Posted on 04/20/2008 8:49:48 AM PDT by Soliton
It's not the challenges that are the problem. It's the blind assertion that all that work is wholly wrong, and that a completely different solution, one which is untestable, and without evidence except for arguments against the scientific answer, is correct.
It's very hard to win the game when each side is playing by different rules.
The criticisms are not blind and they are made with specificity. They aren't even untestable - Dembski made one I personally was able to falsify with a formal system argument he wasn't aware of. (Specifically, a special subset of complex systems can be shown to meet his specified complexity criteria without having been designed).
The rejections by the likes of Dawkins are blind, and they are not science. They are a personal philosophic view on his own part, a naive and uninformed one at that, they he pretends is science, which he pretends to speak for, etc. The firings and other institutional, rather than intellectual, responses, are also egregious, especially in the case of scientists clearly doing entirely sound work in their own fields, who mention ID or show it glancing respect, largely for their own philosophic reasons, and then get blackballed from all scientific work.
There are decent intelletual arguments against some of the positions IDers have put forward. More to the point, some of them have enough substance that it takes a decent intellectual argument to meet them. Sometimes those are philosophical (most often, in my experience), sometimes formal, sometimes scientific. But slandering them without specificity, arguing against them in straw man fashion for things they haven't said, let alone personal retaliation for professing heretical views, isn't any of those things.
And I see far too much of that from the side of this that pretends to be the scientific side - but that, to me, doesn't speak for science, but for its own pretty narrow philosophic position.
As for openness of evolutionary theory to revision, it is higher when none of this comes up. There are serious weaknesses in the standard paradigm there, that serious scientists have pointed out over the years and currently. But whenever the issue looks like it might be ID, or touches on curricula, all that is just dropped to close ranks, and it is simply pretended in sheer chutzpa that it is all much more solid and settled than it is. That is bad science, and it isn't any better as ideological positioning or public policy.
Bottom line - the IDers are picking at a real scab, and the scab is a scab because the self appointed spokesmen for science are not living up to their own ideals, or their own professed rationality. I don't think the IDers are intellectually right. But their opponents make them look good, by being superficial strident bores.
I'm sure the ID side could be portrayed likewise.
But serious people see beyond that instantly. If one is unable to recognize propaganda, whether it's in support or opposition to their particular beliefs, they are fools, but exactly the target audience.
Should IDers be removed from the science faculty? No, if that's their private belief. But they may not teach it as science, because it is not science. It is philosophy or religion. It is not science, and must not be offered as such.
I'm not at all suggesting that it can't be mentioned or even taught as a course. But since it doesn't qualify as science, the schools would be wrong to teach it as such. If and when ID can actually offer testable evidence, that could change things.
Right now, it's a conclusion looking for reasons.
Apply to *Dawkins*, he'd be canned tomorrow. He pretends all his philosophy is science, it isn't, he teaches it from the highest scientific positions and everyone defers to him.
See the point?
The standard cannot be, no scientist may have philosophic views - it would be thought police, and the policers will not long be scientists and the politically correct views won't be their particular idiosyncratic idiocies.
Instead the standard has to be, anybody is free to think whatever they heck they want. Men cannot be expected to police their own opinions into separate categories, at the whim of hostile outsiders to violently disagree with them and wish to persecute them.
Instead, the hearers need to separate philosophic from scientific on evidence, and on seeing how all the pretend authorities reason with one another, what sort of evidence they offer, etc. Science is always pure invitation to truth, it cannot be made a coercive requirement. It can distinguish itself from other forms of reasoning, only to perceptive people who think for themselves and sift evidence critically. It cannot be distinguished by the specific positions taken, nor can it be institutionally policed off from other thoughts.
Institutional policing is policing and not science. The only forum in which real science can distinguish itself from other things, is the mind of someone intent on finding reliable truth, for himself.
So no, we can't lay down laws that Dawkins or Dennett may not philosophize, or may not pretend their philosophizing is science. Yes, you and I can see that much of it is not science but their philosophizing, and some of it isn't even that, it is pure wind and chutzpa. But they are free to emit wind at their leisure, and we are free to notice when they look like fools.
And the IDers too, are free to pursue careers as molecular biologists or doctors or astronomers or mathematicians, and they are free to philosophize, and they are free to confuse their philosophizing with what they think is science, and they are free to emit wind. And you and I and everyone else are free to notice when they look like fools.
