This OP may change over time. But for now…
- Devolution
- Rejecting common descent
- Failure to address how designs are actualized
- Materialism and Naturalism
“Devolution” is evolution. Stop trying to convince people that evolution and devolution are opposites.
Present the case for common descent. Address the subject of why IDists ought to accept common descent. Stop trying to convince people that ID and common descent are incompatible.
The designs that the science of intelligent design detects had to be actualized somehow. If the design that was detected is not an instance of an actualized design then it is a mistake to infer that it is designed. Tell us how designs are actualized without appealing to acts of special creation by a supernatural designer. There needs to be an alternative to God as The Designer who actualized his designs by something other than natural processes or there will always be a cloud over the claim that ID is a “strictly scientific” theory.
It’s not clear to me how introducing the immaterial into science would work. As things stand right now I see appeals to the non-material or the non-natural as unscientific and at odds with claims that ID is a strictly scientific theory.
Thoughts?
ETA: Mung has special powers, Gregory.
What do you think Gregory? Anything you believe I should add to my list?
Is it supposed to be poetry? ; )
1) Devolution is a Behe attempt at concept-transfer. The term ‘devolution’ and the verb ‘to devolve’ are used largely in political science for decentralising structural power. A naive Catholic biologist seduced by the IDM & now it’s poster-boy for life is Behe. #1 has been tried before & failed as a semantic move.
2) Yuck. Too easy & obvious. Which ‘common descent’?
3) “The designs that the science of intelligent design detects…”
Jargon. IDT is a ‘biology-first’ theory, according to Dembski. Others have tried to make it into a theory of everything (ToE), much like those they are attempting to oppose on the extremes do with evolution, which also has a tendency to be turned into a ToE. The people who do this are not to be listened to & the problem within the IDM is that no one from the DI has made an effort to distinguish when their ‘Intelligent Design’ theory turns into IDism. This would require them to call people out within their own ‘movement’. They’re in dread village unprepared for that kind of real confrontation with their own ideologies, ones that they often flatly deny even holding, though it is obvious to others (such is often the case with ideologies & social movements like the DI’s Center for (the Renewal of) Science & Culture, which is brimming with ideology from beginning to now).
4. Sorry, you’re just confused about this. Information, choice & value; are these ‘immaterial’ in your grammar? Don’t get stuck on ‘philosophy of biology.’ It’s a quick flight to naturalism, like many have flown into without an escape route.
Agreed. Tell Meyer & West this directly.
LOL. No the OP won’t change, unless you have special editing privileges as a Moderator that regular folks like me don’t have. OP is a one-time shot, I was told, or has that changed?
Is this thread your attempt to follow-through on this?:
To which I wrote: “Be welcome to do that. A refreshing of your list would be good.”
If it is, then in the attempt at poetry, can you be more explicit with what are your specific concerns? All I see is the ‘strictly scientific’ issue, which of course you know I hold as a problem for the DI’s IDism as well. Anything else?
IDists should accept common descent because Behe accepts common descent. If there is a better biologist in the ID movement, I haven’t encountered the name.
Evolution is change over time. There are people who have tried to say it is progress or regression, but the official definition is change.
I don’t think that’s a good reason. I think it should be accepted based on the evidence for it. Evidence which the people who post articles at EN seem to be unaware of. Or are deliberately keeping hidden.
This is perhaps the greatest sticking point for me and the one most likely to end my direct financial support for the DI. And yes, Gregory, I have expressed my concern on this issue directly to John West in person.
Yes. You asked, I delivered. See, I respect you, in spite of all the nasty things you’ve said about me. 😉
Isn’t that enough? Can’t it sink or swim on that one issue alone? Isn’t that the issue that the majority of opponents to ID are most concerned with?
Good points, Mung. I take them as addressed to ID advocates.
As for “devolution”, I’ve never heard an evolutionary biologist use the term. It seems to be a favorite of creationists and ID advocates, though, and they use it with confidence that it means something, somehow.
Thank you.
How on earth does ID theory propose to distinguish between evolution and devolution. Your guess is as good as mine.
One might suppose that there are actual examples of devolution (whatever that means). They fail to qualify as evolution because … Your guess is as good as mine.
Darwinian evolution can only “devolve” something that was previously perfect (created by God). That so smacks of Young Earth Creationism. And I want nothing to do with YECism.
