As a card carrying creationist, I’ve sometimes wanted to post about my reservations regarding the search for evidence of Intelligent Design (ID) and some of the rottenness in the search for evidence in young earth creation. I’ve refrained from speaking my mind on these matters too frequently lest I ruffle the feathers of the few friends I have left in the world (the ID community and the creationist community). But I must speak out and express criticism of my own side of the aisle on occasion.
Before proceeding, I’d like to thank Elizabeth for her hospitality in letting me post here. She invited me to post some things regarding my views of Natural Selection and Genetic Algorithms, but in the spirit of skepticism I want to offer criticism of some of my own ideas.So this essay will sketch what I consider valid criticism of ID, creationism in general and Young Earth Creationism (YEC) in particular.
Take any of the accepted laws of physics, like say the classic one, F=ma in classical mechanics. The physical behavior requires no Intelligent Designer. This is true of every physical law. I recall a professor of physics saying, “after Newton there was no need of witches or of God”. What she meant, it seems to me, is God was irrelevant to understanding physical law. Invoking God doesn’t give further insight to understanding physics.
Only in some controversial interpretations of Quantum Mechanics will some physicists even dare to argue God exists. Such arguments have been put forward by Richard Conn Henry, John Barrow, Frank Tipler, FJ Belinfante etc. See:
But that is the crux of the problem. If the Intelligent Designer is not the focus of physics, and physics underlies all the sciences, then how can ID then be incorporated into science? In that regard, I’m mostly ambivalent to arguing whether ID is science or not.
Like the play “Waiting for Godot”, we are “Waiting for the Intelligent Designer”. I reject the notion that one can apply stone henge as evidence of intelligent design and then make an equally believable case that one can look at the intricacies of the cell and conclude the Intelligent Designer exists. When I was an engineering student, I would be subject to examination to demonstrate that I could make designs. Human made designs are thus subject to independent verification. We can subject those sort of intelligent designers to field laboratory testing, we cannot do so regarding the supposed Intelligent Designer of the universe and life. This lack of direct testability will always leave quite a bit of room for skepticism, if not some inclination for outright rejection, no matter how powerful the arguments are against chemical and biological evolution.
If God were continually making miracles like he did in the time of Moses, we might not be having these debates, but as for now He has chosen to remain hidden from observation and experiment which are the foundations of science.
These criticism of ID will apply to creationism and particularly young earth creationism. Even supposing miracles are real, by their very nature, miracles will elude repeatability (that’s why they are miracles!). The most we can hope for is to use science to demonstrate that an unusual mechanism had to be responsible for certain phenomena. You can pretty much forget being able to create experiments that will require the Intellgent Designer to appear in the laboratory or in the field. Not even creationists will argue for that possibility.
But that is not my worst complaint about the enterprise of YECism. The community appeals to Biblical authority to “prove” its case. But that is no proof whatsoever, and I’d argue that even the Bible doesn’t teach this as a method of proof. Is there biblical thermodynamics, calculus, electromagnetism, classical mechanics, linear algebra, or any major field of research that can be resolved by theology? No.
For example, some YECs will come around and preach that if you don’t believe the Earth is Young, then you’re compromising the word of God. To which I respond, well what does the book of Genesis have to say about what the right form of Maxwell’s Equations should be or how do your resolve the conflict of YEC with the Einstein-Planck equation that is related to the photo electric effect and thus all of Quantum Mechanics. At that point, the preachers have little to say. They’ll then proceed to make disparaging comments about my character.
The major problem of YEC (and there are many) is the problem of distant starlight. Some will invoke temporally and spatially varying speeds of light. Some will argue light was created en-route that gives the appearance of age (GAG!). The problem with varying speeds of light is in order to preserve the energy of the Einstein-Planck equation, one has to then invoke a varying Planck’s constant, which would mean the undoing of Quantum Mechanics. So YECism flies in the face of Maxwell’s Equations (electromagnetism), Relativity (which is related to Maxwell’s Equations), and Quantum Mechanics — no small pillars of real science! Though YECism might stand on its own against evolutionism, it collapses under the weight of modern physics.
