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.
Flint:
No, purported supernatural entities needn’t be undefined, and typically aren’t. Most theists have plenty of definite ideas about God, for example.
Materialist says: “It seems like a good indication that an intelligent agent designed that thing.” = SCIENCE.
Non-Materialist says: “It seems like a good indication that an intelligent agent designed that thing.” = CREATIONISTS OUT TO DESTROY SCIENCE AND IMPOSE A THEOCRACY ON THE WEST MAKING ASSES OUT OF THEMSELVES WITHOUT ANY PROPOSED MECHANISM, MODEL, WORKING DEFINITIONS OR KNOWLEDGE OF THE DESIGNER!!
^
No conflation there, nuh-uh.
Glen Davidson
The huge difference being that when a materialist says that about an observed phenomenon he provides his supporting positive evidence.
The non-materialist claims it with zero positive evidence then starts bellyaching because science won’t accept his religiously motivated horseshit just on his say-so.
Adapa,
The existence of an organized world full of organized properties is plenty of evidence.
Some people just chose to ignore that with all their might.
No, William.
Scientists says: “One hypothesis is that an intelligent agent designed that thing: do we have a candidate agent with the means, motive and opportunity to do so?”
IDist says: “It seems like a good indication that an intelligent agent designed that thing, and despite the fact that we have no candidate agent with the means, motive and opportunity to do so apart from a putative agent with unconstrained power that we cannot test, and plenty of other potentially viable hypothesis we will conclude that our putative agent with unconstrained power did it and pour vitriol on materialist scientists for refusing to consider non-material causes”.
Since Gregory can get away with shouting the following name-calling, insulting remarks directly at particular commenters and at anyone in general who disagrees with him, is it okay if I call Gregory a pontificating, sanctimonious, two-faced, extremely angry, arrogant, demanding, loud-mouthed, ignorant, narcissistic, trolling, god bothering asshole?
“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…”
And:
“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.”
And:
“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.”
And:
“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.”
Yeah, funny how the materialist and the non materialist both point at a material thing init. It seems you non-materialists can’t point at non-material things, how very strange.
keiths,
But you haven’t shown how to test a supernatural phenomenon. There is a disconnect between praying, some deity responding or not, and any observable change in reality following the praying. It’s like the sock gnome hypothesis. The best you would have shown, assuming that you detected some change, would be coincidence.
keiths seems very clear on what is, and is not, a (putative) supernatural agent.
I would like to know how he defines a putative supernatural agent, and how he distinguishes between a natural and a supernatural hypothesis.
Alan,
Of course I haven’t. Didn’t you read my reply to your last comment?
You wrote:
I replied:
Lizzie,
Let’s start with Yahweh.
Christians, Muslims and Jews regard him as supernatural. If he existed, I would regard him as supernatural. Why? Because he’s outside of nature and not subject to natural law. In fact, he created nature, according to his adherents.
Almost everyone regards creator Gods like Yahweh as supernatural. It makes sense to regard them as supernatural. They exist first, and nature comes later. They aren’t bound by natural law. Even the word itself betrays its meaning: super = above, so the supernatural is “above nature”, not part of it.
As I asked earlier:
LOL! And it seems that keiths actually thinks that’s a ‘scientific’ statement, which has nothing at all whatsoever to do with his atheistic worldview (wink, nudge). 😉
That said, I do agree with keiths claim that “methodological naturalism is an unnecessary restriction” and even that it can be ‘harmful,’ depending on one’s worldview. Notably, it was a Christian ethicist at Wheaton who coined the ideology of ‘methodological naturalism’ (though of course, as a USAmerican, he didn’t call it an ‘ideology’).
Where keiths and I differ is 1) I am not a proponent of ideological scientism, while he is, and 2) I don’t think the ONLY alternative to ‘natural’ is ‘supernatural’, while he does.
Other than that, play on folks, Boudry is an entertaining wind-blower and this anti-supernaturalism atheist vs. atheist banter re: MN at TAMSZ is amusing. 😉
Gregory,
Science has issued no edict against tests to confirm or reject the supernatural. I’m simply intrigued to know how it can be done.
Alan Fox,
Ah yes, the monumentalist “Science has…” claim! 😉 Little person speaking on behalf of a ‘grand realm’. 🙂
This time coming from a mere computer programmer, mathematician?
The point is that if you had studied HPSS or STS or PoS, then you’d stop phrasing ‘science says…’ But you haven’t, so your wording is ‘primitive’ and outdated.
I guess that’s a no then!
I’d like a definition of supernatural.
I think there is a lot of subconscious equivocation going on in these discussions.
I’d consider all intelligence to be supernatural as well as lots of other phenomena we encounter every day but I’d doubt that is how you understand the term.
For some folks here supernatural is the equivalent of “not real” but that is simply an expression of the worldview of materialism. There is no way to get beyond your worldview with mere “testing” it is the very foundation of your thought process.
If you begin with the presupposition that everything can be reduced to matter then it is unsurprising that you will have difficulty understanding how we can confirm or reject the existence of something that can’t be reduced to matter. The very idea of the supernatural will seem nonsensical to you from the outset.
I would say that there is intellectual poverty in that approach but that is just me and as you know I have my own presuppositions.
peace
List these phenomena.
math and logic and thoughts and emotions and ideas and imagination and music and art and morality and confidence and patriotism and culinary satisfaction and lust and greed and kindness and etc etc etc
peace
Certainly those are all perfectly “natural” by my lights!
