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…
This is a really important point for people to focus on, and you are doing a really good job of explaining it.
When people put their knowledge of nature into a mathematical model Dembski says that they are smuggling information into the model, and Marks says that they are guiding the model.
It’s not that Dembski and Marks are arguing against a specific model; they are objecting to the very act of modeling. They have completed their argument once they’ve established that a model is the word of man.
I am not appealing to QM. I used quantum fluctuations as an example of a natural phenomenon that is at least thought to be random. You obviously missed the whole point.
I’ve done my homework, and that has shown me that this is not about what I want to believe, but about what the evidence, sometimes scarce, sometimes abundant, allow me to understand. I cannot choose what to believe at all. It’s about the evidence, and good philosophical foundations. Choosing is off the table for me.
No offence taken. I re-read my comment as you suggested and found no false dichotomy. So, why won’t you help me out and explain the false dichotomy I applied in my comment. Show the sentences and the false dichotomy that they display. Make it very clear please.
I’m not determined to dodge anything. I just haven’t seen anything that could point to “ID/God.”
timothya,
Umm, might want to try a theologian. The notion that ‘religion’ is ‘just an artefact of history’ is incorrect unsustainable.
First, please refer to my name as it is listed. I’m not chummy with you & consider you a rabid skeptic. Sorry, no ‘friendly’ nickname for you.
Second, you have yet to admit that ‘evolutionism’ is an ideology. I’ll wait for you to answer the question: Is evolutionism an ideology? Yes or No?
You keep speaking of ‘creationism’ as an ideology. I agree. However, you’ve yet to acknowledge the same re: ‘evolutionism.’ Until you do, there’s little reason to consider you even-handed, objective or comprehensive in your statements. It just seems you’re pushing your own atheist/agnostic (hard to keep track of ‘skeptics’ here) worldview as you embrace evolutionist ideology, in addition to evolutionary biological theories.
Let me clarify it again then, as I did in the first post in this thread, just as Mung did. Evolutionism, the ideology, belongs in this conversation. There, I introduced it & disallow ‘this’ to only be a conversation about ‘evolution vs. creationism’, which is wrong-headed & incomplete. I agree with you that the OP is also wrong-headed & incomplete.
Not really. Evolutionary biology is a scientific theory, agreed. However, evolutionary economics & politics (which you cannot deny exists, is a *thing*) is a dehumanising distortion of social sciences and humanities. It is a pseudo-scientific theory or simply an example of ideological evolutionism in action, e.g. in the works of D.S. Wilson & A. Mesoudi.
Creationism is an ideology, not a ‘religious belief system.’ The RBS is Christianity or Islam or less commonly, Judaism. Please get it straight.
Entropy,
I’m not interested in such a low, unproductive discussion as J-Mac has framed it. I made that clear at the start of the thread. Carry on then your irrelevant arguing with each other without me.
Evolutionism is the ideology, not ‘evolutionary theory.’ End of story. If you can’t get it right, then go to the library & learn.
Then you should not have interjected when I, or others, were discussing J-Mac’s misconceptions.
You seem to have problems with long-term memory. I told you I understood that distinction. The problem was your interjecting with “evolutionism”-related complains, without clarifying that you were not talking about evolutionary theory, thus derailing the conversation, and confusing the creationists who saw your comments as referring to evolutionary theory.
Just note how Bill Cole told you, twice, that you two agree in much more than he thought.
If I have to keep repeating my points, and you’ll keep forgetting what we already discussed, this won’t be very productive. So, I’m done.
Heh. If I want advice about special pleading, I will ask a theologian.
Entropy,
Be done, please. It’s obvious by now that you won’t admit such an ideology as evolutionism exists. You are living in a fantasy world of denial about evolutionism & here we are seeing that first hand.
When I speak about ideological evolutionism, I am *NOT* lumping in evolutionary theory in ‘strictly natural sciences’ with that. Do you understand this clearly or not? You may be confused about this & seem to be.
If a ‘clash of ideologies’ is the topic, then at least get straight the ideologies involved. IDism = ideology. Creationism = ideology. Evolutionism = ideology. Have fun if those aren’t your proper opponents in the ‘debate.’
