I’m ambivalent to the question whether ID is or is not science. I don’t care how it is classified. The more important question is whether it is true. Even though in some people’s definition of science, ID might count as science, in other people’s definition of science it won’t count as science. Therefore, just to be safe and avoid pointless arguments, ID should not be promoted as science even by IDists.
Certainly IDists use scientific findings to advocate their assertions, but that doesn’t make ID science any more than a police investigator using science makes the police investigator a scientist.
What I view as representative scientific disciplines of investigation:
1. applied and theoretical electro magnetic theory
2. quantum chemistry
3. thermodynamics for heating and air conditioners and nuclear reactors
4. celestial mechanics
etc.
These involve hypotheses, predictions and experiments. ID does not have direct experiments because the mechanism (the Designer), even if He exists, usually chooses not to show up in such experiments.
Not every truth claim about the physical universe is accessible to science. I claim Socrates was a real person as Plato described, however, we only have Plato’s testimony to rely on. Even if Socrates was a real person, and even if there is credible evidence to that effect, such questions about the physical universe are outside science.
If the design of life came about by mechanisms outside those that can be demonstrated in laboratory experiment and are outside physical laws of chemistry and physics, then even if ID were true, ID might not be properly called science. Therefore I think ID should not be promoted as science.
ID is hypothesis, a claim about the physical universe.
This is my view:
Perhaps, however, one just really does not want to call intelligent design a scientific theory. Perhaps one prefers the designation “quasi-scientific historical speculation with strong metaphysical overtones.” Fine. Call it what you will, provided the same appellation is applied to other forms of inquiry that have the same methodological and logical character and limitations. In particular, make sure both design and descent are called “quasi-scientific historical speculation with strong metaphysical overtones.”
This may seem all very pointless, but that in a way is just the point. As Laudan has argued, the question whether a theory is scientific is really a red herring. What we want to know is not whether a theory is scientific but whether a theory is true or false, well confirmed or not, worthy of our belief or not.
Stephen Meyer
http://www.arn.org/docs/meyer/sm_methodological.htm
Does it really help IDists to claim they have a “Positive case for ID” and that “ID is science”? When I’ve witnessed debates on the topics, the IDists have lost. Why? They get bogged down in arguments over definitions rather than delivering discussions about the computer-like, well-engineered systems within biology and why such systems must transcend laws of physics and chemistry as a matter of principle. Therefore, ID should not be promoted as science.
PS
With respect to the public school science issue:
I’ll wager a bottle of single-malt scotch, should it ever go to trial whether ID may legitimately be taught in public school science curricula, that ID will pass all constitutional hurdles.
Bill Dembski
Being an advantage player, I should have taken that wager. I’d certainly like to upgrade my collection of scotch whiskey’s to be more like Richard Hughes’.
OMagain,
Saying the exact opposite now of what you wrote before, as you wrote “Software where changing one thing can change 1000 other things in unpredictable ways is not desirable. YET THAT IS HOW BIOLOGY IS”
Most mutations are neutral, because the genetic code is fine tuned to minimize the negative effects of mutations. Codons differing by only one base either code for the same amino acid, or an amino acid that chemically close to the intended amino acid.
Got any evidence / support for this?
No, I don’t think that I did actually. But whatever.
Software is brittle. Biology is less brittle. Questions?
But..but.. isn’t software designed? What does that mean for biology?
Yeah, you’re not kidding. That man’s friends should stage an intervention to get him and keep him off twitter for the rest of his life.
This, exactly. This is why UDists treat us as heretics. Surprisingly, it’s not because we say (if we say) that we don’t believe in their scriptures, but because we clearly don’t believe in our own “scriptures”. How can that be, they wonder. How can any group of people be so … faithless … as to disregard the revealed texts of our own holy leaders such as Lewontin and Dawkins and especially the grand patriarch Darwin.
Clearly, we’re broken. Clearly, we’re incapable of a decent respect for authority. Clearly, we’re incapable of the normal human ideal of fealty. Not heathens, but worse, heretics.
NO, your point was
where you imply that — because biologists parenthetically mention the appearance of design — justifies IDists pretending that they are attempting to “answer this question”. But a) IDists in fact are making absolutely no attempts to develop “scientific methods”, and b) more to the point, it’s really not an open question. We know the answer; it was settled in its basic outline more than a century ago: regardless of the OoL, evolution occurs with no apparent direction, as soon as there is a reproducing population with variance.
