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.
After four kidney transplants and witnessing the various ills folks with kidney disease face along with those who died not having their prayers answered, I can say with 100% certainty that faith healing is bunk and science works.
That’s great, but you still haven’t responded to my point.
That’s just silly. Basically you’re saying that your god is prone to the same limitations and errors that humans face. Correction – more prone since faith healing has a significantly lower success rate. And worse, tosses in fickleness in just plain whimsically refusing to heal some people of faith. Good luck with that…
Free will is the how; logic is the tool; necessity for a rational worldview is the reason.
If this god/intention thing is no better than a placebo, what exactly is the point?
No, I’m saying that humans who are utilizing faith as a method of healing are as prone to such limitations.
I guess that depends on what you mean by “better”.
Let’s say that the faith healing triggered a placebo effect for my wife, and she went into spontaneous remission. Is that better than going through months of chemo & radiation treatment, or dying, even if such a chain of events cannot be replicated on demand in any way?
I’d say it’s “better”.
Except that the healing comes not from the faith healer, but from some god, so ultimately it’s the god’s limitation, not the healers. Or are you suggesting that the healers can get their earnestness wrong? “Oh…man…sorry about your kid dying. God would have saved him, but I’m afraid I could not concentrate enough because my taxes are due tomorrow.”
I gotta admit though, the image you are painting with those responses is darn funny. Thanks!
“No better than a placebo” = has no better success rate than no treatment.
Except that it’s no better than doing nothing and having the same remission effect.
William J Murray,
By definition, a miracle has no limits.
That’s what makes it a miracle, that something that should not be able to happen, just happened.
If you say that that particular something could have happened, then it is not a miracle that it did.
Either god is capable of miracles or he isn’t.
Which is it?
That’s not what is going on in my view. IMO, ALL healing is, ultimately, faith healing. Everything that occurs, occurs as the result (directly or indirectly) of intent. The pattern of how (and if) that healing occurs is a function of the individual’s intent and their nature, regardless of if the healing comes in the form of standard medicine, acupuncture, faith healing, or any other healing avenue.
The pattern of how anyone else observes what occurs is due to their nature and intent. The “faith healer” is just a vehicle for whatever the intent ultimately is – just like “standard medicine”. Any of it can fail or succeed, depending on the intent and nature of the individuals trying to be healed and those observing the process.
Well, my apologies then on misunderstanding what you meant by faith healing. However, you’ve now set up a contradiction: if all forms of healing are faith healing, then your statement about using faith healing vs chemo makes no sense. How is healing as a result of chemo any less faith healing than prayer?
Sheesh. I’m trying to recall who said “whoever can believe in gods, can believe in anything.” Whoever it was, nailed it precisely. Once both evidence and plausibility are discarded, belief knows (and shows) no limits. Why should it?
At the end of the day, it’s not any less “faith healing”. We just call them two different things, and they look like two different things – like water, ice, and steam. It’s all still water.
Of course, people have been trying to fly by various contrivances since Icarus. It’s a good thing science has lent a hand to “faith flying”; praying real real hard works so much better when godless research lets us know how to build airplanes, cure diseases. and pretend it’s all magic on the internet!
So you’re claiming that chemo and faith healing are equivalent? Time to cancel your health insurance?
“Whoever can believe in materialism, can believe in anything.” THAT nails it, precisely…
WJM:
Darwin’s ‘a priori’ was Christian, Creationism. His self-imposed ‘brief’ was to explain ‘clumpy’ diversity and the discordance between the fossil record and modern organisms and between different geological epochs, rather than having as entire purpose the explanation of Design. He certainly makes reference to Paley’s viewpoint, but also to the influence of Malthus and the role of population limits in conditioning that which survives. Characterising Darwinism as as “the entire purpose of which was to explain the apparent design found in life” is simply historically inaccurate. But of course you’ll remain unmoved in your lotus position, convinced you are the only honest thinker in the house. Anything and everything one such as me says MUST be due to my ideological blinkers. I could not possibly be interested in factual accuracy, could I?
Again, as I have noted, many cultures did not take a “design” approach to their creation myths, nor even invoke a supernatural being. It is inaccurate to say that “biological life forms have always appeared to be designed, and it is only those most deeply ingrained in materialist ideology that can say it doesn’t appear to be designed.”. If someone cannot see the design that you see, it does not mean that they are blind.
