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.
Remind me again how a program “chooses” to stop running as it was programmed?
How did you do it? Specifically?
I don’t have so much of a problem with that one, actually, since finding a decent mechanic just may require a miracle.
Ah, so it’s predestination.
When, in the course of the programmed operations, a free will capacity emerges; one can at that point either choose to maintain the emergent property of free will (emergent, as in revealed, not emergent, as in generated), or choose to deny it/give it up.
William J Murray,
So something that is initially programmed without free will can develop free will on its own?
If that property emerges, it has the choice at that point and can elect to give it up at any time.
William J Murray,
If free will emerges from a program that did not have free will programmed into it, then that program generated functionality that was not programmed into it by the intelligent designer.
Is that correct?
The program doesn’t gain any functionality because free will in not part of any “program”. I said, emergence in the “reveal” sense, not in the “generate” sense. The program doesn’t “generate” free will, the program generates conditions that reveal it.
At that point, however, intention can begin reprogramming the program.
Why?
William! You’re back! And back on the topic of free will. From our earlier exchange:
RB:
WJM:
RB:
And a question you passed over:
What combination of necessary and sufficient causes, factors or conditions result in some people choosing, in that initial moment of proto free will, to persist with free will, and others to revert to a course determined by brute biological mechanisms?
Thanks.
Because free will is a universal, funcamental force. It isn’t generated, it’s revealed.
The necessary condition is that free will is available. The sufficient cause of any decision made at that point is free will itself. Nothing sufficiently causes a free will intention; it is the sufficient cause of other things.
Bootstrapping, UR DOING IT RONG:
http://uphillwriting.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/circular-reasoning-works-because.jpg
William J. Murray,
William, I find it unfortunate that you can’t transform yourself into a state that can accept evolution in relationship to your identity. Hopefully, when Libertarian Free Will emerges in your programming, you will choose to cease being an automaton and accept the evidence for it. Of course, I understand that you may freely choose to not freely choose and, subsequently, your internal programming may render the evidence for evolution unable to exist in your reality.
Hi, William, sorry I’ve been very busy, so I’m a bit behind, but I’ve been reading your book 🙂
The problem it seems to me, with your model is that a) there is no evidence to support it whatsoever and b) we have a supported model that works pretty well.
I realise that the idea that “consciousness” is something that eludes a mechanistic account, but whether or not you think so (I don’t), we have very well-supported models of volition. The psychoplasm is not needed for the model to function! Just as, it turned out, the luminiferous ether wasn’t need either (though I guess it could still turn out to be a useful concept). Same with phlogiston.
So why should we adopt a non-parsimonious model (the psychoplasm) that posits an entity for which we have no evidence when a more parsimonious model works fine?
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
What model works? Please be specific.
Elizabeth said:
Can you support your assertion that “there is no evidence to support it whatsoever”?
I never said “we” should. I never said or argued that anyone should. I have only stated that I did, that others have, that it has has an apparent, practical positive effect in my experience, and I have answered questions about that to the best of my ability.
Jon said:
Apparently, you are misinformed.
William- Forget about trying to reason with these people. Hopefully you have something better to do with your life.
No, and I will qualify: I am aware of no evidence to support it, and I speak as one fairly well acquainted with the empirical literature.
Fair enough. So you evaluated a model simply by whether it is useful?
If so, I would agree with your approach!
Would “programmed incorrectly” be more accurate?
Remember, it’s not his choice to be misinformed. It’s the choice of the “programmer”.
So, my testimony, and that of others through various media, is not evidence?
By whether or not I personally find it useful.
Since I don’t know when a person I am interacting with has free will or not, I choose to interact & respond as if they have it until it I have reason to think otherwise for that particular person.
So there is no difference between somebody who has free will and somebody who does not.
So if people who have free will and those who do not cannot be distinguished from each other Occam’s razor suggests that the entire concept is superfluous.
What sort of thing would lead you to think that somebody did/did not have free will.
Can you give an example or two of each?
If you can’t…..
We’ve already been through this. You are trying to convince someone of your position – yourself. Perhaps even other like-minded individuals who might lurk or post here. If that weren’t the case, you wouldn’t bring it up at all.
Be that as it may, you did state that some people require faith healing:
I disagree. Wanting something is not an action, it’s a drive as far as I can tell. But if that’s how you define “doing something”, then I’ll change my question to “why take any active action such as medicine or faith healing or any other recommended course with the intent of curing an illness? Why not just go on as if there is no illness and assume it will go away without any physical external intervention?”