There is no justification for you quotemining biologists’s comments about “appearance of design” as if that somehow gives a shadow of support to the lie that IDists are simply trying to determine if life is the “result of agency”. Of course that’s not what IDists are doing, and your “modest point” is crap.
P.S. Why the hell are you still such a failure of a decent human being to learn to blockquote like everyone else?
Okay.
Yep. IDists like WJM give away their dirty secret when they admit like this they could never know what the signal of “look-designed” is for complex life unless they already know who the designer is and the process by which the “design” was generated.
God, of course, preferably the god of the majority christians, but any god will do, really. Miraculous twiddling to insert a flagellum into a previously flagella-deficient bacterium. Presto, that’s all the explanation we get of the process! Fine with them just so long as they can use it to introduce religion into high school science classes.
Glen:
She knows what a quote mine is, Glen, and she was correct to label this one as such.
RoP claimed that Dawkins defined biology as “the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose”. If you look at the quote in context, it is clear that he is not defining biology, but merely describing it.
That’s a quote mine.
Twitter is a kind of self-quote-mining. At least it seems to be for Dawkins.
No, because nothing in the quote suggested that it was a “definition,” save in the loosest sense. A quotemine is where something is taken out of context, like when what Darwin wrote of how daunting the evolution of the eye appears is all that is quoted, leaving out the reasonable enough explanation (or at least some mention of it) of how the eye could evolve.
ROP didn’t take the quote out of context, he just claimed that it was “Dawkins’ definition of biology” at one point, although *defines* was used earlier as an apparent non-standard “scare quote.” It’s true that context shows that it was not “Dawkins’ definition of biology,” but there was never any indication that it was, except for ROP’s misrepresentation. On its own, it just looks like a declarative statement. In context, it just looks like a declarative statement.
The quote by itself is basically representative of what Dawkins was saying in the whole passage, except for the parts where he’s presaging the evolutionary explanation for what he calls “the appearance of design,” but nearly everyone knows that he ends up with an evolutionary explanation, so that’s no mystery or crucial missing context. You don’t quotemine when you’re not leaving out crucial context, but you misrepresent when you claim that the quote is “Dawkins’ definition of biology,” when at most it’s one definition (even then in a rather loose sense) used for a particular purpose.
Glen DAvidson
Like all other public figures and celebs, he may be employing ghost-tweeters. This would explain a few things.
As to the definition debate, sorry but Dawkins was indeed defining biology. In the context, he is elaborately describing what biology *is* and he is distinguishing it from physics. This is defining, certainly in the informal sense.
That he got the definition totally wrong (complexity is absolutely irrelevant in biological studies) is another matter.
“Statistical and biochemical studies of the genetic code have found evidence of nonrandom patterns in the distribution of codon assignments. It has, for example, been shown that the code minimizes the effects of point mutation or mistranslation: erroneous codons are either synonymous or code for an amino acid with chemical properties very similar to those of the one that would have been present had the error not occurred”[1]
References:
1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9732450
Heh.
Obviously I can’t tweet, because I can’t keep anything down to 140 characters.
And people like Dawkins (and maybe me, and maybe you as well) who must think in branching, networked, and recursive paths to work around to a clear view of an issue … should not try to take a machete like twitter to trim their own thoughts down to fit that straightjacket.
But I actually suspect that Dawkins has ossified in old age and would now be a problematical fave even at greater length. That’s sure evident when he tries to explain himself after one of his tweets goes wrong. Poor old guy.
And this is evidence for ID how, exactly?
P.S. Thank god you’ve finally figured out how to blockquote!
Glen, keiths, whoever else cares:
I would be really happy to drop this subthread about “quotemine”. If I was incorrect in calling out RoP for quotemining, I’m sorry. If I was correct in calling them out, I’m still sorry.
I’m sorry that this hoohaw about “quotemine” is a distraction from the larger point, which is that Religion_of_pieces is using the words of biologists in an illegitimate way in a stupid attempt to make ID out to be science. Because, he implies, the mere fact that biologists speak of “appearance of design” is a sufficient excuse for the IDists to claim there is a question of Design Agent which should be investigated. No, No, a hundred years of No. It doesn’t matter how many millions of words RoP pulls (in context or out of context) from biologists, because xe can’t support xis false thesis that ID might be science by any word from any authority. That’s a fallacy. The only thing which would support xis thesis is actual evidence, and xe hasn’t got any.
