This theme has been on my mind for a long time and although I was going to do an OP on the enzyme disillusion (some experts here think they know all there is to know about how enzymes work) I thought this OP could possibly get more people involved in the discussion…
Is Evolution vs ID the debate or a clash between 2 ideologies?
Both sides could disagree and say that it could be the clash of 2 sciences, or at least, the clash of science vs pseudo science…But which one is which?
I have realized a long time ago that both Evolution and ID would have to be ideologies driven by different, or opposing, world views…
Why?
Simply stated: None of the sides can provide empirical, irrefutable evidence for their claims that would sway at least the great majority of people to believe it… I actually believe this is an ingenious way of helping people express their freedom of choice, which to me adds another layer of evidence for existence of a Subprime Intelligence…
Evolutionists can’t replicate any of the main steps of evolution, starting with the origins of life.. They can’t even make the prokaryotic cell to evolve one step toward the eukaryotic one… Whoever does it, will receive a Noble Prize but those who realize the magnitude of this problem for science to overcome know that it would have to involve cheating…
ID is no different… Nobody has seen any life forms being created, so the best ammunition they have is to shoot with at Evolutionary Theory is: Irreducible Complexity, the interdependence of the living cell components that need to be present at the same time or the simplest of cells dies… Their inference for Supreme Intelligence behind the observable universe and life seem irrefutable and yet the society we live in today doesn’t seem to buy it…Quite with opposite… I have recently come across and experience of a young, bright university student who was appalled how quickly and without giving it a second thought, young university students dismiss the idea of a creator or ID…
Both sides, Evolutionary theory and ID, rely on some kind of inference they call scientific and it is up to an individual to get educated and decide which one is more plausible..
Which brings me to the main point of this OP:
Mike Behe once said: “…You can’t convince some of something if he doesn’t want to be convinced…”
I hope both sides of the issue will realize this statement to be true and act accordingly…Does it mean that ID should throw in the towel and move on to something else, like promoting The God of All Sciences… something like that?
I don’t think so but on my part I have realized that the best OPs could be those who appeal to people who hardly or never comment at TSZ…That’s why DI is needed, so that people know and understand that just because evolutionary theory is taught at schools and Universities, it doesn’t mean there is evidence for it…
Evolutionary theory is not even a scientific theory, or scientific hypothesis, though evolutionists claim that it can be verified by the scientific method… Over the last few months I have been challenging many at TSZ to propose at least one experiments to verify some of the evolutionary claims but nobody even bothered to do that…
This challenge presents a perfect opportunity for those who believe that evolutionary theory can be falsified by experiments so that their assumptions about evolution being a scientific theory or hypothesis doesn’t remain as an illusion only…
It should be evolutionism vs IDism.
Yes, if the aim of the comparison is seeking accuracy. However, there are people who do not wish for accuracy & and who cannot share any with others.
THE debate? I don’t plan to comment on this thread by a Catholic apostate who gets basic terms wrong. If the person showed willingness to learn & improve, then perhaps.
Subprime intelligence?
It must have evolved from Supreme… Who would have known that blind dumb luck can cause directed mutation that quickly?!
I agree… You are one of those people..if I could say it in my own words…
I’m not really interested in those people as I am interested in as to why they wish for accuracy not to be shared… Can you provide your personal take in your own words?
Would the title change the animosity?
Using more accurate terms may improve the coherency & fairness of your argumentation.
J-Mac’s complaint is that evolutionary theory itself is “ideological”; he is not concerned (as you are) with illegitimate extensions of evolutionary thinking into non-biological domains (e.g. evolutionary psychology, cultural evolution) but with the very idea of evolutionary theory itself even with regard to biology.
Hence he is not concerned (as you are) with “evolutionism” as an ideology, while content to accept evolutionary theory with regard to biology specifically. If he were to adopt your language, it would obscure a crucial difference between his views and yours.
He confuses theory with ideology or is simply conflating them in that single term: ‘evolution’? One can make a critique of a theory properly, without calling a theory an ideology merely because you disagree with it’s conclusions at one, many or all levels. It’s admittedly difficult to understand the extremes that some USAmericans go to because this topic has deeply affected not a small number of homes & communities in their country.
If he were to adopt my language he would be able to distinguish properly (or at least better than he does now) ideology from theory. Instead of ‘obscuring a crucial difference’, the adjustment on his behalf would rather throw light on it.
I am not a quasi-atheist naturalist as you are KN, so ‘good light is preferred to the obscurantism that may be behind your explanation of J-Mac’s blind spot.
