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).
That presupposes that there is some way of testing the axioms. That gets to be problematic once you get outside the realm of physical causes and sensory perception.
You wrote:
Since the days of Newton, science has ignored formal and final cause with the assumption that everything in the universe is a machine that can be understood by material and efficient causes....The "presupposition" that the universe "ought" to be understood as a machine obviously limits the scientific search to machine-like characteristics from the get-go.And their presupposition has been wildly successful for centuries because, with the notable exception of living things, the rest of the universe can be understood as a machine.
Evidently, the scientists always considered biology to be a “special case” – minor in comparison to the rest of the universe – and not really worth their time. The machine presupposition works well in physics and chemistry, so it’s just a matter of time before they can explain life as a machine, too.
The Newtonian paradigm has been so successful that by now, most people believe that physics (including mechanics of course) is THE universal descriptor of the laws of the universe, and biology — as you noted — is just a fairly "rare" and thus uninteresting case. Biology is simply assumed to reduce to the physical laws.
On that very assumption, though, biology hits the wall.
Notice that Darwin's Theory of Evolution is not a theory of biology, per se. It is only a theory of speciation. It takes the biology "for granted," and then purports to explain how it speciates.
A much more interesting proposal has been surfacing in recent times, however — the idea that biology is the basic, "more general law" of the universe, and physics is a special case of it.
It seems to me that a science that purports to be a "life science" ought to get a bit more serious about the question, What is life itself? That is, what constitutes "biology?" This is not to ask how do biological organisms change — this is to ask, What is it that makes them biological organisms — living systems — in the first place?
To me, this is the greatest question for 21st-century science. And it is clear that the Newtonian Paradigm cannot answer it. Since Darwin's theory rests on that, it has no answers either.
Here's an excerpt from Robert Rosen's working notes that sheds light on the issues of self-imposed "scientific limitations" WRT to inquiry into biological nature — in a delightfully humorous way:
WHY DO PEOPLE HATE SCIENCE SO MUCH?Thank you ever so much for writing, dearest sister in Christ!a. IT'S REMOTE. (hence, limited away from what is concrete and near).
b. IT PERTAINS, AT BEST, TO ONLY ONE WAY OF KNOWING. (hence, limited away from what is inaccessible to that way of knowing).
c. IT'S RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR PRESENT PROBLEMS; PROBLEMS WHICH CAN ONLY GET WORSE AS SCIENCE PROGRESSES. (hence, limited away from the roots of those problems, limited away from solving those problems; indeed, a cause of those very problems; making the world increasingly worse as it advances).
Re (b): Hutchins felt that scientists were in fact insufferable; arrogant and impudent; confusing reality with objectivity, facts with understanding or principle. Remember his remarks about the Great Conversation. He held that the real question was "what should I do now?" "What should we do now, why should we do these things?" The Great Conversation was, he felt, about politics and religion.
What I am trying to argue is that science is characterized by what it is about, not by any method or way of knowing. Something becomes scientific not by means of a particular way of knowing, or of doing, but by what it is about. It is about truth. It is about finding the consequents of hypotheses: IF a, then what? IF b, why b?
Is A true? (observation).
If A is true, what else is true? (prediction).
Why is A true? (causality).Pretty benign. In this context, a "limitation" of science, would be something like: (a) an inherent inability to tell whether A is true or not; (b) an inherent inability to find out what A implies; (c) an inability to find out what implies A....
We're not.
To look at the epistemological rigor of a modern scientific model is not to engage in "amorphous musings."
>>To look at the epistemological rigor of a modern scientific model is not to engage in “amorphous musings.”<<
Well, I did say “no offense.”
But seriously, there is a pretty bright line here: is is possible for ID/religion to be applicable to science? No matter how long the road you take, it still leads to a chasm that cannot be leaped (lept? leapt?). No matter what we are talking about in this sometimes debate, sometimes yelling match, that is what we are talking about.
Epistemological discussions feel good and I certainly enjoy reading them, but they don’t move the ball.
Again IMHO and YMMV.
BTW: I haven’t had a chance to wish you ladies a lovely and blessed day (evening, weekend, week, etc.)! Please take this as such a wish :)
If not A, then what? If B, then why B and not C?
>>If not A, then what? If B, then why B and not C?<<
because 7 8 9!!!!
(sooner or later the ladies are going to just turn on me and smack me down with their purses, umbrellas or whatever is at hand!)
Why is "proofs" in quotes?
You'd be so lucky, if all we had were purses, umbrellas or whatever is at hand....
>>You’d be so lucky, if all we had were purses, umbrellas or whatever is at hand..<<
You gotta love Conservatives womens — intelligent and usually well-armed!
;)
Careful. There might be a rail gun in that purse.
And your degree is in what field again?
[[And your degree is in what field again?]]
the Barley Field?
science.
>>There might be a rail gun in that purse.<<
Lets say I would not be surprised ;)
I see “whatever is at hand” has arrived.
As contrasted by many posters here that DO let their 'faith' get in the way of their science.
On the science and philosophy point, I'll repeat here my reply to a comment you made on a thread that has since gone to crickets:
Beginning of Modern Science and Modern Philosophy
But that tendency is also a family of philosophies whose labels I defer to betty boop and in general only note that the tendency values sensory perception and reasoning above all else.
And among that family are those who paradoxically hold to physical causation as an axiom (strong determinism) while at the same time declare their personal choices (free will.) If you haven’t already, you should check out betty boop’s wonderful essay on Einstein’s God.
Her essay illustrates how some of the great minds concluded that the first cause was not physical and yet would not admit any subsequent non-physical causation.
I also note that many mathematicians - or scientists with strong mathematical skill - hold theories and speculations which speak beyond physical causation (Tegmark, Rosen, Shannon, Jastrow, et al)
Presuppositions concerning causation are caught up in each person's understanding of what is; it is philosophy. And of course our personal philosophy (whether or not it has a label) derives from our beliefs.
Christians and Jews who believe in God, the Creator, admit to non-physical causation in widely varying degrees. Deists admit to at least one. And so on.
So this, I believe, is at the root of the crevo wars and the never-ending disputes over the intelligent design hypothesis, i.e. the posters' philosophy concerning causation. The debate cannot be science versus philosophy.
LOLOL!
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