Is ‘evolutionism’ an ideology: Yes or No? Or do you not even acknowledge the existence of ideological evolutionism? The fact that you haven’t yet addressed ‘evolutionism’ in a meaningful way speaks volumes of your worldview. If you’re actually against evolutionism, then stand up & say so. It’s cowardly like IDists hiding from ‘real design theories’ to pretend ‘evolutionism’ doesn’t exist & shouldn’t be pushed back against appropriately.
Obviously I could not have ‘interjected’ since both Mung & I posted in this thread before you. Carry on debating the likes of ‘J-Mac’ when you have someone here would could actually meet your fairly weak challenges with scholarship that has been done by him & others. Instead, you’re arguing with this thread’s author. LOL!
That old, run-down & beaten conversation of yours?! = P
Creationists are already confused. You, an atheist/agnostic, aren’t going to convince them of anything with your godless worldview. Best to realise that sooner than later. Creationists who actually listen to what I’ve been saying & writing, however, are offered a realistic option, whose sole aim is not disenchantment like yours, but rather knowledge acquisition & edification.
timothya,
If you want something special, yes, go speak to a theologian. Open your heart & you might learn.
The woo you’re pushing here as a skeptic/atheist/agnostic isn’t special, but boring.
Gregory,
Yeah. I’m done. No worries.
Oh! Come on! They can teach you many more ways of making a fool out of yourself, not just special pleading. Don’t underestimate them.
😀
J-Mac still doesn’t understand how the scientific method works. You don’t repeat the hypothesis. You repeat the experiment. A forensic scientist doesn’t have to repeat a murder in order to gather evidence.
ID wants to be science, so they have to conform to the scientific method. When they fail to do so it isn’t a clash in ideologies, it is a failure on the part of ID supporters to meet their goals. Most people are just fine with science and theology co-existing, but it is the ID/creationists who want to force people to buy into their false claims that their theology is science.
Still not the definition of the scientific method… not even a promise of it…
Who would spend so much time on excuses for a scientific theory or hypothesis that could be easily tested? I think he doesn’t want me or my kids to believe in evolution…What else would it be?
My kids like this easy description of the scientific method…How about you?
Nobody can force you to learn. Remain in your blissful state as long as you desire. But don’t you wonder why all the people who can actually write in proper full english sentences “believe in evolution”?
What about Intelligent Design has been tested by experement?
All you are doing is emphasizing why your Intelligent Design Creationism is not science, no matter how much legitimacy you try and steam from “the quantum”.
The fact is 97% of biologists “believe in evolution”. Nobody cares what you or your kids believe. Why would they? Why should they?
If you think a message board is the place to be convinced about evolution then we can shut down all the universities!
In which of those steps do you repeat the hypothesis?
I would agree with this entirely, though with the term ‘theology’ substituted for ‘ideology.’ It is not wrong to discuss the ideologies involved. IDism is the ideology. It is quite hard to distinguish the ‘theory’ of ‘Intelligent Design’ from the ideology, once one removes the probabilistics (predominant use of probability theory for argumentation). And of course, there are several, even many scientific methods. It’s ok; most IDists operate at that simplest level of discourse too.
Unfortunately, evolutionary theory doesn’t have to meet the same requirement…
I wonder why? Maybe because it can’t? This would prove the arguments in my OP on how the supporters of the ideology ignore any challenges to prove that it is a scientific theory or hypothesis…
But excuses mount and the burden of proof is shifted to the other side, as it should be, in the clash of ideologies…
OMagain,
What does it mean to “believe in evolution”?
J-Mac,
Evolutionary biology uses inference to the best explanation, which ID could be, because based on this standard it is opinion that carries the day. The scientific method requires directly testing a hypothesis. We cannot model evolutionary mechanisms let alone test them.
I suspect that’s between quotes because it’s not a mere belief. It’s acceptance due to the evidence. At least that’s my case. It’s not that I want to believe it, it’s that the evidence is right there.
No it doesn’t. You should stop taking ID-creationist claims at face value, let alone as unmistaken pronouncements. Remember, the ID community is a bunch of creationists, not some kind of god. They make mistakes, and they can err into dishonest territory too. So, better to try and learn from better informed sources instead. If you still feel like those guys deserve any respect, confirming from independent sources is still a good idea, right?
The more the reason to suspect the ID pronouncements about whether evolution uses “inference to the best explanation,” since it looks too much like an attempt at levelling the field by making evolution appear as foundationally poor as the religiously-motivated ID agenda.
