Posted on 09/24/2009 6:08:52 AM PDT by xcamel
William Dembski, the “intelligent design” creationist who is a professor in philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, has some rather interesting requirements for students of his creationism courses — 20% of their final grade comes from having written 10 posts promoting ID on “hostile” websites: Academic Year 2009-2010.
Spring 2009
Intelligent Design (SOUTHERN EVANGELICAL SEMINARY #AP 410, 510, and 810; May 11 – 16, 2009)
NEW! THE DUE DATE FOR ALL WORK IN THIS COURSE IS AUGUST 14, 2009. Here’s what you will need to do to wrap things up:
AP410 — This is the undegrad [sic] course. You have three things to do: (1) take the final exam (worth 40% of your grade); (2) write a 3,000-word essay on the theological significance of intelligent design (worth 40% of your grade); (3) provide at least 10 posts defending ID that you’ve made on “hostile” websites, the posts totalling 2,000 words, along with the URLs (i.e., web links) to each post (worth 20% of your grade).
AP510 — This is the masters course. You have four things to do: (1) take the final exam (worth 30% of your grade); (2) write a 1,500- to 2,000-word critical review of Francis Collins’s The Language of God — for instructions, see below (20% of your grade); (3) write a 3,000-word essay on the theological significance of intelligent design (worth 30% of your grade); (4) provide at least 10 posts defending ID that you’ve made on “hostile” websites, the posts totalling 3,000 words, along with the URLs (i.e., web links) to each post (worth 20% of your grade).
Just about as solid as your biblical creation myth.
Good choice of “word”
Another fart in your general direction.
Here’s a thread started by GGG today where he associates evolution with the Nazis. Goodwin’s law is in effect.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2351596/posts
[[But why should an intelligent agency be excluded from consideration?]]
Because to them - the evos- everything MUSt have come about naturally- there is no other relgion under the sun to these folks- there is no such thing as common design- similarity to them means common descent- no other explanation is allowed (despite the FACT that we know homological similarities often arise through wholly different pathways- if it ‘looks similar’ there must be an evolutionary connection- again- no other explanation allowed)
[[Humans move and exist in a physical world, subject to gravity and energy inputs and chemical reactions that would permit them to place a rock in the road by design so I see no reason to exclude as unimportant or unscientific that possibility because intelligence may be involved.]]
Exactly! a Stone mason, or someone building something may have moved then abandoned it, or an animal may have moveed it to it’s current location for all we know- but again- the possibility that an intelligence was involved is not allowed when concidering Evolution
[[I understand what you are saying about the ID view and its variations among adherents. That is why I am not one of them, I have no trouble with pointing to a Creator, Designer and Producer of the universe or cosmos.]]
Neither do I and neither do a great many ID proponents- it’s a falacious argument to insist that an opinion based o nthe evidences MUST exclude God as a possible conclusion- and when there is enough actual evidence to show a very strong need for an intelligence- which there is enough- more than enough infact- then it’s simply an unreasonable and unscientific position to insist nature must have done it- especially in light of hte fact that for nature to have done it, it would have had to violate several serious key scientific principles- Evos however just blow htis fact off, and still insist nature must have done it.
When science examines intelligently designed artifacts, they have NO problem concluding that humans were responsible- without being compelled to name the individuals- when enough evidence is present to show a serious NEED for an intelligence behind hte complexities of artifacts, it is NOT unscientific to conclude that humans were responsible without naming who the individuals were- and it’s certainly NOT unscientific, when there is enough evidence to show a serious NEED for an intelligence behind life’s irreducible complexities to suggest that an intelligent Designer was NEEDED- and hte only itnelligent Designer capable of omnipotent creation that I know of, and that a great many ID proponents and scientists know of, is God.
While some ID folks are loath to admit God is the Intelligent Designer- a good portion do infact admit htis, and have no problem doing so- but technically speaking, one need not name the intelligence no more so than one need name the intelligence behind historical artifacts in order to correctly posit that an intelligence was NEEDED!
[[And please respect your audience enough to post both proper spelling and grammar. You reveal your ignorance in the large things by demonstrating your ignorance in the small things.]]
Lol- Care to compare intelligence test results? Beign too tired to give a crap about spell-checking, and corercting neurological mistakes while typing has nothign to do with intelligence- but you keep analy obsessing over spelling as though it is some sort of victory for your side- Shallowness, and lack of amunition for arguments is revealed on your part
[[Your attempts to climb the intellectual mountains of science are analogous to the linguists who has noted that all languages across the galaxy have a “jin-n-tonix” construct and do not buttress anything other than your circular references.]]
