To define:
NDE (Neo-Darwinian Evolution) = OOL & evolution without prescriptive goals, both being nothing more in essence than functions of material forces & interactions.
ID (Intelligent Design) = Deliberate OOL & evolution with prescriptive goals
(I included OOL because if OOL contains purposefully written code that provides guidelines for evolutionary processes towards goals, then evolutionary processes are not neo-Darwinian as they utilize oracle information).
I’m not an evolutionary biologist, nor am I a mathematician. Therefore, when I argue about NDE and ID, the only cases I attempt to make are logical ones based on principles involved because – frankly – I lack the educational, application & research expertise to legitimately parse, understand and criticize most papers published in those fields. I suggest that most people who engage in NDE/ID arguments (on either side) similarly lack the necessary expertise to evaluate (or conduct) such research on their own.
Further, even if they had some related expertise that makes them qualified, to some degree, to successfully parse such papers, as has been brought up in this forum repeatedly is the lack of confidence in the peer-review process as a safeguard against bad science or bad math, or even fraudulent and sloppy science. A brief search on google or bing for scientific fraud and peer review process will find all sorts of studies about a growing epidemic of bad citations – citations that reference recalled, recanted, fraudulent or disproven research.
So, for the majority of us who are not conducting active research in evolutionary biology, nor are mathematicians or information theorists, what are we really saying if we assert that “evolution has been proven by countless papers”, or “ID is necessary to the formation of DNA”? When one of us claims that Dembski’s work has been “disproven”, or that Douglas Axe has proven something about functional protein probabilities, what does it mean when we (those whom I am referring to in this post) have no personal capacity to legitimately reach that conclusion via our own personal understanding of the math or the research fields/data involved?
All we can be doing is rhetorical characterizing and cheerleading. We argue as if we understand the research or the math, but in fact (for many of us) we don’t, and even if we did, unless we are doing that research, we cannot have that much confidence in the peer-review process. All we can do (outside of arguments using logic and principle) is quote abstracts and conclusions or other people we believe to be qualified (and honest) experts about data and research we don’t really understand and which may or may not be valid. This is really nothing more than just cherry-picking convenient abstracts and conclusions and assuming the peer-review process worked for that particular paper.
Therefore, the NDE/ID argument for most people has nothing to do with (and, in fact, cannot have anything to do with) valid and informed interpretations of biological data or an understanding of the math involved in information theory as it is applied to evolutionary processes – even if they believe that to be the case. Logically, if we admit we are not really personally capable of qualitatively examining and reaching valid conclusions of research that we would somehow vet as valid research, we must admit all we are really doing is choosing to believe something, and then erecting post hoc arguments in an attempt to characterize our choice of belief as something derived from a legitimate, sound understanding of the facts (biological & mathematical) involved.
This means that for most of us, the NDE/ID argument is really a proxy argument that belies the real argument, or the reason we have chosen NDE or ID to believe in the first place. IMO, that “reason” is a disagreement of ontological worldviews, and I think that the two general worldviews that are in conflict which are fighting a proxy battle through the NDE/ID debate are:
1) Humans are deliberately generated entities that exist for a purpose;
2) Humans are not deliberately generated entities that exist for a purpose.
Now, I don’t claim those general worldviews cover every foundational motive or position in the NDE/ID debate. But, I think it is logically clear that most of us must be presenting what can only be rhetorical cheerleading in an attempt to construct post hoc rationalizations for our choice of belief (combined with attempts to make the other “side” feel bad about their position via various character smearing, motive-mongering, name-calling, belittling their referenced papers and experts, and other such invective, and so we must have chosen our belief for some other reason, and IMO the two categories above represent the two basic (and pretty much necessary) consequences of NDE/ID beliefs.
So, to simplify: for whatever psychological reasons, people either want or need to believe that humans are deliberately generated beings that exist for a purpose, or they wish or need to believe the contrary, which leads them to an emotional/intuitive acceptance of ID or NDE, which they then attempt to rationalize post hoc by offering statements structured to make it appear (1) as if they have a valid, legitimate understanding of things they really do not; (2) that they have real science on their side; (3) that experts agree with them (when, really, they are just cheerleading convenient experts), and (4) that it is stupid, ignorant, or wicked to not accept their side as true.
Seeing as Darwin had no mechanism for either variation or heredity, and so no means of even beginning to understand what a sufficient undirected (by intelligence) explanation would require, one could hardly make a case that darwinism was the more “parsiminous” explanation.