Actually this suffices as a fine answer. To follow-up then, do you just stop at the first thing that you happen to do when the pain goes away and attribute the pain loss to that action? In other words, if you’ve had a headache for a few hours and you go to pour a glass of milk, do you then hold that pouring a glass of milk caused the headache to go away? Why or why not?
So bottom line – there’s no way for two separate people to look at some random group of other people such that both of the initial two people come to the same conclusions about said “internal structures” of each member of the group independently? Just checking.
Fair enough I guess, but I don’t see that as very helpful. But then I see The Matrix as just a cool, if highly borrowed and stylized, bit of fiction.
As for “What the Bleed Do We Know” and “The Secret”, I can only chuckle at the fond memory I have of a brief period where my dad got waaaaay into Lifespring. I remember going to a few seminars with him and wondering why the folks running it weren’t being prosecuted for fraud. Much later apparently they were:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifespring
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_Dynamics
This of course then reminds me of the scene in Bowfinger that goes something like:
Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin): I love your work here at Mindfff…head…
That I don’t know if a someone else has free will or not doesn’t mean there is no difference between having free will and not. I can personally attest that there is a difference, the most obvious being that those with free will believe as they wish, not as they must. Often, those who probably don’t have (libertarian) free will agree that they don’t have it.
Also, i said I don’t know. Of course, there is often good reason to suspect or believe that someone doesn’t have free will, but again – there’s no way for me to know it as a fact, which is why I try to interact with them as if they do, for the most part.
The concept that some others do not have free will is quite useful to me, whether it is true or not. It has eliminated what used to be considerable frustration and/or irritation at some people that I would encounter – including those in forums/blogs such as this. My stress level dropped considerable after I adopted that belief.
Generally, I suspect people that keep behaving the same way, or keep putting themselves into the same situations over and over, when those actions/behaviors keep generating results they greatly dislike, and when they do not have to do those things, of not having free will. With some people, it’s pretty obvious they simply do not have free will, because they are incapable of relatively minor belief/habit changes even though they desperately wish to change them.
Of course, not everyone who claims to have free has it. Probably, very few do, because if you ask them if they can believe whatever they wish, they usually cannot.
Do I have free will William?
I’m sure that, for you, it is.
I wish I could believe certain things that I don’t. But the way you describe it, William, knowledge is incompatible with Free Will.
No. Claims are never evidence of what is being claimed; they are solely evidence that someone made a claim. Why? Because anyone can make a mistake or even lie.
William J. Murray,
Would you be kind enough to inform me as to how? I was trying to apply your model of psychoplasm to the discussions that have occurred on this site, but I am struggling to understand it. (Looking back, I apologize for how flippant my comment was)
For instance, there is disagreement between you and others about the mechanisms of evolution. Do you believe these disagreements arise due to the internal states of those arguing it? Through the effects of intention, is the existing evidence literally different for each person, assuming they have free will? If so, couldn’t one simply will to adopt the other viewpoint? It might be helpful if you did so, to get a better understanding of what people here are trying to communicate, and then let us know your experience/thoughts.
But if not, why not! Convince me!
William, would you like to play a game?
Ask me a series of questions designed to determine if I have free will or not.
Once you have determined the answer, give your reasoning.
William J. Murray,
On the topic of internal states/free will affecting perception/reality, I’d like to hear your thoughts.
For the widely accepted theories in science, the vast majority of the scientific community perceives that the empirical evidence supports those theories, and agree as to why it does so. Now, is it more likely that these shared perceptions are due to most of these individuals using free will to intend to adopt these positions or that most of these individuals lack free will and their internal programs are similar enough to one another that they lead to these shared perceptions?
I would imagine that a way to distinguish between these two options is to consider the probabilities of each position. What is the probability distribution of the different internal programs and the types of perceptions/realities that follow from them? Should we expect each possible internal program to be equiprobable? Or, does the fact that all our experiences, I gather most people likely do not have free will from your previous comments, have a lot in common suggest a very non-uniform distribution of internal programming? Any thoughts on why that may be?
OH! Could that distribution change depending one’s internal programming/intentions?
If my questions are too leading, or stem from misunderstandings, please correct me.
Where? Can you provide the quotes and a link? As far as I can recall, the only thing I’ve ever disagreed with anyone here about, in relation to evolution, is how they interpret the arguments presented by various ID advocates.
I said nothing about claims; I said testimony. If, in your opinion, “testimony” = “claims”, is it your position that testimonial evidence in any medium is never evidence?
