ID is like the old locked room mysteries.
Scenario: Mr Body is found in a locked room with two bullet wounds in the back of his head. Lethal weapon found in his hand.
All the people known to profit from his death have airtight alibis. Security cameras show no one entering the room after Mr Body enters.
Only Mr Body’s fingerprints are found on the gun.
1. Suicide?
2. Magic or Divine Intervention?
3. Space Aliens having unknown technology?
4. Something else?
Interestingly, number one has actually been put forward in at least one actual, recent case.
If we substitute biogenesis for Mr Body’s death, ID proponents assume number two or number three.
If we substitute evolution for Mr Body’s Death, then Michael Behe and Mendel’s Accountant proponents assume number two or number three.
What do you guys think? What assumption do you think is most reasonable? I’m not asking what really happened. I’m asking what is the first working hypothesis that comes to mind?
Oh this is a doozy. This is as good as Walto’s car in the desert. You have no idea how it go there, what made the car, but if we take evolution’s assumption, well, it just got there by accident. Why should we assume an intelligence had anything to do with it, sometimes things just happen without meaning.
Now you are claiming that the existence of seemingly designed objects such as living systems, with many many functional, integrated parts, just got there for no reason. So your analogy is that evolution should tell you something else did it, something with no meaning at all. Evolution’s default IS NOT to go with what the evidence looks like, its to say, something else, don’t ask how.
It just is….
That Mr. Body is an acquaintance of Hillary Clinton.
It was done by Design!
We can’t discern anything else from CSI, or whatever letters are fashionable at the present time.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
It was done by the inherent property of nature! Things just happen!
That was actually YOUR car, phoodoo.
Ah well, we’re all brothers.
The problem with these types of hypotheticals is that the ID simply says, “it’s still design by humans! Checkmate suckahs!” (a la Phoodoo’s response)
I prefer the natural example. The rocks on the beach are all sorted. There’s no evidence anyone or any animal of any kind moved them to the location. How did they get there?
1. Natural forces
2. Goddidit
3. Space aliens
4. Other
IDists, if they were consistent, would choose 2, but concede 3 is a possibility. Few, if any do however. Funny that.
Another great example are sea shell fossils found at or near the tops of mountains. There actually are creationists (ken ham for instance) who insist that such is indeed God working through DA FLUD.
Number three. Aliens having advanced technology.
Here’s another one for ya:
1. Natural phenomenon
2. Man-made
3. Goddidit
4. Space aliens
5. Other
The explanation for the two bullets could be a gun like the one featured in the video, a double-barreled pistol.
The guy in the video points it at his head toward the end of the video (yikes!). He could have been like the guy you talked about except in that case he pointed the gun at the back of his head.
I thought he was going to blow his brains out at the end of the video:
Jeez, Sal, give the fiction writer some credit. Your scenario is worthless as a story.
Let’s back slowly away from the literalness of the scenario, and assume that we have an unsolved mystery, and that intense investigation does not solve it or provide a good, easy to accept explantation.
The question remains. Which of the four working hypotheses do you think is most useful?
How do rocks move in Death Valley? Of course the materialists simply assumed that there would be a material explanation, not ghosts, gods, or aliens–saps one and all.
Now they have pictures of the ice the rocks were embedded in moving, but like that proves anything at all. How do we know that it wasn’t spirits or gods moving the rocks and the ice at the same time?
Always looking for observable causes, those bozos.
Glen Davidson
My own view is that one of these four options has historically been more productive.
I’m just curious how others feel.
It’s not that hard. Some guns can double-fire when the trigger is pulled, the fervent hope that certain accused have had when the “suicide” involved two bullets. Unfortunately for some of them, certain guns essentially never double-fire when the trigger is pulled (I suppose there’s always some chance, but it can be low enough to disregard), making that excuse worthless. I can’t see how a revolver could double-fire with one trigger pull, for instance.
Not to derail petrushka’s question, but yes, it is possible for two shots to come from one (single-barrel) gun, even when the first bullet incapacitates the person.
Glen Davidson
Specifically, I’m thinking of Mendel’s Account.
The argument was made that I assume Mendel’s Account doesn’t correctly model biology because I believe evolution to be true.
I have to ask, looking at the history of biology for the last 200 years, what working hypothesis is most productive? Paley’s or Darwin’s?
Not which is true, but which generates the most useful research ideas.
But which one makes WJM (et al.) happier?
Glen Davidson
Accountant.
Not proofreading today.
Robin,
No1. Snow donuts are Natural phenomena caused by the wind blowing snow over snow covered ground.
Re Mr Body. It is best not to jump to premature conclusions. Further investigation could be carried out to ascertain entry points, exit points, trajectories, evidence of bullet contacts in the room, actual bullet or ricochet marks, examination of the weapon if it is the type of weapon that could have caused the wounds.
These would be some of the things that are easily checked before any speculation as to the cause is necessary.
I think thats a snow doughnut. I just recently discovered these things exist. In special cases. So natural.
