Critical thinking means never having to say you’re certain.

This was originally intended as a brief reply to the comment by William J Murray but it sort of grew into something a little longer so I thought, since everyone else is doing it, I’d put it up here.

William J Murray:
I think that any fair reading of UD will show that the vast majority of pro-ID posters there, and certainly the moderators and subject contributors, are not “anti-science” at all, nor “sneer” at science; rather, they have what is IMO a legitimate concern over the anti-religious, anti-theist, pro-materialist agenda that many of those currently in positions of power in the institutions of science blatantly demonstrate.

I would agree that not all contributors to UD are anti-science but there is, nonetheless, a prominent strand of such thinking there. Many of the original posts mock the speculative excesses of evolutionary psyschology, for example, or seem to gloat over instances of where science has apparently got it wrong. Those occasions where the author of such comments has got it wrong themselves pass largely unremarked. The overall impression is of an anti-science advocacy site.

I will grant that there are a few contributors to UD who are critical of the perceived atheist/materialist stance of many scientists in public fora as improper because it associates science with atheism. They hold, as I do, that the most science can say on such questions is that, following Laplace, it has found no need for such hypotheses thus far. While it may be true that a majority of scientists hold atheistic views it is misleading to suggest that they are endorsed by science as a whole.

That said, my impression of UD is that the majority of contributors are critical of science because they believe it is hostile and threat to their religion. They feel that science is perceived as a source of knowledge that is more reliable and authoritative than that offered by the various faiths which is thereby undermined. One slightly amusing response is the attempt to cast science as just another religion. Those who do so seem to be oblivious to the contradiction: on the one hand, religion is presented as a way of knowing that is fully the equal of science, on the other hand, the authority of science is supposed to be undermined by calling it just another religion, implying that religion is a lesser form of knowledge and science is to be dragged down to that level. Unfortunately, much as they would like to, they can’t have it both ways

There is without doubt a very vocal group of scientists and advocates of science who believe that it does make religious beliefs untenable They highlight the harm that has been done – and is still being done – in the name of the various faiths as evidence that we would all be better off without it. My own view is that this is reactionary and most prominent in the United States. It is a response to the extreme hostility felt by many Americans towards any form of non-belief and the excessive influence of such religious beliefs on the society and politics of that country.

My own view is that it is true that, over the millennia, a great deal of blood has been spilled in the name of various religions. It is also true that huge numbers have been killed in the name of the various political ideologies, which were in some cases atheistic, that gained power in the twentieth century. I would argue that it is further true that trying to compare body counts is a pointless distraction. The real lesson to be taken is the dangers of absolutist thinking.

In spite of the posturing and boastfulness of some, we are mostly well aware of our own weakness and vulnerability. Instinctively, we crave the kind of reliable knowledge about the world in which we find ourselves that will give us a good handle on it and increase our chances of survival. We are all too easily seduced by anyone or any belief system which appears to offer such certainty, especially in times of heightened insecurity. The danger is that, once convinced of the absolute truth of such beliefs, there are some who will have no doubt that they are fully justified in doing almost anything to defend and promote such them. Thus we have the spectacle of William Lane Craig apparently feeling compelled to defend and justify the massacring of children, even though I have no doubt it is something he would never do himself, because it is something reported in his Bible as being required of believers and approved by his God.

Thus we come back to Oliver Cromwell’s impassioned plea, used as the motto for this blog:

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.

363 thoughts on “Critical thinking means never having to say you’re certain.

  1. I would agree that not all contributors to UD are anti-science but there is, nonetheless, a prominent strand of such thinking there. Many of the original posts mock the speculative excesses of evolutionary psyschology, for example, or seem to gloat over instances of where science has apparently got it wrong. Those occasions where the author of such comments has got it wrong themselves pass largely unremarked. The overall impression is of an anti-science advocacy site.

    That might be your impression, but it is apparently founded upon a very simple conflation: those kinds of remarks are not about the perceived failures of science, but rather about the perceived failures of what they consider to be atheist/materialist agenda masquerading as science. I think it serves the purpose of anti-ID advocates, materialists and atheists to paint ID advocates and theists as “anti-science” when it is plain that there has never been significant conflict between the theistic communities and scientific investigation itself (the church being largely responsible for funding and establishing scientific universities, research, and libraries), but only in some of the conclusions drawn by specific individuals, many of which are IMO serving a materialist or anti-theist agenda.

    One is not anti-science just because they (1) disagree with particular conclusions, or (2) point out the failures and excesses of an subset ideological community that attempts to use science to promote an ideological agenda.

    I will grant that there are a few contributors to UD who are critical of the perceived atheist/materialist stance of many scientists in public fora as improper because it associates science with atheism. They hold, as I do, that the most science can say on such questions is that, following Laplace, it has found no need for such hypotheses thus far. While it may be true that a majority of scientists hold atheistic views it is misleading to suggest that they are endorsed by science as a whole.

    You are again making a mistaken conflation; IMO, most ID advocates and even the generally religious community don’t hold “science” as atheistic, but rather hold that the institutions of science have largely been taken over by atheisic ideologues. Their problem isn’t with science (considering the long, good history between religion and scientific investigation), but rather with with the ideology that is being promoted as science.

    That said, my impression of UD is that the majority of contributors are critical of science because they believe it is hostile and threat to their religion.

    From my perspective, you are entirely mistaken. No contributors at ID, IMO, are critical of science per se, nor do they believe science is hostile or a threat to their views. What they believe to be hostile and a threat not only to their views but to civilization itself is the materialist/atheistic ideology that is being promoted as if it were valid scientific conclusion instead of philsophical metaphysics.

    IMO, the rest of your post represents the fruit of this poisoned foundation, and so I’m not going to address it, except to say that I find it highly derogatory, condescending, convenient and self-serving.

  2. William, my impression of the attitude to science among the ID supporters at UD is, well, confused, rather than hostile.

    As Seversky says, and as the strapline to this blog also expresses, science is always uncertain – all scientific conclusions are provisional and subject to revision. Many of the pro-ID arguments I read are actually anti-evolutionary arguments that are what I would call arguments from ignorance – of the form: Darwinism can’t account for this, therefore ID. Which makes two related errors, in my view: firstly it makes the assumption that “Darwinists” are drawing the non-provisional conclusion that Darwinism is true and ID therefore false; and secondly, that an inference (ID) can be supported by lack of good evidence for an alternative (Darwinian evolution).

    The very idea that “design” can be reliably detected, without need to propose any hypothetical mechanism by which the design was conceived or executed is fallacious, IMO, becauses it appears to depend on probabilistic arguments concerning an ill-defined null hypothesis (“Chance and Necessity cannot explain what we observe, therefore Design”).

    For null hypothesis testing you need to correctly model what you expect under your null. Dembski’s null seems assumes that we can compute the probability that life would emerge in the universe “by Chance or Necessity”, but we can not. There are too many “uncertainties”, because the universe is chaotic (in the best sense) and full of stochastic processes with feedback loops whose outcome cannot be predicted (this would be true whether or not the universe was deterministic btw, and is why I think the idea that determinism means no free will is deeply flawed).

    And Darwin proposed exactly such a stochastic process with feedback system, which we know works in practice to produce complex functional entities (as in GAs for example).

    But we will never be certain about how that process got going on this earth, resulting in, inter alia, us; and the fact that we cannot be certain does not allow us to infer ID, scientifically.

    To infer ID scientifically, you’d have to have an actual testable hypothesis, with a either a properly-specified null, or, better, a differential prediction as compared with the prediction made by a Darwinian alternative.

  3. As Seversky says, and as the strapline to this blog also expresses, science is always uncertain – all scientific conclusions are provisional and subject to revision.

    IDists and theists would certainly agree with that.

    Many of the pro-ID arguments I read are actually anti-evolutionary arguments that are what I would call arguments from ignorance – of the form: Darwinism can’t account for this, therefore ID. Which makes two related errors, in my view: firstly it makes the assumption that “Darwinists” are drawing the non-provisional conclusion that Darwinism is true and ID therefore false; and secondly, that an inference (ID) can be supported by lack of good evidence for an alternative (Darwinian evolution).

    This straw man(and the others you go on to write about here) has been rebutted repeatedly. I doubt any headway can be made by doing so again. However, that isn’t really the point of this thread or of my comment; my point is that it is a false characterization to accuse ID proponents at UD of being “anti-science” when that is clearly not their issue with the things they comment, post, and report on. It has been reiterated countless times on that site that it is their view that the institutions of science have been basically taken over by materialist, atheistic idealogues with an anti-theistic agenda.

    The ID proponents at UD, IMO, love science, have no “fear” or antipathy towards it; as a methodology they embrace it and in fact believe that the facts support their view and not that of the materialists or atheists.

  4. William J Murray,

    This straw man(and the others you go on to write about here) has been rebutted repeatedly. I doubt any headway can be made by doing so again.

    Oh, I don’t know, try me 🙂

    I haven’t yet seen a rebuttal that didn’t invite a persuasive counter-rebuttal!

    The ID proponents at UD, IMO, love science, have no “fear” or antipathy towards it; as a methodology they embrace it and in fact believe that the facts support their view and not that of the materialists or atheists.

    Well, I tend to agree – as I say, most of what I see there is not antipathy to the idea of science, but confusion about what scientific claims are, and what scientific methodology can and can’t do. For instance, I often see it claimed (though not by any means all) that science is hampered by an “a priori commitment to materialism”. Well, in my view, that is an “anti-science” claim, because scientific methodology simply is not equipped to deal with anything other than material theories.

    But as I say, not all ID proponents make this claim.

  5. William J Murray: It has been reiterated countless times on that site that it is their view that the institutions of science have been basically taken over by materialist, atheistic idealogues with an anti-theistic agenda.

    Ah, the vast conspiracy.

    They’ve nothing else to do but get worked up about the injustice of it all. They simply cannot understand that ID is moribund for perfectly ordinary reasons.

    There are no ID experiments to perform, no ID predictions to confirm, no ID explanations to generate further research…..nothing. And there’s no amount of conspiracy-mongering that will alter this fact. ID has spent the last 20 years trying to persuade everyone but the scientific community of its validity. This in itself tells you everything.

    So how does the average ID supporter respond to this? Well, it’s all those damned tenured, atheist, materialists in their ivory towers. If only we could expel those hide-bound tax-burdens then ID would truly usher in a golden age of science!

    It’s hilarious.

