There’s a lot of discussion of censorship swirling around the ID/evolution/online world right now, which I find very odd. Apparently the magazine Nautilus has closed a comment thread (without apparently deleting any comments) on the basis that “This is a science magazine, and our comments section isn’t the place to debate whether evolution is true”.
Accusations of “censorship” by “evolutionists” have been flying around for a while now, at least since the Expelled movie and it resurfaced regarding the withdrawal of the Biological Information: New Perspectives book from the Springer catalogue. And now, recently, Jerry Coyne has been named “Censor of the Year” by the Discovery Institute.
My own instincts tend against censorship, and although I do not think that all censorship is bad, I would certainly rather err on the side of too little than too much. Here, as I hope everyone knows, only a very narrow class of material is ever deleted, and only a very narrow class of offenses bring down a ban.
But what is censorship, and who, if anyone, is censoring whom in the ID/evolution debate?
Merriam Webster defines the verb to censor as
to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable <censor the news>; also : to suppress or delete as objectionable <censor out indecent passages
So by this definition, any editing process that involves filtering out “objectionable” contributions or content amounts to “censorship”. But that merely passes the definitional buck on to the world “objectionable”.
For censor as a noun, it gives as its first definition:
1: a person who supervises conduct and morals: as
- a : an official who examines materials (as publications or films) for objectionable matter
- b : an official (as in time of war) who reads communications (as letters) and deletes material considered sensitive or harmful
So now we have the additional concept of material “considered sensitive or harmful”. And if we check the definition of censorship, Merriam Webster gives as its first:
we find that being “exercised repressively” is also key to English usage. So let me define, for the purpose of this post, to censor as:
- [to examine in order] to suppress or delete anything the censor considers objectionable, sensitive, harmful, especially when exercised repressively.
So to what extent, if any, are ID challenges to evolution actually subject to repressive censorship by pro-evolutionary institutions? And to what extent, if any, are evolutionary challenges to subject to repressive censorship by ID institutions?
And while I realise this is a sensitive subject, let’s try to discuss it with as little rancour as possible!
And still no one does science with ID.
That’s the real test.
Glen Davidson
Yes, US corporations do seem to have as much power as the ballot box.
From my perspective, I ignore questions that (1) I’ve already responded to many times, (2) have explained why the questions are irrelevant or non-sequiters to my actual position, (3) are so foolish that I don’t waste time trying to point out how foolish they are, or (4) are obviously just baiting, and I leave discussions after I’ve made my point, exposed what I wished to expose to my satisfaction.
As far as counter-arguments, most of the counter-arguments Liz offers are not germane to the actual argument I’ve made. They are only responsive to the argument Liz believes I’ve made, or are germane to some argument she believes Behe or Dembski has made, and no effort of mine appears able to disabuse her of the notion that it has nothing to do with **my** arguments.
If you feel you have made your points, what difference does it make if I leave the debate or not? Are you trying to convince me of something? Should the debate go on ad infinitum? At what point would you consider it a good point to end the debate or move along?
I’m sure that’s pretty much the perspective of most IDists at UD as well, as far as their interactions with ID critics from TSZ. If you wish to invent a fiction in your mind that I, or IDists, “know we had our clocks cleaned” and that’s the reason we “leave a debate” or “ban others” or “won’t come to TSZ and post”, I suggest that you’re trying a little to hard to convince yourselves of the power of your arguments.
I’m comfortable saying that, for the most part, most anti-ID arguments appear to ID advocates to be pitiful, irrational, and overwhelmingly stupid. Jaw-droppingly stupid. Ideological-blindness quality cray-cray stupid. Which is the reason a lot of people got banned from UD – they kept insisting on making what appears to UD IDists to be the same overwhelmingly stupid “arguments” against ID, along the lines of creationists arguing that we never see any humans evolve from apes, so evolution can’t be true.
“You’ve not done any science” is “Jaw-droppingly stupid. Ideological-blindness quality cray-cray stupid.”?
I don’t think many of us make arguments against ID.
What we argue is that ID isn’t science. That isn’t the same thing as saying it isn’t true.
When ID ventures to make a scientific assertion, it’s generally bullshit.
ETA:
Specific examples of bullshit are Behe’s irreducible complexity and Dembsky’s explanatory filter.