If space aliens is a option then why isn’t it a option in all crime cases/ Why is the law system based on the complete rejection of interference by space aliens or space alien teenagers??
There are no space aliens. Just us.
Robin,
Right, so likewise the thing that looks like a gun in the room could actually just have been dust that got blown naturally into the shape of a gun. Some wasp came in and brought gunpowder on their feet. Eventually a hard shell formed around the outside of the gunpowder (we don’t know the exact details of how, but we are working on it). Through some forces, no need to invoke a magical deity!, the gun moved one day and bang!
And there you have it, simple as that. The one thing you have to keep in mind is that this didn’t happen overnight. Its not like one day there wasn’t a gun, and then suddenly there was a gun. It happened slowly, almost imperceptibly. Completely natural.
The same reasons that biology does not posit an Intelligent Designer. There’s simply no need.
Glad we could finally reach an understanding.
Please demonstrate for me that an Intelligent Designer was not involved in their construction.
Charlie, I take it you default to option four.
My follow-up is, suppose you spend years investigating and don’t find a solution?
Does your default change?
I hear he’s giving it one more year and then heading for Lourdes.
If I had a default it would be “not 2b or 3” until I had some more information to go on which might enable me to narrow it down. If I was a character such as Sherlock Holmes or Columbo my default would be No4, specifically murder, possibly using some sort of 2a trick. And I would soon know how it was done, why it was done, and who dun it.
If I was some disinterested party then I may never know but that would not be a problem as I would deem it none of my business anyway and I would leave it to the people whose job it is to solve this mystery.
I’m not trying to be snarky here. I’m not hiding my motive in asking this question.
My scripture here is Scooby Doo.
The first commandment in the investigation of mysteries is thou shalt look for natural causes.
I say this because every once in a while, an ID advocate makes a remark, intended to be disparaging, that biologists reject Behe or Dembsky, or reject Mendel’s Accountant because they believe in evolution.
Equating belief in evolution with belief in unseeable forces.
I just wondered if that equivalency extends to more mundane mysteries.
Agreed Charlie, but one can only know that (assuming “knowing” is even possibly…) through some investigation of the natural world and natural processes. There’s nothing obvious about it and by most measures, it certainly appears to be a “designed”/”entity-made” item. The point is, there is clearly no less reason to assume 2, 3, or 4 for snow donuts then there is for biology. But, once we know that snow donuts are natural phenomena, there’s a good deal of reason to reject 2,3, and 4 for a whole slew of other things.
I’m right there with you Robert. Why don’t police invoke aliens or demons or other non-human entities as explanations for crimes? Seems a little biased if ID is true…
Here’s the problem with your rebuttal Phoodoo: no one – no materialist anyway – disputes that humans design guns. There’s plenty of evidence for human engaging in not just in the design of guns, but in the manufacture of them too.
What we dispute is that there’s any reason to even consider that any other entity could have been involved in the design of guns. First, there’s no evidence of any other “designers” of any kind capable of designing guns, but second we already know quite specifically an entity responsible for gun design and manufacture, so there’s no need to even consider investigating further on that point.
Here’s the second issue: that humans design guns does not indicate ANYTHING about other designing entities or other designing processes. Nothing. At. All. So there is no validity to “ID theory” being extended to living organisms. It’s just a completely unjustifiable leap of agenda bias.
So there’s no reason to even consider that snow donuts or organized boulders on a beach or even bird wings are anything other than products of natural forces. Hence the reason science doesn’t bother entering anything but natural explanations.
But you can’t let criminals off because God or Satan might have done it–even though you’d think under their beliefs God and Satan, or their agents, would inevitably raise reasonable doubt. That, however, would have consequences that are unacceptable.
But biology, meh, it’s expendable. To be sure, there are cognitive and psychological biases that make accepting a different class of causes seem plausible to the naive for processes occurring across unfathomably long times and for extremely complex and not-fully-understood entities like organisms. Nevertheless, logically they’re the same sort of problem, do we allow the suspect off by saying that God did it, and if not, why would we let Dembski and Behe teach the kiddies (using taxpayer money) that God did it, or at least to question whether potentially investigable causes are all that we should consider in science.
Glen Davidson
Perhaps there’s a way of calculating the probability that a crime had natural causes.
We could have a metric. Call it Crime Scene Information.
Exactly. That is why I would exclude 2b and 3.
Here is a list of natural occurances:
1. The arrangement of pebbles on a beach
2. The formation of a snow donut.
3. The building of a swallow’s nest
4. The growth of a tooth within a baby’s gum.
4. A spider’s web
5. The growth of a snowflake.
I hope we can all agree that these are all natural phenomena. But some of them as a preparation for future events. So we can say that the concept of cause and effect of classical physics does not hold when it comes to biology. Biological systems can look to the future in ways that physical systems do not.
This looking to the future comes to its greatest expression in human individuals and it cannot be explained by physics and chemistry alone. This does not mean that it is not a natural process. It means that nature is more than just physics and chemistry and cannot be explained by these disciplines.
