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.
Gregory,
It puts you on the spot, Gregory. Will you rise to the challenge and actually defend your faith, for once, or will you fold again, as usual?
How would you test any claim you did not expect the future to be like the past?
How the NT relates to the OT is a bit of a hobby for me. It’s a shame I did not know you back then we could have had some interesting discussions.
peace
keiths:
Alan:
By substituting “real” for “natural” and “unreal” for “supernatural” you are rejecting the supernatural, obviously.
Such a rejection should be based on evidence, not the assumption that the supernatural is unreal.
I did: the claim that God answers intercessory prayers. Did you miss it?
Flaming angry atheists on this site crack me up. 😉 Oh, he used the word ‘prove’, slimy Alan Fox! wahaha
Apparently Alan Fox, atheist slumdog who doesn’t even believe in the spiritual lost lives recently in Paris, hasn’t ‘rejected’ the supernatural, instead he just ignores them and it in his bleak and ultimately pointless life.
How is this supernatural?
Alan,
You don’t think that God, if he exists, is a supernatural being?
I asked what is supernatural about the claim.
Expanding:
Assuming we devise some test to establish whether a particular result of people praying is different from them not praying, how does that test the causality to God? It`s as real as the link between pirates and global warming.
Alan,
The claim that a supernatural being — God — answers intercessory prayer is a supernatural claim.
The claim that a supernatural being — God — flooded the entire earth a few thousand years ago is a supernatural claim.
Those are supernatural claims, yet they have entailments and can be tested.
keiths,
The claim that there was a global flood can be tested. Whether God caused it is untestable.
[Lopping off pinkie]
Which testable elements are supernatural?
Well that’s the whole point, isn’t it? I remember hearing of a priest or some such person back when magnets were a novel thing in Europe, he was so happy to see the miracle of magnetism because at long last he saw that miracles do happen. And why not? Any new phenomenon might be a miracle for all we know, or indeed, all phenomena may be miraculous.
Regularity vs. “caprice” is no clear demarcation, either. After all, many religions did credit the gods for there being any order in the world, and I think that a lot of theists today do, too. Maybe it’s “caprice” or chaos that’s really the default, and order is the miracle.
Since we don’t really have solid evidence for phenomena called “supernatural,” we really don’t know what is supernatural. I tend to think, not a priori, but a posteriori, that real vs. non-real is what we have to end up using, rather than natural and supernatural. Stuff like telepathy, if it were to exist, may be as “natural” (whatever that’s supposed to mean) as anything else, but I’m inclined to call it “supernatural” just because it doesn’t really seem real–but even more it seems to be that it is just not real.
What is called the “supernatural” seems rather fictional, God, of course, but even the mistaken paranormal powers, as they seem made up without at least sufficient evidence to be accepted (so at least not shown to be real). Of course science mistakes like polywater and cold fusion might then be “supernatural,” too, but I think they’re more properly science mistakes, since they purport to be “natural” and real phenomena. The upshot of all that is that there’s no definite way to say that anything is “supernatural” rather than “natural,” and even gods could end up being very natural indeed, for all that we know. Greek gods seem quite natural, after all, only with some rather impressive powers.
Glen Davidson
Alan,
To test a hypothesis, you do experiments that are capable of falsifying it.
If there is no link between intercessory prayer and outcomes — and there doesn’t seem to be — then you have falsified the hypothesis that God selectively favors those who are prayed for.
If there were a link, then that by itself would not prove the hypothesis, of course. But that’s the norm in science, independent of whether the hypothesis in question is supernatural or natural.
For example, suppose my hypothesis is that a chemical unique to rutabagas causes high blood pressure. I can falsify that hypothesis if I test for a link between rutabaga consumption and high blood pressure and find none after controlling for other variables. But if there is a link, it certainly doesn’t prove my hypothesis. There could be other reasons for the link.
Gregory,
Less sputtering and more reasoned arguments, please.
keiths,
So how to establish the causal link between prayer and god?
Alan,
Yes, and it has been tested — and falsified.
Therefore, the supernatural claims of Genesis 6-9 can be rejected — scientifically.
Science is perfectly capable of dealing with supernatural claims as long as they are testable. Methodological naturalism is a mistake.
keiths,
And the link between prayer and god can be tested how?