You still can NOT show how it’s possible for nature to violate several key scientific principles eh? If all you’’ve got for arguments are ad hominem attacks, then whatever- again- you just reveal how shallow your preferred hypothesis really is
[[Nature isn’t “magical” — and your assertion (it does not even rise to contention) that because you don’t understand simple processes such as stochasticism, somehow millions of real scientists analyzing and interpreting billions of artifacts across hundreds of years have been toiling in fields of error doesn’t even meet the laugh test.]]
Again- the argument is completely goign over your head apparently- Nature, as described by the mythical process of Macroevolution, certainly MUST BE magical in order to violate the very scientific principles that bind it- I’ll ask again- Show us evidnece that shows nature can violate chemical, biological, and natural processes while beating out mathematical probability impossibilities- show it happening just once- then please do explain to hte rest of us how it could have violated it trillions of times, leaving behind NO traces of evidnece (apparently, your magical nature did so ‘in hte past sometime’ but compeltely stopped violating scientific principles ‘in hte past after evolution was all done supernaturally creating all the myriad billions of species)
[[somehow millions of real scientists analyzing and interpreting billions of artifacts across hundreds of years have been toiling in fields of error doesn’t even meet the laugh test.]]
Sure it does- it’s quite laughable when someoen is so maried to an a priori agenda that they IGNORE the scientific impossibilities facign hteir hypothesis and can’t cede the facts and keep on insisting ‘nature did it’ despite evidence to the contrary- quite laughable indeed (of course htose who are married to the hypothesis, and hwo’s reputations are on the line for havign invested so much time and effort into a failed religious beleif about macroevolution don’t think it’s so funny eating crow- of course they are goign to keep on- hoping agaisnt all hope that they’ll be proven right- but after 150 years of intense discovery, and billions of dollars spent, you’d think they’d get hte message and try to save face by at least ceding the possibility that they were wrong- but nope- steadfast right to the end- Down with hte ship to the bottom of the sea! (it’s called cuttign off your nose to spite your face- Throwing a rope to a drowning man- only to have him stubbornly refuse help and swim away to deeper water- The numbers game doesn’t work here I’m afraid- and a fair amount of scientists HAVE realized (and even publically stated) that the process of Macroevolution is chemically, biologically and mathematically impossible and that it natural laws- but per usual- they have hteir characters attacked by the drowning men who are so wedded to their hypothesis that they can’t see the forrest for the trees.)
Sign the List
Signers of the Scientific Dissent From Darwinism must either hold a Ph.D. in a scientific field such as biology, chemistry, mathematics, engineering, computer science, or one of the other natural sciences; or they must hold an M.D. and serve as a professor of medicine. Signers must also agree with the following statement:
“We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”
http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org/sign_the_list.php
Woopsie- many ARE turning away, or at least ceding that the natural process of Macroevolution does NOT explain how l ife got here
“Professor Colin Reeves
Dept of Mathematical Sciences
Coventry University
Darwinism was an interesting idea in the 19th century, when handwaving explanations gave a plausible, if not properly scientific, framework into which we could fit biological facts. However, what we have learned since the days of Darwin throws doubt on natural selection’s ability to create complex biological systems - and we still have little more than handwaving as an argument in its favour”
“Edward Peltzer, University of California, San Diego (Scripps Institute)
As a chemist, the most fascinating issue for me revolves around the origin of life. Before life began, there was no biology, only chemistry – and chemistry is the same for all time. What works (or not) today, worked (or not) back in the beginning. So, our ideas about what happened on Earth prior to the emergence of life are eminently testable in the lab. And what we have seen thus far when the reactions are left unguided as they would be in the natural world is not much. Indeed, the decomposition reactions and competing reactions out distance the synthetic reactions by far. It is only when an intelligent agent (such as a scientist or graduate student) intervenes and “tweaks” the reactions conditions “just right” do we see any progress at all, and even then it is still quite limited and very far from where we need to get. Thus, it is the very chemistry that speaks of a need for something more than just time and chance. And whether that be simply a highly specified set of initial conditions (fine-tuning) or some form of continual guidance until life ultimately emerges is still unknown. But what we do know is the random chemical reactions are both woefully insufficient and are often working against the pathways needed to succeed. For these reasons I have serious doubts about whether the current Darwinian paradigm will ever make additional progress in this area.”
http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org/scientists/
On and on it goes- but of course all of htese more than 700 scientists must not be ‘real scientists or prophesors and specialists in their fields’ because they find that the mechanisms behind Macroevolution can NOT explain how life got here, right? They must all have a ‘religious agenda’ and just want to ‘sneak relgion and creationism into hte classroom, right? Lol Yeah right!