Gregory,
Sorry Greg. Trying to get J-Mac to understand and then adopt your terminology will not work, and will not clarify anything. J-Mac, like other creationists, will conflate and blur things as much as possible if that helps them call evolutionary theory, along with everything else in science that they dislike, an “ideology,” or any other word that would make it appear to be something other than science.
ETA: Leaving aside that you’re not prone to making such a clear distinction yourself in your comments.
If evolutionary theory is ideology what ideology is it? Is it its [or is it it’s?] own ideology? Evolutionary Theoryism?
Is there any question at all over whether ideology drove Darwin’s thinking when he was developing his theory?
No. The Descent of Man, his notebooks & Autobiography take care of that.
Nevertheless, the ‘if/whether’ question is much less interesting than the ‘how’ question. It is similar, notice Mung, to what the DI does in placing its focus on something being/having been ‘designed’, rather than in the ‘designing’ process itself, in which they are almost totally uninterested to treat seriously outside of biology fighting ‘Darwinism’ & ‘evolutionary theory’.
Entropy,
I’ve been making a clear distinction, or at least a strong effort to identify a necessary distinction between ‘evolutionary theory’ & ‘evolutionism’ for at least 15 years & have published considerably on the topic. Suggesting that I am “not prone to making such a clear distinction” is unsustainable given the evidence. This is a blog, after all, what more do you expect? Go do some research & come back with an update that clarifies between ‘evolutionary theory’ (other names: ‘evolutionary studies’ & ‘evolutionary sciences’) and ‘evolutionism,’ the latter which I define clearly, simply & unambiguously as an ideology. Do you consider evolutionism both a ‘thing’ & an ‘ideology’?
When you come around to accept that evolutionism is a ‘thing’ & that it is an ideology, indeed, please do let TSZ know about it. Otherwise, back to the fog of skeptical anti-theism for you.
Evolutionism is a untested hypothesis. Its not a scientific theory.
All claimed evidences are after the fact evidences. It has no biological evidence but is all comparative anatomy and comparative genetics, geology, etc and classification systems. Lines of reasoning.
Even if true it would be hard pressed to prove even a bit of its fantastic claims.
ID/YEC starts from the loud evidence of complexity and diversity before our eyes and our eyes. It shouts smartness. So one should conclude a thinking being created it like ourselves who creart things while nature does not. Thinking beings.
Well what other evidence for this creator in nature. It could only be that the complexity has no other answer. NO MATTER how much you fifgure out how nature works it still wouldn’t show any more complexity that what we already see.
so ID/YEC only are required to knock down claims of complexity and diversity from chance events. We don’t need to prove our conclusion as its assertion is the proof in this case. There it is and too smart for chance plus time.
In the incpompetence of mankind they switched it around.
They don’t prove the chance hypothesis and demand proof for the creator hypothesis.
people show they are dumber on a curve with us creationists only at the better part of the curve on this issue.(though likely its most issues also a curve)
Robert, I rarely respond to you because I find you largely incoherent & at the same time stubbornly & proudly an ideological creationist. Yes, evolutionism is not a scientific theory. That’s fine. Could you please state clearly why you won’t consider ‘evolutionism’ as an ideology?
Well, Robert, creationists have demonstrated repeatedly that they have a distorted understanding of natural science as well as scriptural exegesis. This is revealed by the statistical data that tells they are usually non-mainstream evangelical protestants. Does that perhaps fit your profile?
Creationism is unnecessary for Christians & ditching it doesn’t equate with rejecting Christianity. Please realise that you are simply wrong with your belief that “all Christians accept creationism.” That ideology is a scar of dogmatic divisiveness among evangelicals that has negatively impacted society.
Is that what you said to JS that got you banned from PS, lol?
Officially, it was “abuse of anonymity.” I was saying things that were difficult, if not impossible for S. Joshua Swamidass to be able to answer respectfully & honourably to because it would require him to think more carefully & perhaps admit that he doesn’t have the story quite right yet. Joshua’s family is almost entirely YECists, as he’s said in his talks. It’s obvious he’s doing this for his family & for his LCMS church more than anything else, certainly more than any ‘scientific’ contribution.
The person who discovered that Venema was wrong was not Swamidass, it was Richard Buggs. Swamidass is standing on the coat-tails of someone else & then added the obvious YECist name ‘genealogical Adam’ (usually without Eve), as his own ‘brilliant scientific finding’ to the already existing conversation that he seems to want to become famous in as a ‘Fifth Voice’ to the already existing RTB, AiG, DI & BioLogos, the latter which he somewhat disgracefully got himself removed from by accusing people of being ‘racist.’ He started the ‘racism’ talk, not Venema, who if you know the story, I have every reason to not defend. & then there’s Swamidass parading his ‘genealogical Adam’ as a great solution, much like Dembski crowed about the Battle of Waterloo; Swamidass thinks he’s building “THE Bridge between science & YECist theology.”