  6. To piggyback on Woodbine’s comments:

    When do ID-proponents believe this “takeover” started? Was there a time, say during the 1930s, when science was more amenable to unidentified-designer-centric explanations for various phenomena? I’m not talking about Lemaitre’s motivations or his ability to, as a purely philosophical exercise, reconcile his conclusions and his faith. I’m talking about a time when non-naturalist accounts were actively given stalls in the marketplace of scientific ideas.

  7. I haven’t yet seen a rebuttal that didn’t invite a persuasive counter-rebuttal!

    It’s not really relevant to the thread.

    Well, I tend to agree – as I say, most of what I see there is not antipathy to the idea of science, but confusion about what scientific claims are, and what scientific methodology can and can’t do.

    And they think the confusion is yours. So? That doesn ‘t mean you’re anti-science, any more than it means they are anti-science.

    For instance, I often see it claimed (though not by any means all) that science is hampered by an “a priori commitment to materialism”. Well, in my view, that is an “anti-science” claim, because scientific methodology simply is not equipped to deal with anything other than material theories.

    Then unless one is presuming that designing intelligences are not material in nature, there is no reason that science cannot reach a finding of a best explanation that likely includes a designing intelligence. A “designing intelligence” would just be another material category of cause, like erosion or vulcanism, that leaves telltale signs of its involvement in a process.

    The problem with an a priori commitment to materialism lies in the vague, post-quantum mechanics concept of what “materialism” means, and the historical prejudice it has against various concepts. What does “matter” even mean in a world where local realism is contra-indicated by experiment and where photons can act like waves or particles depending on how they are measured?

    When Newton proposed his action at a distance concept of gravity (which could act on distant objects without an intermediary material), it violated the predominant concept of natural, material interactions – things bumping into each other, acting on each other directly, physically, materially. The first quantum experiments did the same – violated the material concept of a world that is “as it is” regardless of how we conduct our experiments. Quantum delayed-choice experiments and local realism experiments also contraindicate most normative concepts of a material, deterministic universe.

    As science progresses, the idea of what the “material” world is changes drastically. Why impose some ideological concept of what the limits of “material” are when one is conducting science? History shows that such conceptual limitations are often erroneous.

    The concept of a “material” universe begs the question, what are you excluding, and why? Why call what you are examining “material” in the first place, and draw a line in the sand and say that science cannot examine what is on the other side, when you cannot even say what is on the other side, or what exactly it is you are drawing a line in?

    IMO, redefining science as the investigation only of “material” causes and effects lends power to those who define what is “material” and what is not and offers a prejudicial line in ever-shifting sand to exclude the ideas and concepts of those who hypothesize or theorize that which the gatekeepers find distasteful.

    Also, it is one thing to claim that science can only examine material things (which I consider to be an ideological game); it is outside of the purview of science to claim that reality is limited to that which is material. That is a metaphysical view, not a scientific one. Claiming that a god doesn’t exist, or that spiritual beliefs are “superstitions”, is not a scientific claim, because even under the materialist definition, science is silent on whether or not such things exist.

    Science cannot indicate that that which science cannot investigate doesn’t exist, and those who claim in the name of science that spiritual beliefs are “delusions” or “supersttions” are the ones misusing the institution of science to promote their personal metaphysics.

  8. William J Murray: It’s not really relevant to the thread.

    That’s OK – I can move the derail out if it starts to get in the way.

    And they think the confusion is yours. So?That doesn ‘t mean you’re anti-science, any more than it means they are anti-science.

    Yes, the symmetry of view intrigues me. It’s one of the reasons I started this site.

    Then unless one is presuming that designing intelligences are not material in nature, there is no reason that science cannot reach a finding of a best explanation that likely includes a designing intelligence.A “designing intelligence” would just be another material category of cause, like erosion or vulcanism, that leaves telltale signs of its involvement in a process.

    Sure. But we don’t have any evidence for a material mechanism executing the design, and whenever we ask, the response is something like: “ID isn’t about mechanisms, just about detecting design”.

    The problem with an a priori commitment to materialism lies in the vague, post-quantum mechanics concept of what “materialism” means, and the historical prejudice it has against various concepts.What does “matter” even mean in a world where local realism is contra-indicated by experiment and where photons can act like waves or particles depending on how they are measured?

    Well, I think it’s a rather silly word. “Matter” doesn’t even cover “energy”. I don’t think scientists do have an “a priori commitment to materialism” – at least I think that’s a very bad way of putting. I think we have an a priori commitment to recovering predictive principles. That’s why the “supernatural” is out of bounds.

    When Newton proposed his action at a distance concept of gravity (which could act on distant objects without an intermediary material), it violated the predominant concept of natural, material interactions – things bumping into each other, acting on each other directly, physically, materially.The first quantum experiments did the same – violated the material concept of a world that is “as it is” regardless of how we conduct our experiments.Quantum delayed-choice experiments and local realism experiments also contraindicate most normative concepts of a material, deterministic universe.

    OK. If that’s how you are defining “materialist”, then it would only be a crank who would claim to be one. No scientists I know of do.

    As science progresses, the idea of what the “material” world is changes drastically. Why impose some ideological concept of what the limits of “material” are when one is conducting science? History shows that such conceptual limitations are often erroneous.

    Quite. But no-one does. What they don’t do is give up the idea of predictability – because without predictability we have no tools.

    The concept of a “material” universe begs the question, what are you excluding, and why? Why call what you are examining “material” in the first place, and draw a line in the sand and say that science cannot examine what is on the other side, when you cannot even say what is on the other side, or what exactly it is you are drawing a line in?

    Well, I’m not aware of drawing a line. What line do you think is being drawn?

    IMO, redefining science as the investigation only of “material” causes and effects lends power to those who define what is “material” and what is not and offers a prejudicial line in ever-shifting sand to exclude the ideas and concepts of those who hypothesize or theorize that which the gatekeepers find distasteful.

    Well, that’s been interesting, William, because I think you have a straw man there, although its straw may originate in careless use of language by scientists! Clearly no scientists aware of quantum physics (as even biologists are!) thinks that science only deals with “matter”, or even with deterministic causality. But the entire methodology is grounded in prediction, even where the predictions are probabilistic rather than deterministic. That’s why the “supernatural” can’t be either confirmed or falsified by science. And why a better word than “materialistic” is plain ole “natural”. Hence the science journal “Nature” 🙂

    Also, it is one thing to claim that science can only examine material things (which I consider to be an ideological game); it is outside of the purview of science to claim that reality is limited to that which is material. That is a metaphysical view, not a scientific one.Claiming that a god doesn’t exist, or that spiritual beliefs are “superstitions”, is not a scientific claim, because even under the materialist definition, science is silent on whether or not such things exist.

    I entirely agree.

    Science cannot indicate that that which science cannot investigate doesn’t exist, and those who claim in the name of science that spiritual beliefs are “delusions” or “superstitions” are the ones misusing the institution of science to promote their personal metaphysics.

    Well, no. Delusions are perfectly real phenomena, and often harmful, and recognising them as such is often important both for the person’s own health and safety and for the safety of others. Take the belief in “demonic possession” for instance. When religion attempts toexplain phenomena – in other words when it tries to do the job of science – is when it gets dangerous, IMO. I’m with Gould – I think that there are legitimate non-overlapping magisteria. But the second they overlap they lose their legitimacy IMO. Science can only deal with what can be predictive. Religion goes wrong when it tries to predict.

  9. Sure. But we don’t have any evidence for a material mechanism executing the design, and whenever we ask, the response is something like: “ID isn’t about mechanisms, just about detecting design”.

    Can you support your claim that “we” don’t have “any evidence” for a material mechanism executing the design? Or do you mean to say that you are personally unaware of any such evidence?

    I’m not aware of any evidence of a material mechanism that executes what is called “gravity” upon objects with mass in the vicinity of each other. So? That doesn’t stop us from taking note of the specific, telltale signs of gravitational effects upon planets and other objects. Is the theory of gravity not scientific?

    IMO anti-ID advocates continually raise this and other straw man denialisms (many of which are addressed in the UD FAQ) just to stonewall a concept that undermines their ideology. My alien artifact thought experiment clearly demonstrates that we need not know anything specific whatsoever about the designers or the means by which they produced the design to infer design and move from a “naturally-occurring” research heuristic to a “designed artifact” research heuristic.

    Well, I think it’s a rather silly word. “Matter” doesn’t even cover “energy”. I don’t think scientists do have an “a priori commitment to materialism”

    You mean, besides the ones that say they do?

    – at least I think that’s a very bad way of putting.

    Then we agree that methodological materialism is a silly and unnecessary definition of the process of science?

    I think we have an a priori commitment to recovering predictive principles. That’s why the “supernatural” is out of bounds.

    Are intelligence and consciousness predictive principles? If not, do you consider them supernatural agencies?

    What they don’t do is give up the idea of predictability – because without predictability we have no tools.

    If we have black box object that we cannot penetrate, that emits a light ray at unpredictable intervals of unpredictable frequency, and we have no way of knowing what is generating the light ray, are we incapable of scientifically tracing the light rays to the black box and coming to the reasonable conclusion that, even though we cannot predict when the black box will generate light rays, or how it is doing so, that the black box (or whatever is inside it) is the apparent origin of those light rays?

    Furthermore, if we find non-predictable light rays coming from other black boxes, and in one case find similar aperiodic light rays emerging from an area of space hidden from us, would it be non-scientific to theorize that a black box might be the source of those aperiodic light rays?

    I find the idea that science must stop where it cannot predict to be simply a convenient anti-ID denialism. Of course science can be used to lead us to all sorts of aperiodic, unpredictable phenomena. Even though we cannot explain or predict the actions of a humans, science leads us to humans who have caused effects that are similarly matches to other such “black box” effects – this is known as forensics. Because we cannot predict what humans will do doesn’t mean we cannot scientifically find them responsible for certain effects. Even if we don’t know how they did something, or why, we can still find out that they did.

    Take the belief in “demonic possession” for instance. When religion attempts toexplain phenomena – in other words when it tries to do the job of science – is when it gets dangerous, IMO.

    Unless, of course, demons exist, and they can possess people. If that is the case, then in such cases it may be that medical treatment is the dangerous application.

    I’m with Gould – I think that there are legitimate non-overlapping magisteria. But the second they overlap they lose their legitimacy IMO. Science can only deal with what can be predictive. Religion goes wrong when it tries to predict.

