Come on Dean. The Supernatural in science ? Certainly, so long as science is trying understand or explain the supernatural. ID, though, just chalks it all up to the supernatural and stops. I would hope you could see the difference.
Truly supernatural is not to be considered in science? Daym! You better let the Pentagon know. They spend BILLIONS on trying to test if human intuition (a form of 'supernatural' - purely meaning it is above the natural NORM of something) is weaponizable. Same with ESP, mind-reading, etc. They pay universities and hospitals to find out if certain drugs will bring out believed latent tendencies towards those items.
Science is PURELY the pursuit of understanding what is deemded the 'supernatural'. Is that not how we descided to find out the Earth wasn't flat? How about the Northern Lights (they were at one time thought to be God's doing...not that there's proof they aren't on a higher plane)? The science of human reproduction was a purely 'supernatural' phenomenon until it was studied, though science still hasn't hammered out just what and when life starts.
Plauges were once supernatural punishment of man, until we figured out what was causing them, and how to go about preventing them, then vaccinating against them.
Please, science is NOT removed from the supernatural. If it were, it would cease to exist. If anyone should be ashamed it's those that claim science is perfect, without flaw, and that those who see science as a tool are wrong to not see it as a supreme answer machine.
They're doing more harm to science than it's inability to answer certain questions. And from someone who loves science, and experimenting, that's sad...
The scientifically accurate, completely honest answers to those questions is No, No, No, and No.
To me, this is another example of how incredibly powerful WAP is. But of course WAP only applies within accepted physics.
"science precludes the supernatural"
I think it would be more accurate to say science "strives to include the supernatural" or absorbs it whenever emprirical discovery/analysis allows this. Lightning was once considered supernatural, as were the sun and moon and stars. Eventually, we figured out how incorporate them into the scientific worldview.
Life originally came from nothing? Not quite. Life as we know it came from a long series of precursors, starting with simple chemical compounds and proceeding from there to more complex chemicals, biochemicals, then life. All this over the course of (at least) 100s of millions of years. Previous mileposts providing the foundation for new mileposts.
All this guided by what is possible and what is optimal under the rules our universe functions under.
We have found lifeforms that are virus-bacteria, more advanced forms that are animal-plants. According to a new scheme humans and toadstools belong to the same kingdom. And everybody is sharing genes with everybody else. Dogs may well have picked up the genes for language comprehension through viruses they shared with us.
Life is old. There has been more time between the appearance of the first jellyfish and the end of the Permian than there has been between the end of the Permian and now. And the first jellyfish were recent arrivals compared to the oldest signs of life we've yet found. In comparison a day of your life is nothing more than a water molecule in the Pacific Ocean. A shitload can happen when dealing with so many days.
Life came from nothing? Not even close. Life came from long ages of unguided, quasirandom preparation. The wondrous thing about life is not that it came about with assistance, but that it arose without.
Some questions can be asked that do not have scientific answers because they make no sense. For instance: Who created the Universe? If the Universe is defined as everything that exists, then nothing that "exists" could have created it. Not every mystical speculation is worth trying to find an answer to. There's such a thing as nonsense.
How did the debate over teaching ID in schools get to be a debate over abiogenesis? This is not ID's primary focus. I am going to pick up my very own copy of OPAP today at lunch, so I'll be able to post examples drawn straight from print on the page, but if this was simply about the origin of life on this planet it would be a very different debate.
I tend to agree that those questions are strawmen for that very reason. You are implying by asking the questions in this context that failure to demonstrate the chance occurrence of life in the laboratory MEANS something. Also, I've never known anyone, scientist or non-scientist, who answered my questions about abiogenesis by telling me to put my faith in the Prophet Darwin, nor have I ever had anyone tell me that abiotic soup became single-celled life in one step. Strawmen all.
You say several times that science can study the 'seemingly' supernatural, but you don't seem to release that that statement is entirely consistent with "science precludes the supernatural". Science precludes the supernatural by taking as its core assumption that anything we can see or deduce, we can meaningfully investigate. If something is truly supernatural, it doesn't obey any natural laws, and if it doesn't, we can't study it scientifically. If a phenomenon obeys natural laws, we can study it, but then it's not supernatural, no matter how woo-woo it seems. If we get a phenomenon which behaves predictably but not in accordance with the laws of nature as we know them, the scientific response to that is not to say we've proved the existence of the supernatural, but to change our understanding of the laws of nature to allow for that phenomenon. The supernatural is precluded not because science is forbidden to go after anything 'spooky' but because science can only study things which obey the laws of cause and effect - the natural world.
Exactly Dean. Science is wonderful and cool. I do wish they would admit that Evolution is "the best theory we have now, but frankly its pretty doggone pathetic, and we hope to find something less creaky over the next century." And that finding is far more probable than Evolution, thus making the probabilities of Evolution important.
And I do wish that we could create "the separation of Science and State." I see Libertarians like Glenn touting Porkbusters, and at the same time touting expansion of Science funding to match what totalitarian regimes do. Such hypocrisy makes one believe Libertarianism is simply a pressure group for the interests of white, male, geeks.
I also find it interesting that CS Lewis, one of the pre-eminent Christian thinkers of the last century, held the viewpoint that there was no division of supernatural and natural. In the Space Trilogy, angels are tachyonic beings, a form of matter that is not like ours, much like the Horta is silicon-based, and not like ours which is carbon-based.
And RS, if the Universe is defined, as most people do, as the physically observable construct of matter and energy we live in, then you don't have nonsense.
Science Is Not About "Seeking Natural Explanations"
Maybe I'm missing something but I have to disagree based on the fact that natural explanations are the default, since we do know that natural cause is the cause for every other effect in nature.
There is no way to test for the supernatural and none of our instruments can detect the supernatural.
If Jesus made a second coming and landed in a star-trek episode...
Spock:
Captain... my tricorder reads... nothing
Kirk:
Then it must be.... him
Bones:
I'll bet that pointy-eared Vulcan is behind this
Jesus:
Prepare to beam-"up"
Science precludes the supernatural because there is no scientific test for it.
No, when Jesus made his appearance to Thomas, he did not say...
"Stand back."
No he said if I recall right something more to the effect of...
"others have seen me, I've eaten and drank which a ghost could not, and look at my hands, my feet, and get over here, and stick your finger in my side where I got jabbed by a Roman sword, ya blinkered idiot!"
Scientific proof of the Resurection. Of course, they didn't have science journals in those days, and had to make do with something called the Bible, you may have heard of it...
"Throughout much of the 20th century, many scientists devoted considerable research into such subjects as mental telapathy and psychokinesis, which would undoubtedly be considered "supernatural" phenomena (at least until we found a mechanism for them). At the time no one had any grand working theory that would explain how such things could work. They merely asked whether the phenomena existed."
Ok, so we agree Dembski, Behe, et al. are free to look for evidence of intelligent design. When they find some they can give the rest of us a call. Until then the mention of intelligent design as a viable alternative explanation for the origin of species should be about as frequent in science curricula as mentions of mental telepathy are for the unexplainable phenomenon of two teenage girls (best friends) who pick up the phone to call each other at the same time.
I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that Science seeks natural explanations to observable phenomena. What bothers me is the notion that because we have found natural explanations for things previously thought to be supernatural, then nothing can be supernatural.
And from the articles I've read, what ID proponents are suggesting is that while it may not be possible for Science to specifically identify THE Creator, it is possible for Science to establish whether or not their is evidence to support the existence a Creator.
Once and if Science establishes that there is positive evidence of Intelligent Design, it still does not establish the identity or origin of that Creator. As far as Science would be concerned, that Creator could be some other natural creature, or a supernatural God. Science just would not know.
Both those who believe that we were planted here by outerspace aliens, and those who believe we were created by God could use the evidence Science produces to support their beliefs. But Science could neither support or refute the specific identities of that Creator unless some other unforeseen information came into play - like for example, the return of those aliens or the second coming of Christ.
The difficulty comes when Scientists arrogantly suppose that they have conclusively ruled out the existence of a Creator. That just simply has not happened.
Suppose that we were Created by someone who operates outside the parameters of the known physical laws of the universe - a God.