It’s #1 on the UD FAQ of frequently raised but weak arguments against ID. I don’t respond to those kind of arguments/statements, or the unending claims that IDists “don’t do science” or “ID is dead” or “IDists don’t get published in peer-reviewed journals” etc., because – from my perspective – that’s the debate equivalent of a spitball. All you can do is roll your eyes and shake your head.
This is obviously why Dembski did not appear at the Kitzmiller v Dover trial. There was no need for him to destroy jaw-droppingly stupid anti-ID arguments.
Probably the reason that the ID-ists don’t publish scientific papers too. Oh, no wait, that’s because of the conspiracy!
It’s not intended to be an argument against ID. It’s just an observation that there’s no scientific content in ID.
There could still be a designer.
On the contrary, as Dr William Dembski, a leading intelligent design researcher, has aptly stated:
“Intelligent Design is . . . a scientific investigation into how patterns exhibited by finite arrangements of matter can signify intelligence.”
Dembski’s assertion is not borne out by facts.
At its best, science is an unfettered (but ethically and intellectually responsible) and progressive search for the truth about our world based on reasoned analysis of empirical observations. The very antithesis of an unfettered search for truth occurs when scientists don intellectual blinkers and assert dogmatically that all conclusions must conform to “materialist” philosophy.
Scientists don’t do that. Where is the ID science?
Such an approach prevents the facts from speaking for themselves. The search for truth can only suffer when it is artificially constrained by those who would impose materialist orthodoxy by authoritarian fiat before the investigation has even begun. This approach obviously begs the question, but, sadly, it is all too common among those who would cloak their metaphysical prejudices with the authority of institutional science or the law.
Conspiracy theory rubbish.
This is especially unfortunate, because just a moment’s reflection is enough to conclude that it is untrue true that science must necessarily be limited to the investigation of material causes only.
Agree. Where is the ID science?
Material causes consist of chance and mechanical necessity (the so called “laws of nature”) or a combination of the two. Yet investigators of the world as far back as Plato have recognized a third type of cause exists – acts by an intelligent agent (i.e., “design”). Experience confirms beyond the slightest doubt that acts by intelligent agents frequently result in empirically observable signs of intelligence. Indeed, if this were not so, we would have to jettison forensics, to cite just one of many examples, from the rubric of “science.”
So, where is the ID science?
Just look all around you. The very fact that you are reading this sentence confirms that you are able to distinguish it from noise.
Meaningful sentences =/= science.
Moreover, ID satisfies all the conditions usually required for scientific inquiry (i.e., observation, hypothesis, experiment, conclusion):
1. It is based on empirical data: the empirical observation of the process of human design, and specific properties common to human design and biological information (CSI).
No-one can calculate CSI. Except JoeG.
2. It is a quantitative and internally consistent model.
3. It is falsifiable: any positive demonstration that CSI can easily be generated by non design mechanisms is a potential falsification of the ID theory.
You can’t use an unuseable method to falsify anything.
4. It makes empirically testable and fruitful predictions (see point 4)
Okay. Point 4:
Non-functionality of “junk DNA” was predicted by Susumu Ohno (1972), Richard Dawkins (1976), Crick and Orgel (1980), Pagel and Johnstone (1992), and Ken Miller (1994), based on evolutionary presuppositions.
By contrast, predictions of functionality of “junk DNA” were made based on teleological bases by Michael Denton (1986, 1998), Michael Behe (1996), John West (1998), William Dembski (1998), Richard Hirsch (2000), and Jonathan Wells (2004).
These Intelligent Design predictions are being confirmed. e.g., ENCODE’s June 2007 results show substantial functionality across the genome in such “junk” DNA regions, including pseudogenes.
Glossing over the um specific predictions of the named authors, why would the designer use more or less junk DNA? Of course, there remains junk DNA.
A similar, but more general and long term prediction of ID is that the real complexity of living beings will be shown to be much higher than currently thought. That kind of “prediction” has been constantly verified in the last few decades, and we can easily anticipate, in an ID scenario, that such a process will go on for a long time. We quote here from a recent post by Gil Dodgen on UD (with minor editing):
“With the aid of improved technology, the formerly fuzzy [appearances of design] of biology (Darwin’s blobs of gelatinous combinations of carbon) are not becoming fuzzier and more easily explained by non-ID theses — they are now known to be high-tech information processing systems, with superbly functionally integrated machinery, error-correction-and-repair systems, and much more that surpasses the most sophisticated efforts of the best human mathematicians, mechanical, electrical, chemical, and software engineers.”