    And I – and many others – disagree. I consider spiritual views and science to be tools I have available to deal with what I experience, and I can apply them how I see fit, not how others wish to legislate or otherwise coerce me. And this is the problem when a particular view of “what is scientific” becomes the de facto representation of “what is real” to the point of calling all those who disagree “superstitious” or “delusional” or whatever; it is no different from the church imposing their view of “what is real” on the populace.

    Should you or others be able to enforce your views of “non-overlapping magisteria” on others as if science = reality? Should parents who teach their children that demons exist be convicted of child abuse and have their children taken away? Should a threat of hell be considered a hate crime or the rantings of the delusional by the law? Should it be taught in biology class that humans are the product of impersonal, uncaring, deterministic forces and materials?

    You see, this doesn’t just come down to people agreeing that they disagree and moving on; these concepts get taught to children in academia as if true; they get put into law as if true; public policy is formed from these views of “what reality is” as if they are true. There are consequences to ideas that are not just expressed in the public forum, but those ideas which take hold and starts forming policy, law, and social behavior, which can lead to things like eugenics programs.

    When theists are regularly belittled, dismissed, and disparaged by high-profile members of the scientific community as if science had proven their beliefs wrong and as if science is the arbiter of reality, then science is being abused by idealogues to try and browbeat others into their metaphysic by calling everyone not on their side of the table “anti-science”.

    No, we’re not anti-science; we just don’t subscribe to your concept of what science is, should be limited to, or conclusions.

  10. Does ID even have a “black box”? Is there some set of letters and numbers that vaguely point in the direction of purposeful design, yet identify neither the purpose nor the designer, that’s cranking out useful science? I’m familiar with some of the recent analysis of “junk” DNA, yet the ID response has been hilariously overwrought: “Here’s a few specific instances of DNA previously thought non-functional having a function, therefore all DNA has a function.”

    My mind remains, sadly, unblown.

  11. William J Murray,

    William J Murray: Can you support your claim that “we” don’t have “any evidence” for a material mechanism executing the design? Or do you mean to say that you are personally unaware of any such evidence?

    I’m unaware of any such evidence, and I’ve seen none offered by an ID proponent. Thank you for the reminder 🙂

    I’m not aware of any evidence of a material mechanism that executes what is called “gravity” upon objects with mass in the vicinity of each other. So?That doesn’t stop us from taking note of the specific, telltale signs of gravitational effects upon planets and other objects.Is the theory of gravity not scientific?

    I should have been clearer. It’s lack of “those specific telltale signs” that I’m commenting on. If there is a previously unknown force that moves molecules around in a manner that is not predicted by currently known forces, I’m not seeing any attempts to measure it. gpuccio suggested that it was quantum effects operating under the limit of statistical detectability, but that, of course, by definition would leave no “tell-tale signs”.

    IMO anti-ID advocates continually raise this and other straw man denialisms (many of which are addressed in the UD FAQ) just to stonewall a concept that undermines their ideology.My alien artifact thought experiment clearly demonstrates that we need not know anything specific whatsoever about the designers or the means by which they produced the design to infer design and move from a “naturally-occurring” research heuristic to a “designed artifact” research heuristic.

    I have read the UD FAQ. I do not consider they “address” these problems, nor do I consider them a “straw man”. I think they are very pertinent problems with ID, and my view is that the reason ID proponents think they are “straw men” is that they haven’t understood the depth of the problem. That’s not because I think that ID proponents are unintelligent – in many ways I think that intelligent people are more prone to this kind of error than less intelligent people – of thinking: “ah, but this objection has been addressed, the objector just doesn’t understand the concept of X”, when in fact there are unprobed assumptions in X. From my experience over at UD, I’d say that there is a real problem in the thinking of many of the smartest commentators of ascribing explanatory power to high level concepts, like “intelligence” or “CSI” or “teleology” or “information”, and dismissing any attempts to unpack them as “definitionalism” or “nit-picking” or “reductionist”, or, of course, “straw man arguments”.

    You mean, besides the ones that say they do?

    Yes, besides those. And of those that do, I’m not even sure if they know what they mean.

    Then we agree that methodological materialism is a silly and unnecessary definition of the process of science?

    I think “methodological naturalism”, which is the phrase I am more familiar with, is a better description. Neither is a efinition.

    Are intelligence and consciousness predictive principles? If not, do you consider them supernatural agencies?

    Yes, they are predictive principles. No I don’t consider them “supernatural agencies”.

    If we have black box object that we cannot penetrate, that emits a light ray at unpredictable intervals of unpredictable frequency, and we have no way of knowing what is generating the light ray, are we incapable of scientifically tracing the light rays to the black box and coming to the reasonable conclusion that, even though we cannot predict when the black box will generate light rays, or how it is doing so, that the black box (or whatever is inside it) is the apparent origin of those light rays?

    Yes.

    Furthermore, if we find non-predictable light rays coming from other black boxes, and in one case find similar aperiodic light rays emerging from an area of space hidden from us, would it be non-scientific to theorize that a black box might be the source of those aperiodic light rays?

    Similar in what sense? Similar probability distribution of the intervals between emissions, or what? (This is not an idle or nit-pickety question, so I would appreciate your answer).

    I find the idea that science must stop where it cannot predict to be simply a convenient anti-ID denialism. Of course science can be used to lead us to all sorts of aperiodic, unpredictable phenomena.

    It’s not “a convenient anti-ID denialism” at all, although I’d say it betrays a misunderstanding of the nature of scientific prediction which I think pervades much ID writing (including Dembski’s). “aperiodic” isn’t the same as “unpredictable”.

    Even though we cannot explain or predict the actions of a humans,

    But we can. It’s called “behavioural science”. Aka psychology. And, at a lower level, neuroscience. It’s what I do 🙂

    science leads us to humans who have caused effects that are similarly matches to other such “black box” effects – this is known as forensics.Because we cannot predict what humans will do doesn’t mean we cannot scientifically find them responsible for certain effects.

    Exactly. So your last sentence is an oxymoron. “Prediction” isn’t about deriving absolute “Laws of Necessity” (or only rarely) but probabilistic predictions that are correct more often than would be expected under some null or alternative hypothesis.

    Even if we don’t know how they did something, or why, we can still find out that they did.

    Yes indeed.

    Unless, of course, demons exist, and they can possess people. If that is the case, then in such cases it may be that medical treatment is the dangerous application.

    Conceivably, that’s why we need evidence-based medicine and good inferential statistics.

    And I – and many others – disagree. I consider spiritual views and science to be tools I have available to deal with what I experience, and I can apply them how I see fit, not how others wish to legislate or otherwise coerce me. And this is the problem when a particular view of “what is scientific” becomes the de facto representation of “what is real” to the point of calling all those who disagree “superstitious” or “delusional” or whatever; it is no different from the church imposing their view of “what is real” on the populace.

    Science doesn’t cover all aspects of “what is real”. But it does deal with what is predictable. It’s the art of making predictive models of reality. Other domains deal with other kinds of models. If a scientists tries to impose her idea of “what is real” on you, tell her to go away. But don’t ask her to build a scientific model that is not a predictive model, because she won’t know how.

    Should you or others be able to enforce your views of “non-overlapping magisteria” on others as if science = reality?

    No.

    Should parents who teach their children that demons exist be convicted of child abuse and have their children taken away?

    Only if they are abusing their children. For example, by some kinds of so-called “exorcisms”.

    Should a threat of hell be considered a hate crime or the rantings of the delusional by the law?

    Well, I’m against the notion of “hate crime” anyway. And being delusional is not against the law, at least in any jurisdiction I’m familiar with.

    Should it be taught in biology class that humans are the product of impersonal, uncaring, deterministic forces and materials?

    “Impersonal, uncaring”, would be untrue in a very straightforward sense. Humans are, in substantial part, the product if deeply personal, deeply caring agents that we call other human beings. Failure to understand the role of nurture and affection, and culture, and socialisation in making us what we are would be biologically untrue, right down to the molecular level. However, if you mean “should biology classes teach us that some personal caring agent designed us”, no, they shouldn’t because we have no scientific evidence for that, and science should be evidence-based. Nothing wrong with learning about that idea in some other class though.

    As for “deterministic”, no, because current science suggests the world is not deterministic, and even if that turns out to be wrong, it is clear that it is deeply stochastic and “chaotic” in the mathematical sense. “Forces and materials”, yes, because that is the subject matter of biology.

    You see, this doesn’t just come down to people agreeing that they disagree and moving on; these concepts get taught to children in academia as if true; they get put into law as if true; public policy is formed from these views of “what reality is” as if they are true. There are consequences to ideas that are not just expressed in the public forum, but those ideas which take hold and starts forming policy, law, and social behavior, which can lead to things like eugenics programs.

    Well, that’s why it’s important to discuss them! And to make sure that ideas like “science tells us what reality is” is unpacked and its limitations exposed. And to make sure that while science can usefully inform us about ethical issues (for example, about the degree of suffering a procedure causes), it is not the arbiter of ethics. Darwinian theory can be true and eugenics still wrong (both, IMO). There is paranoia on both sides, and to defuse it we need to understand each other. The prospect of theocracy is as frightening to atheists and scientists as “materialist atheism” can be to theists. There’s a grain of justification in both sets of fears, but much of it is due to misunderstanding, for which both the communicators and communicatees (if there is such a word) are partially responsible.

    Let’s try and sort it out 🙂

    When theists are regularly belittled, dismissed, and disparaged by high-profile members of the scientific community as if science had proven their beliefs wrong and as if science is the arbiter of reality, then science is being abused by idealogues to try and browbeat others into their metaphysic by calling everyone not on their side of the table “anti-science”.

    But let’s get this in perspective. Firstly, those “high-profile members of the scientific community” are often “high-profile” simply by dint of their disparagement of theists. I’m thinking Dawkins here. He’s written some good pop-science books, some excellent articles, and some provocative polemic. He’s not “high profile” because of his science, but because of his writing – and a successful writer, is one that is, almost by definition, “high profile”. Similarly some high profile members of the ID community have achieved that profile not by their science but by their writing in the non-scientific domain. The vast majority of scientists simply publish their scientific findings in the peer-reviewed literature, and rarely make any comment, let alone disparagement, about theists at all. I believe a majority of scientists are non-theists, but fewer are self-described atheists in my experience. Most simply consider theism irrelevant to what they do.

    Which, as I have argued, it is.