That concept is not unusual or unnatural. After all, we many times create closed systems that operate using only a subset of the physical laws that we know of. The components of those systems operate within the boundaries we set, though we ourselves are not constrained by the boundaries of the systems we create.
Just because "God" operates outside those boundaries doesn't mean that he does not also operate within them as well. In other words, the same physical laws which apply to us in a complete way might also apply to God in an incomplete way.
In fact, though we may have only one "God" of our particular system, there could in theory be another whole race of superintelligent beings that operate on a scale, a speed, and in a dimension that is completely outside our realm of observation. "God" could be some superintelligent "scientist" of another realm running his own controlled experiment.
None of these ideas are unreasonable on their face. And even if there were billions of other "Gods," unless they were participants in this grand experiment, they would be irrelevant to our existence.
It then follows that this "God" might have a specific purpose for his experiment, and that the components that did not work according to His design would be discarded and destroyed, i.e. sent to Hell. And the components that did operate according to His design would be retained and inserted into a larger system, i.e. go to Heaven.
If you remember the final scene from the movie "Men in Black" our universe was merely one marble among many in the marble bag of some creature totally beyond our ability to comprehend in time and scale. Is this really an "unnatural" concept? Or merely an acknowledgement that some things might be beyond our ability to measure or comprehend?
The arrogance of scientists who suppose that we have the capacity to answer every single question we might have from the known physical laws of nature is astonishing. It supposes that there are no more new laws of physics to be discovered - a huge assumption. It arrogates us to the position of being at the end of history, i.e. all that can be known is already known and we only need to organize it properly.
1. Steve Verdon's whining about "Have you stopped beating your wife?" is silly. This fallacy is merely one of syntactical conjunction -- ie, it is 2 questions:
* Have you ever beaten your wife?
* If so, When's the last time?
That's why it's hard to answer with a Yes or No. Dean's questions aren't this.
2. Science doesn't exclude the supernatural. That's another fallacy. Science only requires that it be observed, tested, and reproduced.
Now, granted, this is a hard standard. For example, I don't believe in ghosts. But if a smart fellow devises a way to (a) observe a ghost (b) test for the presence of a ghost and (c) reproduce these results, Hey, I'll believe in ghosts!
I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that Science seeks natural explanations to observable phenomena. What bothers me is the notion that because we have found natural explanations for things previously thought to be supernatural, then nothing can be supernatural.
I don't think that there's been any claim that nothing is supernatural, just that if something is, it's outside the realm of science.
The problem with trying to find scientific evidence for a divine Creator is that if the Creator isn't subject to natural law, what kind of disconfirming evidence could there possibly be? If the proposed Creator is the familiar omnipotent kind, then literally ANY observed evidence is compatible. Even a perfect fossil record isn't firm evidence for evolution if you assume that there might be a Being Who created the Earth complete with buried fossils and all the other evidence intact (this is known as the omphalos hypothesis).
For this reason, we can't rule out the existence of a Creator, and anyone who says that science has done so is an idiot. I've never heard anyone say that, personally, although I have heard the claim that science has provided naturalistic explanations for many of the things for which a divine explanation was traditionally invoked and thus a Creator flunks a sort of plausibility test. That's not a scientific argument though.
We can't know that science's assumptions about cause and effect and so on are True in an absolute sense. They're just useful, and when we're working with that particular toolkit, we're constrained to questions we can answer in those ways.
In fact, though we may have only one "God" of our particular system, there could in theory be another whole race of superintelligent beings that operate on a scale, a speed, and in a dimension that is completely outside our realm of observation. "God" could be some superintelligent "scientist" of another realm running his own controlled experiment.
It's possible. One in-between hypothesis is that our Creator is not strictly supernatural, but is so far beyond us in capabilities and nature that it's the same thing as far as we're concerned. (I sort of think most people who believe in God would find this to be an unsatisfying kind of 'God', but I'm not religious so I can't say.)
Again, though, how do we study this? We're back to Dean's question about testable predictions made by ID. I don't remember him getting any answers. If we can't test it, it's not science. That's only a problem for people who think, incorrectly, that 'scientifically testable' and 'true' are synonyms.
For this reason, we can't rule out the existence of a Creator, and anyone who says that science has done so is an idiot.
Nope, an agnostic is a "weak atheist" because they cannot justify a belief in something that there is no evidence for.
You can rule out the existence of a creator that's contingent on the lack of evidence for it, by comparison to every other shred of evidence that we have at our disposal, which indicates that natural cause is the only cause for any and all effects.
Call me names... the preferred theory doesn't care.
I mean, just because science has done a bang-up job in advancing the current state of knowledge doesn't make it the only valid source of knowledge.
And some things are just unknowable by science. It's not that we haven't found a way to prove such-and-so, or that the state of the art hasn't advanced; it's that we never will, even given an eternity of scientific advances.
On the one hand, it's hard for me to believe that we're even having this conversation after the events of the past century. On the other, history is one of those things beyond science's grasp, so it's not surprising that few scientists have learned its lessons.
Even if we had shown that natural causes account for all observed effects (which, as yet, we have not), that wouldn't rule out the existence of a Creator. It is possible a Creator exists and simply chooses not to interfere in its Creation; it is also possible that what we perceive as 'natural laws' are direct manifestations of Divine Will, and it happens that the Creator wills every test to work exactly the same each time. The fact that we have no conceivable way to distinguish between these possibilities may make the question of the existence of a Creator seem irrelevant or uninteresting, but it doesn't rule it out.
Similarly, many people today judge, on the basis of the available evidence and using some principle such as Occam's Razor, that the simplest and best theory is that there is no Creator. I'm one of them. That does not constitute a proof that there is none.
Absolutely. Did you read what I actually wrote? Especially the part about 'scientifically testable' and 'true' not being synonymous?
On the one hand, it's hard for me to believe that we're even having this conversation after the events of the past century. On the other, history is one of those things beyond science's grasp, so it's not surprising that few scientists have learned its lessons.
Uh, yeah. Those dumb scientists should stop trying to pull discussions about the existence of God and other scientifically unknowable topics into high school science classes. You're so right.
If you are talking about the study of biology, or chemistry, or physics, or astonomy, or any number of scientific fields, then yes, ID has no role to play in those discussions.
But when it comes to theories about origin of the species, or origins of life, the theories being proposed in "science" class are no more scientific than Intelligent design. They are based on assertion, supposition, and belief - nothing else.
It is fine and good to talk about the methodologies of carbon dating, studying the fossil record, etc. But when you use that true science to make the logical leap into the philosophical discussion of the origins of life, you have ceased talking about science as Dean describes it here.
There is nothing testable or falsifiable about the primordial soup. It is mere supposition. There is plenty of evidence of species adaptation. But adaptation is distinct from the radical mutations what one must accept as truth in order to buy into the whole concept of Evolution as a philosophy.
Just because a philosophy was developed by scientists does not make that philosophy scientific. It is still philosophy. I'm all for taking philosophy out of science class. But if Evolution in its whole concept is to be presented in Science class, then competing philosophies should have equal standing.
Absolutely. Did you read what I actually wrote? Especially the part about 'scientifically testable' and 'true' not being synonymous?
Hmm, must have missed it. Sorry.
On the other hand, "how do you study it?" implies that something isn't studyable, which is what I was reacting to. But I was probably reading you a little too closely for the context.
Uh, yeah. Those dumb scientists should stop trying to pull discussions about the existence of God and other scientifically unknowable topics into high school science classes. You're so right.
How am I right? Where did I mention anything about high school science class?
Perhaps we both should do a little more reading before posting.
But when it comes to theories about origin of the species, or origins of life, the theories being proposed in "science" class are no more scientific than Intelligent design. They are based on assertion, supposition, and belief - nothing else.
I strongly disagree, but I'd do a better job of disagreeing in detail if you'd give me a specific example of what you're talking about.
How am I right? Where did I mention anything about high school science class?
Did you get that the context for Dean's post was the Dover school case, where there's a fight going on about whether intelligent design should be presented in science class?
You seemed to be saying that scientists have to accept that there are areas of knowlege on which they are not authorities, and the existence of a vastly superior/supernatural Creator is one of them. I was sort of amused, because that is exactly the point of the plaintiffs - this is not a scientific issue and does not belong in science class.
