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.
I don’t think this is quite fair, madbat – William has been frank, in his OP, about not having the expertise to evaluate the science or the math, but only the logic.
And I think William’s view (though I’m still struggling to understand his point) is that scientists are somehow missing the point that their very project depends on something (regularity) that could only be the product of intelligence.
I think William’s mistake (and I think it is) a mistake arises from confusion over the concepts of intention and chance. But I think he thinks that the confusion is on our side 🙂
It’s precisely this kind of mutual misunderstanding that I set up this site to try and resolve. Let’s keep going 🙂
And thanks, William, for sticking with the project. It’s appreciated (by me, at least). I know what it is like to be one-against-many, when the many seem to be systematically missing your point.
In principle, under such a broad definition astrology would be science. Alas, for “whatever reason” (read fleecing money from the gullible) practitioners of astrology do not want to limit their claims and conditions to that definition.
That seems to be more of an assertion than a fact. I don’t know if it can be answered by physics, but that hasn’t stopped physicists from trying.
Personally I find all discussions of the origin of existence to be rather pointless, except as time fillers.
CSI is not cumulative. It is combinatorial. In the NS scenario, combinatorial lineages are being explored, but far more are being selected against – meaning, they are being removed from the search (in the descriptive sense, not the prescriptive) for high levels of combinatorial, functional info (or CSI).
NS is not “searching” for increased CSI; therefore, it is not a CSI search algorithm. NS can as easily select against increased CSI as for it, because increased CSI could render the organism less fit. Since the only information NS as an “evolutionary algorithm” has guiding it (as “oracle” or “active” information) is CSI-neutral, it cannot be logically claimed to be the bridge towards our target quantity category of CSI.
IOW, in specific regards to CSI, NS is just another “chance” process, because its criteria for selection has nothing to do with CSI.
William, you are saying nonsensical things. Word salad, literally.
Fitness is not cumulative, either (whatever that might mean). Darwinian evolution, which combines random mutations with selection pressure, is a cumulative process. There is no contradiction here whatsoever.
While I agree that we humans often see or do things through a design “lens”, I don’t agree that we always do, and it appears to me that you’re making a huge jump from ‘we design’ to ‘therefore we must be designed’. If that’s what you believe then who designed your designer God? Also, some animals design things or alter their environment, but many don’t. Are some animals designed but others aren’t?
One of the things I’ve noticed about humans, and especially religious humans, is that they believe that everything revolves around humans. We humans like to think that we’re special, and most religious people take that attitude to the level of being specially created in the image of their God. What if you were a slug, or a lion, instead of a human? Would you think that everything revolves around humans, and how they think or what they do? What if you were a tree, or a wild bird? Would you care what humans think or do? Those things and many others are just as alive as we are. If we were all gone, do you think they would miss us? To ourselves we like to think that we’re special, but do you think that a wild lion would think that we’re special and God-like, or would it just see us as a meal, a nuisance, or a threat?
How would you describe the scenario in which a gene is duplicated and the duplicate acquires a new function through mutation?
William’s confusion is at a very basic level. He seems to think that a cumulative search is an algoritm looks for a cumulative answer, whatever that means. It isn’t, of course. The word cumulative here describes a particular search strategy and does not describe any properties of the target.
With all respect, WJM seems to have trouble imagining concrete objects in dynamic systems. Words seem to be more real than things.
Obviously, the gene wasn’t “duplicated”, or it wouldn’t have a new function. What was produced was a near-duplication. “Function” is not by itself CSI, so “acquiring a new function” by itself doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in CSI. A length of iron can be used as a lever; additionally using it to bash open a walnut hasn’t increased the CSI of the iron bar.
No, I’m not making that jump. I’m saying that we all we have is the design perspective to operate from – even the idea that we are not operating from a design perspective is a designed perspective. My point is that any perspective that attempts to exclude the design perspective or assert that non-design perspective as the de facto starting point in our modeling of the world is necessarily committing an argument-destroying, fundamental conceptual error.
Where did I claim my designer was god? Where did I claim that I was designed? You’re mistaking a logical argument about necessary premises for some other argument you’re imagining that I’m making.
“that non-design perspective as the de facto starting point in our modeling of the world is necessarily committing an argument-destroying, fundamental conceptual error.”
