Intelligent Design: a Catechism

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uwot
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Re: Intelligent Design: a Catechism

Post by uwot »

QMan wrote:If I draw a stick figure, isn't that intelligent design, or even a single line?
Assuming you qualify as intelligent, yes it does.
QMan wrote:And that's all that was designed at the start.
Which? A stick figure or a line? Start of what? I'm not really with you.
QMan
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Re: Intelligent Design: a Catechism

Post by QMan »

So, at the start stick figures where designing stick figures and straight lines?
uwot
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Re: Intelligent Design: a Catechism

Post by uwot »

QMan wrote:So, at the start stick figures where designing stick figures and straight lines?
I take it you are claiming that "proteins, DNA, amoebas etc." were designed and that evolution has been guided by that same designer ever since; culminating in you and I having a chat over the internet. Who knows? But for the purposes of this thread, who can prove it? My argument is that science can't, if for no other reason than that the minute you accept as true anything you cannot prove, you stop doing science.
What an odd god, to make us so inquisitive and yet, to insist we don't ask questions.
tmoody
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Re: Intelligent Design: a Catechism

Post by tmoody »

I'm on the road and probably won't be able to post for a few days. I just thought I'd let you all know I haven't disappeared, and I'll be back to resume my assault on science and civilization.

Later!
Ginkgo
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Re: Intelligent Design: a Catechism

Post by Ginkgo »

QMan wrote: Not being a philosopher, I don't know what you mean by an Aristotelian enterprise but I assume you mean "don't take us back to the pre-Middle Ages." That leaves me really perplexed and I believe leaves us at an impasse. As I had explained, science, being confronted with an unknown, did exactly what science does and is intended to do, namely, investigate the unknown by all means possible using modern day methodology. There is no way science ever could or would go back to pre-Middle Age thinking or methodology, that is simply illogical.
I think you have put this in a very clear and precise way and you finish it with some very good questions.

By "Aristotelian enterprise" I mean Aristotle's metaphysics. Aristotle starts out with what appears to be a type of scientific method. He alludes to things that we experience in every day life such as cause and effect, induction and inference. The type of things we talk about in modern science. In actual fact he is not doing science, he is doing metaphysics because after talking about what we know of the physical world. Call this bit (a) he then goes on to talk about a type of Kantian things-in-themselves. Another way of saying this might be that we start with mind dependent physical objects and arrive at mind independent objects.Call this (b).

The point I am trying to make in all of my posts on this subject that (a) can be regarded as scientific and (b) is metaphysics. If you are doing metaphysics then you are not doing science. It makes no difference if you claim that you are starting out with induction. Having said all of that, I agree that we should use different methodologies in science, but we need to be careful not to use those methodologies that will make science a pseudo-science.

You are probably right about the possibilities of science not being taken back to the Middle-Ages. However, Galileo probably thought the Inquisition was illogical as well.
QMan wrote:
Further, I do not understand why you want to delink scientific enquiry from a topic in need of enquiry just because there may be the possibility that a non-material result could be obtained. That line of reasoning would tell us to stop efforts in string theory and in numerous other areas of investigation in the hard and soft sciences. Thus, any scientific enquiry and conclusion pertaining to peoples perception, reactions, behaviors, opinion, shades of meaning, etc. would be useless endeavors.
[/quote]

I am all for science investigating the non-material, this is where I think quantum mechanics is useful.What I am against is a methodology that tries to pass itself off as a scientific method.
tmoody
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Re: Intelligent Design: a Catechism

Post by tmoody »

Ginkgo wrote: If you are doing ontological parsimony then I think you are doing metaphysics, not science. We end up with things like, "God created the best of all possible worlds" It leads to apriori assumptions about how the natural world was designed.
Ontological parsimony merely functions as an heuristic in science. The rule is simply, Don't introduce entities into a theory unless the data force you to. The reason for the rule is pragmatic: When you violate the rule you're increasing the risk of getting it all wrong.