What a wonderful insight! Yes, what people generally hold as “knowledge” is indeed incompatible with libertarian free will.
Can you believe whatever you wish?
Let’s say I could – in what sense would my will be “free”?
Indeed “testimony” = “claim”. In the very specific case of the US Judicial System, testimony under oath and penalty of perjury is considered circumstantial evidence for the claims.
However, given that you have not actually testified to anything on these boards that I’ve seen (e.g., made a direct declaration of a fact) and freely state that you aren’t actually trying to prove anything to anyone here, but rather merely describing your thoughts (not a testimony), I figured I’d respond to such.
Let me know if you’ve changed your mind and have decided that you are in fact trying to testify to some fact in order to persuade us of some fact though.
I must wonder then if all children have free will, but some lose it as they mature and learn more.
In the sense that you would be free to believe whatever you wish.
I notice, Elizabeth, that you did not answer my question about testimony. Before I continue with Robin’s view on testimon and evidence, is it your opinion, like robin’s, that testimony is not evidence?
WJM’s version of free will is indistinguishable from imaginativeness and ability to learn. He wraps it up in a lot of philosophical verbiage, but that’s what it boils down to.
So in a sense, all the fictional stories that deal with the loss of innocence and imagination as children grow up is a loss of free will.
I’m not a big fan of WJM, but there’s a kernel of non-BS lurking in his stuff. But to the extent that it’s useful, it’s not new.
Not really. You can ‘elect’ to believe it, you may even act as if you do. But fundamentally, you may still not.
Very nicely done!
It’s not much of a leap. All you’ve said so far is that freedom is delusion, and delusion is freedom.
That’s not what I’m seeing. It stikes me as more of an immunity to learning.
Well yes. That’s sometimes the impression I get from hyperimaginative adults. And from stories that imply that adults are somehow detached from reality as compared to children.
My point would be that there needs to be a balance between imagination and reality testing, just as there needs to be a balance between perfect replication and genetic meltdown.
I’ve stated before that my definition of free will involves the generation of alternatives and the learning of consequences. I think science is a very successful blend of imagination and reality testing.
But it’s interesting that everyone, even flat-earthers, think that they are the free ones, the ones that have it right.
I don’t remember making such a statement.
I think it would be a stretch to equivocate a state of purposely-held beliefs with a delusion. Those in delusions consider their beliefs true and factual aspects of reality, which is not the case with purposely-held beliefs that are entirely held as provisional, conditional, and not claimed to refer to factual truths.
William J Murray,
What’s the difference since either way, “factual truths” do not alter your beliefs?
Whether in delusion or denial, the game of life is not played as if you are an equal partner in it, rather you become the writer of an imagined reality.
I want to be part of life but your philosophy only gives me the ability to deny it, not cope with it.
The difference is as I have said. In a delusion, one holds their beliefs to be factual truths about the world. That is not the case with freely held purposeful beliefs. A person having a delusion cannot stop having that delusion upon willing it so; if they are not enjoying the delusion, or it is harming them or causing problems, they cannot simply choose to believe something else.
One would have to be claiming that something “is not” a factual truth about reality in order to be in denial about it. Ambivalence about whether or not something is factual or true is not denial that it is factual or true.
It doesn’t give you the ability to “deny” anything. Denial is just a negative form of delusion; you believe X to factually be “not true”. Beliefs in the free will system are not positive assertions about the factual state of reality one way or another; they are nothing more than provisional, conditional, interpretive conveniences.
The problem here is that you and others are interpreting the term “belief”, when I use it, as the way that you use it, and not in the way I have explained what “belief” means in the free will system. Delusion and denial of “reality” is not possible under the free will system because beliefs are not claims – positive or negative – about any state of reality, truths, or facts.
I realise I live in a virtual reality constructed by my senses. Therefore it is possible for me to believe any given thing as internally any possible state can be achieved regardless of the limits of sensory input due to that level of abstraction, but I also know that does not/would not change reality externally. However, I guess that belief is something that could also be changed. I’ve known some fairly unhinged people well into their Magik.
Say it 10,000 times and it becomes true. But I’ll never be able to fly….
So, free will or not?
William J Murray,
If you can play the game of life, as if you were it’s writer, you are not “part” of life, you are instead its creator.
In order to live life, you “must be” as much as a slave to it as you are a master.
What is the point of courage if you can simply wish away threats with your beliefs?
We have to believe there are dangers in life if we wish to experience courage.
They are not dangers if they are not out of our control.
Your philosophy of life simply allows people to wish away danger.
Why would you want to be in control of everything around you?