RoP’s whole argument is:
ID should be acknowledged as a legitimate scientific endeavour.
Even your beloved scientist Dawkins says “life appears designed”.
We IDists are doing science (just like Dawkins, hee hee) when we go into our fake labs and write our fake papers — not about the Designer, god forbid — about the fact that “life appears designed”.
????
PROFIT!!!
Well, sure, that’s a legitimate argument! Er, no, the other thing. It’s an illegitimate argument.
It’s still an illegitimate argument whether we call Step 2 a “quotemine” or call it something else. Sorry for my part in the confusion.
hotshoe said:
OMG!! Do you really not get that I was being sarcastic? Do you really not realize that I was drawing attention to the fact that anti-IDists demand to have the designer and his mechanism identified before any conclusion – even provisional – of “design” is reached – but don’t even blink when SETI’s method requires no such identification?
Really?
Citation please.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit right?
I happen to think it’s perfectly possible that a determination of *design* but with *unknown designer* can be made.
I could give examples, on request.
ID claims to have a made a determination of design. I accept that they have made that determination. ID claims to not have identified the designer. It could be aliens. It could be god. I accept they have said that. I summarise.
The point really is William, now what for ID? If ID has made a determination of design, now what?
But of course you don’t have an answer for that, as you are not necessarily an ID supporter, you just are pointing out something you find ironic. You may or may not believe in ID, depending on if such a belief will enhance your life.
We know.
But, I don’t accept that ID’s determination of design is solid. I think it’s weak. We don’t understand everything about biology therefore ID? That’s more or less what it is.
If you disagree, point out in what direction ID should take it’s next step.
I grant IDists the right to make a provisional conclusion of design.
Now what?
Even JoeG has an answer to this.
Further research is needed?
hotshoe:
No such luck. I’m going to respond to Glen. 🙂
Glen:
Quote mining is quoting something out of context with intent to deceive. RoP did that by claiming that Dawkins was defining biology, then supplying a truncated quote that appeared to support that assertion, but only when taken out of context.
Religion_of_pieces
In case you missed it (in the spirit of “for your information, let me ask you a question”), here are some questions for you:
Do you know what univocal predication is? Have you read Edward Feser’s philosophical critique of IDT? Do you acknowledge that ‘human designer’ and ‘divine designer’ take different categories or do you conflate them?
Added to that: are you aware that Discovery Institute fellow William Lane Craig has just recently said that theists need not accept IDT? Why do you think he said that?
Indeed. And that’s why I don’t bother trying again. If you didn’t have enough interest then, you’ve not likely changed.
So you are probably in possession of all the facts.
Where did Sal say he was forced to leave UD? Where has Salvador stated that he lost his posting rights at UD?. Any time I’ve asked him he’s simply refused to answer.
Yet biologists have encountered complex coded messages and still fail to say it’s a sign of intelligence. What gives?
Science has never found a complex coded message in biological life. It would be helpful if the IDiots pushing such nonsense didn’t equivocate on the definition of message.
Yes, it’s not like I used “message” for no reason.
Glen Davidson
Mung, you are as slimy as people can get on the internet. Now you demand that I keep track of your statements & positions?! Attention-seeking much? It is enough to note that you are an IDist, something you can’t seem to bring yourself to publically acknowledge.
I have no information whatsoever or knowledge about stcordova’s posting priviledges or relationship with UD. It was YOU who suggested this at TSZ. UD is not a credible ‘community’ in my eyes. As a sociologist of the IDM, it serves a ‘news’ & ‘views’ purpose, but little more, and it is certainly not trustworthy. That you find it a welcome home for you gains you no believable status.
Sure, you’re hurt because stcordova says things like the title of this thread. You are a self-proclaimed ‘creationist’ (something you claimed about yourself, but which you won’t explain) and obviously also an IDist. It means, in short, being a ‘loser’, given how badly IDism has failed among scholars, both atheist and theist. That IDism has had some level of PR ‘success’ among (predominantly non-scientist) evangelical Protestants; should that be considered a ‘win’ of some kind? I suppose you would say ‘Yes.’