Science? Any science? Gil Dodgen’s assertion that biology is not more easily explained by non-ID theses is not science.
It’s all just smoke. We know that ID is an ideological movement and isn’t about doing science at all.
William,
You’re forgetting the all-important category (5) : Questions that you cannot answer, so you pretend they fall into categories 1-4.
Everyone knows why you bail, William.
“Its already been refuted / calculated” = the ID Emperor’s clothes.
We’ve noticed that you can do no more.
We can point to science done with evolutionary theory.
But then, you’ve never troubled to learn what constitutes science, so why should you be able to come up with reasonable responses to reasonable observations? That doesn’t get you off of the hook, nor do your constant and baseless repetitions of what a bunch of pseudoscientists think about science.
Glen Davidson
Doesn’t matter. The amount of complexity doesn’t matter. Evolution is about the history of biological populations, not about their complexity.
ID sheds no light on their history.
ID ‘science’ – that method they cannot themselves use:
William, what’s your excuse for not explaining your misquote of “The Grand Design”
William,
Speaking of unanswered questions, I’m still awaiting your reply to this one.
This is what ID predictions SHOULD be:
I’m curious about the timeline of ID predictions. Were they made before or after the collection of data?
Predictions involve causal entailment.
That’s what ID “predictions” don’t do, unless they are based upon how humans design. Paley kept claiming (not altogether persuasively) that he was only discussing design as it is known from artificers and architects. That’s, or something close to it, iswhat would have to be done, since they are good representatives of known designers. IDists will have none of it, because life has long been shown not to present the marks of architects and artificers (portability of concepts, esp.), and instead try to pretend that design would appear as evolution does, or to make hazy, non-entailed predictions that there will be less “junk DNA” than some evolutionists assumed existed (while others thought quite otherwise).
We need causes for predictions. IDists have no meaningful causes, only a presumption that it could be just about anything complex and functional–including the complex functionality causally predicted by evolutionary theory. To be useful, though, even as a possible heuristic device, ID would need to causally predict what evolutionary theory does not, and to be a good theory it would need to causally predict at least most of what evolutionary theory does. Since no one has ever once observed a designer, unless it was a GA, that produced the results seen in life, it completely loses any contest against evolutionary theory that specifically does predict what we see.
That’s why ID isn’t science. It only tries to parasitize off of real science, by pretending that design could produce the same results (we can’t rule it out, but we certainly can’t rule it in when no designer has been observed making things that are truly like evolved life), rather than showing that anything is truly entailed by ID. This matters to people who care about science, if not to those who care about apologetics first and foremost–one reason most UDites don’t come here. Getting around to actually doing science simply is not among their interests.
Glen Davidson
That was a technique used by several IDCists the last time I posted extensively at UD. At first everyone assured me that CSI, by Dembski’s definition, could definitely be calculated. Then they made a lot of noise. Then they told me it had been calculated. When I asked for a link to the actual calculations, they went back to making noise.
It reminded me of when Bill Gates got married. Rumor has it that one of her friends asked Melinda how the wedding night went. She said “He sat on the edge of the bed all night telling me how great it was going to be.”
What’s the cause for the orbital path of a planet around the sun?
Gravity.
https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/4960651776/h05F24E78/
Wrong, Richard. Gravity doesn’t cause anything.
Anyone here willing to disabuse Richard of this “sloppy thinking” of his? Anyone here want to explain how Richard doesn’t understand what gravity is? Anyone here want to pile on Richard and mock him for his lack of scientific understanding?
GlenDavidson said:
Would anyone else like to explain to Glen Davidson why he so glaringly, blatantly, obviously wrong? Or do you only do that for people at odds with your ideology?
What do you think gravity is?
Gravity of the sun, plus the interactions of the planets and other bodies of the solar system. Importantly, earth almost certainly formed near to where it now orbits, and it appears that interactions with other bodies of the solar system (nearly) circularized the orbit.
It’s the sort of thing that science allows one to understand.