    In any case, I’d like a citation for any scientist who has claimed that science proves “theistic beliefs” wrong. Science has certainly demonstrated (we don’t do “proof” in science) that certain religious propositions are overwhelmingly contradicted by evidence, and has replaced religious explanations of natural phenomena (earthquakes, lightning) by scientific ones, or, alternatively by the statement “we don’t know”. But science has not, and cannot, rule out “theism”. It can’t even falsify miracles – all it can do is provide a plausible natural account that makes predictions that are subsequently supported by new data.

    No, we’re not anti-science; we just don’t subscribe to your concept of what science is, should be limited to, or conclusions.

    Well my view is that this is muddled, on two counts. One is that you have misunderstood “our” concept of science; the second is that you have misunderstood how the scientific method works – it cannot (not “won’t” but “cannot”) test supernatural hypotheses. It can certainly test design hypotheses, and it can also test a-causal hypotheses, but it can’t test “super-natural” hypotheses.

    Science is the study of nature in other words. Not the study of why there is nature in the first place, or of causal agents that are outside nature. Indeed, I’d put it the other way: any agent that is detectable by science is what we call a “natural” agent. If you ever find a scientific demonstration of God (or a demon, or psi, or astrology or whatever) you won’t have demonstrated the “supernatural” but merely have discovered a hitherto unidentified “natural” force in the world!

    If you don’t believe me, try the thought experiment 🙂

  12. I should have been clearer. It’s lack of “those specific telltale signs” that I’m commenting on. If there is a previously unknown force that moves molecules around in a manner that is not predicted by currently known forces, I’m not seeing any attempts to measure it. gpuccio suggested that it was quantum effects operating under the limit of statistical detectability, but that, of course, by definition would leave no “tell-tale signs”.

    You’re conflating the method for the result. Even if the method is unknown (how gravity or ID is generating the effect), the result is detectable by reference to a pattern that is known to be described by the commodity in question.

    Similar in what sense?

    Similar in the sense that they are aperiodic light rays being emitted from a specified location in space that do not fit the pattern of any other known emitter of light.

    I should have been clearer. It’s lack of “those specific telltale signs” that I’m commenting on.

    That is exactly what the FSCO/I metric is claimed to provide. It is the same as an attempt to provide a formula for the recognizable effects of gravity; we might not know now gravity/ID works, or how it “makes happen” the effects/patterns we find, but if it is scientific to call an effect an effect of gravity without knowing what gravity is, or the mechanism it uses to achieve the recognizable pattern of effects, then it is scientific to call the theory of ID scientific.

    Unless, of course, one insists that the effects of ID are not recognizable; is that your position? That ID doesn’t produce any recognizable effects that we can – as best explanation – reasonably infer were the product of ID? If so, do you have an answer for my ancient alien artifact challenge?

    I have read the UD FAQ. I do not consider they “address” these problems, nor do I consider them a “straw man”.

    And I – and others — are of the opposite opinion. So? Reiterating explanations you find unsatisfactory would be a waste of time and space.

    Exactly. So your last sentence is an oxymoron. “Prediction” isn’t about deriving absolute “Laws of Necessity” (or only rarely) but probabilistic predictions that are correct more often than would be expected under some null or alternative hypothesis.

    Except I’m not talking about the probabilistic predictions via psychology of what humans do; I’m saying that even if we posit that we cannot predict what a human will do, and we do not know how or why the human did what they did, we can still gather the evidence to best explanation (and all such explanations are provisional) that a human was responsible for a phenomena.

    We may not know who carved the Easter Island statues, or how, or why, but we know a deliberate intelligence carved them. We might not know who painted the walls of some ancient caves with primitive pictures – or how, or why – but we can still determine that they did. If we found similar ancient artifacts on otherwise desolate alien planets, we might not know the identity of those who created the artifacts, or how, or why; but we can still reasonably infer that a designing intelligence created them. You apparently agree to this when you say:

    Yes indeed.

    Unless you are going to insist that humans cannot make such determiniations outside of their own species, that we are for some reason restricted to only being able to recognize product of human intelligence? Or do you agree that non-human intelligences might leave product similar enough to what human intelligence leaves to be recognizable as the product of intelligence, even if non-human?

    As for “deterministic”, no, because current science suggests the world is not deterministic, and even if that turns out to be wrong, it is clear that it is deeply stochastic and “chaotic” in the mathematical sense. “Forces and materials”, yes, because that is the subject matter of biology.

    Perhaps you are conflating “deterministic” with “predictable”. That it may be “deeply stochastic and chaotic” doesn’t stop it from being deterministic. From dictionary.com:

    1. the doctrine that all facts and events exemplify natural laws.
    2. the doctrine that all events, including human choices and decisions, have sufficient causes.

    Perhaps you care to give another answer to my reworded questoin:

    Should it be taught in biology class that humans (as a species, not as individuals) are the product of impersonal, uncaring, deterministic forces and materials?

    And to make sure that ideas like “science tells us what reality is” is unpacked and its limitations exposed.

    This is exactly what I think is the reason for many of the subject threads about claims of science at UD; it’s not anti-science, it’s an attempt to expose the unwarranted ideology that has been packaged up with the science as if the science indicates the ideological conclusion.

    From a Discovery Institute article in 1997:

    Are attacks on materialism from scientific quarters having any effect? They are having enough of one that the National Association of Biology Teachers last month voted to drop the terms “unsupervised” and “impersonal” from its standard description of the evolutionary process. These are words, of course, that effectively would deny the possibility that life came from a creator. The NABT still wants evolution alone to be taught in the classroom, but the group’s director, Wayne W. Carley, acknowledged that “our intent is to say that science cannot comment on whether evolution is supervised by some ‘intelligent design’ or not.”

    If science cannot speak to whether or not the process of evolution is “unsupervised” and “impersonal”, what were those terms doing in the standard description offered by this important institution? This is exactly the kind of materialist (for lack of a better word), anti-theist ideological propaganda that is insinuated into the scientific and academic culture and literature that UD seeks out, exposes, and attacks. And, doing such, they are not attacking science, nor are they anti-science.

    It can certainly test design hypotheses, and it can also test a-causal hypotheses, but it can’t test “super-natural” hypotheses.

    Why do you keep inserting the term “supernatural” into our debate? Have I said anything about any supposed “supernatural” agency? Have I claimed that “supernatural” agencies exist?

    You are making another straw man here. The debate isn’t about “natural vs supernatural”, but rather “natural vs artificial”, where “artificial” isn’t limited to just human deliberate design.

    If you agree that intelligent design can produce some recognizable artifacts in the real world; and you agree that even if we cannot say how a black box produces an aperiodic, unpredictable effect, we can still reasonably assign similar such effects we find to the black box phenomena; and that if we find patterns of behavior (like gravitational effects), then even if we do not know how the effect is achieved, or exactly what the cause is, we can still resonably and reliably assign that class of effects to the proposed cause.

    Since you agree that human intelligence & design are prerfectly within the realm of scientiific discovery & investigation, I don’t see how you can disagree that we can devise a metric that recognizes at least some of the patterns produced by human intelligent design and that if we find such patterns elsewhere, it is a viable hypothesis that a human -like intelligence generated the phenomena in question, whether we can find those intelligences or not, and whether we can uncover how they generated the effects or not (as per my ancient alien artifact scenario).

    In any event, whether or not ID is a recognizable class of patterns is way off-topic here; IMO, it is a scientific venture to try and develop such a metric, and a valid scientific theory that ID is a valid causative agency – like gravity; and like my black box scenario or gravity, even if science cannot say what the cause is, how it produces the effects it produces, or even predict the effects it produces, it can still at least point to the source of the effect.

    Is the big bang predictable? No. Can we predict what effects the class phenomena known as the big bang singularity will produce? No. It is the ultimate black box, upredictable, non-repeatable phenomena, where we can only examine the effects of one non-repeatable unique (miraculous?) event to reach scientific conclusions about that unique phenomena.

    To claim that science cannot investigate and has nothing to say about such a phenomena because it cannot make predictions concerning the phenomena is, IMO, insupportable. The big bang singularity is the textbook definition of “the supernatural” as it is immune to explanation via nature because it generated what we call “nature”; that doesn’t stop science from investigating it, hypothesizing about it, how it happened and in what context, nor from examining the effects to gain a better understanding of what the big bang is and its characteristics.

    Using the term “supernatural” and claiming that “science stops here” is, IMO, just a means to ideologically exclude and ostracize (and in many cases belittle, delegitimize, undermine, and ridicule) certain proposed entities (god, soul, ghosts, psi, etc.) that are culturally associated with the term “supernatural” because they conflict with one’s idiosyncratic physicalist ideology.

    Associating the ID contributors with the terms “anti-science” and “supernatural” claims, then conveniently (and negatively) characterizing their motivations and emotional states is, IMO, nothing much more than a smear tactic. They have legitimate concerns that science (and associated academia) is being broadly used (whether consciously or not) to insinuate and disseminate physicalist (for lack of a better word), atheistic, deterministic propaganda, and use that forum (in part) to expose and “unpack” such instances.

  13. William J Murray,

    Good points, William.

    I would also add that is because of the very tentative nature of scientific claims that we have controversy in science in the first place, and that it is the staunch materialists (not necessarily on this blog, but certainly elsewhere) who often deny that there is controversy – particularly regarding many of the claims of evolution. So I wonder if slapping on the label of “anti-science” on either side is really accurate.

  14. Brandon Ward: “So I wonder if slapping on the label of “anti-science” on either side is really accurate.”

    I think that’s the only thing one can conclude given that of all of science, **only** the theory of evolution is called upon by the theist side to accept non-materialistic input.

    Why?

    Only the theory of evolution threatens biblical inerrancy and that is why it is the focus of all this attention.

    So, is it anti-science to insist on the admission of non-materialistic evidence when discussing evolution?

    Yes, since we don’t do it for **any** other field of science.

  15. William J Murray: You’re conflating the method for the result. Even if the method is unknown (how gravity or ID is generating the effect), the result is detectable by reference to a pattern that is known to be described by the commodity in question.

    No, I am not. I’m not talking about the method, I’m talking about the result.

    Similar in the sense that they are aperiodic light rays being emitted from a specified location in space that do not fit the pattern of any other known emitter of light.

    Well, if I’m understanding your thought experiment correctly, you have one known emitter of light that emits light in a certain aperiodic manner, and you now find a similar aperiodic light emission from a “specfied location in space”, right? Yes, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to hypothesise that the same process may be responsible for both sources. And I’d want to know more about that pattern.