“Science seeks to discover natural causes to provide natural explanations for what is observed in nature. However, to say that natural causes are the only causes or to dogmatically assert that everything about the material world can be explained through material causes alone are philosophical statements and not objective statements about scientific methodology.
Science makes no presuppositions about the existence or non-existence of transcendent causes. Neither does science make any presuppositions regarding the influence or effect a transcendent cause might have in the material world or the ability or inability of science, using the methods of empirical science, to detect those influences or effects. Consequently, the impossibility of disproving the existence of a transcendent cause precludes an assumption that all observable effects must be due to natural causes and only natural causes. Imposition of such an assumption can only be made on the basis of ideology and within the context of public education, raises First Amendment issues.
Evidence bearing on a scientific question must be critically examined from all sides and evaluated on the basis of scientific merit, not religious or philosophical presuppositions. While it may be true that science can only study material effects in the natural world, there are some effects that cannot be explained by the laws of physics and chemistry, chance and time alone and point to the possibility of an intervening intelligence, or, a previously undiscovered law that mimics the actions of an intervening intelligence. To rule out the possibility of an intervening intelligence can only be made on the basis of ideology, not evidence.”
http://www.nmidnet.org/articles.htm
Science is supoposed to be about OBJECTIVE observation- but macroevolution cuts objectivism off at the knees by declarign that everything MUSt have a natural origins and MUST be explained via natural processes- this is a subjective ideological religious claim, and is NOT an objective observation of the evidences
But how can we talk about science without acknowledging its fundamental philosophical presuppositions? Such as materialism, naturalism, determinism, positivism? The scientific method — methodological naturalism — is based in these doctrines.
Further, is a historical science like Darwin's macroevolution theory "science" in any strict sense? Certainly, it's not "science" in the same way that physics is science. It is not primarily based on direct observation, falsification tests, replicable experiments, predictive power, and so forth. It has a mythic element to it that no one wants to discuss. Certainly not in public school classrooms!
You want to separate the knowledge disciplines into nice, neat little separate boxes. The only reason you think this possible is that you do not see how mutually dependent these disciplines are.
The German language makes this particularly clear. Its word for "science" — Wissenschaft — means all knowledge, in the broadest sense. Wissenschaft subdivides into two main categories, Naturwissenchaften — the "natural" sciences" (physics, chemistry, biology, et al.) and Geisteswissenchaften— the "humane sciences," the humanities, or sciences of Spirit (philosophy, psychology, history, the arts, et al.). Wissenchaft is the master term that contains and integrates its two subdisciplines.
Not to mention that scientific theories and discoveries often have outcomes that affect the humane sphere of persons and societies. Is this aspect something we want to see discussed in a science class? I'd say, yes. Moreover, scientific theories often have implications for ontology and epistemology, even if a theory didn't explicitly intend such a result. All rest on a cosmology, or worldview, of some kind.
So you can see, science is simply "filthy" with philosophy!
In the end, the question boils down to: What do we want for our children? Do we want them to be well-informed, critical thinkers, or do we want well-trained parrots — taught to accept the "received wisdom" and mindlessly repeat it?
You wrote:
Unless and until you can provide a forum for all creation stories/theories/etc. in a science forum (thus ending it as a science forum) you can’t make this a 1st Amendment issue.I'm sorry, freedumb2003, I can't make heads or tails of this statement. Would you kindly try restating it?
And to enforce..ahhh...”ensure” the above we'll enlist the services of the ACLU, etc.,???
But where are we going to put Darwinism? Under the heading of “unexplainable caprice” as did Salthe.
Why is methodological naturalism explicitly differentiated from philosophical naturalism?
Agreed. The ID folks have striven to keep identification of the designer out of their arguments rather than enter into religious areas whatever their personal opinions.
Everyone can recognize design (it need not be attributed to God) but I see the evolutionists here avoiding the HOW of said recognition like it a mongoose dodging a King cobra even in a simple thought experiment as I suggested.
Here is an excerpt from an article by an evolutionist of no mean repute:
“Analysis and critique of the concept of Natural Selection (and of the Darwinian theory of evolution) in respect to its suitability as part of Modernism's origination myth, as well as of its ability to explain organic evolution
(August 1999; [updated August 2002] )
S.N. Salthe
“its privileging the centrality of competition.