Perhaps I am biased. 🙂
Why doesn’t something like Bostrom’s simulation theory work? Granted, it’s philosophy, not science, but it avoids supernatural beings. He does assume it is humans doing the simulating, but that seems fixable — just make it aliens operating in a universe where the laws of physics are completely different from those in our simulated universe.
Davies has a book coming out in Feb that is about information and biology. It is out in the UK and the Guardian has reviewed it. According to the reviewer, Davies is cautious about Aristotelian-style teleology in science, but the reviewer is happy with the Nagelian vision of a purposeful universe. So that too sorta meets your criterion for a naturalistic design.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/18/demon-in-machine-paul-davies-review
The “demon” is the Maxwell version.
Mung,
I have a theory that the laws of physics are consistent in all corners of the universe, including the parts of the universe which are beyond our ability to ever see.
Is this an unscientific theory, because it can not ever be proven?
Not necessarily. Aspects of your theory might be unprovable so those particular aspects of the theory which go beyond the testable would not be scientific claims. But your theory also seems to entail that the laws of physics within the observable part of the universe, are consistent, so within that realm you theory is testable and therefore scientific.
It does touch on a problem regarding falsifiability. Must theories make practically, or merely principally testable claims? This is one of the questions being debated with respect to string theory. It makes claims which are in principle testable, if we could built a particle accelerate with a circumference of a light-year. Well, building such a machine is technically possible. But there’s a good chance that will never be done, as it is practically unrealistic. That means there is a practicality barrier to the testability of certain predictions of string theory.
It seems to me your theory as you describe it is caught in a similar dilemma. Your theory makes claims about the behavior of the laws of physics in an area of the universe which, if we could actually travel there, we could test the predictions of the theory. That would make it testable in principle. But we can’t go there in practice.
I suppose one should never say never in a situation such as this. At some point in human prehistory, the idea of testing theories about what conditions were like on the bottom of the Mariana’s Trench, or beyond the atmosphere, were practically untestable. You could have had a theory about conditions beyond the atmosphere, or at the deepest places of the ocean, and we would not have had any way to test them in practice. Yet with technological developments, such claims eventually became testable.
So…it seems I’m not the only one confused who Mung attempts to address in this OP… I thought it was Gregory… 🤔
I don’t recall being ‘nasty’ to you, rather only to the position you have been holding in defense of IDism. Consider it Menippean satire if that helps. I’d much rather you be healed from IDism & see no better way to do that than to speak straight up truth to (non-mainstream evangelical protestant) power. That’s what’s at stake between Meyer, West & co. vs. myself along with the many Abrahamic theists they are ignoring to their own peril.
One would think they could at least stand up & acknowledge the design theorists, design thinking, design theories that are clearly present & not ‘unfairly oppressed by Darwinists.’ One would think they would rather have honour as human beings to not stick their heads in the sand at the obvious. Why do they still do this, Mung?
That one issue alone sinks the IDM, as I’ve been saying now for a few years, as it became became clear with Casey Luskin harping the ‘strictly scientific’ refrain in his writings. Giving that man power in a legal sense to manipulate fellow ‘believers’ was one of the worst things the DI has done. Likewise, continuing to employ David Klinghoffer at ENV. These things show the low civility roots of the DI’s long, drawn-out sciency PR campaign, alongside of their high-faluting, politically active & decorated Board of Directors with Howard Ahmanson Jr. quietly making it happen.
As for me, I’m not concerned about the “majority of opponents to ID”, but rather with the correct & justified, nay, even necessary opposition to IDT/IDism by Abrahamic theists. As you are also one of us, I suggest you cluster together a team of voices (Francis Beckwith has some good warnings & strategies to start, as someone who once supported ID & the DI & then changed his mind after working with them) to help resist & eventually overcome the ideology that you’ve at least partially embraced from the DI. Seattle is still a beautiful city even without them on the map! = P
I don’t disagree with the first paragraph.
The DI’s avoidance of the ‘good science’ of ‘common descent’ & an ‘old earth’ & slanting the way they want their followers to approach it is part of what has made the ‘movement’ what it is. Good to hear that you’ve addressed this to John West. It would be helpful to hear his response to your concerns, because he largely dismissed mine, without really facing any of them. Did he actually respond to your concerns or just kick them down the road?