Okay, if that's not what you said, can you say it again? I have re-read your original comment to see if I can get it, and I don't. Aside from "that's contingent on the lack of evidence for it" it looked to me like I said what you said, and I don't understand this clause.
"Supernatural" is a scare word in any event. There is no such thing as a supernatural event. If it happened, it is natural. If ESP exists, then it isn't supernatural -- there couldn't be anything more natural. If Bigfoot exists, then he is just another animal -- he isn't supernatural.
On the other hand, if these things don't exist, that doesn't make them supernatural, either. It makes them fiction. If there is an intelligent designer, then that designer is natural. It is just a part of nature that we haven't understood yet, as is anything else that we decide to label "supernatural".
A "scientist" avoiding an issue because it deals with the "supernatural" is a dogmatist, and lazy to boot.
Wow!... the moron over at this blog that was bad-mouthing Dean just deleted two of my posts and manipulated the context of what I said, and now I can't post anymore.
Apparently the fanatic doesn't like the fact that he knows less about science than the person that he's badmouthing about that very thing... and please, somebody, tell the loser that I said so.
What I'm talking about is that Behe, Dembski, et al. have not produced any evidence of design in nature that passes the laugh test.
Behe's IC? None of his examples of IC systems stand up. What's more "a system that is made up of parts that are each required for the function of the system overall and if any one part...." Could form through natural genetic/evolutionary means, therefore the existence of such a system, if one is ever found, is not proof of intelligent design.
I am not sufficiently trained in mathematics to criticize Dembski's work however the person he borrowed the NFL theorems from is and he says Dembski's work is not sound.
So I will modify your possible answer 1) to: There is no evidence that there is goal oriented design in nature. Just because something looks like it was designed does not mean that it is. Behe, Dembski, etc. have not devised a rigorous system for detecting designed versus not designed systems. If they ever do, they can attempt to produce evidence of design in nature. Until then, their ideas deserve no more consideration for inclusion in science curricula than mental telepathy, telekinesis, astrology, UFOs, and the rest.
Okay, if that's not what you said, can you say it again? I have re-read your original comment to see if I can get it, and I don't. Aside from "that's contingent on the lack of evidence for it" it looked to me like I said what you said, and I don't understand this clause.
Maybe not clearly enough I said that we know that the cause for every effect in nature, (that we know of and can test), is natural. It requires an unfounded leap of faith to assume otherwise without good reason to do this.
Science rules out the supernatural until and unless you can prove otherwise.
Leaps of faith to "anything is possible" are not warrented without proof.
Darwin and his Theory of Evolution do not address the initial step(s), although of course people working with it are interested. Evolution concerns itself with the ongoing process of life.
I am not all that sure that Darwin himself would have disagreed that an intelligence (he would explicitly have said God) continued to be involved, to some degree, past the initial establishment of life. But neither do I think he would agree that direct intervention was needed, or occurred, at every step rather than occasionally: to be sure, that is just my opinion and based on little more than knowing he was strongly religious to the point of not publishing - for years - for fear of upsetting others of his creed, until he was made aware that another scientist was about to publish almost the same ideas.
John, I think that the Dover School board was forced by the educational guidlines to include a statement about Darwin's feelings about the random nature of mutations in order that they didn't violate the policy for the exact, "origins" reasons that you indicated.
You seemed to be saying that scientists have to accept that there are areas of knowlege on which they are not authorities, and the existence of a vastly superior/supernatural Creator is one of them. I was sort of amused, because that is exactly the point of the plaintiffs - this is not a scientific issue and does not belong in science class.
My point was strictly a reaction to your query about how to study non-scientific things, which I think we've already determined was a bit hasty.
But since you bring it up, isn't it the point of Dean's (Fred's) questions that origins discussions aren't suitable in general for science class?
If you agree, cool. But if not, then I have to ask: As long as we're teaching metaphysics in science class, on what basis is my metaphysics excluded?
And if one metaphysical position is using the political process to exclude another from the public space, isn't that precisely the kind of thing the First Amendment was written to prevent?
I thought we were talking about the existence of a Creator, not an origin question.
I don't think the First Amendment guarantees your right to have your metaphysical position explored under a specific topic heading. If there's a claim for a supernatural cause, it's not a suitable topic for science class. A claim that there could not have been a supernatural cause is also not a topic for science class. A description of what we do know, what we don't know, and the best natural-cause theories to date for the evidence is what belongs in science class.
Maybe we're using two different senses of 'rule out' here. I think you are using it in the sense of 'exclude'; science excludes the possibility of a Creator, as its working assumptions involve looking at natural causes for effects. What I think Scott meant, and what I was addressing, was 'rule out' as in 'eliminate' or 'make impossible', as in, "the scientific evidence eliminates the possibility of a Creator". It doesn't, and it can't.
But how can you just invent something external to nature without any evidence at all that anything can exist outside of nature!?!
Were did this supernatural force come from that doesn't exist anywhere that I can find, except in the minds of people that misinterpret the purpose in nature that chaos whorshiping antifanatics won't even admit exists???
How do you justify pure "imagination" as remotely plausible or relevant to anything real without evidence... ?
Einstein is no-doubt rolling in his grave at the thought that science has completely lost touch with methodical structuring to nature, but both sides of this debate are killing me for the same clueless reason!
No offense, that last part was just a general rant.
A description of what we do know, what we don't know, and the best natural-cause theories to date for the evidence is what belongs in science class.
I agree with the principle. I'm just unconvinced that "what we know, what we don't know, and the best natural-cause theories" is all that gets discussed in science classes.
The question that comes to mind: maybe ID isn't one of "the best natural-cause theories". But is that because the science is bogus (Pons-Fleishmann style), or because we've made a metaphysical decision that ID is not "natural" in the sense of "scientifically discernable"?
I think that there's a case to be made that, if ID is not a possible scientific conclusion to the discussion of origins, no other theory can be, either. At least, I'd have to understand what about the ID theory distinguishes it from evolution in this regard.
More importantly for the topic at hand, I don't think I'm the only one that thinks this way, which is why these disputes keep coming up, and why people are starting to resort to the political process to get their POV into the classroom. That was my point about the First Amendment: if we're letting ideology into the science classroom, then we have to let it all in. I'd prefer taking it all out, and it sounds like you agree, at least in principle.
And, as I mentioned before, it's a mystery to me why scientists would prefer ideology to science to resolve the question, given ideology's rather poor showing in the 20th century.
It doesn't appear to me that you have read any of the articles Fred Reed has written on this subject. Dean linked to Fred's main site, but here are some direct links to the articles themselves. I suggest that you read them. Here are some quotations:
One difference between faith and science is that science allows with reasonable grace the questioning of theory. A physicist who doubts, say, the theory of general relativity will be expected to show good cause for his doubt. He won’t be dismissed in chorus as delusional and an enemy of truth.
By contrast, he who doubts the divinity of Christ, the prophethood of Mohammed, or the sanctity of natural selection will be savaged. It is the classic emotional reaction of the True Believer to whom dissent is not just wrong but intolerable. Which is unfortunate. If the faithful of evolution spent as much time examining their theory as they do defending it, they might prove to be right, or partly right, or discover all manner of interesting things heretofore unsuspected.
Among the articles of faith: Life evolved from the primeval soup (sheer conjecture; the existence of the soup is inferred from the theory); evolution occurred, as distinct from change; accounting for all characteristics of life (mere assertion); natural selection being the driving force (unestablished). Many of these points are logically separable. Since evolution serves the purposes of a religion, namely to explain human origin and destiny, they are invariably bundled.
And here is another:
Evolution breaks down into at least three logically separable components: First, that life arose by chemical accident; second, that it then evolved into the life we see today; and third, that the mechanism was the accretion of chance mutations. Evolutionists, not particularly logical, refuse to see this separability.
The first, chance formation of life, simply hasn’t been established. It isn’t science, but faith.
The second proposition, that life, having arisen by unknown means, then evolved into the life of today, is more solid. In very old rocks you find fish, then things, like coelacanth and the ichthyostega, that look like transitional forms, and finally us. They seem to have gotten from A to B somehow. A process of evolution, however driven, looks reasonable. It is hard to imagine that they appeared magically from nowhere, one after the other.