In an increasingly overcrowded world, it happens that more people are coming to believe in the evolution of organisms, including people, by way of natural selection — which works fundamentally on the principle of competition between types. You and I as individuals cannot compete in this game, but, as tokens of various types (blue eyes / brown eyes; dark skin / light skin — each of us is a nexus of many genetically coded types) our reproductive success contributes to the competition for representation of these types in the population (and of the genes governing them in the gene pool). It is curious that there is an obvious correlation between holding liberal political views and believing in evolution by natural selection — seemingly a flat contradiction! This probably ought to be the most troubling aspect of selection theory for liberals. Darwinian models have supplied motivation for social Darwinists of one kind or another ever since World War I, ranging from the German High Command at the turn of the century to some contemporary sociobiologists. We might note here that many sociobiologists hold that competition between populations (e.g., among humans, warfare) is a reasonable way to sublimate competition between types in a population (see discussion of interspecific competition in the last paragraph of (6), below). Irons’ review of R.D. Alexander's book The Biology of Moral Systems concludes that the fact that it presents such an unpleasant perspective doesn't make it wrong. The answer to this view is to bring up the social construction of knowledge, where we see that what is desired can be constructed as true. Sober and Wilson's recent book, Unto Others, devoted to tracing the evolution of altruism, is nevertheless based on competition, as any Darwinian text must be.
(If one wishes to catch the moral and philosophical flavor of Darwinian implications, the Alexander book cited above, and Monod’s Chance and Necessity are central readings.)
It has often been suggested that such social Darwinian applications are “misuses” of the theory. Well, I think that a theory that has so strong a propensity for this kind of (mis)use could properly be held to be suspect when its adherents are growing apace along with the world population. Or, more innocently, we might ask in just what way a theory that privileges competition as the source of everything is ideologically appropriate to an increasingly overcrowded world. Perhaps it is!”
Who is Goodwin?
I misspelled (but close), it’s Godwin , and here is the wiki definition of Godwin’s law:
Godwin’s Law (also known as Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies) is a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990 which has become an Internet adage. It states: “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”
The term Godwin’s law can also refer to the tradition that whoever makes such a comparison is said to “lose” the debate.
Godwin’s Law is often cited in online discussions as a deterrent against the use of arguments in the widespread reductio ad Hitlerum form. The rule does not make any statement about whether any particular reference or comparison to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate, but only asserts that the likelihood of such a reference or comparison arising increases as the discussion progresses. It is precisely because such a comparison or reference may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued, that overuse of Nazi and Hitler comparisons should be avoided, because it robs the valid comparisons of their impact.
Although in one of its early forms Godwin’s Law referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions, the law is now applied to any threaded online discussion: electronic mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms, and more recently blog comment threads, wiki talk pages, and Twitter.
In other words, the side that compares the other side to Hitler in an online debate or argument has lost the debate. They have no other weapon than to call or associate the other side with Nazis.
In another thread today, GGG started off with this in the title. He lost the argument before it started.
“In other words, the side that compares the other side to Hitler in an online debate or argument has lost the debate. They have no other weapon than to call or associate the other side with Nazis.”
A more fitting saying, “Keep yor eye on the ball...or you’ll lose the ball”.
Evidently they are differentiated to show that one — methodological naturalism — has become the term of art for the currently reigning "scientific method." The emphasis is on "method," or manner of proceeding in the investigation of nature. The latter — philosophical naturalism — is the doctrine that justifies the method — that doctrine being that all natural objects can have only natural causes. In any case, the former is derivative from the latter.
>>Lol- Care to compare intelligence test results? <<
I stopped reading after that line. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t catch my breath, much less read.
I don’t know what you said but I am sure somewhere someone will get a kick out of it.
Does there exist a methodology derived from philosophical supernaturalism that can be used as a framework for consistent scientific investigation?
Give me an instance of "philosophical supernaturalism?" You don't by any chance mean logic? That's pretty supernatural! Not a spot of the material to it! But science wouldn't get very far without it. Nor would philosophy for that matter.
It doesn’t surprise me that you never heard of Godwins law in your little bubble.
I heard of it back in 1995. How old were you then?
If you don't like that terminology, what do you prefer? If methodological naturalism is not an acceptable basis for scientific inquiry because it is "derived from philosophical naturalism", what philosophy do you propose to derive a methodology from, and what would that methodology be?
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