It does not appear to be designed, at any level. I’m probably more aware than you of the deep complexities underlying this ‘microscopic’ level, but still it does not shout out “Designer!” from every pore. If it did, I would say so – I have no inner compulsion to be ‘for’ or ‘against’ the Judaeo-Christian God, despite your apparent certainty that ‘God-rejection’ lies in the dark heart of every atheist-materialist, and they don’t even know it. Life is stuffed with the debris of common descent and mutational happenstance. ‘Fortunate’ mutations – like successful faith-healing outcomes – are in the minority, but seem to be something more than they are, to those determined that there exist something more than they are.
Well, no 🙂
It means “no better than a placebo”. Placebo is frequently better than “no treatment”, which is why we actually use placebos in trials!
The placebo effect is remarkably powerful, or can be.
Like when a tornado tears a house apart and forces a two by four through a parent’s head but their nearby child isn’t physically injured? Where’s the miracle for the parent who was killed? And where’s the miracle for the child who is now homeless and whose parent is dead?
Like when a child is born with a horrible, terminal illness, but their sibling is not? Where’s the miracle for the suffering, dying, dead child? And where’s the miracle for the family who watches their loved one suffer and die?
Like when a gazelle that was just born is killed and eaten by lions? Where the miracle for the newborn gazelle, or its parents?
Like when an asteroid slams into the Earth and wipes out millions of individuals of thousands of species? Where’s the miracle for them?
Are miracles always a good thing, or are some miracles a bad thing? And what’s the point of miracles? Is “God” just playing with its ‘creation’ and showing off?
There’s a “theory” called “Darwinism”? That’s news to me.
It’s been about 10 years since I encountered Sal on ARN. Looks like nothing has changed since.
I just got a phone call from Fred the giant frog god and she asked me to tell you that she is not limited to what you imagine she can or can’t do, nor to what you imagine must motivate her.
What if the diagnosis of cancer was wrong. Do you have evidence to show that it was 100% correct? Do you believe that all medical diagnoses are correct?
No, nothing much has changed. The “discussions” continue to consist of Sal asking misleading questions, ignoring all responses and questions, and making unsupportable assertions. It’s all like:
Sal: Have you stopped beating your wife?
A1: I’m not married.
A2: I AM a wife.
A3: I never started
Sal: How can we have a discussion when nobody is willing to respond to my questions?
According to joe, ice isn’t water.
Contradict yourself much? Don’t you constantly argue that materialism places limitations on things?
William J. Murray said:
No, I’m saying that humans who are utilizing faith as a method of healing are as prone to such limitations.
So it’s humans that are doing the faith healing, not your god?
A reasonable summary 😉
I did hope to learn whether Sal was still promoting Genetic ID as an example of “intelligent design”. Sal?
A long time ago I managed a drug store with a pharmacy, so I had access to a lot of drug company research materials. One of the things that always struck me was how effective the placebo effect was. Often, the actual drug would only marginally do better than the placebo, but they would both be very effective treatments.
Today, a relatively new term is the “nocebo” effect, or what is an anti-placebo effect, which has been known to cause negative effects up to and including, apparently, death. It is when patients believe that what they are taking has negative side effects, or believe that they have a disease they do not really have.
It is a fact that the mind has a very powerful, physical effect on the body. This is one reason why, IMO, it is extremely important that one examine their system of thought, their beliefs, and their fundamental premises. For good or bad, what one believes, what one has faith in, affects at least their state of mind, physical health, and the kinds of actions and choices they make in the world.
IMO, humans are individuated aspects of god, like waves on the ocean.
Rationalizing away the sequence of events away to fit into my then-atheistic, materialist outlook would have been intellectually dishonest, especially in light of seeing the child healed of his wounds in real time at the same faith healing. Of course, it could all just be a coincidence of events that have other explanations. As I said before, there’s always plausible deniability.
We generally don’t refer to bad things that happen as “miracles”, but it’s still that which is produced, directly or indirectly, by faith. If you have faith you will fail, or that you will get sick (and by faith I mean it is a deep-rooted condition of your identity), you can bet you will experience it.
I think that when more recognizable miracles are produced or experienced, it is like a doorway one can walk through or slam shut if they wish – even if the miracle isn’t a good thing particularly. For example, one thing I noticed about my life up to when I started applying these principles was that, no matter how much money I made, I always lived on the edge of finanicial ruin. If something really bad happened and we needed a lot of money, something would happen and we’d get money. If we got a lot of money, something would happen that would require all of it. I recognized this as a highly unlikely, long-standing set of events that pointed to some kind of control mechanism that was keeping us in a certain kind of situation, and I wanted to change it. IOW, that we always stayed exactly “on the edge” wasn’t the kind of thing one would normally refer to as a miracle, but I recognized it as a miraculous series of events nonetheless.