Yet the vast majority of Christians around the world aren’t YECists, like his non-mainstream evangelical protestant brothers & sisters, respectfully. So he’s fighting a rather strange personal, quasi-scientific ‘creation war’ (as he refers to it), that at the end of the day is meant for LCMS & YECists. This is why he doesn’t aim to present ‘genealogical Adam’ at science conferences, but rather at evangelical churches, like his upcoming discussion with Ann Gauger, with a highly partisan audience that he can speak ‘evangelicalistically’ to as much as he wants.
I imagine Joshua is still too scared to propose or present ‘genealogical Adam’ to a ‘strictly scientific’ audience or to attempt publication outside of his safe evangelical circles. He likely knows that’s when his romance period with his new term borrowed from the results of someone else’s research, will be exposed for what it is: not innovative, not helpful & indeed, quite dangerous & potentially negative for Abrahamic monotheists if he keeps pushing it (which no doubt he will). I find the hubris especially off-putting in this computational biologist, as if he cannot ‘lower’ himself to have an actual conversation about the ideologies that are clearly & predominately driving his efforts.
Yes, this is true.
He would be laughed at, if he tried that. And he probably knows that.
Yes, his “genealogical Adam” is a religious program, not a scientific one. But I guess that’s what’s important to him.
I have no reason to doubt that’s so. However, you don’t make that distinction clear when you have commented in response to things I write to try and help creationists understand the huge difference between ID and the science of evolution. You mistake the evolution I’m talking about for “evolutionism,” and leave creationists thinking that the science I’m talking about is the very same as the “evolutionism” you’re talking about. I end up being the one trying to make things clear, hoping to rescue the topic, with little to no success.
So, sorry, but the distinction might be very clear in your mind, but it doesn’t carry on in your writings. More importantly because you bring up “evolutionism” to the table in discussions about evolutionary theory vs ID/creationism. That’s not helpful. It makes creationists think that they’re right about evolution not being science, and invites confusion.
How could evolutionary theory be a hypothesis if it is NOT testable, Bob?
Evolutionists pretend that the scientific method does apply to evolution…🤔
I guess there is a difference between a theory: i.e. evolutionary theory and a scientific theory or a scientific hypothesis?
Otherwise we would have testable ideas…rather than faith…which is exactly what Venter has been saying and trying to do but mainly failed at the molecular and cellular level…
Why can’t there be irrefutable evidence of ID? Whether people allow themselves to be persuaded is a separate topic entirely. People in general have a hard time accepting uncomfortable truth, but that doesn’t make the truth false. As the saying goes, truth is not a popularity contest.
Now you get my point?!
If ID/God came and created life in front of all the commentators of TSZ, how many do you think would find this evidence irrefutable?
1. All
2. Most
3. Few
Take your pick…
There’s a tiny philosophical problem that makes the expectation that ID is true absurd. Cdesign proponentsists are supposedly trying to explain life forms as being designed by some Intelligent Being (to make the hypocrisy less conspicuous, it should be “intelligent beings,” but they can’t help the singular and the capitals). They miss a few tiny details:
1. Humans beings, the intelligences whose working we know about are part of what they’re trying to explain.
2. If we took the idea seriously, we’d have to examine what intelligence is, what it needs, etc, before even proposing it to be a foundation for any “theories.”
3. Examination of both of the above would lead to the conclusion that the ID community is using circular logic of the kind they’d refuse to allow for explanations other than ID.
4. Examination of those requirements forces the conclusion that some kind of nature capable of producing life by itself, is necessary before intelligence could even exist, and before such intelligence could even contemplate the idea of taking advantage of the way nature works to produce designs.
5. Given that, if we were products of intelligent beings, those beings would still be dependent on a nature capable of producing them, and thus ID would have answered nothing. It would have pushed the question one step farther. Life thus would remain unexplained.
6. Since there’s no evidence of other intelligent forms, let alone one with technologies to produce life as we know it, and since ID wouldn’t actually answer the questions of life, the proper course of action. the proper starting point, should be how nature-other-than-the-intelligence-that-depends-on-it has produced life and its diversity.
Agreed. Which is why it’s not a matter of allowing ourselves to be persuaded, but about examining the claims as they are, the evidence as limited or as powerful as it might be, the philosophical and scientific foundations as flawed or as strong as they might be.