Sorry…meant to add (/sarcasm).
Of course you’re right. I was just giving Robert a hard time. Indeed, forensic science is limited to piecing together the actions of humans across a given timeline and never invokes demons, aliens, gods, or other supernatural phenomenon simply because only humans (at this point) have ever been shown to A) exist, and B) commit crimes against other humans. Contrary to the movies and comics anyway…
And here I thought that it was physics that allows a computer to predict the path of a hurricane.
Glen Davidson
Robin,
Oh, I thought I was just agreeing with you…
Glen Davidson
Physics determines the path of the hurricane, various pieces of information allows the path to be somewhat predicted. Do you think that “physics” gathers that information?
Do you think that’s a sensible question?
Do you think that non-physical processes gather that information?
Glen Davidson
Robin,
I think its great that petrushka started this thread. It shows just how silly the assumptions made by evolutionists are.
Do we know what makes a cell? What makes DNA? What makes something come alive? What makes complicated organs? What makes brains work? We know none of this, and yet the evolutionist just wants us to assume it just happens by accident if you give it enough time.
Their default answer, when they don’t know the source of something is: purposeless accidents.
I think the absence of video evidence clearly indicates the activity of a mind.
Yeah…I’m just having a day. As you were…
Sooo…waaaiiit…let me see if I’ve got your logic straight here:
Because we humans don’t know enough about cells, DNA, life processes, complex organs, and why neural cellular connections work they way they do in order to design and build such things ourselves, such items MUST have been designed and built by someone (something) else? Is that really your argument here?
As for the purposeless accidents comment, nope…not my claim, never been my claim, ain’t gonna be my claim. In fact, I already explained why it’s erroneous, so your strawman soaked in the oil of ad hominem is hereby dully oxidized appropriately.
phoodoo,
So tell you what. We’ll do some research into things, and propose a number of explanations. Some of those we can rule out straight away based on the available data, some we can’t. Then, over time, we’ll see if one seems to work better then the others and then we can potentially work to improve its depth and scope.
Anyone is free to partake in this process. What will happen is that there will be a number of candidate explanations and individual people will decide for themselves which particular one seems to be best supported by the available evidence.
As nothing is 100% certain in life, we’ll determine which of those explanations is considered the best supported by the majority of people and we’ll use that one as a working hypothesis, in order to generate new questions that can be answered through more experiments and research.
Over time we’ll have to start over a few times, as we discover more and more. But eventually we’ll no doubt hit on something that approximates the truth and then for some time the refinements will be small, just adding details. Still, even then, we’ll have to throw the whole thing on the fire from time to time and start over. But from the ashes rises a stronger idea, taking longer each time to be overthrown.
And, as I say, at any point anyone can come up with a better idea and work to support it and burn the old idea to the ground, replacing it with a yet stronger structure. Anyone at all. Even you phoodoo. Even you.
And, as I say, we have to have some sort of ‘this is what we think best represents the truth’. We can’t just say ‘we don’t know’ if we have an idea and nobody has a better one! That would be simply untrue. We have a bunch of ideas, some of them are supported by evidence and some which are not.
So even if there were textbooks called ‘It just happens by accident if you give it enough time’ and even if those textbooks were written in a number of fairly obscure chinese dialects, if that was still our best guess at the truth of the matter then it’s too bad for those that don’t like it but are unable to come up with a better idea they can convince people is better supported. They’ll just have to accept it as true for now, as they have nothing else to propose. If those people don’t like it too bad for them.
I’ve worked with people who tell me that I am wrong about something but who are then unable to come up with a better idea. Guess what. We went with what I suggested. What is the alternative? Do nothing, make no decisions? Be afraid to move forwards for fear of failure?
If you want to claim you know nothing phoodoo, then I’m prepared to believe you. But if you want to claim everybody else knows nothing, then better have a second act to that play or expect some tomatoes to come your way.
So, about those books on faith healing and PSI? Anything in particular you think stands out from the crowd?
;P
The evolutionist isn’t “assuming” that it all happens by accident, phoodoo. It’s a theory. They test it. Your guys do too.
You, on the other hand, have no theory. Just a story that makes you feel good. Worse, you sincerely believe that if their theory is imperfect, that if their guys or your guys or anybody else ever finds a flaw in it, that your comforting story must be true. I’m sorry to tell you this phoodoo, but that’s the sort of argument a toddler might make about why his stuffed piggy just has to be alive.
I wasn’t aware that ID could be fit inside a nutshell. Good job petrushka!
I’m a little unclear on the evolutionist test though (as you know).
See, they always have an escape clause for the non-random bits. Selection. So what’s the test, really?
God is not involveed in the working creation we live in at observable levels.
Its about thev spectrum of complexity. The glorious complexity demands a creator. Not the secondary stuff which is still fantastic but only after the fantastic complexity foundations are made.
Creationism, YEC, demands no life except on earth.
If you mean god is not a option for interference then yES this is traditional.
All crime is presumed to not be done/or influenced by the spiritual beings.