Glen Davidson
No, Glen. Gravity doesn’t cause anything. Liz? Anyone? Is anyone here willing to step and disabuse your own of their misconceptions about what gravity is?
What about the loss of useful heat energy in a closed system. What causes that, Glen? Dave? Richard?
I’m waiting to see if those who know better will step in and do to you what they do to IDists all the time, what Liz in particular has done in several cases. Let’s see if they’ll expose your lack of understanding or “sloppy wording” or “sloppy thinking”.
Gravity is not even the apparent cause. Gravity doesn’t cause anything.
Why don’t you learn enough science to even pretend to deal competently with these matters? I didn’t write that gravity “causes something.” It’s a force (technically, not even that, but conventionally it is one), gravitational interactions cause things, however ignorant you are of these matters.
Gravity was the first “force” that separated out from the other “forces” in the Big Bang.
Why don’t you write something useful for once? Just more misrepresentation, and incorrect beliefs from a typically useless source for “information.”
Glen Davidson
Causal, of course.
The distortion of space-time generated by mass of the two bodies, plus the momentum of the revolving body.
Being able to calculate those variables, we can do such things as, for example, predict when the planetary orbits will decay. If we have a good-enough model of the causal processes at work in stellar evolution, we can predict whether the sun will expand into a red giant before the decay of those orbits. And so on.
I don’t think SLOT is a causal theory per se. Increase in entropy is probabilistic. A consequence of the possible configurations of microstates as they relate to macrostates.
I don’t know what your point is about gravity, though.
I am not stepping in to disabuse anyone of their misconceptions about gravity, for the following reason: I can see two different ways in which you might believe Richard to be wrong. One is earth-shatteringly boring, and the other relies on a misconstrual of the context, which you yourself provided. So until you actually make your case as to why you think he is wrong, I cannot tell whether you are the one who is wrong, or merely boring.
Your question about heat makes me suspect that it’s the boring door.
I can tell that you are rather rude, however.
No, KN. That is not a cause, that’s the effect as described by a model. Try again. In terms of the model, what causes that supposed distortion of space-time as mass moves through it?
On the atomic level it is.
It’s probabilistic, meaning that a single particle may lose entropy rather than gain it, but it becomes nearly certain that, say, 100 particles will gain entropy if conditions allow it over a few seconds.
Glen Davidson
So, nothing causes that loss of heat-energy that can be used for work in a closed system? GlenDavidson says that all real science has predictions that entail causes. Can we, then, make no 2LoT predictions without knowing the cause for why we lose heat energy that can be used for work in a closed system?
Can Glen answer what causes heat in a closed system to gravitate towards equilibrium?
We seem to have moved topic. Meanwhile, I have remained on topic by censoring a couple of rule-violating posts by moving them to guano 🙂
Please keep the rules guys.
I started a thread on the emerging topic, which is interesting, but I didn’t manage to finish it. Meanwhile, carry on here. May post tomorrow.
The interactions of the molecules, and, in the right conditions, the probability that (say, during adiabatic expansion) gas molecules will fill the available space, rather than remain confined, are the causes.
Oh right, not bothering with context, you pretend that I wrote that all real science has predictions that entail causes. No, I don’t pretend to know what the deal is with quantum mechanics, but was clearly discussing classical science, such as we know with orbital mechanics and evolution, not the magic of ID.
We did before we knew the cause, but of course it was all understood as causal before we knew the mechanism for sure, by dealing with entropy quantitatively. The concept of entropy allowed for higher order causal understandings of energy and its usefulness before the mechanism became certain. Carnot, et al.
So you fail to show any causally entailed predictions of ID, yet again, and try to use ignorant misrepresenations to paper over your continued failure. I don’t suppose that will ever change.
Glen Davidson
The problem here, William, is that words do become very important in this kind of conversation. There are definitions of “cause” in which you would have a fair point (gravity does not intend to bring about the movements of the planets, for instance). But there are other definitions in which Glen would be right (the planets would continue in straight lines except for the gravitational force exerted on them, so in that sense it is gravity that causes them to take the trajectories that they do).
Also there can be multiple causes of single phenomena, and single events can cause multiple subsequent events.
So I do agree that you need to say just in what sense you think that gravity does not “cause” anything. Indeed, the word “cause” itself can become somewhat referent-less once we get to quantum level.