Example: Vitalism seemed, for a long time, to be required by the data. That is, living things appeared to have properties that couldn't be explained in terms of the known properties of inanimate physical substances. With the development of cellular biology and biochemistry, the nature of cellular machinery began to be understood and the need to posit vital forces simply fell away.

The scientifically collected data can't, in my view, force an inference to a supernatural designer, so that's why the ID trail stops short of that, at least as far as scientific inquiry is concerned.

The ID critic will insist that ID itself is a regress to a kind of vitalism about cellular machinery. I get the point of that, but in my opinion it's premature to insist upon it.
Ginkgo
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Re: Intelligent Design: a Catechism

Post by Ginkgo »

tmoody wrote:
The scientifically collected data can't, in my view, force an inference to a supernatural designer, so that's why the ID trail stops short of that, at least as far as scientific inquiry is concerned.

The ID critic will insist that ID itself is a regress to a kind of vitalism about cellular machinery. I get the point of that, but in my opinion it's premature to insist upon it.
Todd, if this can be regarded as a summary of where you stand on the matter at the moment than I am happy with this explanation.
tmoody
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Re: Intelligent Design: a Catechism

Post by tmoody »

Ginkgo wrote:
tmoody wrote:
The scientifically collected data can't, in my view, force an inference to a supernatural designer, so that's why the ID trail stops short of that, at least as far as scientific inquiry is concerned.

The ID critic will insist that ID itself is a regress to a kind of vitalism about cellular machinery. I get the point of that, but in my opinion it's premature to insist upon it.
Todd, if this can be regarded as a summary of where you stand on the matter at the moment than I am happy with this explanation.
That's pretty much it. I'd add another quotation from you:
I am saying that A,B,C are evidence for P. Later on D,E, and F might end up being supporting evidence for P. On the other hand D, E, and F, might contradict P. All we can say as far as science is concerned is that the evidence at the moment support a theory.
I think the phrase "evidence at the moment" is very important.

To put the matter another way, I am unimpressed by the induction, "Science has closed so many gaps already, we can be confident it will close these too." I'm not unimpressed because I take a dim view of the achievements of science. Far from it. But induction makes sense where phenomena are subsumed under laws and there are, to my knowledge, no laws of scientific discovery.

At a personal level, I think the most compelling evidence for ID is at the level of the origin of life itself. I find the so-called "chemical evolution" theories very weak. Typically these theories involve scenarios under which a "replicator" molecule might form, and the rest is left to evolution. But to my way of thinking, although it's not hard to imagine such replicator scenarios, the gap between these replicators and anything remotely resembling a living thing is staggeringly large.

Of course, I don't suggest for a moment that scientists should stop trying to fill that gap with a plausible naturalistic explanation, and I'm perfectly fine with it if they succeed. In fact, I think it would be one of the most important achievements in the history of science, and that can't be bad. But in the present, I simply prefer to accept where the evidence points now, rather than to reject that inference in favor of where I think or hope the evidence might eventually point.

I don't think there's much more I can say on the matter without repeating myself. Thanks to all for the conversation.
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HexHammer
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Re: Intelligent Design: a Catechism

Post by HexHammer »

The article is filled with nothing but circular logic, and proves excatly nothing.

ID was utterly debunked in a major lawsuit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller ... l_District
thedoc
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Re: Intelligent Design: a Catechism

Post by thedoc »

HexHammer wrote:The article is filled with nothing but circular logic, and proves excatly nothing.

ID was utterly debunked in a major lawsuit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller ... l_District
This case only settled the legal question of ID being considered as a religious teaching by the courts. It did not deal with the proposition of whether any of it was true, since it relied on the existence of God and is therefore not science.
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HexHammer
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Re: Intelligent Design: a Catechism

Post by HexHammer »

thedoc wrote:
HexHammer wrote:The article is filled with nothing but circular logic, and proves excatly nothing.