I’m afraid you seriously misunderstand the way scientists operate. But from what you say, you simply ‘choose’ to believe things and that’s good enough, so if that’s the belief you have chosen, no words I can tap into the internet will disabuse you of it.
But … one uses the methodologies one has at one’s disposal. One does not dismiss any method to ‘get at’ what is assumed to lie beneath – some kind of regularity in the world. But it has to be reproducible. It has to fit with existing data, or show why existing data is wrong. Apart from that, anything goes, and the results of the experiment are the results of the experiment. The idea that one has a predisposition to find out certain results and not others is poppycock. Watson and Crick ‘believed’ that DNA would display regular physical properties, so that’s all they looked for, to the exclusion of anything else about it? That is all they could look for! But what they found fed straight into evolutionary theory, which was bolstered in numerous ways. The applications of a piece of research are not always apparent to the researchers. You seem to think research is as ‘goal-oriented’ as ID evolution!
But the fundamental problem with ID-style rhetoric is one of logic – your preferred dimension. ID, as you have restated above, is an argument from analogy – weak at best, and polluted by invention of exceptional, undemonstrable causes.
I don’t think scientists are fundamentally any different than anyone else.
I don’t see the logic in your answer. The historical variation in species was evident to Darwin from fossils and from his study of related species. However that variation may have originated (and as you point out, Darwin could not say what the mechanism was), inferring an intentional cause would have been as illogical for Darwin as it would have been for one of his contemporaries to infer one for a chemical reaction. Before Rutherford described the atom, do you think chemists made a “political” choice to exclude a designer as an explanation for the nature of the reactions they observed?
I didn’t say they were. Nonetheless, unlike most people, they have tools at their disposal that allow them to go deeper than most into the way the world works – instead of just ‘deciding’ what to think, they at least try to find what ‘is’. Your thesis that they organise their investigations in order to confirm their prejudices is .. .a prejudice. Some might, but they try not to. Even if they were so motivated, unintended consequences would bite them in the backside ere long. As I say, results that seem to confirm prejudices may actually have a better interpretation that destroys them. Publish the data and be damned.
Your thesis amounts to a conspiracy theory – but the ‘conspirators’ are unaware that they are involved in one.
William Murray:
I haven’t claimed that Dembski’s argument is not fallacious, or that Sewell’s argument is not such an equivocation. It’s irrelevant to me if their particular argument (or gpuccio’s or kairosfocus’s) are technically sound or not because, IMO, they are only attempting to supply a rigorous definition, description and methodology to a theory (ID) that is obviously true in the first place.
Ah, it’s obviously true, so who cares if those who are attempting to demonstrate what is obviously true are using unsound methods. Got it.
William Murray:
I haven’t claimed that Dembski’s argument is not fallacious, or that Sewell’s argument is not such an equivocation. It’s irrelevant to me if their particular argument (or gpuccio’s or kairosfocus’s) are technically sound or not because, IMO, they are only attempting to supply a rigorous definition, description and methodology to a theory (ID) that is obviously true in the first place.
Ah, it’s obviously true, so who cares if those who are attempting to demonstrate what is obviously true are using unsound methods. Got it.
This is a strange argument. It is simply not the case that one chooses to believe something that then rationalizes that belief from there.
One is not free to believe that the Hawaiian Islands do not exist or that the Earth flat. One is not free to believe that one is impervious to scalding by boiling water. Choosing to reject these notions has consequences that logic will not correct except in one’s own imagination.
When ID/creationists construct an edifice of pseudo-science, they do so in order to give gravitas to their sectarian beliefs. But what does one gain from having a set of sectarian preconceptions propped up on a platform of pseudo-science? How can it provide any peace of mind that one’s prior choices are just fine? The only way one can avoid the consequences of such beliefs coming into contact with reality is to restrict one’s associations to a small number of like-minded individuals living in the same echo chamber.
All one has is sophistry that ties itself in knots attempting to deny the existence of objectively verifiable knowledge that can be had simply by going out and observing; or in the case of ID/creationist pseudo-science, simply by picking up some high school science textbooks and perhaps come introductory college level texts.
Yet we see continued examples of people over on UD dumping truckloads of copy/paste material, from people like Dembski, Sewell, Abel, and the rest of that crowd, as arguments and rationalizations for their prior beliefs. And they do it as though they understand it when in fact they have no idea what it means or that it is objectively wrong.