DG says:”Should IDers be removed from the science faculty? No, if that’s their private belief. But they may not teach it as science, because it is not science. It is philosophy or religion. It is not science, and must not be offered as such.
I’m not at all suggesting that it can’t be mentioned or even taught as a course. But since it doesn’t qualify as science, the schools would be wrong to teach it as such. If and when ID can actually offer testable evidence, that could change things.”
Seems you have introduced a catch-22 here the likes of what the film has complained. “ID is obviously not science!”, you say. “Should not be taught in science classrooms”, you say. Yet you leave the prospect open to “testable evidence”. Pray tell how this testable evidence comes forward when the concept of ID itself is considered non-scientific?
You do see the irony here, do you not??
Max Tegmark writes a cosmology circular for Scientific American than might have been published in Metaphysical American instead, in which he stumps for 4 tiered and towering actual infinities, infinite spatial extent, receeding bubble inflation, many worlds QM in each, and a string landscape in which all possible rules of physics are realized somewhere. Not only does it not have testable implications, it literally posits that every conceivable observation is actual and occurs countable infinity times, and the only meaning it leaves to anything like "likelihood" is the (utterly unobservable) average spatial distance between those infinite sets. Shall we can him for pretending his philosophy is science? In a footnote he will say something like, if you don't mind wild ideas, go to my website and check out my bananas theory of everything. Should he be blackballed from all cosmology departments?
Another one devotes a few lectures to discussing the anthropic principle and places it has been advanced, in cosmological fine tuning arguments or as an ad hoc explanation of the observed matter to anti matter difference or whatever. Can? Blackball? Just discipline?
Enough. There are ideas that are franky philosophical and entirely speculative, that nevertheless arise in scientific contexts and rely on some degree of familiarity with existing science and the evidence for it, that attract the minds of scientists and interest them. This does not make them into scientific theories. They are frankly philosophic ideas, and they often have critical weaknesses that are not apparent to the scientific specialist, but would be to a trained academic philosopher.
We don't try to police them out of existence. We'd stunt minds if we did. They are generally harmless and sometimes quite fun, and sometimes they may suggest real advances to theorists etc. I don't see any outside, a priori or rational reason, that ID fascination should be treated any differently. I am not thinking about curricula issues or secondary public schools, just college and up academia and what the profs and grad students and practicing scientists (including other research institution types etc) do among and for themselves. I see no harm in it.
And I think men like Dawkins, or others earlier in the thread speaking of "barbarians at the gate" and the like, see harm in it, pretty much purely out of bigotry, or perhaps more accurately an intellectual snobbishness that looks down its nose at religion of any kind.
Men are free to think what they like, by nature. They will say what they think. It is foolish to fight it and try to stamp it out. Instead, offer truth freely, and entertain speculation indulgently.
One man's opinion...
You don't see the difference, do you? This young physicist writes about a valid theory - Quantum Mechanics.
Where does ID start from? I would say nothing. That is the core of ID:
“Nothing” + “ID” = “Something”
Was such an event ever scientifically detected?
(If ID wants to be science it has to play by the rules.)
Did any lemma (a small proven hypothesis) like IC ever worked?
(Behe is trying, I know, but without success as I remind.)
Next ID problem is the act of IDing.
When does IDing happens?
Always, sometimes or never?
Never:
no ID
Sometimes:
What happens in between - evolution?
Always:
Then the theory of evolution is the best way I know to describe the constant process of IDing.
“Men are free to think what they like, by nature. They will say what they think. It is foolish to fight it and try to stamp it out. Instead, offer truth freely, and entertain speculation indulgently.”
Get used to the law. It is not allowed for teachers on public schools to preach in scientific classes.
Evolution is a science. It deals with what can be studied and observed through natural means. Christianity is a religion. It deals with faith and morals and belief in things on a spiritual plain that cannot be studied and observed on earth and beyond man's understanding.
Perhaps you would feel more comfortable living in a country where Christianity is the state-sponcered religion. For example, in in Finland the "Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland" is the official religion of the country and laws can can be amended only by a decision of the Synod of the Evengelical Lutheran Church and subsequent ratification by the parliament.