I think I see the problem. We allow any view point that can make a positive case for itself. Imagine (as philosophers like to) a filter where I presume something is created by ‘natural forces’ unless you can show it being designed, with a long stepwise narrative of how it was designed, when it was designed, who designed it, etc etc.
Would you be cool with that? Or would you find it a meritless, negative argument?
Elizabeth, once again, please stop trying to paraphrase my position; it is clear that you do not understand it enough to paraphrase it successfully.
Also, please do not attempt to defend my argument or my presence here or the things I’ve said; I don’t require your protection. I’m not going to run off site because someone says unfair or mean things. I know exactly what I’m in for when I say some of the things I do. I’ve been thrown in jail and my family harassed for saying things others didn’t care to hear, so reading some (perhaps unpleasant) text on a blog is hardly something to get worked up about or need defense from.
Wouldn’t a good yardstick of her understanding your argument be that she could explain it back to you using different terms in a way that you’d understand and approve of? Wouldn’t you want this?
But then you’ve just defeated your own argument, William. If human’s “de facto” position is some “design perspective” that we can’t get out of – as you say, having a non-design perspective is actually a “design perspective” – then this “design perspective” of which you speak is a meaningless concept. You might as well be saying that humans have a de facto gerbiz position or a razingle position. The default you’ve created is of no value if there’s no alternative to compare or contrast, thus all other knowledge and ignorance – science and “ID” – would proceed from that position with no impact whatsoever since real science still employs different and (here’s the key) successful design models while the ID position creates nothing. So William, we’re back at square one with ID having no value whatsoever to humans and science still holding all the trump cards.
What exactly did you think you were demonstrating with this claim of yours?
No, it isn’t. It’s a necessary foundational concept, such as “I exist”. It is not meaningless to posit “I exist” as the basis for all further considerations, because to posit “I do not exist” is to establish a position that eliminates your capacity to make the claim “I do not exist”. It is of the utmost meaning that we accept our necessary, foundational, inescapable premises.
That everything extends from our necessary ID perspective must be accepted, or else one destroys their capacity to meaningfully generate intelligently-designed arguments to the contrary. ID, like “I exist”, is a necessarily-accepted premise of existence.
I think perhaps that some of us are not particularly interested in self-consistent logical systems that have no practical relationship with the world.
I would cite the messiness and lack of logical rigor of the Copernican system prior to Newton. Sometimes new ways of imagining physical systems lack precision and logical completeness, but lead to useful research.
Evolution is such a messy system. It certainly lacks the level of mental hygiene that emanates from a disembodied Designer who requires no list of capabilities. Evolution is full of epicycles and kludges. It’s a bit like chemistry before the Bohr atom and the valence shell atom.
Because there is no central, sweeping generalization that is both easy to follow and fully correct, it is fairly easy for creationists to peck at the fringes.
Still, the sun does not circle the earth.
That’s just arguing that a given philosophy gives you some perspective on your own meaning. It adds zero to any any discussion about practical achievement, science, and successful activity. In fact the earlier discussion was whether ID was science, which you’ve just admitted isn’t. It’s just a philosophy. But it’s not even a useful philosophy since you’ve freely admitted that there’s no way to understand anything except in light of this supposed perspective (begging the question along the way, but that’s small potatoes at this point). It really boils down to being a wall against which you’ve propped up your assumptions about the world, but it does nothing to help you or anyone else investigate the world. It’s not a tool or even a framework for making or using a tool; it’s merely some inherent lens we all wear that limits our vision to seeing everything as tools. It might as well just a location of our brains or some component of our retina, but in any event it is of no value to any human activity except perhaps navel gazing.
But you’ve said that there can be no contrary – that’s it’s a default position – so your claim above is meaningless. It’s like saying that without a visual perspective we can’t compare how we see the world through our eyes to how other aliens with other eyes see the world – except that we have no clues at all about how other aliens might even see their world, nevermind that we can’t ever see with any other eyes then the ones we’ve got. How exactly to you propose making a comparison to something that doesn’t exist and for which you have no model?
Actually it isn’t. I can maintain supposed existence just fine on the premise of “state A vs non-A” with no care at all about whether “I exist” or others exist or anything exists. It makes zero difference to “me” if everything “I” supposedly perceive is just an illusion; the perception of stimuli and the perception of reaction to stimuli is all that matters. Whether it’s “real” or whether “I’m experiencing it” affects the situation not one degree.