I think.
In fact I’ll go out on a limb and say that ultimately, science doesn’t address causation at all, but correlation. Some events appear to only appear in one sequence, others appear to be reversible. There’s an argument that the direction of causality is coterminous with the direction of time.
But I’ll go to bed before I say anything stupider….
He can, but doesn’t see the point of explaining well-understood science to someone uninterested in learning or doing science. Explanations of these matters are done much better via diagrams and the like.
Try learning instead of claiming whatever you would like to be true.
Glen Davidson
To save time, and avoid a discussion of the stress-energy tensor, there are nomological facts. Can you move on to the point you wish to make now, please?
Take a tank full of water and ink. Microscopically, there are few ways that the contents of the tank can be arranged so that the ink sits on top of the water, a low entropy state. There are relatively very many ways the contents of the tank can be arranged so that the water and ink are mixed, a higher entropy state. So “nothing causes it” is misleading. We know why entropy increases.
There is no “gravitational force” that causes anything, Liz. Not that we know of, anyway. That term is a reification of a model of behavior as if it is an existent cause. You know, like saying that “chance” causes something. It doesn’t. Chance doesn’t cause anything; it’s a model of potential outcomes.
“Gravity” is the behavior of mass in space that we describe with various models. It is a pattern of behavior. We have no idea how it is that mass behaves the way it does; we only observe that it does, formulate mathematical models based on that observed, regular pattern of behavior from which we can make very precise predictions, and we call that behavior “gravity”.
We don’t know what causes mass to behave the way it does. Gravity is a description of that behavior, not the cause.
This is why I stress finding regularity in nature as opposed to finding causes.
Finding causes is a task to keep philosophers and theologians off the streets.
Science finds useful regularities. Lizzie called then correlations, but it’s a bit stronger than that. Lawful behavior in the relations of phenomena can result in very accurate predictions.
What ID fails utterly to do is produce anything useful, either at the practical engineering level, or at the level of understanding that allows the construction of research programs.
You haven't explained why. Saying that there are more X states than Y states doesn't explain why the ink should move towards an X state rather than a Y. "Likeliness" is an attribute of the observational fact, not an explanation for why we observe what we do.
You cannot explain why entropy increases, you can only report that it does. Entropy is not a cause; it's a description of observed phenomena.
Murray. Science answers how questions, not why questions.
Hume would say so, but of course he’s pretty soon off again to finding causes himself, so for that reason, as well as many others, I can’t really imagine giving up the importance of causes. Kant noted that it’s a category of thought, which means less to most of us than it did to him (as in, why believe in categories, rather than tendencies and the like?), but clearly he’s got a point.
If you’re being sued, or charged with some malicious crime, won’t you want your lawyer to demand causes to believe you did something untoward? Even when it’s all circumstantial, it still comes down to causes.
Make a rocket, calculate a trajectory, whatever, it’s all causal, including the gravitational interactions (the point Murray seems to miss is that gravity can be nothing more than a heuristic or accounting and it still is what allows us to consider causation throughout the solar system, even if it’s demons or angels that ultimately cause things to happen). You want to know where to find a transitional form between fish and tetrapods, you consider the causes operating (or at least the temporal scale at which these operate–still depends on the causes), and look at strata laid down at a point when such a transitional form might exist.
Get an operation, and you hope the surgeon is very well informed of physiologic causation.
Of course we could opt out of causal talk by discussing correlation and regularity, but you’re still going to think causally when shooting pool or discussing evolution. I’m not going to argue with Hume, yet, practically, causation is absolutely crucial to the classical sciences.
Glen Davidson
It explains why the ink and water is likely to move toward a high entropy state. The SLOT does not forbid a temporary decrease in entropy. It is a statistical law.
I can explain why entropy increases. I could explain why particles have stochastic motion.
We can keep on asking why or how until we come to “I don’t know.” What this proves for you, I don’t know either. Perhaps you want to argue that knowledge should be complete under naturalism. Or perhaps you want to argue that there are no nomological facts?
And we use all kinds of metaphorical language in ordinary speech.
If we see a consistent one to one regularity, we call it a cause. If we see a statistical regularity, we call it a correlation.
But when you are arguing with a creationist, you have to be careful.