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.
Theories often aren’t, Phoodoo. They are too big and general. However, unless you can derive testable hypotheses from them, then they are useless.
And you can certainly do that with Darwin’s.
Those hypotheses are confirmed tend to support the theory (but do not confirm it); those that are disconfirmed often mean that the theory has to be modified.
otangelo,
Sure, and when I’ve done that you’ll get me to explain ATPase, and when I’ve done that the avian lung, and when I’ve done that the Cambrian explosion, and when I’ve done that the salt concentration in oceans, and when I’ve done that RNA world, and when I’ve done that photolysis in the primitive atmosphere, and when I’ve done that helicase, and when I’ve done that macroevolution, and then … and you won’t read a single goddamned word I have to say.
The global flood? Never happened. Unless, again, God wants to deceive us, by leaving no trace. No boots, ploughs, houses, bodies, nothing.
Exactly. You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
The so-called global Flood is physically impossible. That is, unless god not only miracled the flood itself into existence but then miracled away all the evidence afterwards, leaving exactly what we expect to see if the Flood had indeed never occurred: human population that never had a genetic bottleneck of fewer than thousands of people; biogeography and ecology of plants and animals that never were disturbed by floods within humanity’s timeframe, etc.
IF god’s going to miraculously restore everything it wishes to the exact pre-Flood state, as if the Flood had never intervened (just to fool us later, once we curious humans developed the sciences of geology, etc) then what possible evidence could we rely on? God left some seashell fossils on high mountains like Everest? Does that mean they’re genuine leftovers from the actual global Flood, or does that mean that scientific geology is correct and the fossils were uplifted along with the rest of the former seabed in a continental collision over millions of years having nothing to do with any flood whatsoever?
Wait, I know! They’re flood leftovers, because the bible tells me so!
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ETA: ninja’d by Allan Miller 🙂
Yes, quite so. That has a lot to do with why I bailed out of Christianity. It became increasingly clear that the god of the old testament is not consistent with the god of the gospels.
(And a note for the quibblers – I quoted only part of what fifth wrote there. Follow the link back to his full post if you want to see the context.)
Back when I was a Christian, I never doubted that. But, after dropping out, I came to realize that the more correct statement is that all humans are part of nature and part of the biosphere, and behave accordingly.
Count me as a skeptic of the claim that science relies on induction.
a quick google search would provide you with a compelling answer…
http://www.comereason.org/character-of-god.asp
keiths:
Patrick:
Lewontin’s error is to equate “supernatural” with “unconstrained” and to commit to methodological naturalism on that basis:
“Supernatural” doesn’t imply “omnipotent”, and “omnipotent” doesn’t imply “unconstrained”.
I used to think this, but I read something that convinced me otherwise. Positions you did not reason into are exactly the ones that reason should work on, as they cannot be defended and hopefully that effort causes the person to at least revisit their reasons for holding that position.
Their preference for one type of evidence over another demonstrates they can reason enough to know that evidence can selectively be used in support of a specific position and therefore taken as a whole it supports some positions more the others. So they only allow the evidence in through their filter, Morton’s deamon, that supports fer instance YEC. Forcing them to confront that filter by making them defend their position can sometimes lead to an honest realization that it’s mere mental habit and nothing more.
At least, some people do become ex-fundies and presumably some variant of such a process or something analogous is in play.
So I’m saying that a particularly nasty insidious flavour of reason was used to get into and defend these weird positions. See Ken Ham for the really creepy sort at the far end of the spectrum I guess. Seriously weird vibes from him.
Another example that comes to mind is the recent gun debate with wjm. He did all the right things, provided citations to published work and supporting data and so on. But it did not matter that the source of that data was clearly biased and the publication was self published and there were several problems with the methodology used that were quickly pointed out. None of that matters! That’s just noise. Reason is being used, and citations given! It’s just the same kind of reasoning that people use to straight face present the evidence that shows YEC is true! So it’s not that these people don’t use reason. The problem is that they do, but it’s like a cargo-cult version of the real thing. They see scientists/politicians making arguments, supporting them with evidence and effecting change. So they try it…
Interesting comment, OMagain. Yeah, you’re probably right.
But no thanks for the reminders of the gawdawful Ken Ham and his creation museum / scam. 🙁
‘Tis too a problem.
What is your entailed hypothesis? It’s a simple enough question. State the hypothesis and how it can be tested. Please no links to word salad.
I would suggest that “supernatural” doesn’t imply anything worth talking or thinking about.
It’s a vacant concept, a placeholder for I don’t know.
I keep trying to suggest we move from “natural” to “real”. It’s then easy to see that all real phenomena are available to scientific scrutiny. The imaginary realm is open to philosophy and apologetics.
But I would also suggest that there is little to be gained by applying scholastic analysis to Lewontin’s remarks. It seems clear that he was contrasting research based on the assumption of regularity with hypothetical research based on the assumption that phenomena are capricious.