Unfortunately for you, the country you currently live in is founded on the freedom of the religion, so the government has no power to teach Christianity in public schools. We do not force Americans who are non-Christian, such as Jews and Hindus, to learn "the Holy Bible" through the use of public taxdollars. As you noted, there's nothing stopping you from having your kids taught religious lessons in school, as long as you are willing to spend the money and time to have them educated at a private school. It worked just fine for me as a kid, my parents saw to it that I attended a public school on weekday mornings and afternoons and attended CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) classes on Monday evening and was raised Christian.
Unfortunately for you, George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson founded this country to specific-prohibit a state-sponcered religion and you choose to raise your kids in this nation. Perhaps you should look into countries where Christianity is the "official" religion if this bothers you so much.
Perhaps you would feel more comfortable living in a country where Christianity is the state-sponcered religion. For example, in in Finland the "Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland" is the official religion of the country and laws can can be amended only by a decision of the Synod of the Evengelical Lutheran Church and subsequent ratification by the parliament.
How you interpreted my message so bass-ackwards is amazing. Are you trying to tell me that parents in Finland must pay the government to run Lutheran schools whether or not their children attend those schools? Because here in the USA I'm forced at gunpoint to pay for everyone else's kids to go to crappy government schools that teach secular humanism.
Unfortunately for you, the country you currently live in is founded on the freedom of the religion, so the government has no power to teach Christianity in public schools.
You are amazingly screwed up. How in the world can you reverse my message so badly and dare to show up here at FR? I don't want to pay for your children to learn to put condoms on cucumbers, and get your daughters the pill at 12 years old against your will, and teachers that will drive your 12 year old daughter to an abortion mill without your knowledge, and then to top it off I'll get to pay to keep them in prison later on in life because they turned out twisted. And because I don't want to have to pay for YOU, you accuse me of wanting to force you to educate your children in a religious school?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?
You've got a lot of nerve! Get your greedy paws out of my pocket, jacka**!
We do not force Americans who are non-Christian, such as Jews and Hindus, to learn "the Holy Bible" through the use of public taxdollars.
No you don't. You force liberal dog-crap on them and you penalize parents who desire to give their kids a decent education.
As you noted, there's nothing stopping you from having your kids taught religious lessons in school, as long as you are willing to spend the money and time to have them educated at a private school.
And don't forget that I also have to be willing to put your kid through school at the same time. Aren't I generous!
Unfortunately for you, George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson founded this country to specific-prohibit a state-sponcered religion and you choose to raise your kids in this nation. Perhaps you should look into countries where Christianity is the "official" religion if this bothers you so much.
Wow, you're screwed up. Get your greedy disgusting paws out of my pocket, liberal doofus!
Please re-read the subject matter of your ORIGINAL POST and stop wasting my time sprewing luntaic rants about public funding for condoms and other garbage that I never advocated except in your OWN delusional mind. Here is what YOUR post was whining about. Allow me to refer your memory:
"I would like my children to be exposed to the underlying tenets of Christianity in school. I would like them to be taught the moral lessons that are readily available in The Holy Bible in school. The government penalizes me for this"
In summery, my responce:
So if you want YOUR children to be taught "the holy bible" in school, YOU will have to PAY for it out of your OWN pocket -- not the govenrment or taxpayers -- because there is NO STATE sponcered religion in this country. Sorry you feel "penalized" by having to do that. If don't like that, you should move to a country where Christianity is the official religion. There's nothing stopping you from doing so. See if you get that through your narrow minded head and stop foaming at the mouth and accusing me of being a "liberal".
You have no buisness dictating that the federal government promote Christianity in American public schools, as your post DIRECTLY called for (due to you whining about having to pay for sending your kids to a second school so they can learn Christianity). You're probably one of the same freepers ranting and raving about how nobody should be allowed to take the oath of office in this country unless they swear on a Christian bible, and agrees with Katherine Harris rant that electing "non-Christians" (like Jewish Republican Eric Cantor) is "legislating sin" What you're advocated is not based on American traditons at all, unless you think a Muslim style theocracy like they have in Iran is freedom.
For the record, I've been "allowed" on FR alot longer than you've been here, jackass.
>>You’re the one rattling on about DEMANDING the govnerment pay for YOUR kids to get a “Christian education” at school,
Dude, you are so stupid that I had to stop at your first line. Listen up and get off the sauce. I want my children to go to a Catholic school. I want to pay for my own chilren to go to said Catholic school. And I don’t want to have to pay for YOUR children to go to a public school.
Get your damn dirty hands out of my pocket!
Same for Evolution. Randomness is part of the game, but selective pressure ensures that the “house” has the advantage.
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