If you’re looking for a new non-movement to financially support instead of the DI, be welcome to contact me privately as I have one in mind.
We already do design thinking, Douglas. Daily, around the world. People already *are* in favour of design & designing. But we respectively reject IDism.
Thanks for coming late to the party & repeating what has already been said & which is already known.
This could very well be wrong as the outer “edges” of the universe are expanding at an accelerated rate faster than the speed of light… are the laws of the physics wrong? Is the interpretation of them wrong? Was Einstein wrong, again? Lol
Mung,
One thing I would find interesting if our collective group could come to a common definition of “common descent”. Maybe you could create a working definition that can be discussed.
When I asked Behe about it his support was not strong enough that he was trying to defend it and in fact was quick to mention its limitation as a theory. The limitation that it did not explain the emergence of new features.
Darwin argued common descent together with natural selection which in tandem attempts to explain the emergence of new features.
Bill,
Mung is probably the right person to ask not only for the definition of common descent but more so what irrefutable evidence would support it…
Here’s an example:
Darwinists predicted the universal genetics code as the evidence for common descent…Now, since the genetic code turned out not to universal, Darwinists say that the variants of genetic code would be predicted by evolution and are the evidence for common descent…Mung seems to support the same notion…
My question still remains: how can two contradictions be the evidence for common descent?
What’s the big deal Bill? It’s easy to understand. It’s the relationship you have with your siblings. You have parents in common. The issue is how far back it goes with the rest of life. How deep it is, and whether we can reconstruct those relationships well enough. This is why we can use qualifiers. For example, common descent refers to any level of the relationship, while universal common descent would mean that all of extant life has such a relationship.
So what exactly confuses you?
How could it be a limitation when that’s not supposed to be what common descent means? Not even close. Your relationship with your brother remains whether you know how your differences arose or not. You’re still siblings. You won’t stop being siblings because that relationship doesn’t explain your differences. So, if Behe thinks that’s the “limitation” of common descent, then he’s too much of an idiot.
Darwin didn’t “argue” common descent as an explanation of the emergence of new features. He argued common descent from the similarities between groups. From the many lines of evidence that he found.
The interesting part was that he also put together a series of phenomena, summarized in the concept of natural selection, that could explain the divergences between lineages, including the emergence of new features.
I had already explained this to you. I hope it was clearer for you this time.
What’s the big bill, Bill?
A New View of Evolution That Can’t Be Represented by a Tree
Darwinosaurs are going down in flames… 🤣
Darwinism is 100% scientific and the other half religious…
Great questions.
But, a better causal account is a secondary matter. The primary matter is two pronged:
1. clear explanatory gap between what we see and our theories
2. possibility of other causal theories and models
The current push of ID has very clearly demonstrated #1, and there is no reason a priori to rule out #2. Doing so just begs the question.
Entropy,
Yes E, I understand your interpretation, now it’s time to see if everyone agrees with you. You should re read what I wrote as your understanding was not complete.
J-Mac,
So there is now more interest in explaining Sal’s flower and Ewert’s dependency graph beyond Harshman’s assertions 🙂
It’s not a matter of agreement, but a matter of understanding. If we understand what the concepts mean, then there’s no way of making the mistake of expecting common ancestry to explain differences between lineages.
No evidence, for anything, is irrefutable. That’s not how evidence works.
If I could say it in my own words, you ain’t seen anything yet!
Due to some obligations, I can’t reveal many details but keep looking for these 3 key words: quantum biology evolution…
You will likely see more and more puzzled Darwinists asking questions not how, but why life systems evolved to use quantum mechanics… It’s unavoidable and hilarious to watch the evolutionary comedy club lol
I agree… It’s called denial … That’s how Darwinism survived…
1. is rather loose & generalistic & offers little of substance.
2. Causal theories & models are widely used in ways that IDists at the DI, your patrons, simply don’t write about or study. Are those the ‘others’ you are still not speaking about?
Why do you continue to ignore the many ‘design theories’ that are not IDist & the design theorists who reject IDism/IDT? It’s inevitable that eventually you must face them directly. The reluctance to even acknowledge the existence of non-IDist ‘design thinking’ is a gigantic sign of the broken political machinations within IDism & the wrong direction the IDM & IDT have gone under the DI’s leadership. EricMH seems to be choosing the same path of his Jedi leaders in Seattle to think first of PR rather than social reality & truth in science, philosophy & theology/worldview, thus avoiding rather than engaging the question fairly & justly.