But that is not even the end of the story. YECists like Ken Ham routinely demonize other Christians who disagree with him. This is personally distasteful because many in the ID community who have even been expelled and suffered career loss for their criticism of Darwin are also demonized by the likes of Ken Ham. Even supposing YEC is true, this is no way to treat fellow Christian who have shown a lot of courage in speaking their conscience.
Does his organization spend lots of money on real science? Well relative to the millions they spend on amusement parks which they pass off as the “creation museum”, they don’t do much on behalf of answering scientific questions. I’ve mentioned three major problems which are utterly neglected in favor of building amusement parks of no scientific value.
If YECists consider it sinful to believe in an Old Universe, then they’ll have to come to terms with the work of creationists like Maxwell, who ironically has given the best line of reasoning to argue against YECism. Using intimidation, demonization, and appeals to theology will not make much of a persuasive case, even to card carrying creationists like me. In fact, it only reinforces the view they have no facts to stand on, only blind belief.
Sometimes the way YEC “research” is conducted reminds me of the geocentrists that attempted to influence my denomination, the PCA. [incidentally physicist Dave Snoke is an Elder in the PCA, and Dave Heddle is deeply sympathetic to the PCA]. It was disgusting to try to reason with geocentrists. I know many Christian believers, who are in the aerospace industry. That industry wouldn’t achieve its success if it accepted geocentrism. I even met a Christian creationist astronaut who walked on the moon (Charles Duke). This would not be possible if the biblical geocentrists had their way. But some people are so committed to their own theology, they are unwilling to be reasoned with, nor will they seriously engage reasonable objections to their claims. If you want a taste of geocentrism, go here:
Though YECs one the whole aren’t as bad as the geocentrists, there are pockets of them that are as bad, imho. I don’t want these sort of people on my team, and hence I have chosen to affiliate myself with the ID community because of some of the rotten tomatoes in creationism.
So then, in light of these things, why do I accept ID as true and hold out a smidgen of hope that YEC might be true? That obviously will be the subject of future posts at the Skeptical Zone, but all this to say, one can’t accuse me of not recognizing serious difficulties in some of the ideas I’ve promoted and explored. And that is what I would hope the skeptical zone is about.
?
I guess I’ll have to agree here – if Darwin could deny what is obvious at the macro level, he certainly could have denied it at the microscopic level as well. If he couldn’t give up his ideology for the human eye, he probably couldn’t have given it up for nanotechnology either.
They were assuming a clockwork. Regularity.
Which is why science still looks for regularity.
Not only can, but do. Often.
Please give me an example of design at the “obvious” level.
Is the Parasitoid wasp an example of such “obvious” design? How about the screw-worm? Would you look at those and say “obviously designed”?
What about HIV? Designed?
Fer instance?
Yet above you said
Yet both cannot be true. If, as you claim, miracles happen often then how can we tell if a given result (say in a scientific experiment) is the result of a miracle or not?
A universe where miracles can and do happen is not a rationally-appreciable world!
William J Murray,
Then why do miracles never happen visibly in front of BOTH theists and atheists?
For instance, a missing finger re-appearing on a hand on live TV, as opposed to chronic pain disappearing where the only evidence is based on the believer.
There’s too many to list, and I’m not sure how I could contextualize it. I described one such instance in relative detail in the Libertarian Free will thread:
Another case would be: my wife was faith-healed of supposedly terminal cancer over 20 years ago.
Another case would be how I got my current job/career that I’ve had for about 17-18 years now with no experience and no education in the field (graphic & print design & layout).
The miraculous is an almost daily occurrence in my life. I certainly appreciate and am grateful for the many large and countless small miracles I’ve experienced and which have made my life such a satisfying joy to experience.
I was an atheist when my wife was faith-healed of supposedly terminal cancer. I could have interpreted that chain of events as a coincidence (compounded, perhaps, by some kind of group delusion). I suspect many miracles happen in front of atheists; but, if they have free will, they will always be able to choose not to see it as such.
If they do not have free will, they just aren’t programmed to see it, or interpret it as such.
I don’t think anyone can experience anything that is sufficiently divergent from the nature of their being.