ID was utterly debunked in a major lawsuit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller ... l_District
This case only settled the legal question of ID being considered as a religious teaching by the courts. It did not deal with the proposition of whether any of it was true, since it relied on the existence of God and is therefore not science.
Lies, the best argument for ID's validity was "irriduceable complexity", all the other silly arguments was also ofc debunked.

Get your facts straight.
thedoc
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Re: Intelligent Design: a Catechism

Post by thedoc »

HexHammer wrote:
thedoc wrote:
HexHammer wrote:The article is filled with nothing but circular logic, and proves excatly nothing.

ID was utterly debunked in a major lawsuit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller ... l_District
This case only settled the legal question of ID being considered as a religious teaching by the courts. It did not deal with the proposition of whether any of it was true, since it relied on the existence of God and is therefore not science.
Lies, the best argument for ID's validity was "irriduceable complexity", all the other silly arguments was also ofc debunked.

Get your facts straight.

Just curious when did you discover this case and how close are you to it?

The ruling clearly stated that the case was about whether ID was religion or science, anything else presented was not the main point of the case. You should read the article yourself. Here is the ruling from the article,


Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District et al.
On December 20, 2005, Jones found for the plaintiffs and issued a 139 page decision, in which he wrote:
For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the religious nature of ID [intelligent design] would be readily apparent to an objective observer, adult or child. (page 24)
A significant aspect of the IDM [intelligent design movement] is that despite Defendants' protestations to the contrary, it describes ID as a religious argument. In that vein, the writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity. (page 26)
The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism. (page 31)
The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory. (page 43)
Throughout the trial and in various submissions to the Court, Defendants vigorously argue that the reading of the statement is not 'teaching' ID but instead is merely 'making students aware of it.' In fact, one consistency among the Dover School Board members' testimony, which was marked by selective memories and outright lies under oath, as will be discussed in more detail below, is that they did not think they needed to be knowledgeable about ID because it was not being taught to the students. We disagree. .... an educator reading the disclaimer is engaged in teaching, even if it is colossally bad teaching. .... Defendants' argument is a red herring because the Establishment Clause forbids not just 'teaching' religion, but any governmental action that endorses or has the primary purpose or effect of advancing religion. (footnote 7 on page 46)
After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980s; and (3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community. …It is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research. Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena. (page 64) [for "contrived dualism", see false dilemma.]
[T]he one textbook [Pandas] to which the Dover ID Policy directs students contains outdated concepts and flawed science, as recognized by even the defense experts in this case. (pages 86–87)
ID's backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID. (page 89)
Accordingly, we find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom, in violation of the Establishment Clause. (page 132)
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HexHammer
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Re: Intelligent Design: a Catechism

Post by HexHammer »

thedoc wrote:Just curious when did you discover this case and how close are you to it?

The ruling clearly stated that the case was about whether ID was religion or science, anything else presented was not the main point of the case. You should read the article yourself.
Are you trying to be amuseing?

Just because the ruling didn't spell it out for you, that many other arguments was debunked, you seem to think it didn't happend?

Study the case and come back and applogize for this misbehaviour.
thedoc
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Re: Intelligent Design: a Catechism

Post by thedoc »

HexHammer wrote:
thedoc wrote:Just curious when did you discover this case and how close are you to it?

The ruling clearly stated that the case was about whether ID was religion or science, anything else presented was not the main point of the case. You should read the article yourself.
Are you trying to be amuseing?

Just because the ruling didn't spell it out for you, that many other arguments was debunked, you seem to think it didn't happend?

Study the case and come back and applogize for this misbehaviour.
I didn't say that, I was merely correcting your statement that the case debunked ID when it did not, that was not the question in the case, debunking ID was merely a side issue that was not finally resolved in this ruling. The court only ruled that ID is religion and not science.

And no I was not trying to be amusing, (this time) I wanted to know when you came across the case.
thedoc
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Re: Intelligent Design: a Catechism

Post by thedoc »

Just curious when did you discover this case and how close are you to it?
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