You seem to be forgetting many articles you have linked to yourself. You seem to also be dismissing the models produced by ID-creationists that pretend to prove that evolution cannot “produce” information. Same for any model that ID-creationists might try. Right? Nice way to shoot yourself in the foot.
There’s plenty of experiments testing one aspect or another of evolutionary mechanisms and events. You know about those experiments evolving ATP binding and synthesis, you know about those evolving domains to complement a protein’s function, you know about those evolving new activities from other activities, you know about that mathematical framework called population genetics, which models several aspects of evolution, you know that people can infer that if evolution is correct, then there should be some order in the way the fossil record should be “layered,” and then search and confirm with the findings at the predicted layers. You know that experiments can consist on predicting where the data for some problem might be found, and then get scientists gathering such data and finding if there’s such a thing. There’s a plethora of experimental hypothesis testing. Only your view is too narrow. You think that experimental means lab testing and lab testing alone. Well, no. Checking organisms according to some prediction counts as experimental too. Getting DNA sequences and analyzing them for evidence of one kind or another of selective pressure counts too. Predicting where, if anywhere, we should find falsifying evidence and then checking to see if we find such falsifying evidence counts too.
Some scientists figured that if Einstein’s theories were correct, they should be able to see the predicted light-bending by checking it happening during some cosmic event (I don’t remember which events that was, but something about light and masses aligning with each other), so they arranged the experiment to be run, the measures to be taken, during the event, and found that, effectively, they saw the effects of light bending as predicted. See? Experiments don’t need to be run in the lab, and they can still be valid experiments.
Isn’t it obvious?
How can you even claim that evolution is a scientific hypothesis if you don’t understand the fundamental steps that hypothesis should follow?
I thought you were a biologist? I guess I was wrong…
Darwin help you, man!
You cannot be serious?! Please tell me it ain’t so…?
I have to admit I had to read this twice to really figure out what excuses you were trying to find… I kind of knew though that sooner or later you would have to try to find a way around why evolution can’t be experimentally tested… It is pretty pathetic watching you write one of the most outrageous sentences a Darwinist can write…
I had to take a screen picture of this just in case because I didn’t want to wake up my kids to see it…
BTW: The bending of light caused by gravity, as predicted by Einstein, was confirmed by an experiment in 2004 by Gravity Probe B. Preparations spanned over 50 years and the cost was $760 million…
J-Mac,
You shot yourself in the foot. That 2004-launched probe gathers data “in the wild,” it doesn’t put Einstein’s theories into a laboratory setting. However, there was a “somewhat” earlier experimental confirmation taking advantage of a cosmic event.
The gravitational waves detected in 2016 or so are another example. The experiment consisted on detecting them “in the wild,” not by producing them in a laboratory.
So, thanks for your help confirming that one aspect or another of a theory can be made into testable hypotheses and checked experimentally, either in the lab, if possible, or “in the wild” by waiting for the appropriate circumstances or looking for the appropriate data.
Entropy,
Independent sources are good and I have confirmed this is how Darwin argued his case. Meyer made the case and I confirmed it with two independent papers several years ago.
You should stop making the assumption that I take creationist claims at face value.
colewd,
Please read the rest of what I wrote. You’ll see that you’re quite wrong about that.
Entropy,
Its appears to have a stronger foundation then the ideological claims of evolution. It proposes a mechanism of change the data supports.
General relativity has a predictive model that is tested. Evolution does not have either. Evolution can make no prediction what the diversity of life will look like 1000 years from now.
Nope. the foundation for ID is an imaginary being they don’t want to identify, whose toolset they don’t want to find either, that’s based on cart-before-the-horse absurdities, etc.
You also jumped over a lot of corrections to your mistaken assumption that it was all about opinion, with no experimental support and no models.
Besides jumping over the examples of experimental and modelling work on evolution, you’re missing the point: experimental testing is not limited to laboratories. Did you get that yet?
Entropy,
You say “imaginary” which is your opinion and is circular reasoning. Other then that you demonstrate again that you don’t understand the theory as it is evidence for design not a designer.
You are making up claims for me. This is called a straw-man fallacy which I know you know. Practice what you preach and read for comprehension. I never claimed that the opinion was not evidence based.
This point is valid but it has nothing to do with evolution testing its grand claims. Its historic science with all the testing problems that entails.