BTW, I was still an atheist for quite a while after that faith-healing event, but that event really got me to thinking about how I interpreted and organized the stuff I experienced.
Not a miracle. Spontaneous remission happens, no miracle required. Perhaps we’re not sure why it happens but it’s not a miracle. And why only your wife? Many other people have terminal cancer and have faith healing performed but don’t receive a miracle cure. Somewhat arbitrary miracle…
Not a miracle. I’ve got a well paying job but left school at 17. Miracle? No. Perhaps talent helps?
Good for you. However you’ve yet to given an example of an actual miracle, only happen-stance.
It seems that your definition of “miracle” is very different to mine.
A miracle is a miracle. Could you give an example of such a miracle that an atheist is able to deny is a miracle?
A man flying (as given as an example on UD recently) would be a miracle undeniable to atheists and theists alike.
Or perhaps they are simply rational people who don’t reach into the “miracle” bag at the first opportunity?
Presumably the cancer did not fly out of your wife there and then. Why would you even link the faith healing event with the subsequent remission?
And what of all those people who do not receive cures? To me a miracle would be somebody like you seriously examining all the holes in their worldview. Is HIV designed William?
A rational response to that would have been to say “hmm, everybody here is asking for cures but nobody is getting one – this is a scam!”
Ah! The ideological preconceptions that he, Wallace and other nineteenth century naturalists all grew up with. That staunch European atheism which had endured for so many centuries, and coloured all of their views. They just couldn’t learn how to make proper arguments from analogy, could they?
It’s obvious that:
We intelligently design houses with floors, walls and roofs, and these function as sheltered habitats for us.
Caves have floors, walls and roofs, and they can function as sheltered habitats for us and other creatures. Therefore, we can infer that caves are also intelligently designed.
We intelligently design canals to function as transport routes.
Rivers are also waterways that can function as transport routes, so we can infer that they also are intelligently designed.
We intelligently design nuclear power stations. The sun powers life on earth through nuclear reactions, therefore……etc.
Function, William, should not to be confused with intended purpose. It is not obvious that things are intelligently designed merely because we can make analogies with our own designs.
I guess, then, that you’d have to tell me what you mean by “miracle” to be able to parse events in my life to see if anything I’ve experienced meets your criteria.
William J Murray,
Why can’t faith-healers heal visible problems like missing fingers or burns on a child’s hands and face?
Give me just one example of the re-appearance of an arm or leg.
She was diagnosed with it, went to a faith healer, went back to the doctor, told them she wouldn’t do the chemo without a second round of tests, they did a 2nd round of tests, and everything was clear.
I could have passed it off as a coincidence, but that wouldn’t have been honest, IMO. When I take medication between doctor visits and the illness/condition disappears, I don’t chalk it up to “coincidence”; why should I do so when the apparently intermediary event was a faith-healing?
Of course, you don’t get “faith healing on demand” like you can with a doctor and antibiotics, but again, that wasn’t an isolated incident. There were many events that, upon consideration thereof, I started reassessing my overall perspective, especially in regards to “consensual empiricism” as a philosophical arbiter of “what is real”.
Toronto,
I have no such examples. I (and many others) did witness lacerations on a child’s head heal before my (our) eyes in a few seconds. A friend of mine and I effortlessly picked up a heavy couch, each of us using only the ends of two fingers, whereas before we could hardly lift it using both hands and all our strength.
But, I don’t know that those things would qualify under your particular definition of “miracle.”
But anyway, it’s not in my philosophy that I can convince people that miracles of any sort exist; instead, my philosophy is that you cannot convince anyone of anything that sufficiently diverges from the nature of their being or, if you will, the fundamental aspects of their deeply-held world-view.
IOW, if some people can fly, or do other such feats, neither I or anyone else will see it until/unless I/we can transform ourselves into a state that can accept such a context in relationship to our identity.
William J Murray,
The problem is that these things are never documented on a video but for some reason, faith healings where the intervention is not in a position to be documented on camera, are.
Pain, deafness, blindness get cured on my Sunday morning channel hopping all the time, but never has anything visible ever been healed.
While I can’t say your event didn’t happen, your TYPE of event, a visible healing, never appears alongside those that require faith to believe that they occurred.