Choosing belief first makes no sense if one is to live in the real physical world. Dropping a shot put on one’s foot, for example, should be a wake up call that there are real physical laws, with real physical consequences, that demand one’s attention and require people to adjust what they choose to believe.
This has always been the methodology of ID/creationism; sectarian dogma first, all else bent and broken to fit.
It is strange that you don’t seem to care that Dembski, Sewell, Abel, et. al. are objectively and demonstrably wrong. You claim to “know” that ID is right and you will accept any concocted pseudo-science to prop it up.
Why do your beliefs need the imprimatur of pseudo-science? Are you latching onto pseudo-science because you don’t like what scientists tell you?
The distinction is that Darwin purposefully, officially characterized his theory as employing processes suffficient without design. As far as I know, no other theory or explanation in science makes that explicit charcterization. Looking for causes for an effect doesn’t imply such causes do, or do not require design influence – science proceeded for hundreds of years under the assumption that the causes were indeed designed, even it wasn’t acceptable to make that assumption formally explicit under natural philosophy.
As long as one keeps their assumptions about the ultimate nature of the causes to themselves, there is no problem; however, when one formally and explicitly make “no design necessary” part of their scientific theory, they’re required to back up that claim. IOW, if like atomic theory or gravitational theory nobody had explicitly identified chance mutation (non-ID) and natural selection (non-ID) theory as suffcient without reference to any design, there probably wouldn’t be an ID/NDE debate today, because ID wouldn’t have been explicitly excluded from the table. We’d just be talking about mutation and selection without any philosophical characterizations about the nature of those things.
Which reveals the philosophical (or political, or religious – however you wish to characterize it) underpinnings and emotional content of NDE theory and why debate about it is so rancorous.
No, I never claimed to “know” tht ID is “right”. I said that the existence of ID and the identifiability of some of its product is an obvious, even trivial fact – humans have it, and employ it to produce that which is not explicable otherwise.
And let’s look at this rationally. If your beliefs hinge upon argument and evidence, then it is you that needs to find some kind of argument and whatever evidence you can to support your beliefs, because you are claiming they are based on those things. On the other hand, what need do I have to accept any evidence (pseudo-scientific or not) or argument when my beliefs do not rely on them? If I don’t need evidence or argument to support my beliefs; why would I accept any “concocted pseudo-science to prop it up”?
Which is why it doesn’t matter to me if Dembski or Sewll or Behe can all be proven wrong; it’s irrelevant to why I beileve what I do.
They don’t.
Why would I bother when I’ve just admitted that my beliefs are not based on any kind of science or argument?
WJM:
Joe can make his own arguments I’m sure, but he specifically chose to look at that of Dembski’s formulations relating to fitness, and the definition of ‘specified’ that relates to statistical likelihood. This necessarily involves a treatment under NS, and not the initial ‘arrival’ of the change under mutation. Although the change may be for the better – more tightly ‘specified’ for the environment – this is not proven by its mere existence in one individual.
In a mixed A,C,T,G population, all at 25%, a randomly sampled individual will be one of the 4 types – that locus is not ‘specified’. After allowing NS to operate, the fitter C (in the example) becomes fixed at that locus – the ‘significance’, ‘specification’, ‘surprise’ has changed as far as a randomly-chosen genome from the population is concerned.
It’s true that all the functional information in C-bearing genomes was there both at the beginning and the end. But ‘the species X genome’ gained 2 bits of specificity thanks to NS. The X genome as a whole became fractionally more closely specified to its environment, by fixation of a change that had already occurred in a part of it – the C-bearing fraction.
I am free to believe anything I wish, even absurd, obviously untrue and contradictory things.
BTW, you contradicted yourself; if one is not free to believe those things, how can there be consequences to not believing them? I’m free to believe whatever I wish. That consequences may ensue doesn’t mean I cannot believe those things.
Allan Miller,
An increase in the ratio of functional information to noise in a genome is not an increase in the amount of functional information in the genome.
William Murray:
No, I never claimed to “know” tht ID is “right”. I said that the existence of ID and the identifiability of some of its product is an obvious, even trivial fact – humans have it, and employ it to produce that which is not explicable otherwise.
No, you claimed that
a theory (ID) that is obviously true in the first place.
This theory is about much more than human-made artifacts. It claims that life was designed. To pretend otherwise seems disingenuous.
Perhaps a clearer way of expressing that would be, an increase in the ratio of functional information to noise is not the same thing as the creation of new functional information. NS doesn’t “put” anything into the genome, it just redistributes whatever is already there.