“I exist” may well be a necessary concept in order for the premise of specific existence to have any meaning, but successful existence in general does not require any premise of existence. Literally millions upon millions of organisms prove that point. Given that, it appears your design perspective doesn’t hold much promise.
That’s exactly my problem: he does not have the expertise to evaluate the science or the math, so he claims that he is only evaluating the *logic*, and that this allows him valid conclusion about the math and the science. It doesn’t, because his conclusions rest on *what he thinks* the science and math are, not on what they actually are. As is glaringly obvious from the kinds of statements about the science and the math he keeps making, and keeps being corrected on.
Claiming that scientists interpret data based on some preconceived world-view bias, and that therefore someone who is unqualified to evaluate the science itself is entitled to choose what they just want to believe is science, is exactly on par with WJM’s description of post-hoc rationalization that I quoted.
And someone who is a professed layman in anything science, but posts stuff like this:
“Your view is manufactured by a fundamental deceit: that any of this (modern science) is possible without operating (essentially, consciously or unconsciously) from the design heuristic.”
…obviously is trying to imply that the person addressed is “stupid, ignorant, or wicked”.
I disagree with your first paragraph but I’m too tired to go into detail right now.
Are you willing to state that you don’t believe that ‘the designer’ is the God you believe in? Are you willing to state that you don’t believe that humans (including you) were and are designed and created in the image of the God you believe in by the God you believe in? If you don’t believe that ‘the designer’ is the God you believe in, or if you allow that it might not be the God you believe in, then who or what do you think ‘the designer’ is or could be?
Creodant,
Those questions, and any answer I might give, are irrelevant to my argument.
Actually, those questions are totally relevant in any discussion about ID and are central to your arguments. The entire basis of the IDC agenda is religious beliefs, and just one of the things that causes problems for the IDC agenda is the fact that IDists will not admit that their motive is religious domination of science, education, public policy, and everything else.
The answers are very relevant to the people you make your arguments to.
There is a history behind ID and that history is creationism as laid out in the Bible.
In order to show that ID is independent from theism, these sort of questions need to be answered.
Just like Dembski claims design can be detected from “information”, so can religious motives be detected in the “information” we get from IDists, so these background questions are very important if ID ever wants to be taken seriously.
They are relevant because the history of science is the history of eliminating the perceived need for intervention in nature. That’s what science does and what it is.
If current science has a bias against intervention theories, it is because it has been uniformly successful in pushing back the need for theories of intervention.
It can never prove that interventions haven’t happened. It can, at best, demonstrate that the hypothesis isn’t necessary.
That makes no sense.
If one looks at “progress” of the roughly 50 year history of ID/creationism and compares that with the parallel history in science, the differences are pretty obvious.
In that period of time since the early 1970s, ID/creationism has been engaged in constant mud-wrestling and word-gaming over the meanings of terms; and they have settled on nothing. Every time one engages someone from the ID/creationist community, it is always a game of smoke-and-mirrors that ends up nowhere.
In that same period in science, we have acquired the Standard Model in physics and are now hunting for the Higgs. The Human Genome Project mapped out the human gene, the World Wide Web was invented at CERN, we went to the Moon and Mars, and we have the Internet and computers and smart phones in the hands of people all over the world.
Most of what has happened in science has taken place out of public view, thus most folks have no idea how much more has happened in addition to all the more dramatic results we are all directly familiar with.
ID/creationism, by having its roots in the traditions of exegesis, hermeneutics, etymology, and endless wrangling over the meanings of words, makes no progress because it is not connected to any reality. It is not worth pursuing. No matter what seems to finally get settled gets unsettled immediately the next time someone moves the goalposts or changes the meanings of some words. Nothing ever converges.
And that is the dramatic difference between science and ID/creationist pseudoscience. Science converges and produces definitive results; ID/creationist pseudoscience mud-wrestles, feigns and evades endlessly.
Evidence doesn’t tell you how to collect it, or how to interpret it, or how to generate a hypothesis about what it might be in the first place. Worldview does all that, which is why they often spend so much time arguing about the materialistic/atheistic worldview influence in science and how those premises destroy sound reasoning and corrupt inferences and conclusions due to such biases.