A miracle would be any faith healer at all, to restore someone’s missing limb.
If faith healing is true, then god is limited in his power, since it does not extend to limbs.
It’s not a problem for me. I don’t require all that is real to be consensually demonstrable.
It’s a good thing, then, that I’ve never asserted god to have unlimited power.
I think you missed the point, which isn’t that it’s “consensually demonstrable”, but whether it is EVER verifiable.
Just as a mind experiment, imagine that there’s no such thing as faith healing, but you strongly wish (for some reason) to give the impression there is. How would you go about it?
Well, you know it can never stand up to examination or verification, so you make sure these are never possible. And you know you can’t claim faith healing produces physiological changes visible to the objective observer, so you make sure the “cures” make no such changes. And you make faith healing unreliable and intermittent, so that it never seems to work when a qualified professional is around (who isn’t in on the scam) who might know better.
And by golly, what you’ve come up with is indistinguishable from “real” faith healing! What a mind-boggling coincidence. How do you explain such an extraordinary coincidence? Easy. Just say “it’s not a problem for me” and POOF it’s not a problem for you. Gotta love it.
I don’t see anyone posting on this board (except maybe you and Joe) arguing the opposite. Certainly none of us who do any kind of research do; research data is not consented to, but rather is provided for others to try and work. It’s no different than baking a cake – you can agree with someone else that you make the exact same kind demonstrated product all you want, but unless you both actually use the same recipe and tools (ovens with same temperatures, environments with similar humidity and pressures, etc) you are not going to have similar outcomes.
Ironically insisting that you witnessed a fantastic healing event and relying on that to be support for your view that the fantastic can and does occur relies upon the idea of consensual demonstration as far as definitions go, but perhaps you mean something else by “consensual demonstration”.
WJM: You would not write books or post on forums if you were not motivated to convince people.
The only other sane reason for posting is to learn from others and to clarify one’s own thoughts.
Since you have declared yourself free of competence in the technical argument, and have expressed no desire to learn, I have to assume that you are out to convince. Perhaps to drum up links to support book sales.
William J Murray,
Exactly.
If faith healing were valid, those who have faith would be healed, of “whatever” disease they have.
Why would the ability to intercede in the material world be limited to those things outside of human scrutiny?
Why would the designer of life itself, be limited in healing that very thing he has designed?
How can a designer who can create and fine tune the entire universe be blocked from regenerating limbs on humans?
I didn’t insist. Someone asked about experienced miracles, I relayed a personal anecdote.
Support for my view … to whom? To me? I don’t require such support – I believe as I wish. To others? I specifically said I believe such testimony is entirely ineffectual when it comes to changing anyone’s mind.
If I were trying to convince others that such things occur, you might have a point. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything. I have no reason to, even if I thought it was possible.
stcordova
I’d like to thank all the participants for the dialogue. Like Allen MacNeill, I view these discussions as a means to clarify our positions and clean up our mistakes and strengthen our presentation.
No Sal, thank you for one again clearly demonstrating what Intelligent Design Creationism is all about. Thank you for lying about the multiple examples of potential positive evidence for ID you were given. Thank you for ignoring the tough questions you were asked and for just repeating your unsupported assertions. Thank you for attributing to me words I never said and a position I never supported. Most of all thank you for the smarmy false niceties, showing everyone that it’s OK to lie your ass off for Jesus as long as you do it politely.
William J Murray,
That’s exactly who it’s for, you.
List every single thing that happened, micro and macroscopically, in the relevant period of time. Then we can determine what is coincidence and what is not. We can perhaps find another group of people who did everything except the faith healing event and see if their cancer vanishes. And then we can find another group of people with one more difference, and so on and so forth, until we identify the causal factor.
Personally I’d not have stopped investigating at “faith healing” and then become a theist.
Non miracles as evidence of miracles is unpersuasive, yes.
Exactly so.
For those who have experienced unexpected healing, I wonder what they say to people who are dying unhealed, or who have lost a loved one.
Tough shit? God hates you?
Or something more loving, such as, “God must really love you to take you home early”?