    That is exactly what the FSCO/I metric is claimed to provide. It is the same as an attempt to provide a formula for the recognizable effects of gravity; we might not know now gravity/ID works, or how it “makes happen”the effects/patterns we find, but if it is scientific to call an effect an effect of gravity without knowing what gravity is, or the mechanism it uses to achieve the recognizable pattern of effects, then it is scientific to call the theory of ID scientific.

    Yes, I realise that, but I think the entire line of reasoning is flawed, for reasons I will try to articulate below.

    Unless, of course, one insists that the effects of ID are not recognizable; is that your position?

    Not exactly. I think that Intelligent Designers are capable of designing things that are pretty well indistinguishable from non-Intelligently designed things, and I also think that an ID inference can be perfectly reasonable, from examining a candidate artefact alone. However, I don’t think “CSI” or “fCSI” or “dfCSI” are reliable criteria (or even clear criteria, to be frank) for design. I do think that the qualities that I think notions like “CSI” are coined to try to capture are a feature of artefacts of biological entities (not necessarily human). Indeed I would postulate that those qualities tend to be features of things that are either themselves self-replicators, or are the artefacts of self-replicators. Including inorganic self-replicators.

    That ID doesn’t produce any recognizable effects that we can – as best explanation – reasonably infer were the product of ID?If so, do you have an answer for my ancient alien artifact challenge?

    Yes. If your ancient alien artefact is not a self-replicator I would infer that it was made by a self-replicator. If it were a self-replicator I would infer that it was possibly wholly or partly the outcome of Darwinian processes.

    And I – and others — are of the opposite opinion. So? Reiterating explanations you find unsatisfactory would be a waste of time and space.

    Not necessarily. You might be more persuasive, or I might be. Conversations are worth having, no? After all, for half a century I found explanations of consciousness unsatisfactory. Then I read one that I found satisfactory! I am always willing to consider that I might be mistaken 🙂

    Except I’m not talking about the probabilistic predictions via psychology of what humans do; I’m saying that even if we posit that we cannot predict what a human will do, and we do not know how or why the human did what they did, we can still gather the evidence to best explanation (and all such explanations are provisional) that a human was responsible for a phenomena.

    But I am talking about probabilistic predictions, and it is precisely because we can make probabilistic predictions about what human will do that we can make justified inferences about whether a human was likely to be responsible for something.

    We may not know who carved the Easter Island statues, or how, or why, but we know a deliberate intelligence carved them. We might not know who painted the walls of some ancient caves with primitive pictures – or how, or why – but we can still determine that they did. If we found similar ancient artifacts on otherwise desolate alien planets, we might not know the identity of those who created the artifacts, or how, or why; but we can still reasonably infer that a designing intelligence created them. You apparently agree to this when you say:

    Even if we don’t know how they did something, or why, we can still find out that they did.

    Yes indeed.

    Yes indeed 🙂 I’d go so far as to propose an Explanatory Filter:

    1. Is it a self-replicator? If YES, it probably evolved.
    2. If NO, it was probably built by a self-replicator.
    3. Do we know of of any self-replicators around at the date the thing seems to have come into existence? If YES it was probably built by them.
    4. If NO it was probably built by somebody else.

    Unless you are going to insist that humans cannot make such determiniations outside of their own species, that we are for some reason restricted to only being able to recognize product of human intelligence?Or do you agree that non-human intelligences might leave product similar enough to what human intelligence leaves to be recognizable as the product of intelligence, even if non-human?

    Sure. But I propose that all intelligent agents are self-replicators. All the ones we know of are 🙂

    Perhaps you are conflating “deterministic” with “predictable”.That it may be “deeply stochastic and chaotic” doesn’t stop it from being deterministic. From dictionary.com:

    No, I’m not conflating them. As it turns out we appear to live in a deeply stochastic and chaotic indeterminate universe, but it’s possibly that we merely live in a deeply stochastic and chaotic determinate universe. Hard to tell the difference, and both are unpredictable except statistically, and over limited ranges.

    Perhaps you care to give another answer to my reworded questoin:

    Should it be taught in biology class that humans (as a species, not as individuals) are the product of impersonal, uncaring, deterministic forces and materials?

    No. It should be taught that biology is the study of the deterministic (and indeed indeterminate, as these are probably important too) forces and materials that give rise to living things. If student ask whether here is any external purpose to the the lives of living things, or whether there is a being who brought the world into being because s/he wanted to bring about beings who could love her, I’d say, “interesting question, but not one that we can address within the domain of biology”.

    This is exactly what I think is the reason for many of the subject threads about claims of science at UD; it’s not anti-science, it’s an attempt to expose the unwarranted ideology that has been packaged up with the science as if the science indicates the ideological conclusion.

    Well, as I said, in some cases it does cut right against theistic beliefs. Young Earth Creationism is a case in point. It is not supported by evidence, and, indeed, is radically inconsistent with it. Not only that, but the only YEC “scientists” around all have an “a priori” commitment (explicit usually, and required in writing) to YEC. If you call the conclusion that YEC is wrong an “ideological conclusion” then I think that it’s nonetheless the conclusion that science indicates, and science teachers should say so. Many theistic propositions are perfectly falsifiable and have been duly falsified. ID, in my view, is not falsifiable, and cannot be falsified (I’m sure you will disagree, but I’d like to know why, because I have not yet seen a persuasive argument that ID is falsifiable). So science teachers would be quite wrong to say that science has falsified ID. But, equally, they would be wrong in my view to say that ID is supported.

    From a Discovery Institute article in 1997:

    If science cannot speak to whether or not the process of evolution is “unsupervised” and “impersonal”, what were those terms doing in the standard description offered by this important institution?This is exactly the kind of materialist (for lack of a better word), anti-theist ideological propaganda that is insinuated into the scientific and academic culture and literature that UD seeks out, exposes, and attacks. And, doing such, they are not attacking science, nor are they anti-science.

    I can’t really comment on this, William – I’m not an American, and I don’t know what institution you are talking about. But I certainly don’t think that the words “impersonal” or “unsupervised” should appear in a description of evolution. They are unnecessary, and, being negative claims, not easily verifiable or falsifiable by scientific methods.

    Why doyou keep inserting the term “supernatural” into our debate?Have I said anything about any supposed “supernatural” agency? Have I claimed that “supernatural” agencies exist?

    I don’t know, William. I’m not sure what it is that you think science culpably excludes. Certainly I see nothing wrong with positing intelligent agency. “Intelligence” is doesn’t mean “supernatural” so, if we are agreed on this, that’s fine. But than “material” doesn’t mean “not supernatural” either, nor does it mean “not intelligent”. Or “not purposeful”>

    You are making another straw man here. The debate isn’t about “natural vs supernatural”, but rather “natural vs artificial”, where “artificial” isn’t limited to just human deliberate design.

    In that case we don’t disagree on this.

    If you agree that intelligent design can produce some recognizable artifacts in the real world; and you agree that even if we cannot say how a black box produces an aperiodic, unpredictable effect, we can still reasonably assign similar such effects we find to the black box phenomena; and that if we find patterns of behavior (like gravitational effects), then even if we do not know how the effect is achieved, or exactly what the cause is, we can still resonably and reliably assign that class of effects to the proposed cause.

    Yes.

    Since you agree that human intelligence & design are prerfectly within the realm of scientiific discovery & investigation, I don’t see how you can disagree that we can devise a metric that recognizes at least some of the patterns produced by human intelligent design and that if we find such patterns elsewhere, it is a viable hypothesis that a human -like intelligence generated the phenomena in question, whether we can find those intelligences or not, and whether we can uncover how they generated the effects or not (as per my ancient alien artifact scenario).

    Because intelligent design is not the only generator of such patterns. Self-replication with heritable variance in reproductive success also produces such patterns, indeed all the patterns that you seem to be interested in can be traced back to self-replicators, human, animal, or even, sometimes, crystal. Indeed, the principle of self-replication with heritable variance in reproductive success appears to be the principle on which intelligent brains function, interestingly – it’s the principle of Hebbian learning, essentially.

    In any event, whether or not ID is a recognizable class of patterns is way off-topic here; IMO, it is a scientific venture to try and develop such a metric, and a valid scientific theory that ID is a valid causative agency – like gravity; and like my black box scenario or gravity, even if science cannot say what the cause is, how it produces the effects it produces, or even predict the effects it produces, it can still at least point to the source of the effect.

    Well, I’ve been saying for a while now, that I think some classes of patterns can be attributed to certain classes of causes, one pair of which is “self-replicators that replicate with heritable variance in reproductive success”. And if we found entities displaying such patterns in other parts of the universe, I think we’d be entitled to infer that we had found evidence of self-replicators. So in that sense (and in that sense only!) I’m an “ID proponent”. I think Intelligence is fascinating. It’s why I study neuroscience 🙂

    Is the big bang predictable? No.

    Not in one sense, as it’s in a class of one. But we can certainly make predictions about what we will observe if our hypothesis that it occurred is true, and, indeed, that’s why we think it occurred – because those predictions were confirmed.

    Can we predict what effects the class phenomena known as the big bang singularity will produce? No. It is the ultimate black box, upredictable, non-repeatable phenomena, where we can only examine the effects of one non-repeatable unique (miraculous?) event to reach scientific conclusions about thatunique phenomena.

    Well, not necessarily. That may turn out to be the case, or, alternatively, cosmologists may come up with a theory that describes the data better, and which proposes that it is not a unique phenomenon. For example Steinhardt and Turok have an alternative theory of Inflation which they claim describes the data as well as the Standard Model, but which is based on a cyclical model, and, apparently makes differential predictions about what the LHC may show. But of course that also means that the LHC could falsify their theory.

    It all comes back to the “right to remain uncertain”! Sure, right now, the Big Bang looks like a unique event, but within my lifetime “Steady State” had data going for it too, and during my lifetime various cyclical theories have come and gone. And of course what we are now much more aware of is that in a sense the “geocentrists” were correct – we are at the dead centre of the knowable (by us) universe. Every single intelligent agent in the universe is at the dead centre of his/her/its knowable universe. And we’d all be foolish to assume that the sphere of universe of which we ourselves are the centre is typical of the whole!