William J Murray,
You’ve just shown why ID should not be allowed in scientific discussions, and that is because ID is not scientific.
Science provides us with descriptions, not beliefs.
You can ignore any description you care to disregard but the description itself remains intact.
Beliefs are fine in church but not a classroom.
If that is what you want to do, then go right ahead. However, you should then have no reason to agonize over your right to do so with anyone else.
But if someone tells me to drop a shot put on my toe because they believe it won’t have any consequences, I’ll pass.
ID/creationists WANT their dogma taught in schools. That has consequences. If they simply believed what ever pseudo-science they wanted to believe to prop up their sectarian dogma and kept it in their churches, the US Constitution allows them to do so.
But unfortunately people with crackpot beliefs don’t keep them to themselves; they attempt to use the law to impose those beliefs on others. So they must think their beliefs are important enough to hassle others with them rather than simply recognizing that they are crackpot beliefs that they need to keep to themselves.
So having such beliefs does in fact have consequences; and those consequences have cost others millions of dollars in defending themselves against these crackpots.
You are free to believe this if you wish. It has nothing to do with natural selection and evolution; so don’t teach it in science classes.
Whether or not ID is scientific has nothing to do with how any particular individual comes to his or her beliefs.
WJM:
Yes, I take your point, and that is how I tend to view things. But Joe F was looking at a Dembski argument that cannot apply to a single genome, and hence the treatment needed to look at the same entity – the ‘consensus’ genome of the species. If I am the fortunate bearer of a new mutation that will raise the fitness of all my descendants who come to bear it, the ‘specified information’ has yet to be ‘put’ into the Human Genome. Just, so far, ‘a’ human genome.
Furthermore, alleles being substituted are not necessarily ‘noise’ – just the previous specification. They may have been just as functional in their day.
I wish I’d known that as a kid.
And decreasing the rate of increase in spending is a budget “cut”.
This is wrong. You’ve conflated how Darwin characterised his theory with the theory itself. While Darwin may have “purposefully, officially characterized his theory as employing processes sufficient without design.”, the actual theory demands no such stance.
But on the broader point it’s helpful to look at the social context in which Darwin developed his ideas. The reigning explanation for life’s diversity at the time was ‘design’, or, more specifically, God. And so it’ no real surprise that Darwin’s arguments were often advanced in terms that deliberately engaged/contrasted with the contemporary view.
Had 19th century meteorology been believed to be a deliberate product of ‘design’ with the same conviction as life then you can be sure that the proponents of newer ‘naturalistic’ theories would have argued their case in a similar fashion; seeking to prove that the weather could be explained quite satisfactorily without recourse to ‘magic’.
But it has everything to do with the role ID is to play as promoted by the ID movement.
The ID movement wants ID discussed as an alternative to evolution but they are not peers.
It would be like deciding whether to use ounces or inches.
What can I say? There are two partially-congruent and equally legitimate definitions of ‘genome’. NS can put specified information as defined by Dembski into one of them, counter to his argument that ‘evolutionary algorithms’ cannot. It can’t put anything into an individual.
If all he was saying was that “evolutionary algorithms (eg NS) cannot put anything into single genomes”, then there would hardly be anything to dispute (and no reason for him to write a damned paper on the matter!). We kinda knew that. It’s Dembski’s model, not Joe’s, and he appears to mean the ‘specification’ of a species, not an individual – don’t blame me!
As seen for 18th century celestial mechanics
“je n’ai pas eu besoin de cette hypothèse”
Very much so, as he explicitly states in the introduction to The Origin of Species (my bold):
Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgement of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists entertain, and which I formerly entertained — namely, that each species has been independently created — is erroneous.
So it’s not surprising that some of his arguments were contrastive (along the lines of “not only does the evidence support my hypothesis, it just so happens to also refute the alternative hypothesis of special creation). Nevertheless his core theory of variation + natural selection -> speciation can be evaluated without that particular alternative hypothesis in mind.
Then why do they still call it “chance” or “random” mutation and “natural” selection? Furthermore, why is this philosophical premise included in textbooks used to teach evolution over the years?
– (Biology, by Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph S. Levine (1st ed., Prentice Hall, 1991), pg. 658; (3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 1995), pg. 658; (4th ed., Prentice Hall, 1998), pg. 658; emphasis in original.)
– (Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas J. Futuyma (3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc., 1998), p. 5.)