Perhaps WJM could volunteer as a counselor in a child cancer ward and tell the kids how God cures some people,. but fuck you.
stcordova,
This is something I’m glad I was a witness to Sal.
If your position had any credibility you would present that evidence instead of putting words in people’s mouths.
Toronto,
If modern medicine was valid, those that go to hospitals would be healed of “whatever” disease they have. Just as a doctor or a hospital cannot guarantee outcomes even if there are no errors in diagnosis or treatment, because one has faith doesn’t guarantee any particular experiential outcome.
Being unavailable to validation via consensual empiricism is not the same as being outside of human scrutiny.
Why wouldn’t he be? Because I design a thing, I have unlimited power over it? Not true. I can design a piece of art; that doesn’t mean I can repair it if part of it is torn off and burned. Whether or not one designs a thing doesn’t correspond to the kind of power it may or may not have after the thing exists; that is just a power thing. I don’t believe god has unlimited power. First and foremost, it is limited by logic. Even god cannot make a 4-sided triangle, nor can god make 2+3=7.
Off the top of my head, because it might violate their free will.
petrushka
For those who have experienced unexpected healing, I wonder what they say to people who are dying unhealed, or who have lost a loved one.
Tough shit? God hates you?
Or something more loving, such as, “God must really love you to take you home early”?
Perhaps WJM could volunteer as a counselor in a child cancer ward and tell the kids how God cures some people,. but fuck you.
That God guy is a real hard ass.
It’s always interesting when a plane crashes with only one survivor. The religious folks all yell “Miracle!!”, conveniently forgetting about the other 299 people God has just given a violent fiery death.
William J Murray,
But that’s what makes a miracle a miracle, that it does NOT work like anything man does and does NOT have those limits.
Modern medicine may fail, but miracles by definition, are not limited by anything.
That sounds like a good Sam Kinison skit.
By your definition, perhaps. But I’ve never argued or asserted that god, or the power of intention, is unlimited. Some things are impossible. Others are just highly unlikely. God/intention can do the latter, but not the former.
I’m personally offended by wealthy (relatively speaking) Americans who rate guardian angels, while Behe’s Designer is busy ramping up new models of malaria and other parasites for the children of Africa.
Now if this life is the designer’s idea of a joke, and this is just a Matrix, and we’ll all be together in the sweet by and by, then all I can say is what a great sense of humor.
But if I could choose someone to heal by faith, I’d have chosen Jim Henson.
William J Murray,
Why do ONLY visible diseases fall into the category of violating their free will?
William J Murray,
If I was god, and just finished designing the universe and fine tuning the laws of physics, I would be very interested in your claim that I have any limits at all.
What in your half century or so of life on this planet allows you to judge the capabilities and limitations of someone who created you and everything you have ever encountered in your entire existence?
IMO, because if an observer is forced to see and assimilate a factual, obvious, no-means-of-denial case of miraculous faith healing, they could no longer believe that miracles and faith healing do not occur, which would be a violation of their free will. As long as there is plausible deniability, however thinly, there is room for a free will choice to believe or not believe.
Logic.
Logically speaking, is HIV designed?
Ultimately, everything that exists is the product of intent, whether directly or indirectly, IMO.
Well, I should say that everything that exists as an independent, distinguishable commodity is the product (directly or indirectly) of intent. Psychoplasm and the mind of god are not products of intent, but they exist.
William J Murray,
How can you judge the “logic” of the entity that was the source of logic and free will?
Do you know at least as much as the designer of everything?
Do you know half?
How do you determine half of everything there is to be known without knowing ALL there is to be known?
Disagreeing with the tone in the choice of my words does not address the point I actually made.
Providing such an anecdote is still an attempt at supporting your view, even if you don’t believe that such support will sway your audience. It’s saying, “I don’t care what others say or believe because I had a personal experience.” Such a statement is an excuse for not considering some other person’s (or peoples’) statements to the contrary.
But you are still trying to convince folks that your position has some level of validity – otherwise you would not be trying to defend your use of the anecdote to me. It’s still there to prop up your insistence that everyone else here on this board is either ignorant or blind. And it’s still – ironically – a reliance on consensual demonstration.
Robin,
I am not limited to that which you imagine must motivate me.