Is there any scientific theory that you can’t mangle?
The lightspeed limitation derived by Einstein applies to objects comprised of mass-energy. There is, however, no limitation on the rate of expansion of space.
It is the expansion of space that is causing the outer regions of the universe to recede from us faster than light (and, as a byproduct, creates the phenomenon of an “edge” to the observable universe).
The expansion of the universe occurs precisely because the laws of physics apply everywhere, not in spite of them.
Lol
This tells me that you did even bother to look it up…
Your ignorance can be explained, in my own words, by the “difference” or the aplication between special relativity and general relativity…
SR is more like a local cop, who says nothing can go faster than speed of light…
GR is like a cop patrolling an autoban in Germany where there is no speed limits…
SR cop doesn’t care about the GR cop and vice versa…
But then there is quantum entanglement…the illusion of time at least on subatomic level…
And then there is Anisotropic Synchrony Convention…🤔
I have some serious worries about whether there could be a scientific theory of what is non-material. Quite often “immaterial” is construed as meaning “transcending time and space”, and I have no idea how whatever transcends time and space could be measured. But without measurement there’s no way to confirm the testable implications of a model. No measurement, no science.
More to the point, materialism and naturalism are simply irrelevant to the whole “debate” about evolutionary theory and Intelligent Design. Even if Intelligent Design were a superior theory to evolutionary theory, that could not tell us anything about whether materialism is true or false. It could do that only if Intelligent Design included a theory of what intelligence is, but it is officially prohibited from doing exactly that.
There cannot be a science of the immaterial because it is science itself which defines the immaterial.
Consider as examples of can be considered to have crossed the boundary one we or another: non-local correlations in QM, virtual particles in physics, the universe beyond our observable spacetime, dark energy, vitalistic force, information, mass itself (sorta).
Laws of physics are formal descriptions of observed phenomena.
Phenomena do not obey or disobey laws.
I think we should restrict ourselves to saying that all known phenomena, including the weird ones, are regular, and do not require magical explanations.
The problem is your #1 is based on your ignorance of biology and use of analogies and models which don’t come anywhere near accurately depicting actual evolutionary processes.
Several dozen people have pointed this out to you on multiple boards where you’ve been preaching your nonsense. I’ve yet to see you offer a single rebuttal anywhere. You just keep that head down and keep on preaching.
Gregory,
Can you elaborate on this?
Literally nobody believes what you are trying to imply here. It’s really rather pathetic.
I don’t really know how you could read the many threads on Common Descent and come away thinking we have not tried to make the case on its own merits.
Lol … Quantum physics … can’t say more … one day you’ll see … lol.
For a moment there I had to double-check the name of the poster.
Rumraket,
Lol!
You can read minds? Tell me, the mind reader, what I’m thinking about your pathetic comments over the last few months…?
Tell us more..😂
Maybe shouldn’t be paying attention to the weather network…🤣
Are you sure you want him to answer this, Bill?
I know you are retired and have extra time on your hands but even then who wants to read pages of elaborate blathering that never lead to the point? Suit yourself…😉
For sure, lots of crazy ideas that begin as mere conjecture end up as empirically confirmed models that have survived numerous rounds of testing. But I take it that the crucial step involves figuring out how to measure the effects of the posited cause. So I’m much more interested in drawing the distinction between
“what we know how to measure” and “what we don’t know how to measure” — operationalized verifiability, if you will.
You’re telling me! Though there maybe be a problem with “seeing” mathematical concepts or probabilities… but you two should never give up…🤣
ETA: Unless of course the human eye could “see” the quantum superposition…
I’ve given a promise to my kids that I will not be revealing any further details unless I give them sufficient time to figure them out first…
I sure knew nobody here would… 😂
Never change J-mac, never change.
Congratulations, you’ve hit the trifecta – cosmological ignorance, quantum woo and Jason Lisle’s Last Thursdayism, all in one comment. I dips me lid.
You’re welcome!
Check out NASA’ s website maybe you will learn something…
It just hit me! You already know everything🤣
Kids! Time is up! Tymoth and the gang didn’t do their homework….😅
https://www.space.com/33306-how-does-the-universe-expand-faster-than-light.html