So, that this being is evidently imaginary is circular reasoning, but proposing that intelligent designers designed the only intelligent designers you can point to is not circular reasoning?
How could there be a “theory” about something being designed if there’s no designer to do the designing? You talk about missing mechanisms in evolution, yet you’re happy to leave the mechanisms (the actual designers, their methods and their tools) out of ID “theory”?
You did, you said that there’s no experiments and no models for evolution:
So, how am I making a straw-man exactly, when you wrote this yourself? Unless, of course, there’s more than one colewd in TSZ. Is there? If so, my apologies.
As I said, there’s plenty of experimental testing of small and grand claims, only not limited to the laboratory.
Now, where’s the testing for the presence, the tools, the methods, the grand claims of ID?
I see nature and I find it to be huge. Enormous amounts of energy, time, chemical/physical phenomena. I see intelligent designers, us, and I find them to be tiny, minuscule, by comparison. So I see no problem with us being the product of such a gargantuan, huge, unimaginably large nature. So, I hear this cart-before-the-horse ID proposal, and I think, well, for that to work the designers would have to be huge! So what kind of nature would be necessary to originate and sustain such huge intelligent designers, since the magnitude of this one doesn’t convince the ID community? How can we test that such a huger nature exists? What would be the mechanisms for originating these immense intelligent designers? How come such immense designers do not leave a trace of their presence? Etc.
ETA: Alternatively, if not huge designers, only more advanced, then why would this nature be able to originate such much more advanced intelligent designers, but not the mediocre ones used as “models” for the ID cart-before-the-horse proposals? How come the mediocre intelligent designers require their components to be intelligently designed, yet the components of these more advanced intelligent designers don’t? If those more advanced intelligent designers don’t need intelligently designed components, then why would we? Why not save a step and wait until we can find some actual evidence for such advanced designers and for the time being, try and figure out how nature can originate life in general and intelligent designers in particular? After all, the chain of intelligent designers must stop somewhere, right?
Do you really not see the problems?
The theory of evolution has already met that requirement. Here are 29+ hypotheses that have been supported by evidence (i.e. scientific testing):
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
Entropy,
Sure. The straw-man version of the theory is not ready for prime time 🙂
Then why spend so much time arguing against evolution instead of for design? Where is the positive scientific evidence for design? Does it just boil down to “it just looks designed”?
For example, what prediction does ID make about what we should see when we compare exons and introns for the same gene in different species? Should there be about the same number of diffrences between exons as there is between introns? Should there be more similarities between introns than exons? What are the predictions, and why does ID make these predictions?
Straw-man version of what theory? I didn’t mention any theory. I was talking about the problems entailed by ID if it were examined seriously.
Anyway, I hope you learned that evolution is not “inference to the best explanation” (whatever that shit might mean), that experimental testing is not limited to the laboratory, and that you should be careful when you advance criticism against evolution, without looking carefully at the failures of ID, which start right at the very very foundations, and continue all the way up.
As for the latter, I leave you with some words that come from a book you might respect:
lets cite something and see where we are miscommunicating. There are more supporting citations.
T_aquaticus,
You should know this T. If you spend time arguing you should make sure you understand the design argument and don’t misrepresent it. If you really need me to review this with I will.
ID fills the vacuum that evolutionary theory left when no mechanism could explain complex adaptions. Conscious intelligence is the known cause of long functional sequences required to complex adaptions.
The discussion of evolution is simply to address false claims. There is no predictive model to support the theory. Your prediction of sequence variation similarity and differences is not a prediction of what living organisms will look like in the future. It also does not predict the appearance of functional sequences.
I predict that, for any previously unknown species discovered, there will be more difference for sequence outside exons than inside, compared to known species. This is based on evolutionary principles: exons are under more selective constraint. What does ID predict, and why?
John Sanford will be disappointed to hear that. Also, you do know an experiment is a model, and vice versa, don’t you?
Magic? Nope.
Note the double standard at work here. Can ID predict what the biosphere will look like 1000, or 1 million years from now? No, not at all. Are we now to conclude that ID is unscientific because it can’t predict the future makeup of the biosphere? Perhaps an ID theory, if there is ever going to be such a thing, is not a theory of what biospheres will be like, but a theory about how organisms come to exist, and how they change? A statement about what is causing the changes to happen, and what kinds of changes can happen?