All he says to me is that you have to assume there are regularities to be discovered.
But to many people, ESP, Psi, and miracles are real.
What keiths seems to be saying is that we can research specific kinds of claims.
Worldwide floods, spoon bending, ESP, and so forth. I agree that you can confirm or discredit specific claims.
But only to the extent that the claim is regular.
By which I mean something like: I can bend a spoon without touching it. I can do so under conditions that you agree to. Or, I can tell you the contents of a sealed envelop under conditions you agree to.
petrushka,
Indeed.
It’s not up to skeptics to prove there is no divine foot. It’s up to a proponent of divine intervention to point to the dent or whatever else the divine foot is thought to be doing.
Well, we can’t. The problem is the entailment. Things go bump in the night. We record bumps. They are definitely sound that match bumps produced by bumping stuff. What have we demonstrated?
ETA right word
The key is that the phenomenon must be regular and producible under mutually agreed conditions.
I don’t know what it could mean not to employ methodological materialism. I just can’t envision an experimental design that doesn’t rule out known ways of “faking it.”
And, as Rhine at Duke University discovered, as you control for more and more materialistic variables, the signal of proposed phenomenon diminishes, until it reaches the noise floor.
Alan,
And I keep responding that the natural/supernatural distinction differs from the real/unreal distinction.
You may believe, as I do, that the supernatural is an empty set — but that’s an empirical conclusion, not a logical or definitional one.
I absolutely agree! Good to see someone else making this point! After all, most of the positions we hold as children are ones we inherited somewhat, and most of us figure out that a lot of them can’t be right. Santa Claus, for one.
Fine. I don’t see a distinction.
I became a skeptic early on due to many such disappointments. 🙁
ETA clarity
Alan,
By defining the supernatural as unreal, you are simply assuming your conclusion. It’s the opposite of skepticism.
petrushka,
Exactly! What matters is not whether a claim is natural or supernatural, but whether it is testable.
Methodological naturalism is a mistake because it throws out claims that are perfectly testable before the evidence is even examined.
We should be encouraging people to think scientifically about their religious and supernatural beliefs, not discouraging it!
petrushka,
It’s just like methodological naturalism except that supernatural hypotheses are not ruled out a priori. Why make an unnecessary assumption?
Methodological naturalism doesn’t solve that problem.
I wouldn’t accept any definition of methodological naturalism that a priori rules out a bizarre but testable claim. We would have no electromagnetism, no relativity, no quantum physics.
Lots and lots of time and effort has been devoted to researching claims of extraordinary phenomena.
The reason such claims are summarily dismissed is not because they are a priori wrong and untestable, but because a century of testing found them nonexistent and the research unproductive.
Not at all. Bring me your supernatural example. How do we test it?
LOL!! And whatever you do folks, stay TRUE to some kind of supposedly authentic ideological ‘skepticism’ as your personal savio(u)r from ultimate despair! 😉
‘keiths’, an anonymous self-righteous internet troll is going to convince you that you too, just like him (wink), can ‘scientifically’ prove (yes PROVE) there is no such supernatural reality. ROTFLMAO! 🙂
Yet by defining the ‘supernatural as real,’ as keiths seems to want, what difference could that possibly make to >90% of the materialist ‘skeptics’ here? Only numbness, avoidance, disbelief or…keithsist hatred of religious believers, or…
I totally agree with the critique of ‘methodological naturalism’ (although Boudry seems quite silly). But keiths is one-legged on the topic, quite obviously, out-classed by people half his intelligence who actually ‘get it’. Or he is just shallow of soul (to which he can only respond, ‘scientifically’ anti-soul) and a thin, flat human being. Sad pussycat…
petrushka,
That’s what methodological naturalism does. It’s there in Lewontin’s quote, it’s in what Pennock (and Judge Jones) said at the Dover trial, it’s in what Eugenie Scott says, and it’s in what several people in this thread have said.
And it’s right there in the name: methodological naturalism. They called it methodological naturalism because they were ruling out the supernatural.
KeithS, you’re an Internet Troll? I thought you lived under a bridge 🙁
Much of Design Inference is simply bad inference, and design never enters into it. There is also inference for Design that is (for instance) confounded by evolution, with no way to distinguish between the two; that is fallacious inference.
Gregory:
Silly Gregory. That’s not at all what I want.
I’m simply arguing that the real/unreal dichotomy is distinct from the natural/supernatural dichotomy.
Science doesn’t deal in proofs, Greg. It’s conclusions are provisional.
Rich,
I come out during the day. The bridge doesn’t have internet service.
Last post on this. Pinky promise.
I think they were ruling out non-regular phenomena.
Like “code.” Things where what it is is more important that what it’s called.
I think they were ruling out claims for which there could be no entailments. That’s my reading. Maybe not yours. When I am reading the writings of respected people, I assume they may have lapses of felicity in presentation, but I tend to doubt that they are stupid. So I cut them some slack.