As far a s god “playing around”, I think you and I think about “god” from two very different frameworks. I don’t see god as an individuated entity per se. I think we are aspects of god (children of god, made in the image of god, waves of the ocean), who are essentially eternal and indestructible, populating certain aspects of ongoing creation and creating it from within, as part of it. IOW, creation is what we, as aspects of god, create and experience as an ongoing, experiential process.
Your god created HIV deliberately. You are a sick puppy.
Unless of course you lost a leg or even just a finger, in which case your god cannot help restore it. Yet it can cure cancer. And while it’s curing cancer it’s improving HIV to kill more.
Go figure.
Hey I get it- you don’t have a clue…
Whoever believes living organisms can/ did arise from non-living matter via necessity and chance, can/ will believe in anything.
It isn’t. Ice has a melting point and water does not. So obvioulsy there is a difference. And thankfully most bar tenders know the difference between water and ice.
William most likely meant to say it is all still H2O
Except ice has a melting point and water does not.
It is an example of intelligent design.
OTOH your position’s examples only include breaking things and making functionality less specific.
So if I understand you correctly, taking medical action, praying, and doing nothing are all forms of faith healing. Is that correct?
If so, why would you ever do anything?
OMTWO:
You need to don your polarising blinkers (or shed your bipolar ones; not sure which). You won’t get anywhere seeing both sides of the coin. HIV, cancer, flu epidemics and the like are what happens when unguided mutation gains the upper hand. Tap into The Source and, if you believe loud enough, these adversities can be defeated. It looks like it can suppress cell proliferation, but not promote it, hence no new fingers.
If you don’t happen to believe, there are always meds for you to believe in instead. They work in the much same way, with the money siphoned off to Big Pharma instead of your local snake-handler.
Indeed. But even given all their shortcomings I’ll think I’ll stick with Big Pharma. And should I be struck down with a (currently) incurable condition I can say with 100% certainty I have no faith that faith healing would do anything other then waste what time I had left.
Mmm. Faith healing may be just a bit o’harmless fun … until people start to decline empirically verified, targetted treatments. I don’t know how much suffering such an attitude has caused, but I would consider it a safe bet that for every case of spontaneous remission with faith healing involvement, there will be at least one occurring without it, along with at least one death from a ‘conventional’ treatment declined in error. Survival rates are climbing all the time, no thanks to the faith healers.
far, far too much. Some places in the USA even have laws that if you allow your child to suffer and die because of religious beliefs you will not be charged. Thankfully that’s changing as more examples of “child dies from easily curable condition while the family prayed” come to light.
He then runs off to other venues to crow about “Darwinists being ubable to answer his questions”. We don’t need a series of posts by Sal.
True, what this blog needs is a series of posts supporting the claims of materialism and evolutionism.
What are the odds of that ever happening?
Take Intelligent Design off of the table and you still have nothing. Not only that you don’t even have ID to gripe about.
Yeah, my problem is I could never stop beating the dead horse.
I worked as a counselor in children’s protective services for seven years. I put faith healers and those who support them in the same moral category as child rapists.
My position may look extreme, but here’s the rest of it:
If you are an adult I have no problem with you choosing to accept or reject medical treatment of any kind.
If you are responsible for the care of another person, or if you are advising another person, I have no problem with faith or positive thinking as an adjunct to medicine.
If you or your advisee are facing an untreatable illness, or an illness where treatments are marginably effective, I have no problem with rejecting treatment.
I consider it reprehensible to advise another person to reject mainstream medicine in cases where mainstream medicine has a significant cure rate or effective palliative treatment. I think it is reprehensible to take money or contributions for faith healing treatments. I think faith healers are liars of the worst sort.
If the advisee is a child, I consider it criminal. In fact I have been in a position to make it criminal.
Nobody said anything about not going to a regular doctor for your treatment, or keeping your child from mainstream medicine. I don’t know of any faith healers that advocate not going to a regular doctor as your avenue of primary care. I also don’t know of any faith healers that take money. The ones we went to didn’t – they wouldn’t even accept unsolicited contributions.
I’m guessing that Sal realized his refusal to answer questions OR listen to answers was getting just a little too blatant, so he ran off again.
So now we can resume chasing WMJ around in circles while he plays find-the-pea with the goalposts.
So that’s where our experience differs. I’m a bit touchy about because I worked with medically neglected children.
I don’t think anyone disputes that positive thinking can enhance one’s ability to survive.
There are treatable diseases and there are untreatable, and many in-between. I have no problem with anything that gives comfort to the untreatable and the in-betweeners.
I’m just wondering if WJM’s faith in miracles extends to internet service without an electronic device. Can you pray your way into your email, William?