The third proposition, that the mechanism of evolutions is chance mutation, though sacrosanct among its proponents, is shaky. If it cannot account for the simultaneous appearance of complex, functionally interdependent characteristics, as in the case of caterpillars, it fails. Thus far, it hasn’t accounted for them.
It is interesting to note that evolutionists switch stories regarding the mechanism of transformation. The standard Neo-Darwinian view is that evolution proceeds very slowly. But when it proves impossible to find evidence of gradual evolution, some evolutionists turn to “punctuated equilibrium,” (2) which says that evolution happens by sudden undetectable spurts. The idea isn’t foolish, just unestablished. Then there are the evolutionists who, in opposition to those who maintain that point-mutations continue to account for evolution, say that now cultural evolution has taken over.
Finally, when things do not happen according to script—when, for example, human intelligence appears too rapidly—then we have the theory of “privileged genes,” which evolved at breakneck speed because of assumed but unestablished selective pressures. That is, the existence of the pressures is inferred from the changes, and then the changes are attributed to the pressures. Oh.
When you have patched a tire too many times, you start thinking about getting a new tire.
The Theory of Implausibility
As previously mentioned, evolutionists depend heavily on plausibility unabetted by evidence. There is also the matter of implausibility. Suppose that I showed you two tiny gear wheels, such as one might find in an old watch, and said, “See? I turn this little wheel, and the other little wheel turns too. Isn’t that cute?” You would not find this surprising. Suppose I then showed you a whole mechanical watch, with thirty little gear wheels and a little lever that said tickticktick. You would have no trouble accepting that they all worked together.
If I then told you of a mechanism consisting of a hundred billion little wheels that worked for seventy years, repairing itself, wouldn’t you suspect either that I was smoking something really good—or that something beyond simple mechanics must be involved?
Evolution writ large is the belief that a cloud of hydrogen will spontaneously invent extreme-ultraviolet lithography, perform Swan Lake, and write all the books in the British Museum.
If something looks implausible, it probably is.
That should give you something to respond specifically to.
if we're letting ideology into the science classroom, then we have to let it all in.
Bingo... Lynn Margulis doesn't call them "Neodarwinan Bullies" because she has normal disagreement with her peers over the random nature of speciation. It's a direct shot at the same kind of fanaticism that plagues the "left" side of this debate. Lynn is one of the most respected members of the evolutionary biology community, but she made her bold statement as the honored guest speaker at the last evolutionary conference, this past summer.
"Neodarwinian bullies" in that context are every bit as antifanatical and agenda motivated as the worst home-schoolin fundimentalist, and most of them are also evobiologists and their equally motivated associates that commonly testify in court.
Whoops, all of the links just take you to his latest article. But look at the left bar and the articles are entitled
1) Yet More Evolution
2) Things in Heaven and Earth
3) Fredwin on Evolution (this is the article with the four questions.)
4) Lockstep Thinking On Evolution
5) Darwin Elucidated
He has an article criticising the philosophy of science entitled "Questions of Faith" with a pretty good description of the failings of science as a philosophy.
Here is the chief defect of scientists (I mean those who take the sciences as an ideology rather than as a discipline): an unwillingness to admit that there is anything outside their realm. But there is. You cannot squeeze consciousness, beauty, affection, or Good and Evil from physics any more than you can derive momentum from the postulates of geometry: No mass, no momentum. A moral scientist is thus a contradiction in terms. (Logically speaking: in practice they compartmentalize and are perfectly good people.)
Thus we have the spectacle of the scientist who is horrified by the latest hatchet murder but can give no scientific reason why. A murder after all is merely the dislocation of certain physical masses (the victim's head, for example) followed by elaborate chemical reactions. Horror cannot be derived from physics. It comes from somewhere else.
But there is. You cannot squeeze consciousness, beauty, affection, or Good and Evil from physics any more than you can derive momentum from the postulates of geometry
I've said this before, but this is another common falacy depending on which cosmological model is actually in effect.
The mindset of that statement comes from a chaotic non-preferred extension of the Copernican Cosmological principle, which isn't doing so good these days in the world of observational physics.
They're just extremely complicated as physical concepts.
Not if an anthropic cosmological principle is in effect in a finite universe. Then it's a near direct translation of the same kind of teleology that people from Hericlitus to Robert Frost have directly observed in nature.
We routinely kill insects by the score merely because they annoy us without suffering any moral outrage. We mow down the grass, and hack away the flora just to make a pretty landscape for ourselves without any moral outrage. So obviously morality cannot truly be explained by the physical sciences.
Yeah it can, those acts are necessary contributions to the ecosystem that we are contributing members of, and to think that we are so detatched from the natural process that we can actully violate the physics of our ecosystem is not only "free-thinker" arrogant, it's also demonstrably false.
Free thinkers think that they can fool mother nature.
You remind me of that commercial advertising an iPod telephone where Maddonna and Biggie and 1000 other singers try to fit inside a phone booth.
Sure, if you redefine people to be merely the recording of their voices, you can fit 1000 people into your phone. But people are more than just their voices. So you cannot REALLY fit 1000 people into a standard size phone booth.
But go ahead. Redefine everything so it fits neatly into your ideology. It's no skin off of my nose.
"Evolution breaks down into at least three logically separable components: First, that life arose by chemical accident; [snip] The first, chance formation of life, simply hasn’t been established. It isn’t science, but faith."
Strawman alert: The very first statement is here is wrong. The theory of Evolution does not care how life started. It is about what happenned *after* life started. e.g. if we stipulate for the sake of argument that some Intelligent Designer created the very first lifeforms, it changes the case for evolution not one whit.
If everything can be defined as a chemical impulse, then there is no case whatsoever for morality. There is no logical basis for guilt or culpability. Pedophiles and Murderers are just following impulses in the same manner that mothers and fathers follow impulses to "love" their children. And while we might have the impulse to kill the murderer back, and hang the pedophile by his balls, that too is just an impulse. There is no case for judging the pervert as bad. Their removal from society is not anything more than white blood cells attacking an infection.
So what is the point of due process? Who cares if a few innocent people get removed as long as the societal infection is removed? After all, biologically speaking, the body destroys both good and bad cells when attacking an infection. Why even try to make a distinction?
I was going to comment on Dean's assertion regarding science and the supernatural, but Elizabeth has already done a superb job.
Science makes the assumption of metaphysical naturalism: That all things are natural. This means that if we can observe an event, we can observe the cause of that event.
Before you jump on me, let me point out that I am perfectly aware that this is simply an assumption. The point is that having made this assumption, we can build the rigorous framework that we know as Science. Without this assumption, we can do most of the same research, but there is no connection between any two experiments.
And the thing is, although this is merely an assumption, it invariably works.
Now, it would appear that when Dean speaks of the supernatural he is not using the term in the same way a philosopher of science would. The Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot aren't supernatural; the simply don't exist.
To a scientist, the supernatural is an unobservable cause. If we had a physical event that is not caused by some other physical event (or property, for those who study QM), that would be supernatural. Science says this does not happen.
If everything can be defined as a chemical impulse, then there is no case whatsoever for morality.
This does not follow.
There is no logical basis for guilt or culpability.
Sure there is: Free will.
Pedophiles and Murderers are just following impulses in the same manner that mothers and fathers follow impulses to "love" their children.
Precisely. Except that the pedophiles and murderers are evil.
Free will is a chemical process, just like digestion, only rather more complex. But just because free will can be understood in terms of brain chemistry doesn't make it suddenly disappear, any more than our understanding of the digestive process prevents us from eating lunch.
There is plenty of evidence of species adaptation.
Indeed.
But adaptation is distinct from the radical mutations what one must accept as truth in order to buy into the whole concept of Evolution as a philosophy.
No-one ever asked you to "buy into the whole concept of Evolution as a philosophy". The fact of the matter is that evolution has happened and continues to happen, and the Theory of Evolution is our best explanation as to how.
And your statement:
adaptation is distinct from the radical mutations
is simply untrue. Adaptation proceeds from mutation by natural selection. That's all there is, and all that is required.
I stayed out of this conversation all day today because, well, I have a life. And I figured people could hash this out fairly well.