As the face of “The Skeptical Zone” I would expect better from you Elizabeth. This may just earn it’s own OP. It is just that spectacularly uninformed. It’s historically uninformed, it’s philosophically uninformed, and it’s empirically uninformed. It’s pure posturing.
For thousands of years, perhaps tens of thousands of years, there has been belief in a Designer [or designers]. And we are asked to believe that throughout all time there was no case for a designer.
But now we see so much more clearly. We have evolved. We are Gods.
You do know what a carrier wave is, right?
Hint: It carries something.
She didn’t say there’s no belief in a Designer. She said there’s no case for one, as in positive scientific case, which there isn’t.
The IDiots haven’t improved on Biblical Creationist arguments one iota, just vastly increased the bafflegab.
What does it carry Mung? A carrier wave may be modulated to transmit a message but it doesn’t have to be.
Hilarious. Citation needed! I need something I can ignore! What sort of citation would not be a cultural artifact?
They wouldn’t be IDiots if they didn’t constantly equivocate over definitions.
LoL. I can give you lessons. [28]
keiths will next provide the quote and citation where in that some book Dawkins actually does define biology.
Gregory whines that I am difficult for him to force into one if his neatly defined and labelled boxes and therefore I am “slimy.” ok, so I am slimy. Create a box and attach a label to it, “slimy.” Label me slimy and drop me into the box labelled slimy.
See how easy that is?
And Mary. And Michael and Gabriel. And St. Christopher.
Is there a patron saint of skepticism?
Mung:
Doubting Thomas, of course.
Mung:
Why will I do that, Mung? And why should Dawkins feel obliged to define biology when his readers (possibly excluding you) already know what it is?
keiths asks why he should provide the quote and citation from that same book where Dawkins actually does define biology any differently than in the quoted text, which keiths claims is a “quotemine.”
Why indeed. Don’t ask me why, keiths, ask yourself why. Maybe there is no other definition presented in that book. Maybe it wasn’t a quotemine. Perhaps Dawkins was just waxing poetic and we need to check with keiths to understand anything Dawkins wrote. Still doesn’t make it a quotemine.
keiths claims it is a quotemine not because it was taken out of context but rather because some larger context wasn’t taken into consideration.
But nonetheless, a definition of biology. keiths disagrees. We could try to resolve the dispute using the standard empirical method.
Ta, no 🙂 [8]
And the empirical evidence that Elizabeth said there’s no positive scientific case for a designer is? The absence of her actually saying that?
I think I am finally beginning to understand what it means to be a Skeptic.
What Dawkins actually said was [quote], but what Dawkins really meant to say was [insert whatever I think Dawkins meant to say].
What Elizabeth actually said was [quote], but what Elizabeth really meant to say was [insert whatever I think Elizabeth meant to say].
I can only imagine the outcry here at “The Skeptical Zone” if I even dared to presume so much,.
Of course Dawkins was speaking about biology. Silly person.
The difference is one of complexity of design.
That’s Dawkins. That’s what you ignore. That’s what you need to address.
Mung: Is there a patron saint of skepticism?
keiths: Doubting Thomas, of course.
You must be joking:
Thomas said to him [Jesus], “My Lord and my God!”
Mung,
So? He doubted and he asked for evidence, which is what skeptics do.
Yeah, you wish.
Umm, no, darlin’. Not close, no cigar.
There’s a reason why people have to learn to read for intention rather than just sounding out the lines as they go along with a finger under the words. It’s a skill (which I’ve learned, as have many other thoughtful people) to parse the difference between what I think Dawkins or Elizabeth meant compared to what they themselves really did mean to say based on the textual evidence of their complete work (post / essay / chapter). One or two short sentences, even if they’re actually taken in context, are not enough to convey the complex real meaning. Understanding someone’s writing takes work, that is, if their writing is anything more significant than tweets. And I’m not always willing to put in the work, but when I do, I’m usually right, because I’ve got a talent for it as well as the education to back me up.
I know I use too many words. But I’m gonna make it as short and sweet for you as I can: If you think I’m wrong, then show me. Don’t just make airy-fairy claims about “insert[ing] whatever I think Dawkins meant to say” — show me!