Plate tectonics can’t predict how future mountains will look, only that where tectonic plates meet is where they will be found. There’s a theory of what causes Earthquakes, the physical forces involved, and even roughly where they will happen (again, where the plates meet and tension builds up). But nobody can predict when they will happen, or what magnitude they will have. A pattern is predicted about where they will happen, but no single Earthquake can ever be predicted.
That’s a pattern, so plate tectonics is a theory that predicts patterns. Common descent is a theory that predicts patterns in the same way. If common descent is true, we should find consilience of independent phylogenies. If common descent isn’t true, there’s no good reason to expect consilience of independent phylogenies.
There are countless scientific theories that predict patterns, without being able to make exact predictions of particular events. Radioactive decay, weather, and a whole host of basic physical theories involving large stochastic, or chaotic systems, are all in the business of predicting patterns in data. There isn’t anything unusual about the theory of common descent in this regard. It isn’t any less scientific just because it can’t predict the exact outcomes of future evolution. If that was the case, you would have to reject ID for the same reason.
Even celestial mechanics have components of uncertainty, where predictions are sensitive to the accuracy of measurement.
Allan Miller,
I think you’re discussion in both posts is about devolution so maybe we need to read Behe’s book first. Certainly Sanford’s work is about Devolution. ID is about the evidence of new functional information leading to irreducibly complex structures. It is limited in its explanatory power. I for one who is not against ID agree with your hypothesis here as some of intron sequences may function as spacers where the type of nucleotide is less relevant.
Mutations and natural selection.
So is mutations and natural selection. But actually “conscious intelligence” is not the only aspect of that cause. All conscious intelligences so far investigated had physical brains and physical bodies.
There is. The theory of common descent predicts consilience of indendent phylogenies. Of course, one can make a whole host of other more detailed predictions about the relative effects of selection and drift under different population sizes and environmental conditions. Generally speaking I’d predict a stronger tendency for genome reduction in enviroments with lots of competition, limited resources, and very large populations.
Neither is the claim that organisms are being continously designed by an invisble conjurer with an artistic license and an impeneteable sense of humour.
And ID does? So why has “functional sequences” not appeared in the Long-term evolution experiment with E coli? Shouldn’t he have zapped one into being with new amazingly designed novel information and functions with magic by now?
It’s curious how ID “predicts” the same thing evolution does, and always after evolutionary biologists have made their predictions.
Tell us something new please. Predict something different from evolution that is going to happen in the future. What mysterious new genetic information will the ID genie conjure up? Be specific. No vague predictions about future patterns, that’s not science I hear you say. Let’s hear it, the celestial-mechanics equivalent of intelligent design. Predict us the genetic makeup and functions of a new species discovered 30 years from now.
Go on…
And no stuff like “highly similar to an already existing species, that will also show statistically significantly high degrees of consilience of independent phylogenies”.
Rumraket,
This is well articulated Rum. You are right where ID does not have predictive power as evolution also does not. They are both limited theories at this point.
Is common descent less scientific than general relativity? That is a qualitative statement but as a minimum I would say it is less suited to experimental science as some of the other historical sciences you mentioned. The scientific method favors repeatable mechanisms like gravity, electromagnetism or cell division.
Rumraket,
Neither ID or evolution are making any predictions here. People are making predictions.
What is “devolution”?
That seems an artificial dodge. If allele frequency change (evolution) cannot be modelled, Sanford is doing something wrong. Though in fact, because frequencies always add up to 100%, ‘devolution’ (by which I assume you mean allele loss) and ‘evolution’ (allele gain?) can both be modelled by the same process.
But why the difference? If not due to evolutionary constraint – the balance of drift and selection and chemical biases – why does ID predict the same as evolution? Including transition/transversion bias, silent substitutions in exons, and so on.
Exactly. “Devolution” is a nonsensical term. Normally alleles are lost because another is gained.
Notice how you couldn’t answer any of my questions?
Also, the theory of evolution already has many mechanisms that explain the emergence of complex traits: random mutation, selection, speciation, neutral drift, vertical inheritance, horizontal inheritance, etc.
Allan Miller,
ID is filling the vacuum of gain of FI that is observed over deep time. Evolution or devolution explains genetic loss just fine.
T_aquaticus,
This is mechanism by committee because of nothing that has been modeled. These mechanisms explain loss of FI and adaption just fine. They do not explain the gain of FI that has been observed over deep time.