom or presupposition. It is a guess based on decades of observing the AI scene.
To repeat, I’m issuing no edicts and I don’t think Lewontin or the scientific community in general are issuing edicts either. I’m suggesting there is a distinction between reality – whatever is amenable to study through observation, measurement and experiment – and imagination – whatever the human mind can come up with that does not or can’t be shown to impinge on reality. See my atavar for the boundary of reality. Anyone is welcome to explain how to observe, measure or experiment with an imaginary phenomenon – a supernatural phenomenon if you like – or better yet, bring the evidence of something already done.
As others have pointed out downthread (playing catchup), your study doesn’t and can’t demonstrate any such thing. I’m not saying such studies mustn’t be done just that it neither confirms nor refutes the hypothesis that “when people offer up prayers [to a deity] for a person who is seriously ill, their medical outcome is better than for a person who doesn’t get any prayers”.
Say the experiment result shows that people praying significantly improves the outcome of prayed-for people who are seriously ill. You’ve merely created or reified an unnecessary link in the causal chain. You have people praying and a coincidental effect that is statistically significant. Why insert the imaginary concept of “god” into the chain? What should we conclude if studies consistently demonstrated a measurable difference? That people are capable of producing and absorbing empathy waves? What would lead us to conclude an invisible third party was involved?
Conversely why does the lack of a significant result rule out God as a “supernatural being”?
(PS I know I said I might put up an OP on this but Lizzie and others have covered points I might have made. I like the Froopz example)
ETA bit in square brackets
Gregory,
You really can’t help yourself, can you?
Patrick,
I’m not an ‘objectivist’ when it comes to people. 😉
Gregory,
No, you appear to be a creepy stalker who is unable to address the post rather than the poster.
Patrick,
Are you an admin at TAMSZ? I guess a completely ad hom post calling a person a ‘creepy stalker’ is kosher here too?
Atheists here usually ignore the content in my posts, as you have obviously done in the most recent one. Typical dinosaurus atheisticus myopia. 🙁
1: A dvd
2: The Eiffel Tower
3: The filling in my left second mandibular molar (though the gold is real!)
Gregory,
My comment was about your observed behavior. It was not an ad hominem.
I would prefer to call man-made objects artifacts rather than non-natural.
I consider humans and their artifacts to be part of nature.
Unfortunately, there is the orthogonal distinction between natural and artificial in food and clothing. And real and imitation.
So it would seem productive to ask how another person would like to label these distinction, rather than arguing about which set of terms is correct.
Patrick,
Anything to avoid the content, it seems. Justified to oneself because ‘an atheist is always right.’ But still not facing the content, the argument, the thoughts, the ideas. Typical. Flat.
Because keiths said that he used empirical evidence to decide that empirical evidence was important to good scientists and skeptics. This seems to be a very confused Idea to me. You don’t decide that empirically but definitionaly. If he did use empirical evidence to make this determination I would like to see what that would look like. I have no clue how it would work
It sounds like you agree with me. Keiths on the other hand seems to profoundly disagree with us. He thinks this is not about definitions at all but about empirical evidence. That just seems jacked up to me
I’d like to explore his thought process
peace
How will you be able to tell empirically if a computer has a mind or is instead just good at mimicking the actions of a mind?
These tests are of no help she could be a robot with a particularly good chat bot program with software that was designed to fool you.
Ever hear of the Chinese room thought experiment?
peace
That’s been the question for as long as there have been computers.
My answer is the that the question will be moot by the time it appears to be answerable in the affirmative. An evolved mind will not be hyper-logical like Star Trek’s Data or HAL 9000.
An evolved mind will have incrementally acquired abilities. It will be frog boiled.
I would wholeheartedly agree. That is one of the reasons belief in god(s) is so pervasive
Again Ditto.
The problem is when we are dealing with proposed persons that are not exactly like us.
In the past people with strange customs and unfamiliar appearance were at times not considered full “persons”. Now days the controversy is associated with “higher” animals like dolphins and chimpanzees soon we will be arguing about computers.
The controversy about mind(s) behind the universe is not different than these “other minds” questions
peace