I think that Pixy Misa and Elizabeth have made superbly-stated arguments. However, I would make this point to them:
As I asked in my piece, isn't the word "supernatural" really just a meta-analysis word anyway? At some point, can we not just declare that if something happens, it is ipso facto natural?
Let me make the point again: 1) science can observe and study things it has no theoretical understanding of, yes? 2) Science can look for empirical evidence for observed phenomena that sound supernatural, yes? 3) Science can look for things by inference, yes?
The question about the leap from abiotic chemistry to life is, however, valid. It's important because all the answers to it are pure speculation--they just are. Why can't we just *say* that, because it's true? And it's not the only question like that. There is still no clear, unequivocal mechanism for speciation that is generally accepted by most biologists. Hell, Stephen Jay Gould acknowledged this, acknowledged it openly. Why is it such a problem for others to just say, "you know what? You're right, we have some educated guesses but we can't say we're fully certain."
And ultimately I still get down to the surveys that Michael Balter pointed to, which so clearly show that a majority, an overwhelming majority depending on how you look at it, have skepticism about Darwinism. To me, it's not enough to say "well science isn't about opinion polls," because let me tell you, these people vote, these people pay taxes and they vote. If you're accepting taxpayer money, you answer to taxpayers and don't get to stamp a big "I'm a scientist, I don't answer to you!" label on your chest.
If nothing else, that's *horribly* unconstructive.
These voters, these taxpayers, fund the vast majority of the science research done in this country, as well as the majority of scientists' salaries. Treating them with contempt is not in my view either smart politics OR particularly decent behavior, scientist or no.
Look at me. I'm an educated layman. I'm smart. I've loved science my whole life. I read peer reviewed studies for fun (and who the hell does that except weirdos like me and Elizabeth Reid anyway?). I have friends, quite a few, who are published and respected scientists. I'm irreligious. I have *huge* disagreements with many Christians. I'm open-minded and inquisitive.
And yet people like this and this seem to think that being abusive toward me, treating me like an ignoramus and a dunce and worse, is the proper response when I point out such simple facts as:
1) There are a lot of things we don't know. It's okay to admit that. Some of them are pretty big questions. We *think* we know how life evolved, but we've got big gaps in the *how* part, and it's okay to be skeptical about that.
2) Life looks to you like it might have been engineered by forces we don't understand? Okay, that's an interesting point. I can see where you're coming from. You think God had a hand in it? Okay, I get what you're saying. Can we get on with the experiments please?
I contend that this, ultimately, is all I've *EVER* said, the only real position I've ever taken. Maybe I haven't said it well enough but I invite you to go back to my previous comments and tell me where I was inconsistent on this point. I don't think I have, even if once in a while I've gotten sarcastic when I shouldn't have.
Pixy: Adaptation proceeds from mutation by natural selection. That's all there is, and all that is required.
I know this is repeating, but:
Stephen Jay Gould thought there had to be more than this, that it was nowhere near enough. I mean, the biggest problem right there is that no one can coherently explain how a genetic mutation can wind up fundamentally altering your chromosomal structures. Look carefully at the subject of speciation and you'll find that it's way more wild and woolly than is often made out.
Does that mean "God does it?" I dunno, define God. *Maybe* it's some force we don't understand. Or maybe it's something simple and obvious staring us right in the face (I know one molecular biologist who thinks he knows, and he's getting some serious attention for it in the molecular biology community for it—you may hear more about it in the popular news in the next few years).
But from the time I was a kid, I was taught that one of the fundamentals of the practice of science is to always be willing to concede what you don't know. I mean, cripes, isn't that where it all starts? "I don't know, let's see what we can find out?"
To a scientist, the supernatural is an unobservable cause. If we had a physical event that is not caused by some other physical event (or property, for those who study QM), that would be supernatural.
With you so far.
Science says this does not happen.
And it doesn't.
Nope.
Science says such unobservable causes aren't science. They have no way of evaluating their truth value, or lack thereof.
Clarification: "Supernatural" in this context, and in theology, means Divine. We are not talking about ghosts or UFOs or angels or devils, which, in theology, are known as "preternatural". We are talking about God or the Gods, depending on your theology.
Bravo Zulu!
(That's sailor talk for, "Ya done good!")
Nah, the second step is to figure out how it works!
Science is PURELY the pursuit of understanding what is deemded the 'supernatural'. Is that not how we descided to find out the Earth wasn't flat? How about the Northern Lights (they were at one time thought to be God's doing...not that there's proof they aren't on a higher plane)? The science of human reproduction was a purely 'supernatural' phenomenon until it was studied, though science still hasn't hammered out just what and when life starts.
Plauges were once supernatural punishment of man, until we figured out what was causing them, and how to go about preventing them, then vaccinating against them.
Please, science is NOT removed from the supernatural. If it were, it would cease to exist. If anyone should be ashamed it's those that claim science is perfect, without flaw, and that those who see science as a tool are wrong to not see it as a supreme answer machine.
They're doing more harm to science than it's inability to answer certain questions. And from someone who loves science, and experimenting, that's sad...
To me, this is another example of how incredibly powerful WAP is. But of course WAP only applies within accepted physics.
"science precludes the supernatural"
I think it would be more accurate to say science "strives to include the supernatural" or absorbs it whenever emprirical discovery/analysis allows this. Lightning was once considered supernatural, as were the sun and moon and stars. Eventually, we figured out how incorporate them into the scientific worldview.
All this guided by what is possible and what is optimal under the rules our universe functions under.
We have found lifeforms that are virus-bacteria, more advanced forms that are animal-plants. According to a new scheme humans and toadstools belong to the same kingdom. And everybody is sharing genes with everybody else. Dogs may well have picked up the genes for language comprehension through viruses they shared with us.
Life is old. There has been more time between the appearance of the first jellyfish and the end of the Permian than there has been between the end of the Permian and now. And the first jellyfish were recent arrivals compared to the oldest signs of life we've yet found. In comparison a day of your life is nothing more than a water molecule in the Pacific Ocean. A shitload can happen when dealing with so many days.
Life came from nothing? Not even close. Life came from long ages of unguided, quasirandom preparation. The wondrous thing about life is not that it came about with assistance, but that it arose without.
I tend to agree that those questions are strawmen for that very reason. You are implying by asking the questions in this context that failure to demonstrate the chance occurrence of life in the laboratory MEANS something. Also, I've never known anyone, scientist or non-scientist, who answered my questions about abiogenesis by telling me to put my faith in the Prophet Darwin, nor have I ever had anyone tell me that abiotic soup became single-celled life in one step. Strawmen all.
You say several times that science can study the 'seemingly' supernatural, but you don't seem to release that that statement is entirely consistent with "science precludes the supernatural". Science precludes the supernatural by taking as its core assumption that anything we can see or deduce, we can meaningfully investigate. If something is truly supernatural, it doesn't obey any natural laws, and if it doesn't, we can't study it scientifically. If a phenomenon obeys natural laws, we can study it, but then it's not supernatural, no matter how woo-woo it seems. If we get a phenomenon which behaves predictably but not in accordance with the laws of nature as we know them, the scientific response to that is not to say we've proved the existence of the supernatural, but to change our understanding of the laws of nature to allow for that phenomenon. The supernatural is precluded not because science is forbidden to go after anything 'spooky' but because science can only study things which obey the laws of cause and effect - the natural world.
And I do wish that we could create "the separation of Science and State." I see Libertarians like Glenn touting Porkbusters, and at the same time touting expansion of Science funding to match what totalitarian regimes do. Such hypocrisy makes one believe Libertarianism is simply a pressure group for the interests of white, male, geeks.
I also find it interesting that CS Lewis, one of the pre-eminent Christian thinkers of the last century, held the viewpoint that there was no division of supernatural and natural. In the Space Trilogy, angels are tachyonic beings, a form of matter that is not like ours, much like the Horta is silicon-based, and not like ours which is carbon-based.
And RS, if the Universe is defined, as most people do, as the physically observable construct of matter and energy we live in, then you don't have nonsense.
Maybe I'm missing something but I have to disagree based on the fact that natural explanations are the default, since we do know that natural cause is the cause for every other effect in nature.
There is no way to test for the supernatural and none of our instruments can detect the supernatural.
If Jesus made a second coming and landed in a star-trek episode...