That said, I have some reservations about the contrast between “natural” and “supernatural”. That contrast comes from a 17th- and 18th-century armistice between physics and theology, and one might well wonder whether it coheres with 21st-century requirements in either science or religion.
It might be better to start all over again by reflecting on what is really important here. As I see it, the crucial notion is this: does reality get a vote on what we say about it? If so, how?
I’d use that as a starting-point for posing anew the old question as to how we constrain the space of possible explanations, and how to avoid getting trapped at a “local optimum” — a just-good-enough explanation, regardless of whether it has been tested or confirmed.
OK, well, define “natural law” then.
I think you’ll find some circularity in there.
Yes indeed. Also subconscious circular reasoning.
If those are “supernatural” by your definition, then the “supernatural” is not beyond the limits of methodological naturalism. All those things can be (and are) investigated using straightforward scientific methodology.
Intelligent Design does not require the supernatural. And if Elizabeth wants fallacious arguments there is no need to look any further than the arguments made by evolutionists in an attempt to support evolutionism.
And no, science does not need to use the failed philosophy of methodological naturalism. Newton didn’t use it.
And that is our objection to evolutionism.
And now you’re going to get called out for using “methodological naturalism” and “scientific methodology” interchangeably. (Not by me, though)
The germ of insight in the idea of “methodological naturalism” is this: good scientific practice consists, as much as (humanly) possible, fitting models to data rather than fitting data to models. (I’m getting this phrasing from Lizzie, but I would conjecture that we all agree on that much.)
To do this, we need good data that is relatively model-independent. (I say relatively because data that’s independent of all models is an empty idea.) And that means, among other things, that the data are generated from reliable measurements.
Now: is it physically possible for us to take a measurement of something that is not part of the universe?
Unless someone can explain how that trick can be pulled off, I think one is fully justified in holding that extra-cosmic measurements are physically impossible. For that reason alone, we cannot have any data about extra-cosmic reality, and hence we cannot build models of extra-cosmic reality. We have speculations and stories and myths and metaphysics — but not science.
In other words, the truth of methodological naturalism is neither more nor less than the fact that it is not physically possible for finite, limited creatures such as ourselves to take measurements that violate the boundary conditions of the universe.
I understand, I am saying your hypothesis tests people’s beliefs about the actions of God, not the actions of God
Actually, Newton was a methodological naturalist in his physics. He just thought, on general philosophical grounds, that physics itself had to be grounded in theistic metaphysics. His theology plays no role within his physics; rather, his theology grounds his physics.
(The same could be said of Descartes, of Leibniz, and quite a few luminaries of the Scientific Revolution.)
Yeah, as if you know. Newton and others saw science as a way of understanding God’s Creation- that is the antithesis of MN
Actually, I do know.
Here’s Newton’s commitment to methodological naturalism in his own words:
Even more people with science educations understand that natural processes can produce organization without the need for a God doing the POOFING.
OK so you don’t know and you make shit up. Got it.
But what produced nature?
If you mean what produced things like the laws of physics and chemistry they seem to be emergent properties of the universe we find ourselves in. Where they came from doesn’t affect the fact they can produce the phenomena we see without conscious external guidance.
That’s simply false. Methodological naturalism is fully consistent with understanding what science is as a way of understanding divine creation. Methodological naturalism simply states that no assertions about the divine nature can themselves be empirically verified.
In other words, methodological naturalism is a constraint on how science is actually done, not a constraint on how we think about what science is or how it is possible. It’s a way of drawing a line between science and metaphysics.
Put otherwise (again): if you think there’s a difference between science and metaphysics –as Newton did, as Leibniz did, and as did many great theistic scientists — then you’re already committed to methodological naturalism. Methodological naturalism is nothing other than that distinction.
Claiming emergence is no better than POOF.
MN is a failed philosophy- period.
From that, I infer that you are unable to articulate why Newton’s principle of deducing hypotheses from phenomena in experimental philosophy is not an example of methodological naturalism.
I’m arguing that Newton is a methodological naturalist because methodological naturalism claims that, in doing science, we should only make claims that can be verified through measurement. And Newton clearly believes that, because he claims that hypotheses should be based on the phenomena. Hypotheses about entities that can’t be observed play no role in experimental philosophy, i.e. science.
Newton is not, of course, a metaphysical naturalist — but he is a methodological naturalist.
MN is a failed philosophy.
You’re free to hypothesize POOF if you wish. Still doesn’t change the fact where our universe’s properties came from doesn’t affect how they can produce the phenomena we see without conscious external guidance.
It’s not a philosophy, it’s a methodology. Perhaps you are thinking of “philosophical naturalism”?
So ronery.
So there’s no distinction to be drawn between science and metaphysics?
LoL! Those laws are designed such that there isn’t any external guidance needed.
Of course it is.
Do you think that table salt has the properties of chlorine gas and elemental sodium?
If not, what is not “emergent” about the properties of table salt?
Science is about knowledge and the reality behind what it is we are observing.
Umm try to stay focused, Lizzie. We weren’t talking about salt.
No, it’s a failed philosophy.
Evidence please. Who designed them, and when, and by what mechanism?
Again- ID does not require the supernatural and evolutionism is loaded with fallacious arguments.