    To claim that science cannot investigate and has nothing to say about such a phenomena because it cannot make predictions concerning the phenomena is, IMO, insupportable.The big bang singularity is the textbook definition of “the supernatural” as it is immune to explanation via nature because it generated what we call “nature”; that doesn’t stop science from investigating it, hypothesizing about it, how it happened and in what context, nor from examining the effects to gain a better understanding of what the big bang is and its characteristics.

    No, it’s not the “text book definition of the supernatural”. I’m not even sure if there is one. I think it’s an incoherent concept, myself. So let’s dispense with it. What I meant is that science can’t test supernatural hypotheses like: “is this a miracle”?
    Because they are scientifically incoherent.

    I think there is real equivocation in some UD discussion (not accusing you, here, William) between “supernatural” and “artificial” or “intelligent”. “Artificial” and “intelligent” are perfectly decent scientifically definable constructs. “Supernatural” isn’t, and that is the reason why science doesn’t “allow the Divine Foot in the door”. Not because it doesn’t like Divine Feet, but because it’s a unoperationalizable construct.

    Using the term “supernatural” and claiming that “science stops here” is, IMO, just a means to ideologically exclude and ostracize (and in many cases belittle, delegitimize, undermine, and ridicule) certain proposed entities (god, soul, ghosts, psi, etc.) that are culturally associated with the term “supernatural” because they conflict with one’s idiosyncratic physicalist ideology.

    Not guilty m’lud. If you can operationalise it, you can investigate it scientifically. If you can’t, you can’t. The ball is firmly in the proposer’s court.

    Associating the ID contributors with the terms “anti-science” and “supernatural” claims, then conveniently (and negatively) characterizing their motivations and emotional states is, IMO, nothing much more than a smear tactic.

    Well, I certainly don’t like it. I suspect it’s “more than a smear tactic” – I think people really think that. I think it’s silly, as is the reverse (and exactly the same happens in reverse). Hence the guiding principle of this site: assume that other posters are posting in good faith. That cuts both ways, and I’m honoured to have you here, William 🙂 I hope some of more your fellows will join us, or at least drop by. It was good to see Brandon and Gil drop in.

    They have legitimate concerns that science (and associated academia) is being broadly used (whether consciously or not) to insinuate and disseminate physicalist (for lack of a better word), atheistic, deterministic propaganda, and use that forum (in part) to expose and “unpack” such instances.

    Well, partly legitimate maybe. Some of the paranoia is, I think, unjustified. A lot, in fact. And some is a response to similarly unreasonably aggressive pronouncements on the part of the “other side” who also, with some legitimacy, fear theocracy.

    I’m all for getting rid of the needless barriers. If we don’t, we’ll never discover what our real differences are.

    Anyway, nice to talk to you 🙂

    Lizzie

  16. You say:

    Yes, I realise that, but I think the entire line of reasoning is flawed, for reasons I will try to articulate below.

    But the next thing you do is validate the “entire line of reasoning” by saying:

    I think that Intelligent Designers are capable of designing things that are pretty well indistinguishable from non-Intelligently designed things, and I also think that an ID inference can be perfectly reasonable, from examining a candidate artefact alone.

    Whether or not any specific, proposed metric is valid, we agree in principle that at least some proposed candidates for being product of non-human, but sufficiently human-like ID can be (to best provisional explanation) identified as such.

    Yes. If your ancient alien artefact is not a self-replicator I would infer that it was made by a self-replicator. If it were a self-replicator I would infer that it was possibly wholly or partly the outcome of Darwinian processes.

    I have no idea why you are specifically inserting the term “self-replicator” here as a qualifier unless you are attempting to make the case that there is no possible means of identifying (as best explanation) a case of biological ID that should be regarded as independent of the organism’s self-replicating process.

    Is that your contention, or will you agree that there might be a means of making such an identification, even if the particular feature in question is part of a self-replicating biological system?

    Sure. But I propose that all intelligent agents are self-replicators. All the ones we know of are

    I’m entirely baffled why you think this is a significant qualifier in this debate. What possible difference does it make to the ID argument if we posit that all intelligences are also self-replicators?

    No. It should be taught that biology is the study of the deterministic (and indeed indeterminate, as these are probably important too) forces and materials that give rise to living things.

    Should it be taught or implied at this time that such forces and materials (as taught) are categorically sufficient to explain the rise of living things?

    Well, as I said, in some cases it does cut right against theistic beliefs

    I agree that valid scientific conclusions can contraindicate (or “disprove”, in the provisional sense) some specific theistic beliefs, just as it can contraindicate or “disprove” some specific, idiosyncratic materialist or determinist beliefs. My point isn’t that science cannot “disprove” some specific beliefs; but rather that it is inappropriate for anyone to use science to make the assertion that a god of some sort doesn’t exist or is not involved, etc. I think we agree on that.

    Because intelligent design is not the only generator of such patterns.

    Until you can show that intelligence is not required for the existence of a self-replicator, you are simply asserting your conclusion here. However, it is irrelevant to my argument here. IMO, it is an entirely appropriate and scientific theory that self-replication is the basis for intelligence, just as it is an entirely appropriate and scientific theory that intelligence is necessary for the production of self-replicating entities.

    I think it’s an incoherent concept, myself. So let’s dispense with it. [in regards to the term “supernatural” – WJM]

    I agree, and let’s do so for further communication.

    I would like to pose this question to you: if it is possible to make a determination of best cause from ID based upon nothing other than an examination of the artifact; and if that artifact is not self-replicating (as in my ancient alien artifact scenario), is it it not true that this inference to best explanation necessarily requires intelligence, but doesn’t necessarily require such intelligence be self-replicating or be part of a self-replicating system?

    IOW, logically, we might have never seen anything other than a white swan, but if we find swan prints, a necessary aspect of our “best explanation” for the prints is that a swan made them, not that a white swan made them. “White” is an unnecessary aspect of the “best explanation”.

    While it may be true that all swans are white, and it may be true that all intelligences are self-replicators, “white” and “self-replicator” are unnecessary for the inference to best explanation. Indeed, insisting on the qualifying term “white” or “self-replicating” is just an attempt, IMO, to subtly (and perhaps unconsciously) insert an ideological commitment (that all swans are necessarily white, or that all intelligences are necessarily self-replicating).

    The necessary part of the ancient alien artifact challenge is that the cause is considered intelligent, not that it is considered self-replicating. That is an ideological commitment that is unnecessary for the inference.

  17. William J Murray:
    You say:

    That is exactly what the FSCO/I metric is claimed to provide. It is the same as an attempt to provide a formula for the recognizable effects of gravity; we might not know now gravity/ID works, or how it “makes happen” the effects/patterns we find, but if it is scientific to call an effect an effect of gravity without knowing what gravity is, or the mechanism it uses to achieve the recognizable pattern of effects, then it is scientific to call the theory of ID scientific.

    Yes, I realise that, but I think the entire line of reasoning is flawed, for reasons I will try to articulate below.

    But the next thing you do is validate the “entire line of reasoning”by saying:

    I think that Intelligent Designers are capable of designing things that are pretty well indistinguishable from non-Intelligently designed things, and I also think that an ID inference can be perfectly reasonable, from examining a candidate artefact alone.

    Well, no. The “line of reasoning” I think is flawed is the reasoning that says:

    Designed things often have characteristic A
    This thing has characteristic A
    Therefore this thing was designed.

    What I think is reasonable would be:

    Things made by self-replicators often have characteristic A
    Self-replicators also have characteristic A
    This thing has characteristic A
    This thing is not a self-replicator
    Therefore this thing was probably made by a self-replicator.

    Whether or not any specific, proposed metric is valid, we agree in principle that at least some proposed candidates for being product of non-human, but sufficiently human-like ID can be (to best provisional explanation) identified as such.

    Unless the candidate is itself a self-replicator. In other words, on observing a thing with the characteristic often denoted “CSI” I think are justified in looking for self-replication – either the thing itself could be a self-replicator, or it might be made by a self-replicator.

    I have no idea why you are specifically inserting the term “self-replicator” here as a qualifier unless you are attempting to make the case that there is no possible means of identifying (as best explanation) a case of biological ID that should be regarded as independent of the organism’s self-replicating process.

    Ah. Glad you asked that 🙂

    Well, to use the rather trivial logic often (fallaciously IMO) used by ID proponents:

    All things with “CSI” are either self-replicators or designed by self-replicators.
    This thing has CSI.
    Therefore this thing is either a self-replicator or designed by self-replicators.

    It’s an improvement on:

    All things we know of that have CSI, apart from biological things, were Intelligently Designed
    Biological things have CSI too.
    Therefore they were intelligently designed.

    But perhaps that’s not saying a great deal 🙂 The more important point, I would argue, is that self-replication with heritable variance in reproductive success is capable of producing this “CSI” stuff. But to demonstrate this convincingly, we’ll need to agree on the metric 🙂

    Is that your contention, or will you agree that there might be a means of making such an identification, even if the particular feature in question is part of a self-replicating biological system?

    Yes, I think so, though it may throw up false negatives. But a set of living things whose phenotypic characteristics were not distributed in a nested hierarchy might suggest intelligent design, I think. Most human designed artefacts, while they show a degree of nesting, also show egregious violations. An observed system in which chimeras were the norm would demand an hypothesis other than Darwinian evolution, I think, and Intelligent Design would have to be a contender. But it would have to be testable. No reason why it couldn’t generate a testable ID hypothesis though.

    I’m entirely baffled why you think this is a significant qualifier in this debate.What possible difference does it make to the ID argument if we posit that all intelligences are also self-replicators?

    Well, for a start, the only intelligences we know of are self-replicators 🙂 And I’d strongly argue that our intelligence evolved. But then that’s the point at issue, so it can’t be my premise.

    Should it be taught or implied at this time that such forces and materials (as taught) are categorically sufficient to explain the rise of living things?

    No, I don’t think so. I’d say: “we do not yet have a fully worked out naturalistic theory of how living things emerged from non-life, but these are the lines on which researchers are working”.

    I agree that valid scientific conclusions can contraindicate (or “disprove”, in the provisional sense) some specific theistic beliefs, just as it can contraindicate or “disprove” some specific, idiosyncratic materialist or determinist beliefs. My point isn’t that science cannot “disprove” some specific beliefs; but rather that it is inappropriate for anyone to use science to make the assertion that a god of some sort doesn’t exist or is not involved, etc. I think we agree on that.