We know that there are many ways that the future will be unlike the past. Global warming comes to mind as an example.
Alan,
The same way you test other hypotheses — by doing science. I already provided a link:
Studies on intercessory prayer
Those are scientific studies, and they test and falsify a supernatural hypothesis. As I explained above:
wow. no kidding. how so ? please explain.
1) How do we know this if we don’t rely on induction?
2) The earth was warmer at times in the past when CO2 levels were elevated.
peace
otangelo:
Read the thread.
Lizzie:
keiths:
Lizzie:
What is incoherent about the idea of supernatural entities whose behavior is not completely chaotic and irregular?
Your claim is that if there is any detectable regularity in the behavior of an entity, then it is not supernatural. Almost everyone else uses the word differently, regarding gods, angels and demons as supernatural entities even when their behavior exhibits regularities, as it does in pretty much every religious tradition I’m familiar with.
Why should your idiosyncratic definition of “supernatural” trump the accepted usage of the word?
Alan Fox,
Do theories need to be falsifiable?
You are testing people’s beliefs not God.
newton,
Exactly!
phoodoo,
No
We know there was no Genesis Noah’s Flood because the world is full of geologic formations that could not possibly form in a one-year flood. Things like
exhumed river channels
and
angular unconformities.
That’s how.
Perhaps you could explain what you mean by “induction”.
newton,
I’m testing hypotheses. That’s what science is for.
So, no proof. Thought so.
http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/tj/j10_2/j10_2_258-278.pdf
You don’t understand at all how science works, do you? Science doesn’t do “proof”. Science does positive confirming or in this case refuting evidence.
Please explain how your global Flood managed to produce those geologic features in just 1 year only 4500 years ago.
keiths,
Studies may show that prayer has no effect on health or whatever. They show nothing about God.
Alan Fox,
So the Theory of Evolution can not be shown to be false?
Do you realize what you are agreeing to?
Alan Fox,
And Popper was a fool?
phoodoo,
You used the word “need”. An unfortunate choice, perhaps.
That’s not what he said phoodoo. The ToE is quite falsifiable, it just hasn’t been falsified.
I doubt it.
Alan Fox,
Why is that an unfortunate word choice?
Alan Fox,
Why would one bother to test a theory that can’t be shown to be wrong?
Alan,
They falsify a supernatural hypothesis: that God selectively favors those who are prayed for.
Science is perfectly capable of addressing supernatural hypotheses, including this one. Methodological naturalism is unnecessary and counterproductive.
We should be encouraging — not discouraging — scientific thinking.
You still haven’t brought me a hypothesis that tests something supernatural.
Alan Fox,
Testing something would suggest that the purpose of the test is to show that the hypothesis is either true or not true.
Why would you test something if the results wouldn’t tell you if the hypothesis was true or false?
keiths,Why do you suggest I wish to restrict science in any way? Nothing could be further from my intention.
phoodoo,
Science is like riding a horse. Faking it doesn’t work out well.
Alan Fox,
Cattails are not tools to be used lightly in the art of military deception.
Any other meaningless phrases you can think of?
Alan,
I can certainly understand why you wish to be evasive about the need for hypotheses to be specific and falsifiably testable. You are sort of painted into a corner on this one aren’t you?
Your first strategy seemed to be to ignore, now just babbling obfuscation seems to be your modus.
Alan,
Because of statements like this:
So if I’m understanding keiths correctly (and I’m probably not), a “supernatural hypothesis” takes the general form of “something undefined does something well defined.” And if the well defined something does NOT happen, then we have successfully ruled out the agency of the undefined — indeed, of any and all possible undefined.
I find it difficult to agree that we can say anything useful about something undefined or unconstrained. We can of course determine that the alleged specific undefined did not do what did not occur, but regardless of the term we choose to use, we are no closer to defining it. “Supernatural” is meaningless semantic noise, unless we’re veering off into an examination of muddled, incoherent or wishful thinking.
Alan,
Of course I haven’t. I don’t think that supernatural entities exist!
Haven’t you figured that out by now?
What I’ve presented are testable supernatural claims. Science can handle them, so methodological naturalism is an unnecessary restriction.
In fact, it’s harmful.