I don’t think there’s a single major ID proponent that would disagree with that.
How could you form a “world-view” before you get any evidence about the world?
What you’re suggesting is somewhat like asking a virus the best way to cure its host!
Mike E.,
ID was the default perspective of virtually everyone conducting science of any kind prior to about the 1950’s ( a few isolated cases notwithstanding). IDists invented modern science. Non-IDists are the johnny-come-lately’s that have, apparently, entirely forgotten history.
IDists wrote the normative lexicon all of science still employs. Evolutionary search? Natural law? Elegance? Principle of parsimony? Non-IDists can’t even stop using the lexicon, much less the concepts, of intelligent design and have to try and force themselves to use non-normative language in their descriptions.
But, you are free to believe that ID was invented in the 70’s if you wish.
Well, possibly not, but in that case, no wonder ID is in trouble!
Actually data can often give you ideas about how to generate a hypothesis, and, indeed, how to collect it.
Well, true (Suzanne Langer points out that an era is marked by the questions it asks as much, if not more, than the questions it answers), but what is missing here is the crucial point that a hypothesis is only as good as the data that supports it.
So no matter how whacky a hypothesis, from how weird and wonderful a world view, if it isn’t supported by the data, then it gets chucked out (or should). Data are the criteria, not the worldview. Which is why this:
is simply wrong. We fit models to data, not data to models. If our models are poor because we have an unrealistic world view, we will get bad model fits. Tough. That’s why science is rigorous – because the arbiter of a model is not opinion but data.
This is simply more word-gaming. Of course we know that belief in an intelligent creator existed before the 1970s.
However, the characteristic misconceptions and misrepresentations of the ID/creationist community today were formally put in place by Henry Morris in the early 1970s. He and other creationists drew on earlier ideas from people like A.E. Wilder-Smith, but the ID/creationist pseudoscience was formally established in the early 1970s. The morph to ID took place right after the 1987 US Supreme Court decision on Edwards v. Aguillard.
The current crop of ID followers is constantly attempting to obliterate that history. But they cannot hide those characteristic misconceptions and misrepresentations that are the shibboleths they have inherited from that history.
ID/creationism is a distinct form of belief in an intelligent creator that uses pseudoscience and mischaracterizations of science to prop itself up. Its attitudes, misconceptions, and misrepresentations give it away.
No, I’m not. You think that science is something that gets invented and operates independent of worldview. It doesn’t.
I’ll admit that scientists, because they’re human, anticipate some discoveries, but when their results contradict their world-view, a good scientist can accept and work with that discovery, regardless of his worldview.
When your worldview “prevents” the acceptance of your discovery, that’s where you have a problem.
That is the problem with ID/creationism, that it wants to keep its “biblical origin” story intact, despite the evidence against it.
No, it doesn’t. As I said, “worldview” very much affects the questions we ask. However, that is not true of the answers to those questions! At least, the whole of scientific methodology is set up to minimise bias in evaluating the answers, from double-blind, placebo controlled trials to punnet squares to inter-rater-reliability testing, to meta-analyses, to funnel plots, to peer-review, to replication studies etc.
“Worldview” may lead religious people to research evidence for a designer, and non-religious people for evidence for design-free mechanisms.
But which hypotheses are supported depends on the data, not on the world view.
This is not necessarily true. In a Bayesian analysis, if two people have different prior beliefs, then the same data and the same rules of inference may lead to further divergence in their opinions regarding what hypothesis is best supported by the data.
E.T. Jaynes gives some examples of that in his book Probability Theory: The Logic of Science, in chapter 5 (“Queer uses for probability theory”). You can download chapters here.
Well, you are still trying to assert that ID/creationist pseudoscience is the same as science. ID/creationist pseudoscience has been pretty sterile over its fifty year history.
On the other hand, there are scientists of every nationality, political persuasion, and nearly every religion that contribute to science. They can agree among themselves on the findings and concepts.
Evidently there are some “world views,” such as ID/creationism, that severely inhibit the ability to do science. But they can sure generate lots of words and lots of mud-wrestling that go nowhere.
That’s right. As long as we all come clean about our priors and we use the same rules of inference, we can at least understand why we still end up with different opinions! The difficult part being the coming clean…
Yes, it is. Even answers must be interpreted via a worldview.