Agreed! The question is now, will you start by reminding yourself of your own biases, your own preferences, your own defective thinking, before trying to convince others that however uncomfortable, your wishes cannot change reality? That however uncomfortable it might be, you can consider those damning points against ID-creationism fairly?
I think you’ll go for the usual excuses of the ID community. That you’ll blame our horrible “materialism” or “metaphysics” for rejecting ID, thus confirming that this is not about truth however uncomfortable, but about religious beliefs.
Feel free to prove me wrong.
Some kind of nature..any kind of nature… but one…
How do you like that, Eric?
You should probably ask him what he means by nature? Is nature sheer, dumb luck? How was nature able to achieved the creative powers to design life that intelligence, who is intelligent enough to distinguish it from non-life, can’t replicate?🤔
J-Mac,
Whether this reaches you or not doesn’t matter. Your “questions” still illustrate the basic philosophical problems of ID very well. So, thanks.
Nice to see you pay some attention. Unfortunately not enough to understand the whole point.
How could it be sheer dumb luck J-Mac? If nature was sheer dumb luck, then we would not be able to make designs ourselves. You do understand that any design we produce depends on nature having at least some predictability, don’t you? Given that, talking about it as being “sheer-dumb-luck,” would be dumb, but now that you understands it you’ll stop, right? After all, you have enough self-respect to accept when you’ve been shown wrong, right?
By having the necessary characteristics that we use in order to produce designs ourselves, that’s how.
If nature couldn’t produce what you attribute to “Intelligent Design,” then we’d be unable to produce designs ourselves. There’s two main reasons why the examination of life forms reminds us of our own designs: anthropomorphism, and the fact that our very designs depend on the way nature works. It’s to be expected that our designs would have characteristics we’d find in the rest of nature, since our designs put natural items together anyway. Mistaking natural products for human-like-design is, yet again, putting the cart before the horse, and excessive arrogance.
Entropy,
Not helpful to your agenda? That’s because you are not ‘in charge’ of the limits & rules of the discussions & your worldview approach to the topic also has an impact. I do not consider this as simply a discussion about ‘strictly science.’ Perhaps you do, which is a rather narrow view.
Besides, the proper comparison is either ‘evolution’ vs. ‘creation’ or ‘evolutionism’ vs. ‘creationism.’ The comparison of ‘evolution’ with ‘creationism’ makes little sense. That is, unless all you are doing is evaluating everything based on how ‘strictly scientific’ it is & as if ideology has no impact on this discussion when it clearly does.
That you refuse to ‘get’ this is not helpful. That you hide your ideology as if it is ‘merely scientific’ reveals a significant flaw.
4.Wonder how that He did that.
5. Wonder why J-Mac always spins hypotheticals in his defence of religious belief, but never advances any evidence to support the contention. Which leads us to . . .
6. The whole rigmarole is a presupposition wrapped in a fantasy and hidden inside circular logic
7. If we are to waste our time on wotifgodditit hypotheticals, can’t we at least consider something entertaining? How about the Flying Monk?
“Irrefutable” is a word I associate with math and with religion (for different reasons). Not with science.
Science is the only reliable process we have to understand and explain our shared world.
Because “ID” has no testable hypothesis that makes testable predictions. It is unfalsifiable until someone can say “ID predicts X happens” where X is some observable phenomenon.
You assume ID is trying to do science as we understand it: namely, as the self-regulating, self-delimiting process which is the only successful way we know to explain, predict, control our shared world.
ID instead is doing mathematics first. The ID worldview says a priori, mathematical reasoning can constrain science. It believes terms like “information” can be defined and applied to scientific models based on their mathematical definitions and theories only only, without regard to the scientific process used to assess the usefulness of mathematical models.
You can see a similar effort in another thread with regard to the concept of “common descent”.
I don’t think I grant the ID movement that much leeway. I agree with the rest of your comment.
If it’s not sheer dumb luck, what is it, since in your own words, sheer dumb luck is unpredictable?
I have a feeling you have provided your own rope, if I could say it in my own words…😉
Sheer dumb luck did it, if I could say it in my own words…
I wonder how the worshippers of sheer dumb luck know how she did it…There is gotta be at least one piece of the evidence…They wouldn’t be blindly assuming that she did it, would they?
There is a book waiting to be written: Sheer Dumb Luck For Dummies…
and a Nobel Prize for the one who can replicate sheer dumb luck’s amazingly creative abilities…🤣
Hum. And what’s that agenda supposed to be Greg?
It’s not about being in charge Greg. I’m telling you that if I’m explaining a difference between evolutionary theory and ID-creationism it doesn’t help if you mistake evolutionary theory with “evolutionism,” a mistake that you make by not clarifying that you’re introducing “evolutionism” into the conversation.
