Posted on 09/30/2005 2:09:51 PM PDT by truthfinder9
It's amazing that these Darwinian Fundamentalists claim they're for science only to turn around and try to destroy any contrary theories or evidence. They're really getting desperate, the ID movement really has them rattled.
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September 30, 2005
It’s happening again: another scientist, another academic institution, another attempt to stifle freedom of thought. The “Darwinist inquisition,” as a Discovery Institute press release calls it, is as predictable as it is relentless.
This time the setting is Iowa State University. One hundred twenty professors there have signed a statement denouncing the study of intelligent design and calling on all faculty members to reject it. The statement reads, in part, “We, the undersigned faculty members at Iowa State University, reject all attempts to represent Intelligent Design as a scientific endeavor. . . . Whether one believes in a creator or not, views regarding a supernatural creator are, by their very nature, claims of religious faith, and so not within the scope or abilities of science.”
I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this thing is getting out of control. To begin with, the reasoning of the Iowa State professors is, frankly, some of the weakest I’ve ever seen. They give three reasons for rejecting intelligent design. The first is what they call “the arbitrary selection of features claimed to be engineered by a designer”—which, even if that were true, would prove nothing. If certain features were chosen arbitrarily for study, how does that prove that no other features showed evidence of design? The number two reason given is “unverifiable conclusions about the wishes and desires of that designer.” That is a dubious claim; most serious intelligent design theorists have made very few conclusions about any such “wishes and desires.”
But the third reason is my favorite: They say it is “an abandonment by science of methodological naturalism.” Now this gets to the heart of the matter. The statement goes so far as to claim, “Methodological naturalism, the view that natural phenomena can be explained without reference to supernatural beings or events, is the foundation of the sciences.” I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a scientist, but I thought that the heart of the sciences was the study of natural phenomena to gather knowledge of the universe. I thought we were supposed to start without any foregone conclusions about the supernatural at all, that is, if we wanted to be truly scientific.
It seems to me that the intelligent design theorists aren’t the ones trying to inject religion and philosophy into the debate—the Darwinists are, starting out with predetermined conclusions.
But it gets even better than that. The Iowa State fracas started because one astronomy professor there, Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, has attracted attention with a book on intelligent design. It’s a little odd to accuse Gonzalez of being unscientific; he’s a widely published scientist whose work has made the cover of Scientific American. But that’s exactly what’s happening. And here’s the kicker: Gonzalez barely mentions intelligent design in the classroom. He wants to wait until the theory has more solid support among scientists. All he’s doing is researching and writing about it.
Now the lesson here for all of us is very clear: Don’t be intimidated when confronting school boards or biology teachers about teaching intelligent design. All we are asking is that science pursue all the evidence. That’s fair enough. But that’s what drives them into a frenzy, as we see in Iowa.
No need for an inquisition. Yes, mutations do occur, and microevolution does occur, but macroevolution is an unproven theory. But then the words theory and unproven don't seem to have any meaning to evozealots!
"Can you give me an example of the use of "supernatural causes" as an explanation of physical events by ANY philosopher of the time?"
There certainly was an appeal to the Bible as evidence. Galileo and Newton appealed to physical evidence.
I am still waiting for evidence that Galileo or Newton relied on supernatural causes or Divine Revelation as evidence in their theories.
The reason there can be no evidence for design is because such evidence is subjective. Two people can look at a tree. One thinks it is evidence of design. Another says it is just a result of biological processes, cell growth and division.
Scientific evidence is information that can be gathered, held, and examined. We see cells divide. We can see the fossil record and can analyze similarities and differences between fossils. We can analyze how organisms are related genetically. There may be argument about the interpretation of data and what it means, but the data is there. How does one gather data and quantify design? If you can come up with a way, that would be the greatest discovery in all of history. But no one has done so. That is a matter left to faith.
So even if we say that something in nature is designed, that all of the data gathered about it is dependent upon that statement of design, it still doesn't change how it is going to be studied. The chemistry, biology, and physics will continue to be studied as it had been before.
That is why the scientific establishment opposes ID. It will continue to oppose it and will defeat it eventually, rightfully so. What is going on is that people who oppose the left are being taken advantage of by those who, for whatever reason, cannot accept evolution. You're argument is with the left.
It's not true that the scientific establishment is disallowing people to discuss this issue. It is being discussed right now. Yet the rejection of ID will not result in anything beyond some people's feelings being temporarily hurt. No one will be killed or exiled. The rejection of an idea is not oppression. But someone has to win.
What about the likelihood of that next term in the sequence coming together? Certainly the nature of the being that come next into the association is determinative.
In any case, the appeal of Evolution to many people is that it provides them the comfort of a demiurge who does NOT judge them to the discomfort of a God who does.