It’s possible they were also ruling out a class of claims that have been thoroughly investigated and found unproductive. This is more risky, but it’s reasonable considering that we don’t have infinite resources.
99% of which you copied from YEC websites or the occasional legitimate source. It’s still plagiarism if you don’t cite the original source here.
keiths:
By defining the supernatural as unreal, you are simply assuming your conclusion. It’s the opposite of skepticism.
Alan:
Sure it is. A true skeptic would accept or reject the supernatural based on evidence, not idiosyncratic definitions.
Studies on intercessory prayer
Science is perfectly capable of handling supernatural claims as long as they are testable.
Nobody is disputing this, keiths.
The only [slight] disagreement is whether a claim can be said to be “supernatural” in any coherent sense if it IS testable.
Thanks Obama!
keiths:
Lizzie:
Sure they are. Lewontin, for example, makes it clear he is talking about materialism:
Lizzie:
That’s a major disagreement, not a slight one. Practically every religion in the world posits a god or gods whose behavior exhibits at least some regularity. By your standard, none of those gods, if they existed, would qualify as supernatural!
Tell a theist that God, angels and demons are not supernatural and they will rightly regard you as playing word games. Our opponents do enough of that — let’s not follow their poor example!
petrushka,
No, they were ruling out the supernatural. See the Lewontin quote in my comment to Lizzie above.
Also, here’s Pennock…
…and Scott:
petrushka:
You chose to use the word “stupid”, not me. I don’t think they’re stupid at all — just mistaken on this particular point.
Besides, you’re the one claiming that they used the phrase “methodological naturalism” despite being fully aware that what they were referring to wasn’t naturalism at all!
Yes, the ‘conclusions’ of natural sciences are provisional. And they are also limited in their scope and reach. Thus, non-naturalistic understandings of reality are philosophically allowed and even welcomed by most people, especially those who are not atheists. : ) But since keiths is a self-avowed atheist, he is simply standing on one leg in his claim on ‘humanity.’
It is quite obvious that you do not (subjectively) *want* supernatural reality. That’s pretty much the whole point of your weak anti-theism posturing on Lizzie’s channel, isn’t it? Yet your rejection of ‘methodological naturalism’ (with silly pretentious Boudry) opens up a discourse that you don’t seem to realise is even possible. You don’t want it to be possible. Boo-hoo.
Gregory,
I welcome that conversation. Please present your case — if you can summon the courage to do so.
keiths,
Nobody on this (God’s) green Earth is ‘courageous,’ that is, except for atheists like you, right, of course?! ;( C’mon, stop playing.
Too many people reject the Christian coined (de Vries) ideology of ‘methodological naturalism’ to even imagine there is no controversy.
“Yes, the ‘conclusions’ of natural sciences are provisional. And they are also limited in their scope and reach.”
Only silly undereducated trolls like ‘keiths’ would try to Gollum against this.
Right – that’s what I mean by “any coherent sense”. If all that is postulated are intelligent beings with psychologies comparable to our own, but invisible, while I don’t think there’s much evidence for them, there is no reason think of them as “supernatural” any more than aliens with advanced cloaking technology would be “supernatural”.
Sure, it’s how the word is used, but when used in that way, scientific methodology is perfectly appropriate for testing the claims. Lewontin doesn’t apply.
Gregory,
There are courageous theists, Gregory. It’s just that you’re not one of them, by all indications.
How about proving me wrong by actually defending your faith in an open discussion?
Adapa,
Even if it were entirely his own words, there is a general ‘crime against discourse’ going on. We see it in the collected works of BA77 and kairosfocus too, among others. It is quite clear from their repetitiousness (‘oil of ad hominem’, anyone?) that much of their post content is actually simply commonly descended from previous works (the very thing they would insist is ‘common design’ if found in genomes, ironically!). To do such extensive copy-paste, then expect interlocutors to type rebuttals to order, is scurrilous IMO. One can whip five or six forums into a frenzy with such an approach, with one hand tied behind the back.
(Sorry, probably belongs in Moderation Issues).
keiths,
Oh, so now it’s about ‘proving’ again? D’ya n’ow c y I rote that? 🙂
Do you actually realise how thin, weak and impotent your tongue is when you say such things, keiths? Sadly, no. But you’ll repeat them with pomp & vanity again & again & again & again here at TAMSZ … trying to convince yourself (as if we need to uplift & validate you) that, what, you’re empty of soul, despairing, lacking inspiration, angry at your own humanity, irreligious, flopping your silly hot air balloon into the sky to eventually … die, etc.
I’m not rejecting the supernatural. I’m just short of examples. Can you bring me one?
To be sure, you cannot! To be sure, says I!
Prove me wrong.
Gregory,
aaaand always look on the bright side of life (de-dum, de-dum-de-dum-de-dum).