    Yes, we do 🙂

    Until you can show that intelligence is not required for the existence of a self-replicator, you are simply asserting your conclusion here. However, it is irrelevant to my argument here.

    Well, in a sense, but then nor have your “side” shown that the simplest Darwinian-capable self-replicator must have CSI. And we know of many self-replicating systems in the inorganic world. But sure, until scientists show that Darwinian-capable self-replicators can arise spontaneously from non-self-replicators, we have an explanatory gap. And I think we agree that ID is not an “argument from gaps” right?

    IMO, it is an entirely appropriate and scientific theory that self-replication is the basis for intelligence, just as it is an entirely appropriate and scientific theory that intelligence is necessary for the production of self-replicating entities.

    Well, I don’t think either of them are “theories” tbh. But I think they are interesting speculations, which require a properly worked out theory to justify, followed by testable hypotheses.

    I agree, and let’s do so for further communication.

    Cool.

    I would like to pose this question to you: if it is possible to make a determination of best cause from ID based upon nothing other than an examination of the artifact; and if that artifact is not self-replicating (as in my ancient alien artifact scenario), is it it not true that this inference to best explanation necessarily requires intelligence, but doesn’t necessarily require such intelligence be self-replicating or be part of a self-replicating system?

    Hmm. I guess so. But in the absence of any evidence at all that non-self-replicators can exhibit intelligence (in the sense of being able to plan ahead, and select actions most likely to achieve planned goals), unless, possibly, designed by a self-replicator (giving myself wiggle room for AI here), I’d want pretty a pretty good testable hypothesis before looking for a non-self-replicating intelligence as the Designer.

    IOW, logically, we might have never seen anything other than a white swan, but if we find swan prints, a necessary aspect of our “best explanation” for the prints is that a swan made them, not that a white swan made them. “White” is an unnecessary aspect of the “best explanation”.

    I don’t think that comparison is legit. The colour of the swan is certainly irrelevant to its ability to leave footprints. Whereas all we know about the mechanisms by which intelligent beings like ourselves design and fabricate things indicates that we do it using cognitive and physical capacities that we understand moderately well in terms of physical processes, and which we at least partly inherit, genetically (there is also cultural inheritance, but leaving that aside).

    While it may be true that all swans are white, and it may be true that all intelligences are self-replicators, “white” and “self-replicator” are unnecessary for the inference to best explanation.Indeed, insisting on the qualifying term “white” or “self-replicating” is just an attempt, IMO, to subtly (and perhaps unconsciously) insert an ideological commitment (that all swans are necessarily white, or that all intelligences are necessarily self-replicating).

    No, it isn’t (well I can’t speak for my unconscious, by definition, but I’m certainly not aware of that motivation!). In fact, though I have issues with this notion of “inference to the best explanation”, I could use it to make my case: in the absence of any evidence that intelligence is a property of non-self-replicators, and in the presence of copious evidence that self-replicators can exhibit remarkable intelligence, having found a non-self-replicator with CSI, it seems to me to be an “inference to the best explanation” that it was designed and made by a intelligence, and that that intelligence was self-replicator.

    Perhaps we can discuss “abduction” in another thread, though. It seems to be a kind of non-rigorous version of Bayesian inference, and I’d rather go with Bayes.

    The necessary part of the ancient alien artifact challenge is that the cause is considered intelligent, not that it is considered self-replicating. That is an ideological commitment that is unnecessary for the inference.

    No, I don’t think it’s “ideological”. Well, maybe. Maybe there is a sense in which, when it comes to the “intelligent” part, we have an ideological difference about what “intelligence” consists of even in the self-replicators (e.g. you and me) we know to be “intelligent”. However, when it comes to the fabrication part (a part I think ID proponents often ignore) – never mind the self-replicator, by what physical means was this artefact supposed to be constructed? And if physical, then it itself must either be an artefact, with a maker as well as a designer, no, or a self-repliator, no? And if not physical – well, what? What’s a non-physical force?

    Which all reminds me: we need a Mind/Body problem thread 🙂

    Will try to write one next weekend if no-one else gets there first.

    cheers

    Lizzie

  18. In any event, we agree that at least some artifacts of supposedly non-human intelligence could be recognized as such. Trying to get many anti-ID advocates to just admit that is like pulling molars.

    Whether or not such intelligences are necessarily the product of self-replicators (or the converse is true) is, as far as I’m concerned, a side issue, and whether or not FSCO/I is an valid metric is – again, as far as I’m concerned – another side issue.

    Perhaps SETI should change it’s name to SETSR? And perhaps the next time I want to insult someone, I’ll just question their capacity for self-replication with modification and they won’t even realize I just called them stupid! 🙂

  19. William J Murray:
    In any event, we agree that at least some artifacts of supposedly non-human intelligence could be recognized as such. Trying to get many anti-ID advocates to just admit that is like pulling molars.

    Yep 🙂

    That’s why I’m partly sympathetic to some aspects of ID thinking – I do think there is a “signature” to living things that is shared with human artefacts, I just don’t think it’s the signature of “intelligent design”! I think it’s the signature of iterative processes with feedback loops 🙂 Whether those are found in brains or in habitats.

    So I’d like to see a better founding for “CSI”. I think there’s a potentially interesting metric there. But not in any current formulations that I’ve seen 🙂

    Whether or not such intelligences are necessarily the product of self-replicators (or the converse is true) is, as far as I’m concerned, a side issue, and whether or not FSCO/I is an valid metric is – again, as far as I’m concerned – another side issue.

    OK. Well, we seem to have reached some useful common ground, anyway, thanks!

    Perhaps SETI should change it’s name to SETSR?And perhaps the next time I want to insult someone, I’ll just question their capacity for self-replication with modification and they won’t even realize I just called them stupid!:)

    heh 🙂

  20. The Discovery Institute article cited by WJM says:

    Are attacks on materialism from scientific quarters having any effect? They are having enough of one that the National Association of Biology Teachers last month voted to drop the terms “unsupervised” and “impersonal” from its standard description of the evolutionary process. These are words, of course, that effectively would deny the possibility that life came from a creator.

    Alternatively, those words could indicate that the Creator was able to design a universe that works — i.e. a universe with the built-in capability to bring forth intelligent life (and whatever else the Creator wished it to bring forth) through natural (impersonal, unsupervised) processes. As opposed to a lesser universe in which occasional meddling was required in order to achieve those ends.

    It astonishes me that creationists prefer the hypothesis of a less competent creator.

  21. Brother Daniel: It astonishes me that creationists prefer the hypothesis of a less competent creator.

    Me too. In all my years as a theist, I at least was devout enough to credit God with making the world competently.

  22. Elizabeth: Me too.In all my years as a theist, I at least was devout enough to credit God with making the world competently.

    Also, there seems to me to be something fundamentally heretical about a God whose hand can be detected because His influence is variably present.

  23. It astonishes me that creationists prefer the hypothesis of a less competent creator.

    What is even more astonishing is your presumption that you know what ultimate purpose any such creator might have had in creating the universe that it did, and find yourself not only in possession of such cosmological, existential knowledge, but also fully capable of judging whether or not this is the best universe for fulfilling that purpose.

  24. Me too. In all my years as a theist, I at least was devout enough to credit God with making the world competently.

    Wouldn’t any assessment of whether or not the world was made “competently” require a knowledge of the parameters involved, and the purpose?

    Without such knowledge, how would one assess whether or not the world was made “competently”?

  25. William J Murray: What is even more astonishing is your presumption that you know what ultimate purpose any such creator might have had in creating the universe that it did, and find yourself not only in possession of such cosmological, existential knowledge, but also fully capable of judging whether or not this is the best universe for fulfilling that purpose.

    I don’t think he’s presuming anything, William. He’s evaluating an idea, and finding the idea that God has to tinker with his/her creation to make it work properly wanting.

    That idea seems far more presumptuous to me! In my theist days (not so long ago) I would have quoted Aquinas and said: we cannot know what god IS only what he is NOT.

    And “tinkerer” seems self-evidently what an omnipotent, omniscient Prime Mover is not.

    Well, to me, anyway.

  26. William J Murray: Wouldn’t any assessment of whether or not the world was made “competently” require a knowledge of the parameters involved, and the purpose?

    Without such knowledge, how would one assess whether or not the world was made “competently”?

    Well, assuming that humans formed some aspect of the purpose, why should the idea that organic chemistry and evolutionary processes were the means of carrying it out be any kind of problem for theism?

  27. I don’t think he’s presuming anything, William. He’s evaluating an idea, and finding the idea that God has to tinker with his/her creation to make it work properly wanting.

    Of course he’s presuming something; he’s presuming to know what the parameters (of that which is doing the creating, and that which is being created, the possible and impossible, and what all the chain-reaction effects would be multiplied over billions of years) are, and what the purpose is. Without that knowledge, one has no rational capacity to assess the competency of the design of the universe.

    It’s easy to just say something like “why don’t car designers just design a car that requires no further maintenance” and judge the competency of the presumed designer against one’s completely ungrounded, uninformed ideal that doesn’t take into account any of the pertinent and necessary parameters – or even the purpose of the design.

  28. What is even more astonishing is your presumption that you know what ultimate purpose any such creator might have had in creating the universe that it did,

    I’m simply assuming, for the sake of argument, that this universe is adequate to fulfill the creator’s purpose, whatever that purpose may happen to be. I made no presumption about knowing what that purpose is. (Yes, I made some reference to our existence, as if that were part of the purpose, but that could be deleted without affecting my point.)

    and find yourself not only in possession of such cosmological, existential knowledge, but also fully capable of judging whether or not this is the best universe for fulfilling that purpose.

    No, nothing of the sort. I don’t know where you got that idea.

    Of course he’s presuming something; he’s presuming to know what the parameters (of that which is doing the creating, and that which is being created, the possible and impossible, and what all the chain-reaction effects would be multiplied over billions of years) are, and what the purpose is. Without that knowledge, one has no rational capacity to assess the competency of the design of the universe.

    I wasn’t assessing the competency of the design of this universe. Indeed I couldn’t have been doing so, because the underlying dispute is all about which universe we’re in. I was comparing two hypothetical universes, without saying anything about which of the two I think we’re in (since that’s the main point of dispute), and assuming that both of them fulfill the creator’s ultimate goals (whatever those may be) adequately well. It seems to me that fulfilling those goals through an act of creation alone is rather more impressive than fulfilling those goals through an act of creation followed by several further acts of tinkering.