– (Biology: Discovering Life by Joseph S. Levine & Kenneth R. Miller (1st ed., D.C. Heath and Co., 1992), pg. 152; (2nd ed.. D.C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 161; emphases in original.)
– (Life: The Science of Biology by William K. Purves, David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, & H. Craig Keller, (6th ed., Sinauer; W.H. Freeman and Co., 2001), pg. 3.)
– (Biology by Burton S. Guttman (1st ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pgs. 36-37.)
It looks like a form of religion has been taught in classrooms for a long time under the guise of evolutionary theory, only the religion was some form of atheistic materialism.
The atheistic/materialistic philosophy of Darwinism has always been its defining, fundamental aspect.
Why do ID/creationists keep retreating to this demonizing line of argument?
It is not the fault of these authors or of science that these passages get repeatedly mischaracterized.
We have had several discussions right here on this site about the fact that atoms and molecules interact strongly. We even looked at the ratio of electrical forces to gravitational forces and saw that energies scaled up to our macroscopic world would involve binding energies on the order of 10^10 megatons of TNT.
Atoms and molecules are not inert objects sitting around waiting to be selected with a uniform random sampling distribution and then placed in specified positions that are an infinitesimal subset of all possible configurations one can imagine.
Atoms and molecules are exploring every nook and cranny available to them consistent with their energies, the rules of quantum mechanics, and the constraints and opportunities that arise with increasing complexity.
This tendency of ID/creationists have of constantly going back to their fundamental misconceptions and mischaracterizations of evolutionary processes is built on a deeply ingrained and emotional attachment to the writings of Dembski, Sewell, Abel, and all the other writers who carry these misconceptions with them into their writings.
None of it has anything to do with science or evolution; it has to do with prior sectarian beliefs.
Because of the environment in which the theory is taught, mostly.
The predominant social explanation of biology is ‘design’, by whichever God the geography dictates. And so the terms ‘random’ or ‘chance’ are employed pedagogically to highlight the fact that the theory can generate diversity minus any guidance. That said, if the intent of the specific text is to impress a particular metaphysic then it should be flagged up and excised.
The term ‘natural selection’ was chosen as a contrast to ‘artificial selection’. The first chapter of the Origin dealt with the ways in which breeders had consciously (and unconsciously) fashioned a variety of animals from primitive stock via selective breeding. And so Darwin chose to call his theory ‘natural’ selection’ to highlight the similarity of the process while emphasising the redundancy of concious choice.
It looks like a form of religion has been taught in classrooms for a long time under the guise of evolutionary theory, only the religion was some form of atheistic materialism.
Well, that’s science for you. A-theistic and non-immaterial.
WJM – The lack of apparent teleology in evolution is an important characteristic, and is emphasised to counter intuitive notions that students might have of organisms ‘trying’ to change for the better. But of course people also try to counter indoctrination by religious fundamentalists, which does lend a flavour of ‘worldviews in collision’ – if you are trying to defuse the influence of one worldview, you must automatically be seen to be trying to ‘push’ another.
We might talk of the lack of purpose of gas molecules in a jar, or photons whizzing through space, but it would be bizarre to do so – whoever thought it could be otherwise? But dare to say it in biology class, and you are brainwashing kids with atheist/materialist ideology?
It simply does appear to be the case that mutation is ‘random’ (not occurring in relation to need), and that Drift is ‘random’ (sample error in finite populations) and that even Natural Selection is ‘random’ (equates to a mathematically probabilistic process). The particular genes that went into you are also ‘random’ samples, your parents meeting was a ‘random’ event … Unless you choose to believe otherwise. In which case you can cheerfully choose to believe the rest isn’t either. There are some logical conundrums down that path, but if it suits you, go for it. But as far as educating kids in science is concerned, your personal difficulties don’t figure. If they have personal difficulties, they should be able to opt out. But teaching them something other than what appears, by all available tools, to be the case? Nah.
Descent with modification and differential survival have always been its defining, fundamental aspect.
William J Murray’s recent remarks about atheism and materialism as defining characteristics of biological science fully warrant his claim that belief in ID is an emotional reaction against a-theism.
The assertion that evolutionary theory is a religion is also a characteristic of a jealous, proselytizing sectarian dogma that wants to assert its self-assumed priority.
It fails to recognize that there are thousands of religious beliefs that have no problems with evolution; but instead, implicitly implies that all other religions beliefs that accept evolution are wrong. And those who have no religion are the most demonized of all.