Spock:
Captain... my tricorder reads... nothing
Kirk:
Then it must be.... him
Bones:
I'll bet that pointy-eared Vulcan is behind this
Jesus:
Prepare to beam-"up"
Science precludes the supernatural because there is no scientific test for it.
"Stand back."
No he said if I recall right something more to the effect of...
"others have seen me, I've eaten and drank which a ghost could not, and look at my hands, my feet, and get over here, and stick your finger in my side where I got jabbed by a Roman sword, ya blinkered idiot!"
Scientific proof of the Resurection. Of course, they didn't have science journals in those days, and had to make do with something called the Bible, you may have heard of it...
Ok, so we agree Dembski, Behe, et al. are free to look for evidence of intelligent design. When they find some they can give the rest of us a call. Until then the mention of intelligent design as a viable alternative explanation for the origin of species should be about as frequent in science curricula as mentions of mental telepathy are for the unexplainable phenomenon of two teenage girls (best friends) who pick up the phone to call each other at the same time.
"Ooh cool! You read my mind!"
And from the articles I've read, what ID proponents are suggesting is that while it may not be possible for Science to specifically identify THE Creator, it is possible for Science to establish whether or not their is evidence to support the existence a Creator.
Once and if Science establishes that there is positive evidence of Intelligent Design, it still does not establish the identity or origin of that Creator. As far as Science would be concerned, that Creator could be some other natural creature, or a supernatural God. Science just would not know.
Both those who believe that we were planted here by outerspace aliens, and those who believe we were created by God could use the evidence Science produces to support their beliefs. But Science could neither support or refute the specific identities of that Creator unless some other unforeseen information came into play - like for example, the return of those aliens or the second coming of Christ.
The difficulty comes when Scientists arrogantly suppose that they have conclusively ruled out the existence of a Creator. That just simply has not happened.
Suppose that we were Created by someone who operates outside the parameters of the known physical laws of the universe - a God.
That concept is not unusual or unnatural. After all, we many times create closed systems that operate using only a subset of the physical laws that we know of. The components of those systems operate within the boundaries we set, though we ourselves are not constrained by the boundaries of the systems we create.
Just because "God" operates outside those boundaries doesn't mean that he does not also operate within them as well. In other words, the same physical laws which apply to us in a complete way might also apply to God in an incomplete way.
In fact, though we may have only one "God" of our particular system, there could in theory be another whole race of superintelligent beings that operate on a scale, a speed, and in a dimension that is completely outside our realm of observation. "God" could be some superintelligent "scientist" of another realm running his own controlled experiment.
None of these ideas are unreasonable on their face. And even if there were billions of other "Gods," unless they were participants in this grand experiment, they would be irrelevant to our existence.
It then follows that this "God" might have a specific purpose for his experiment, and that the components that did not work according to His design would be discarded and destroyed, i.e. sent to Hell. And the components that did operate according to His design would be retained and inserted into a larger system, i.e. go to Heaven.
If you remember the final scene from the movie "Men in Black" our universe was merely one marble among many in the marble bag of some creature totally beyond our ability to comprehend in time and scale. Is this really an "unnatural" concept? Or merely an acknowledgement that some things might be beyond our ability to measure or comprehend?
The arrogance of scientists who suppose that we have the capacity to answer every single question we might have from the known physical laws of nature is astonishing. It supposes that there are no more new laws of physics to be discovered - a huge assumption. It arrogates us to the position of being at the end of history, i.e. all that can be known is already known and we only need to organize it properly.
Count me out of that.
What are you talking about?... they claim that evidence for design in nature is evidence for intelligent design.
How you interpret the evidence determines whether or not it's science.
1) There is no such thing as scientific evidence goal oriented design in nature?
or…
2) Evidence for purposeful design in nature doesn’t prove intelligent design.
One answer requires the interpretational denial that evidence for design in nature exists in order for it “not to be science”.
Interpretational denial just exposes your unscientific PREDISPOSITIONING.
1. Steve Verdon's whining about "Have you stopped beating your wife?" is silly. This fallacy is merely one of syntactical conjunction -- ie, it is 2 questions:
* Have you ever beaten your wife?
* If so, When's the last time?
That's why it's hard to answer with a Yes or No. Dean's questions aren't this.
2. Science doesn't exclude the supernatural. That's another fallacy. Science only requires that it be observed, tested, and reproduced.
Now, granted, this is a hard standard. For example, I don't believe in ghosts. But if a smart fellow devises a way to (a) observe a ghost (b) test for the presence of a ghost and (c) reproduce these results, Hey, I'll believe in ghosts!
Barnes, Hank
I don't think that there's been any claim that nothing is supernatural, just that if something is, it's outside the realm of science.
The problem with trying to find scientific evidence for a divine Creator is that if the Creator isn't subject to natural law, what kind of disconfirming evidence could there possibly be? If the proposed Creator is the familiar omnipotent kind, then literally ANY observed evidence is compatible. Even a perfect fossil record isn't firm evidence for evolution if you assume that there might be a Being Who created the Earth complete with buried fossils and all the other evidence intact (this is known as the omphalos hypothesis).
For this reason, we can't rule out the existence of a Creator, and anyone who says that science has done so is an idiot. I've never heard anyone say that, personally, although I have heard the claim that science has provided naturalistic explanations for many of the things for which a divine explanation was traditionally invoked and thus a Creator flunks a sort of plausibility test. That's not a scientific argument though.
We can't know that science's assumptions about cause and effect and so on are True in an absolute sense. They're just useful, and when we're working with that particular toolkit, we're constrained to questions we can answer in those ways.
In fact, though we may have only one "God" of our particular system, there could in theory be another whole race of superintelligent beings that operate on a scale, a speed, and in a dimension that is completely outside our realm of observation. "God" could be some superintelligent "scientist" of another realm running his own controlled experiment.
It's possible. One in-between hypothesis is that our Creator is not strictly supernatural, but is so far beyond us in capabilities and nature that it's the same thing as far as we're concerned. (I sort of think most people who believe in God would find this to be an unsatisfying kind of 'God', but I'm not religious so I can't say.)
Again, though, how do we study this? We're back to Dean's question about testable predictions made by ID. I don't remember him getting any answers. If we can't test it, it's not science. That's only a problem for people who think, incorrectly, that 'scientifically testable' and 'true' are synonyms.
Nope, an agnostic is a "weak atheist" because they cannot justify a belief in something that there is no evidence for.
You can rule out the existence of a creator that's contingent on the lack of evidence for it, by comparison to every other shred of evidence that we have at our disposal, which indicates that natural cause is the only cause for any and all effects.
Call me names... the preferred theory doesn't care.
Non-scientifically?
I mean, just because science has done a bang-up job in advancing the current state of knowledge doesn't make it the only valid source of knowledge.
And some things are just unknowable by science. It's not that we haven't found a way to prove such-and-so, or that the state of the art hasn't advanced; it's that we never will, even given an eternity of scientific advances.
On the one hand, it's hard for me to believe that we're even having this conversation after the events of the past century. On the other, history is one of those things beyond science's grasp, so it's not surprising that few scientists have learned its lessons.
Even if we had shown that natural causes account for all observed effects (which, as yet, we have not), that wouldn't rule out the existence of a Creator. It is possible a Creator exists and simply chooses not to interfere in its Creation; it is also possible that what we perceive as 'natural laws' are direct manifestations of Divine Will, and it happens that the Creator wills every test to work exactly the same each time. The fact that we have no conceivable way to distinguish between these possibilities may make the question of the existence of a Creator seem irrelevant or uninteresting, but it doesn't rule it out.
Similarly, many people today judge, on the basis of the available evidence and using some principle such as Occam's Razor, that the simplest and best theory is that there is no Creator. I'm one of them. That does not constitute a proof that there is none.
Absolutely. Did you read what I actually wrote? Especially the part about 'scientifically testable' and 'true' not being synonymous?
On the one hand, it's hard for me to believe that we're even having this conversation after the events of the past century. On the other, history is one of those things beyond science's grasp, so it's not surprising that few scientists have learned its lessons.
Uh, yeah. Those dumb scientists should stop trying to pull discussions about the existence of God and other scientifically unknowable topics into high school science classes. You're so right.