    I suppose you can speculate that the former is *impossible* (even for God), but that won’t endear you to a typical theist.

    Or you can suggest that maybe God likes tinkering, I suppose. And on that note, would you happen to have seen The Onion’s classic piece on Intelligent Falling?

  29. In any case, all this stuff about “competency” is a distraction (yes, I know it’s my own fault) from my original point, which was that the use of the words “impersonal” and “unsupervised” do not deny the possibility that life came from a creator, regardless of the Discovery Institute’s attempt to spin them that way.

  30. It seems to me that fulfilling those goals through an act of creation alone is rather more impressive than fulfilling those goals through an act of creation followed by several further acts of tinkering.

    I guess if god’s goal was to be “impressive” by whatever standards “seem” to you to be binding, then you’d have an argument here.

    I suppose you can speculate that the former is *impossible* (even for God), but that won’t endear you to a typical theist

    In my experience, the typical theist is no more capable of sound rational thought or meaningful theistic philosophy than the typical atheist. The criticism I present to you and Elizabeth isn’t to provide a rational justification for your commentary that would “endear you to a typical theist”, but which is logically sound. However, I think that even the “typical theist” would assume that god has created the best possible universe that can (1) rationally and functionally exist, (2) serve the purpose for which it is intended, and (3) house intelligent agents with free will.

    There are a couple of problems with your hypothetical universe comparison. First, there is no way for you to assess whether or not the purpose can be served by frontloading perfect information at the creation point. It may well be that to allow free will, there must be a basic ambiguity about cause and effect relationships in the material world to allow humans the freedom to choose and affect the world around them.

    Obviously, such built-in ambiguity would require later ongoing adjustments to keep it on track towards fulfilling the goal. Also, how would god insert souls into humans once they come onto the scene without tinkering? If it is god’s plan to directly reveal itself to humans, how can that be done – again – without tinkering?

    Second, let’s look at this from another perspective; we think in terms of linear cause-and-effect, but what if god is not limited to such a perspective? If god exists in all potential timeframes, then the idea that “creation” is a singular event in history is only a false conceptual artifact. “Creation” could be an ongoing event in all time frames; in fact, many theistic philosophers since Aristotle have made this very point that without a divine sufficient cause, there is no reason for anything to occur. IOW, god is ultimately the empowering, necessary cause of all ongoing phenomena.

    If god is, as many theistic philosophers believe, the very grounding of existence, then whether or not it appears to humans that god is “tinkering” with events, god is always acting in our world and the ultimate source of everything that occurs in an ongoing manner. In other words, what appears to be “tinkering” is really only where you notice god acting, while the rest of god’s ubiquitous, ongoing, sufficient cause is not even noticed.

    So, the claim that god is lame for creating a universe that it has to tinker with is really nothing more than rhetoric based on a very superficial and cartoonish concept of theistic philosophy. That argument might get an emotional reaction from “a typical theist”, but it has no sound basis in a rational argument about the nature of god and the universe.

  31. William J Murray: it has no sound basis in a rational argument about the nature of god and the universe.

    What is the nature of your god, William? And how did you establish it?

  32. The nature of my god is: (1) source of existence, (2) source of logic (and mathematics), (3) source of good (necessary, universal purpose), (4) source of libertarian free will. I rationally discerned (from necessary assumptions, leading to necessary inferences) that god must exist and have those characteristics in order to provide the necessary foundation for a rationally coherent, consistent, and justifiable worldview.

  33. I rationally discerned (from necessary assumptions, leading to necessary inferences) that god must exist and have those characteristics in order to provide the necessary foundation for a rationally coherent, consistent, and justifiable worldview.

    Well, if you leave out “rationally” and “rationally coherent,consistent and justifiable” then I agree! Well, maybe leave out “necessary” too! 🙂

  34. I see your comment on Uncommon Descent

    I’ve been involved (for a couple of months now I think) in a debate at Dr. Liddle’s website over morality and how one rationally justifies calling what anyone else does “immoral” or “wrong” without a theistic premise. So far, only one person there has honestly responded that, under moral relativism, gassing Jews is as intrinsically moral an act as hiding them in your attic to save them.

    I confess to not following too closely these days. Is someone here advocating mass extermination is moral – even subjectively? Who might that be?

  35. Nobody has been advocating such a thing. Rather, WJM has been making noise about you subjective-moralists refuse to recognize that under subjective morality, gassing the Jews is just as moral as saving them. That is, he’s tryna shove a vile and unsupportable argument in the mouths of his opponents, in hopes of making said opponents defend the indefensible.

  36. Robin (who can correct me if I’m misrepresenting) didn’t advocate anything, but (if my memory serves) agreed that under moral subjectivism, given any individual’s view/belief that an act is moral, then it is moral by definition, regardless of what the act is – including genocide, because it requires no justification/validation other than the subjective belief by that individual that it is a moral act.

  37. William J Murray:
    Robin (who can correct me if I’m misrepresenting) didn’t advocate anything, but (if my memory serves) agreed that under moral subjectivism, given any individual’s view/belief that an act is moral, then it is moral by definition, regardless of what the act is – including genocide, because it requires no justification/validation other than the subjective belief by that individual that it is a moral act.

    Moral subjectivism posits that there is no objective moral standard. Therefore, there simply exists no independent yardstick to compare various invididual subjective concepts of moralities against. If objective morality does not exist, it makes zero sense to claim that ‘an act is moral by definition’ as if there exist a definition of morality outside, over and above all the individual subjective moralities held by individuals.

    Whenever a moral subjectivist condems an act as immoral, it means it is immoral in their particular subjective moral system. Don’t try to introduce an independent yardstick to evaluate these systems against (‘moral by definition’). Don’t try to evaluate subjective moral systems against each other from any other viewpoint than someone’s subjective morality, because, and this is crucial: the absence of such an independent yardstick is the very definition of subjective morality.

    Until you understand this, you will continue to evaluate moral subjectivity as if there exists objective morality. Obviously, it will fail in such a context. What you are trying to do is incoherent.

    fG

  38. Don’t try to introduce an independent yardstick to evaluate these systems against (‘moral by definition’).

    I didn’t introduce it; they did. The yardstick is their own premise – that morality is entirely subjective, which means that what anyone defines as moral is moral by definition. The definition is writ by each individual.

    Until you understand this, you will continue to evaluate moral subjectivity as if there exists objective morality. Obviously, it will fail in such a context. What you are trying to do is incoherent.

    Except that’s not what I’m doing. I’m pointing out that when something (anything, not just morality) is considered entirely subjective, then whatever the individual decides is moral (or tastes good, or is beautiful, or the best band ever) is by definition (the premise that the commodity is entirely subjective) moral – for that person.

    So, if a person decides that it is moral to commit genocide for laughs, it is moral by definition (the definition that morality is entirely subjective) moral for that person to commit genocide for laughs.

  39. Alan Fox:
    I see your comment on Uncommon Descent

    I confess to not following too closely these days. Is someone here advocating mass extermination is moral – even subjectively? Who might that be?

    None that I have seen.

    And under moral relativism committing genocide is neither “intrinsically” moral nor immoral. It is just an act. The judgment about the morality of such an act is made by each individual observer. Even if the judgment were made by some being regarded as a deity, in what way would it be any less subjective?

  40. William J Murray: I didn’t introduce it; they did. The yardstick is their own premise – that morality is entirely subjective, which means that what anyone defines as moral is moral by definition. The definition is writ by each individual.

    Except that’s not what I’m doing. I’m pointing out that when something (anything, not just morality) is considered entirely subjective, then whatever the individual decides is moral (or tastes good, or is beautiful, or the best band ever) is by definition (the premise that the commodity is entirely subjective) moral – for that person.

    The same applies, therefore, to any judgment about what is immoral. It is an individual opinion, It would also be the case for any individual extraterrestrial intelligence or individual deity.

    So, if a person decides that it is moral to commit genocide for laughs, it is moral by definition (the definition that morality is entirely subjective) moral for that person to commit genocide for laughs.

    It would also, presumably, be considered immoral by the entire population that this person proposed to exterminate. What is your point?

  41. William J Murray: “So, if a person decides that it is moral to commit genocide for laughs, it is moral by definition (the definition that morality is entirely subjective) moral for that person to commit genocide for laughs.”

    So if it is accepted that an “objective moral code” exists, which says it is moral to “commit genocide for laughs”, is genocide now moral?

    What about the people who disagree with this “absolute” moral code?

    Are they immoral for refusing to accept the validity of that “absolute moral code” and the resulting genocide?

    How does an “absolute moral code” get you off the hook for doing something you consider immoral?

  42. Right, it seems as if you do get the point after all. If morality is subjective, it is perfectly fine for an observer to claim that another persons acts are immoral, when those acts are immoral in the observer’s moral system. There is no contradiction, no incoherency.

    Just like it is perfectly fine for an observer to state that an object is ugly, even if another person proclaims the object to be beautiful. Agreed?

    So how does that square with all the hoolah about people such as Dawkins being called ‘hypocritical’ when they criticise someone who suggest that biblical genocide is ok if God commands it? Clearly in Dawkins’ moral system such genocide is immoral and he speaks out against it. What is wrong with that? Why the accusation of hypocrisy?

    fG

  43. I’m not sure what your question is. We agree. There’s nothing further to debate between us. The debate is currently between Elizabeth and I about how a self-evidently, universally true moral statements can exist from an atheistic perspective. My argument is that they cannot – that a theistic perspective is necessary for such a proposition.

    None of you are arguing that self-evidently true, universal moral statements exist that I can see, and it appears that Elizabeth has decided not to continue with this argument.

  44. …self-evidently, universally true moral statements can exist from an atheistic perspective. My argument is that they cannot – that a theistic perspective is necessary for such a proposition.

    But the whole point is that a theistic perspective is just as subjective as an atheistic view. You have nothing to show us. You may believe you do but that is all it is. It is no different from making stuff up, so far as I can see!

  45. William J Murray:”None of you are arguing that self-evidently true, universal moral statements exist that I can see, ….”

    If “universal moral statements” exist, we could never see them, since we are each of us, stuck behind a “firewall” of our own making.

    No one can peek around their own firewall which we can label, “subjectivity”.

    You, William Lane Craig and StephenB cannot step outside yourselves to escape your subjectivity.

    That would be a necessary first step for you to attempt.

    Show me the logic and premises that would allow your thoughts to be interpreted by you, without your own subjectivity being involved in the process.

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