No it isn’t. “creation” stands for “everything that exists” in a creationist’s mind. “Evolution” stands for but one of many concepts describing natural phenomena.
I know. Evolution is a scientific theory, while creationism is a religious belief system.
Since you haven’t noticed, let me tell you that the discussions here is about J-Mac equating evolutionary theory and ID-creationism as both being “ideological.” So, of course ideology has an impact in this discussion, since, due to their ideologies, creationists refuse to understand the difference between a scientific body of knowledge, hypotheses, facts, explanations, etc, and the religious inclinations that act as foundations of the ID-creationist movement.
You have to do much better than that Greg. What ideology are you talking about? Are you saying that I take evolution, exaggerate its usefulness, and then misapply it to promote eugenics? Is that what you’re saying?
There can be, there just isn’t any positive evidence for the intelligent design of biological life now. The God of the Gaps arguments the IDiots offer were rejected by science as invalid 300 years ago.
Preaching your scientifically unsupported religious beliefs doesn’t make the false be true either.
I only meant that in the sense that I took you to ask them to make falsifiable predictions, but “irrefutable” is not falsifiable by definition.
I would think irrefutable evidence would not look like dumb blind luck, to anyone.
That is all well and good,why don’t you describe how does ID/ God do/did it so it is irrefutable or at least what would we observe to make it irrefutable? It is your thought experiment.
This seem confused if the the object is to determine how life actually came to be in its present form . What would be the irrefutable evidence ID/God was the actual cause? How did it happen?
Lacking any other actual explanation , natural causation seems the better explantion.
If the alternative is “For every unknown therefore God”, only one can be falsified.
Whats that? Be specific or don’t waste my time!
How could irrefutable evidence be made by you irrefutable? Is there another kind of irrefutable evidence?
As predicted, you missed the whole thing. However, you continue to illustrate creationist philosophical problems. Thus worth answering, if not for you, for others who might have a better grasp of that process called reading for comprehension.
I told you already, as far as human understanding goes, there’s both deterministic and random processes. After all, you should know about random quantum fluctuations, and about deterministic phenomena like gravitation. Come on J-Mac, what about some self-respect?
More like we’re about to discover that you haven’t understood that you hold a false dichotomy, despite we have explained it to you a thousand times. You seem to think that order can only come from an intelligence, but intelligence would not be able to even exist if there wasn’t any natural order to hold it together. Without any natural, ground, foundational, order, we’d be unable to produce designs. You’re, again, putting the cart before the horse. Imagining that what’s necessary before there can be any intelligence can only be produced by an intelligence.
You might enjoy the physicists discussing the question of whether quantum events are truly random, here:
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/210587/is-quantum-physics-truly-random-or-does-it-just-appear-that-way-because-of-heise
Answer 5 in that thread seems to be saying that a particular quantum phenomenon, if sampled a sufficient number of times, will show a Gaussian distribution if it is truly random. However, when quantum events are so sampled, they do not exhibit Gaussian distributions, provisionally indicating that there is, indeed, an underlying deterministic process at work.
Appealing to QM makes your case even worse…You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about…
Do your homework! Make up your mind what it is you want to believe other than you had already been predetermined to believe and then make your case…
False dichotomy? No offence Entropy… Read your own comment..
PS. Can you please tell me, in your own words, why you are so determined to dodge anything that could point to ID/God? I really would like to know…
The question there really was about whether God plays dice…
The outcome of rolling 1 die has 1 out of 6 probabilities… Random yet restricted…just like “random” mutations…
Does or could?
No one knows how many sides divine dice have.
Explain yours specific detail and I let you know the difference in specific detail.
? You asked how people would react to “ If ID/God came and created life in front of all the commentators of TSZ, how many do you think would find this evidence irrefutable?“
How does ID/ God create the life? The “how” is what would need to a be irrefutable. You are twisting yourself into knots avoiding the answer.
Some this is some kind of pretend evidence, not a specific one?
Before your assertion makes any sense, you have to make a case that your deity exists. A non-existent thing can not play dice (excepting those non-existent things that people conjure in their imaginations).
So, lay out your best evidence. Does it involve flying monks? 100% photosynthetic efficiency? Unspecified quantum woo? Virgin birth? A global flood? Or is it just endless whining about the shortcomings of actual scientific inquiry?
If i want advice about physics, I will consult a physicist. If I want advice about religion, I will ask an historian. If I want advice about statistics, I will consult a mathematician. If I want advice about a malfunction in my car, I will consult my local mechanic (brilliant woman). In no case would I consult someone whose only “qualification” is that they are a god-botherer.