If you are talking about the study of biology, or chemistry, or physics, or astonomy, or any number of scientific fields, then yes, ID has no role to play in those discussions.
But when it comes to theories about origin of the species, or origins of life, the theories being proposed in "science" class are no more scientific than Intelligent design. They are based on assertion, supposition, and belief - nothing else.
It is fine and good to talk about the methodologies of carbon dating, studying the fossil record, etc. But when you use that true science to make the logical leap into the philosophical discussion of the origins of life, you have ceased talking about science as Dean describes it here.
There is nothing testable or falsifiable about the primordial soup. It is mere supposition. There is plenty of evidence of species adaptation. But adaptation is distinct from the radical mutations what one must accept as truth in order to buy into the whole concept of Evolution as a philosophy.
Just because a philosophy was developed by scientists does not make that philosophy scientific. It is still philosophy. I'm all for taking philosophy out of science class. But if Evolution in its whole concept is to be presented in Science class, then competing philosophies should have equal standing.
Hmm, must have missed it. Sorry.
On the other hand, "how do you study it?" implies that something isn't studyable, which is what I was reacting to. But I was probably reading you a little too closely for the context.
Uh, yeah. Those dumb scientists should stop trying to pull discussions about the existence of God and other scientifically unknowable topics into high school science classes. You're so right.
How am I right? Where did I mention anything about high school science class?
Perhaps we both should do a little more reading before posting.
I strongly disagree, but I'd do a better job of disagreeing in detail if you'd give me a specific example of what you're talking about.
That isn't what I said.
that wouldn't rule out the existence of a Creator.
What I said does.
How am I right? Where did I mention anything about high school science class?
Did you get that the context for Dean's post was the Dover school case, where there's a fight going on about whether intelligent design should be presented in science class?
You seemed to be saying that scientists have to accept that there are areas of knowlege on which they are not authorities, and the existence of a vastly superior/supernatural Creator is one of them. I was sort of amused, because that is exactly the point of the plaintiffs - this is not a scientific issue and does not belong in science class.
Okay, if that's not what you said, can you say it again? I have re-read your original comment to see if I can get it, and I don't. Aside from "that's contingent on the lack of evidence for it" it looked to me like I said what you said, and I don't understand this clause.
On the other hand, if these things don't exist, that doesn't make them supernatural, either. It makes them fiction. If there is an intelligent designer, then that designer is natural. It is just a part of nature that we haven't understood yet, as is anything else that we decide to label "supernatural".
A "scientist" avoiding an issue because it deals with the "supernatural" is a dogmatist, and lazy to boot.
Apparently the fanatic doesn't like the fact that he knows less about science than the person that he's badmouthing about that very thing... and please, somebody, tell the loser that I said so.
What I'm talking about is that Behe, Dembski, et al. have not produced any evidence of design in nature that passes the laugh test.
Behe's IC? None of his examples of IC systems stand up. What's more "a system that is made up of parts that are each required for the function of the system overall and if any one part...." Could form through natural genetic/evolutionary means, therefore the existence of such a system, if one is ever found, is not proof of intelligent design.
I am not sufficiently trained in mathematics to criticize Dembski's work however the person he borrowed the NFL theorems from is and he says Dembski's work is not sound.
So I will modify your possible answer 1) to: There is no evidence that there is goal oriented design in nature. Just because something looks like it was designed does not mean that it is. Behe, Dembski, etc. have not devised a rigorous system for detecting designed versus not designed systems. If they ever do, they can attempt to produce evidence of design in nature. Until then, their ideas deserve no more consideration for inclusion in science curricula than mental telepathy, telekinesis, astrology, UFOs, and the rest.
http://acepilots.com/mt/2005/11/02/dean-esmay-scientist/
Maybe not clearly enough I said that we know that the cause for every effect in nature, (that we know of and can test), is natural. It requires an unfounded leap of faith to assume otherwise without good reason to do this.
Science rules out the supernatural until and unless you can prove otherwise.
Leaps of faith to "anything is possible" are not warrented without proof.
I am not all that sure that Darwin himself would have disagreed that an intelligence (he would explicitly have said God) continued to be involved, to some degree, past the initial establishment of life. But neither do I think he would agree that direct intervention was needed, or occurred, at every step rather than occasionally: to be sure, that is just my opinion and based on little more than knowing he was strongly religious to the point of not publishing - for years - for fear of upsetting others of his creed, until he was made aware that another scientist was about to publish almost the same ideas.
5) Has any experiment on the origin of life lasted for at least one million years?
My point was strictly a reaction to your query about how to study non-scientific things, which I think we've already determined was a bit hasty.
But since you bring it up, isn't it the point of Dean's (Fred's) questions that origins discussions aren't suitable in general for science class?
If you agree, cool. But if not, then I have to ask: As long as we're teaching metaphysics in science class, on what basis is my metaphysics excluded?
And if one metaphysical position is using the political process to exclude another from the public space, isn't that precisely the kind of thing the First Amendment was written to prevent?
Sorry for the off-topic stuff.
I thought we were talking about the existence of a Creator, not an origin question.
I don't think the First Amendment guarantees your right to have your metaphysical position explored under a specific topic heading. If there's a claim for a supernatural cause, it's not a suitable topic for science class. A claim that there could not have been a supernatural cause is also not a topic for science class. A description of what we do know, what we don't know, and the best natural-cause theories to date for the evidence is what belongs in science class.
Maybe we're using two different senses of 'rule out' here. I think you are using it in the sense of 'exclude'; science excludes the possibility of a Creator, as its working assumptions involve looking at natural causes for effects. What I think Scott meant, and what I was addressing, was 'rule out' as in 'eliminate' or 'make impossible', as in, "the scientific evidence eliminates the possibility of a Creator". It doesn't, and it can't.
Were did this supernatural force come from that doesn't exist anywhere that I can find, except in the minds of people that misinterpret the purpose in nature that chaos whorshiping antifanatics won't even admit exists???
How do you justify pure "imagination" as remotely plausible or relevant to anything real without evidence... ?
Einstein is no-doubt rolling in his grave at the thought that science has completely lost touch with methodical structuring to nature, but both sides of this debate are killing me for the same clueless reason!
No offense, that last part was just a general rant.
I agree with the principle. I'm just unconvinced that "what we know, what we don't know, and the best natural-cause theories" is all that gets discussed in science classes.
The question that comes to mind: maybe ID isn't one of "the best natural-cause theories". But is that because the science is bogus (Pons-Fleishmann style), or because we've made a metaphysical decision that ID is not "natural" in the sense of "scientifically discernable"?
I think that there's a case to be made that, if ID is not a possible scientific conclusion to the discussion of origins, no other theory can be, either. At least, I'd have to understand what about the ID theory distinguishes it from evolution in this regard.
More importantly for the topic at hand, I don't think I'm the only one that thinks this way, which is why these disputes keep coming up, and why people are starting to resort to the political process to get their POV into the classroom. That was my point about the First Amendment: if we're letting ideology into the science classroom, then we have to let it all in. I'd prefer taking it all out, and it sounds like you agree, at least in principle.
And, as I mentioned before, it's a mystery to me why scientists would prefer ideology to science to resolve the question, given ideology's rather poor showing in the 20th century.
It doesn't appear to me that you have read any of the articles Fred Reed has written on this subject. Dean linked to Fred's main site, but here are some direct links to the articles themselves. I suggest that you read them. Here are some quotations:And here is another:That should give you something to respond specifically to.
Bingo... Lynn Margulis doesn't call them "Neodarwinan Bullies" because she has normal disagreement with her peers over the random nature of speciation. It's a direct shot at the same kind of fanaticism that plagues the "left" side of this debate. Lynn is one of the most respected members of the evolutionary biology community, but she made her bold statement as the honored guest speaker at the last evolutionary conference, this past summer.
"Neodarwinian bullies" in that context are every bit as antifanatical and agenda motivated as the worst home-schoolin fundimentalist, and most of them are also evobiologists and their equally motivated associates that commonly testify in court.
1) Yet More Evolution
2) Things in Heaven and Earth
3) Fredwin on Evolution (this is the article with the four questions.)