This reminds me of a discussion I had with some folks a little while ago. If the Uncertainty Principle is sound, the universe can never achieve perfect flatness or "total entropy." That would mean the position and velocity of every particle would be known, and that makes Heisenberg grumpy. So this means the most spreading out the universe could achieve is that of a sea of very low probabilities. Since there's no reason to assume time would just arbitrarily end, the probability is non-zero that regions of the universe would, in essence, spontaneously re-coalesce into gravity wells, sparking the reformation of macroscopic structures. It seems to me the probability of some section or region of the universe reforming in this manner would be higher than the probability of the entire universe achieving that baseline flatness to begin with. This suggests to me that in all likelihood, we are in fact in a steady-state universe that has been and alway will be here.
Don't know what you're trying to say here.
In any case, the appeal of Evolution to many people is that it provides them the comfort of a demiurge who does NOT judge them to the discomfort of a God who does.
The appeal of evolution for me is that it provides a consistent and logical explanation for a large body of observations about the world. I can't speak for other people, except to say that a scientific theory generally shouldn't be mistaken for an ethical treatise.
Science has already produced detailed explanations of a large number of self-organizing processes.
I hate to say this, but it really sounds like you describe a currently ill described phenomenon. It fits the definition of supernatural.
I guess the nature of God is not a prerequisite.
DK
So why doesn't all dark matter lead back to the cosmic egg, pre-big bang? A rather useless wormhole theory.
If you have a chain of six billion enities who constitute an entity with certain characteristics, what is the liklehood of its being altered by the addition of another or by its displacing of others? Red Rover.
I found God's Funeral by A.N. Wilson useful. Have to get back to the mind set of the 1860s. Which reminds me of the term that Huxley coined: agnostic, which originally had nothing to do with the knowability of God but with Huxley's desire to distance himself from the "gnostics"-- the clerical scientists who thought of themselves as an elite class who by the application of reason were able to bridge the distance between heaven and earth. Biship Wilberforce, for instance. Newman had no trouble with Darwin, because he did not belong to that liberal protestant crowd nor to the evangelicals whose authority derpended totally on the Bible. Anyway,. I think, many scientists adopted Evolution as their own gnosis. Right or wrong, ID threatens the authority of their remote disciples , which is why they are so angry.
That's interesting. The expert witness for the plaintiff, Miller, admitted evolution is NOT a fact.
It does? All I did was apply the HUP to the state the universe would need to be in, in order for the "big wimper" theory to be correct.
In order for the universe to succumb to complete entropy, every particle needs to have a velocity (zero) and a position (equidistant from each other). Since, according to quantum theory, one or the other can be established with certainty, but not both, this state cannot happen. Again, according to quantum theory.
At no point am I invoking the supernatural for this.
I guess the nature of God is not a prerequisite.
I wouldn't know.
So why doesn't all dark matter lead back to the cosmic egg, pre-big bang? A rather useless wormhole theory.
It may lead to a "big crunch" (or a "big near-miss"), but if you compress the universe into a singularity, you're once again violating the HUP, since you're dictating this singularity's position and velocity.
Is the HUC inaccurate? Or am I misunderstanding it?
Sorry, typo. HUP.
You answered: Excellent. Intelligence has deduced a remarkable design to the structure and development of atoms. Is it so ridiculous to posit the theorum that the very intelligence used to discern atomic aptters may be a referent to greater intelligence?
Cutting through the chaff, I'm guessing that your answer to the question is "yes, every atom is intelligently designed."
And the result is, rather obviously, that because your version of ID posits intelligent design as the explanation for everything, it explains nothing. It is an explanatory dead-end, the ultimate shoulder-shrug. The answer to every how, what and why is the same -- the mysterious IDer did it.
Well, at least this frees up more time for golf.
At no point am I invoking the supernatural for this.<<
I am just stating the obvious. We don't know the answer, and we have theories that lead to your conclusion, but they are uncertain.
Hence my crack about the supernatural and God.
If something is a phenomenon and we don't have a good explanation, it is still a phenomenon.
If it is not a phenomenon, science and observervation are inappropriate tools.
Supernatural is a hokum term, used to hide from real science.
Loved your explanation of HUC and universal entropy "extinguishment". I've read books that weren't as clear as that post.
I tend to think we limit ourselves too much.
DK
That old war horse again?
How, what and why are the very questions that Darwinian scientific research cannot answer. It only becomes possible to answer them when the plausability of how, what and why exist.
So what's your methodology for discerning design? Be precise.
That sounds to me like a highly ordered state. Wouldn't that be zero entropy? Or am I misunderstanding you?
There are no facts in science. Only theories supported by evidence.
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