So I would suggest that William J Murray has betrayed his sectarian roots and motives.
I can’t seem to edit, so I’ll just add: Belief in ID is theism
If I were in Darwin’s shoes, and assuming that I was deeply religious, I would have probably come to a similar conclusion.
If God is omnipotent, then he should be able to get everything right at the initial creation (as in creating those processes that are sufficient).
I have never understood why creationists and ID proponents want to insist in a bungling incompetent God who can never get anything right and has to keep coming back to patch up and tweak the results of the original creation.
William, thank you for your reply.
As has been observed above, this misses the point that Darwin simply contrasted his proposed explanation with the current one, namely divine creation (or design, to use the term du jour). Darwin simply observed that natural forces (i.e. environmental factors having no discernible element of intention) could produce changes in species in a way similar to the effects of animal husbandry, and proposed that that could explain the diversity of species. No “political” animus required or imputed.
Again, you impute a wider sectarian motive to Darwin that the facts do not support.
Significantly, the emotion provoked by NDE (as you call it) is confined to a small number of Christians and Muslims, mainly in the USA and Turkey, and who identify with particular political beliefs prevalent in those countries. Christians elsewhere, to the extent that they express an interest in how species may or may not have originated, tend to treat it as irrelevant to their religious beliefs. Few outside the USA espouse ID, and those that do tend to have close ties to US Evangelical or Fundamentalist sects. (I’m not aware of ID proponents outside Turkey who do not have ties to US Christian sects, but there may of course be some.)
The few scientists who espouse ID all, as far as I am aware, avow religious and political beliefs along the lines I have mentioned. Where those who do not support ID get emotional, it is because of the political stance of ID proponents who mischaracterise or misrepresent science as a means of advancing a political agenda, such as teaching unsupported notions in science classes.
Well said.
Huh, interesting concept of what *freedom* and *belief* mean. So, since you think that you choose your beliefs first, before you have examined any evidence and arguments, then what is this choice based upon?
Thanks for making this point, Alan. I see the argument has moved over here, while on my own thread they’re off talking about ribosomes.
Yes, I do not agree that I have committed a basic logical fallacy. I do sometimes, but not this time.
My argument is critical of William Dembski’s argument that Complex Specified Information cannot arise by natural selection (or other evolutionary processes). Dembski defines CSI as the state in which a genome is in the upper 10-to-the-minus-150th of an initial distribution of genomes. He is not saying that CSI already exists as soon as mutation has introduced the best alleles at all loci. William Murray may prefer to say that the “information” exists as soon as mutation does that, but that is not Dembski’s definition of CSI. My argument, including the numerical example, shows that Dembski is wrong, and also identifies the step in Dembski’s argument (the change of the specification in mid-argument) where he goes off the tracks.
I chose to sprout wings and fly to the moon. Unfortunately, I’m still here. Something called “reality” seems to be constraining my possibilities.
Except that it doesn’t avoid “might makes right” as your de facto basis of moral authority.
I’m wondering what mechanism Galileo or Copernicus had in mind.
Has it ever occurred to you that regularity is what science seeks, rather than cause?
Exactly right, for which we both agree with Toronto when he said:
Empiricism or GTFO. Now that is just as true for ID as it is for Darwinism. And it is precisely why allowing either as government backed education is an exemplar of Theocracy.
William J. Murray:
The term you’re looking for is ‘confirmation bias’. We all do it every day with things as important as exponential functions and our ability to carry credit, as well as to the inconsequential such as cosmological creation myths. And biological ones.
It’s all entirely meaningless from a belief basis. Either it can be demonstrated empirically or it cannot. If it can then it doesn’t matter what you believe lies behind the demonstration. And if it cannot then it doesn’t matter what you believe at all. Aside issues of ethics, which are themselves religious affairs.
Except to date most of the “obvious facts” you’ve used for your premises have been dead wrong.
You should be careful making unsubstantiated assertions concerning biological evolution like that when you have no idea what you’re talking about.
No you don’t.
Belief is not subject to the will.
Well, yes, it has, William. For example, if I’d found ID scientifically persuasive, I’d probably provisionally believe it, as I provisionally believe other sound scientific arguments supported by evidence, no matter how counter-intuitive (relativity, for instance, or, for that matter Darwinian evolution).
And I think that is fairly natural. We are rational beings after all, and we tend to put more credence in models that make sense and are supported by evidence than ones that don’t.
It didn’t occur to me for many decades. But I think it is true.