4) Lockstep Thinking On Evolution
5) Darwin Elucidated
He has an article criticising the philosophy of science entitled "Questions of Faith" with a pretty good description of the failings of science as a philosophy.
I've said this before, but this is another common falacy depending on which cosmological model is actually in effect.
The mindset of that statement comes from a chaotic non-preferred extension of the Copernican Cosmological principle, which isn't doing so good these days in the world of observational physics.
Sure you can. They're just extremely complicated as physical concepts.
Sure it could, if you defined it in terms of a neurochemical response.
Not if an anthropic cosmological principle is in effect in a finite universe. Then it's a near direct translation of the same kind of teleology that people from Hericlitus to Robert Frost have directly observed in nature.
A moral scientist is thus a contradiction in terms. (Logically speaking: in practice they compartmentalize and are perfectly good people.)
I slammed Elizabeth for seeming to say the same thing (unjustly, I hasten to add).
There is nothing logically inconsistent in believing both that the earth is round and that we should not kill each other, for example.
Not even if it was the absolute only way to save your family's life or maybe the greater whole of mankind?
Moral relativism.
Or do you mean that more-generally... as in a higher, more-absolute form of morality?
Like... it's generally a bad to kill, barring survival exceptions to the more-absolute moral law... ;)
Sure it could, if you defined it in terms of a neurochemical response.
(sigh)
See what I mean about people not paying attention to history?
Free thinkers think that they can fool mother nature.
I have proof that this is crap.
You remind me of that commercial advertising an iPod telephone where Maddonna and Biggie and 1000 other singers try to fit inside a phone booth.
Sure, if you redefine people to be merely the recording of their voices, you can fit 1000 people into your phone. But people are more than just their voices. So you cannot REALLY fit 1000 people into a standard size phone booth.
But go ahead. Redefine everything so it fits neatly into your ideology. It's no skin off of my nose.
"Evolution breaks down into at least three logically separable components: First, that life arose by chemical accident; [snip] The first, chance formation of life, simply hasn’t been established. It isn’t science, but faith."
Strawman alert: The very first statement is here is wrong. The theory of Evolution does not care how life started. It is about what happenned *after* life started. e.g. if we stipulate for the sake of argument that some Intelligent Designer created the very first lifeforms, it changes the case for evolution not one whit.
How it started is a matter of chemistry. How it then proceeded, that is a matter of evolution.
I'm confused. What am I redefining?
If you're responding to this:
Sure it could, if you defined it in terms of a neurochemical response.
...that's TallDave, not me.
If everything can be defined as a chemical impulse, then there is no case whatsoever for morality. There is no logical basis for guilt or culpability. Pedophiles and Murderers are just following impulses in the same manner that mothers and fathers follow impulses to "love" their children. And while we might have the impulse to kill the murderer back, and hang the pedophile by his balls, that too is just an impulse. There is no case for judging the pervert as bad. Their removal from society is not anything more than white blood cells attacking an infection.
So what is the point of due process? Who cares if a few innocent people get removed as long as the societal infection is removed? After all, biologically speaking, the body destroys both good and bad cells when attacking an infection. Why even try to make a distinction?
Science makes the assumption of metaphysical naturalism: That all things are natural. This means that if we can observe an event, we can observe the cause of that event.
Before you jump on me, let me point out that I am perfectly aware that this is simply an assumption. The point is that having made this assumption, we can build the rigorous framework that we know as Science. Without this assumption, we can do most of the same research, but there is no connection between any two experiments.
And the thing is, although this is merely an assumption, it invariably works.
Now, it would appear that when Dean speaks of the supernatural he is not using the term in the same way a philosopher of science would. The Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot aren't supernatural; the simply don't exist.
To a scientist, the supernatural is an unobservable cause. If we had a physical event that is not caused by some other physical event (or property, for those who study QM), that would be supernatural. Science says this does not happen.
And it doesn't.
So I went and commented anyway. :)
This does not follow.
Sure there is: Free will.
Precisely. Except that the pedophiles and murderers are evil.
Free will is a chemical process, just like digestion, only rather more complex. But just because free will can be understood in terms of brain chemistry doesn't make it suddenly disappear, any more than our understanding of the digestive process prevents us from eating lunch.
Indeed.
No-one ever asked you to "buy into the whole concept of Evolution as a philosophy". The fact of the matter is that evolution has happened and continues to happen, and the Theory of Evolution is our best explanation as to how.
And your statement:
is simply untrue. Adaptation proceeds from mutation by natural selection. That's all there is, and all that is required.
I think that Pixy Misa and Elizabeth have made superbly-stated arguments. However, I would make this point to them:
As I asked in my piece, isn't the word "supernatural" really just a meta-analysis word anyway? At some point, can we not just declare that if something happens, it is ipso facto natural?
Let me make the point again: 1) science can observe and study things it has no theoretical understanding of, yes? 2) Science can look for empirical evidence for observed phenomena that sound supernatural, yes? 3) Science can look for things by inference, yes?
The question about the leap from abiotic chemistry to life is, however, valid. It's important because all the answers to it are pure speculation--they just are. Why can't we just *say* that, because it's true? And it's not the only question like that. There is still no clear, unequivocal mechanism for speciation that is generally accepted by most biologists. Hell, Stephen Jay Gould acknowledged this, acknowledged it openly. Why is it such a problem for others to just say, "you know what? You're right, we have some educated guesses but we can't say we're fully certain."
And ultimately I still get down to the surveys that Michael Balter pointed to, which so clearly show that a majority, an overwhelming majority depending on how you look at it, have skepticism about Darwinism. To me, it's not enough to say "well science isn't about opinion polls," because let me tell you, these people vote, these people pay taxes and they vote. If you're accepting taxpayer money, you answer to taxpayers and don't get to stamp a big "I'm a scientist, I don't answer to you!" label on your chest.
If nothing else, that's *horribly* unconstructive.
These voters, these taxpayers, fund the vast majority of the science research done in this country, as well as the majority of scientists' salaries. Treating them with contempt is not in my view either smart politics OR particularly decent behavior, scientist or no.
Look at me. I'm an educated layman. I'm smart. I've loved science my whole life. I read peer reviewed studies for fun (and who the hell does that except weirdos like me and Elizabeth Reid anyway?). I have friends, quite a few, who are published and respected scientists. I'm irreligious. I have *huge* disagreements with many Christians. I'm open-minded and inquisitive.
And yet people like this and this seem to think that being abusive toward me, treating me like an ignoramus and a dunce and worse, is the proper response when I point out such simple facts as:
1) There are a lot of things we don't know. It's okay to admit that. Some of them are pretty big questions. We *think* we know how life evolved, but we've got big gaps in the *how* part, and it's okay to be skeptical about that.
2) Life looks to you like it might have been engineered by forces we don't understand? Okay, that's an interesting point. I can see where you're coming from. You think God had a hand in it? Okay, I get what you're saying. Can we get on with the experiments please?
I contend that this, ultimately, is all I've *EVER* said, the only real position I've ever taken. Maybe I haven't said it well enough but I invite you to go back to my previous comments and tell me where I was inconsistent on this point. I don't think I have, even if once in a while I've gotten sarcastic when I shouldn't have.
I know this is repeating, but:
Stephen Jay Gould thought there had to be more than this, that it was nowhere near enough. I mean, the biggest problem right there is that no one can coherently explain how a genetic mutation can wind up fundamentally altering your chromosomal structures. Look carefully at the subject of speciation and you'll find that it's way more wild and woolly than is often made out.
Does that mean "God does it?" I dunno, define God. *Maybe* it's some force we don't understand. Or maybe it's something simple and obvious staring us right in the face (I know one molecular biologist who thinks he knows, and he's getting some serious attention for it in the molecular biology community for it—you may hear more about it in the popular news in the next few years).
But from the time I was a kid, I was taught that one of the fundamentals of the practice of science is to always be willing to concede what you don't know. I mean, cripes, isn't that where it all starts? "I don't know, let's see what we can find out?"
To a scientist, the supernatural is an unobservable cause. If we had a physical event that is not caused by some other physical event (or property, for those who study QM), that would be supernatural.
With you so far.
Science says this does not happen.
And it doesn't.
Nope.
Science says such unobservable causes aren't science. They have no way of evaluating their truth value, or lack thereof.