Scientific methodology does no such thing. Those methods do not “minimise bias” in evaluating answers; they attempt to strictly impose a set of a priori biases upon the answers. It appears you have conflated your personal empiricism for “objective reality”.
Data cannot be rationally interpreted without a worldview. If you interpret it according to some form of empiricism, you’re still interpreting it via a worldview.
1. Does this mean any worldview can only be subjective?
2. Can your worldview change upon learning more about the world?
I suppose this is true, if “accurate predictions” are simply the bias unjustifiably introduced by an uncongenial worldview.
Again, I’d have to agree with this. “Congruent with objective reality, according to prediction and test” is nothing but the scientific set of a priori biases. No better or worse than “ratifies my religious faith” as a bias. EXCEPT, of course, for that pesky congruency issue. I personally have difficulty equating rigorous prediction and testing with personal preference as equivalent mechanisms for determining objective reality. I may be in the minority.
And around we go. If the goal is to iteratively fit the model to observation of the universe around us, that’s one “worldview”. If the goal is to omit all observation that cannot be stretched enough to be interpreted as matching emotional preference, that’s another “worldview”.
By Jove, I think you’ve put your finger on the heart of the issue here. Would we rather be happily deluded, or would we rather be more nearly correct even when the truth hurts? I think most people opt for the former, whether they articulate it or simply “feel” that way. One need only intone “Am Not! I’m being scientific!” and POOF, the problems vanish. Poof theory wins again!
Flint, I appreciate that you’ve at least admitted to the necessary logic of my post, and then demonstrated the deep-seated bias involved in such a priori worldviews by using invective to characterize those who simply call attention to this obvious point with the following:
Let’s note that the worldview you profess is not producing a simple affirmation or agreement of an obvious logical point, but apparenly must also include derision and negative characterizing of what might be other worldviews as if those who operate from different worldviews must be “deluded”, worthy, apparently, of your ridicule.
Worldviews drive people and provide them very deep and basic motivations; how one observes data; how they categorize it; how they interpret it, and what conclusions they reach is just the tip of the iceberg of how worldview organizes perception and thought towars self-affirmation. Nothing quite affirms the self like ridiculing and disparaging that which one sees as not like one’s self.
William J. Murray,
If “worldview” determines not only questions but the answers, does that mean that, say, the rules of logic are dictated by “worldview” also?
And how do you account for consilience? Worldview has notoriously unreliable effects when one steps of a cliff, for example. The laws of nature are, sadly, much more predictable.
It’s not affirming the self as much as ridiculing the position.
I have great fears that students in the future will be taught a worldview that doesn’t change with a change in knowledge.
The ID/Creationist worldview is based on theology and that remains fixed by church leaders regardless of new insights into reality discovered by scientists.
Is this the reason you don’t like science?
How about things like racism and bigotry? Are these affirmations of self?
I get the impression that you think any world view is justified.
How about a worldview that “affirms self” by permitting one to go out and mass murder all those stupid infidels out there and burn people at the stake who don’t agree with said worldview?
Are you advocating “worldview anarchy?” If not, how does one sort through “worldviews” to determine which is best? What criteria would you use?
And by the way, isn’t this off the topic of this thread? Were you attempting to seque the thread onto your favorite topic?
That would depend on your worldview, now wouldn’t it?
Again, this interesting perspective that how one holds “the laws of nature” and their efficacy is not part of a wordview, as if it is something else. I guess it’s common among many worldviews to be blind to one’s own, or to consider one’s own something “more”, or something different.
Look; why don’t you just come right out and admit it. You hate science to the point that you will never learn it. Why should we care?
Apparently you want to justify your “worldview” with some reasons. But if your reasons are part of your “worldview,” what possible meaning could they have to anyone else?
Umm, you have just admitted that both the questions and the answers are only determined by my worldview if I believe according to my worldview that they are….
That’s very odd for someone who thinks that science can’t resolve anything. What do you love science for? Its color?
That only means you don’t understand my arguments, nor do you understand ID arguments. You prefer to debate straw men.
…. but you could have saved yourself so much time and effort simply by adopting the worldview that you had proven DrDrD wrong!
… says the man who calls people that disagree with his worldview deceitful.