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).
Should one of them be falsified, the theory built on it will also fail. For instance, theories which held geocentricity as a postulate are now falsified.
Darwin took life as "given" - he didn't ask or answer the question "what is life v non-life/death in nature" nor did he posit a theory of abiogenesis.
In my view, Darwin should have formally declared life as an axiom or postulate in his theory. Contentious disagreements have multiplied from inferences due to that omission.
On that very assumption, though, biology hits the wall.
And of course I very strongly agree that the big science question this century ought to be what life "is" not simply what it looks like.
LOLOL!
Thank you and I was going to ask if it was past your bedtime when I realized I am the one on the East Coast and it is past MY bedtime (I have been traveling coast to coast for 10 years on and off and I still haven’t adjusted!)
I will address just a few points, if you don’t mind.
>>Moreover, some of the non-physical causations of which we speak are already being applied, e.g. Shannon’s mathematical theory of communications (information theory) in pharmaceutical and cancer research.<<
Being in the information processing business, I am certainly familiar with most aspects of information theory. But when asking the underlying question “how much data are needed to ascertain information?” there are no non-physical aspects. There may be gaps that require inference, but no model contains “this gap bridged by God.” A representation of an object (e.g. a relational variable versus a relation) is far from a non-physical entity. It has what we call “informational heft” — meaning from a physical Universe in a physical Universe.
>>It seems that betty boop and I are ever standing in the gap. Of a truth, science is rooted in philosophy. <<
Indeed you do and I enjoy and learn from your posts. But I don’t think we are standing at the gap you think we are. The Universe is made up of rules and those rules have result sets. The result sets are: known true, known false, unknown. If we set aside the first two, then we end up dealing with the unknowns (also known as null in a 3VL [3 value: {1,0,null}] analysis).
Now, any rule applied against an unknown results in an unknown — IRRESPECTIVE OF THE KNOWN QUALITY OF THE RULE BEING APPLIED.
I provide emphasis because I want to point out that any path that leads to an unknown ends up in the same place no matter what led it there.
So, now that we are left with only unknown, we can begin to try to classify the nature of the unknown: never instantiated (we never asked), known to be unknown (we asked and got no answer), axiomatic (we supply an answer when there is no ability to ask), etc. There can be quite a few classifications to unknown data before you end up with a truly null result (Chris Date says proper analysis will never result in a wholly null (”unknown”) result, E.F. Codd says it is irrelevant — go figger).
Now, the interesting part is each of these classifications remove our rule from the “unknown” (3VL: null) category to the identified (2VL) category and can be applied to the rule we are examining. I could go into the entire substructure of why 3VL has no applicability (maybe this is where we “leave the path”?) but I would have to restate a lot of Boolean algebra and that would be pedantic, boring and irrelevant).
So where does that leave us?
Well, it means that in the physical Universe we inhabit, even the most esoteric information theories do not obviate physical answers. The milieu demands exactly the opposite. There is not nor can there ever be a “God in the gaps.” If you wish to rely on an information theory model, then application of that which is not know would result in “God is in all gaps” (again, I refer you to Boolean algebra, substituting God or an ID to the null element).
Bottom line: there are no non-physical causations and they can not be created out of whole cloth from argumentation.
Lord have mercy! Did I write all that? Now it is I who is leading the cast down the primrose path! Remember to bring your boogie board and a wet suit!
Proofs apply to mathematics but do not apply to science, i.e. any scientific theory is subject to falsification.
In Life Itself Rosen uses the formality of mathematics both in proving why the Newtonian model is inadequate for biology and then in constructing a relational model which is adequate for biology.
Because the book like the author has one foot on each side, I put the word proof in quotes.
>>In my view, Darwin should have formally declared life as an axiom or postulate in his theory. Contentious disagreements have multiplied from inferences due to that omission. <<
And since I am having insomnia, I’ll go ahead and address this question (if’n you don’t mind).
Abiogenesis is no more a prerequisite to TToE (or any other biological science) than it is a prerequisite to Geology, Astronomy or any other life science. Darwin was not looking to the origins of the Universe, merely the origins of biology.
Because TToE is an emotional area, people feel that it has to qualify itself based on a different set of criteria than do other sciences. But, if the first question to a radioastronomer or geologist is not “but when and how did the Universe begin?” then it is equally irrelevant to demand an answer to that question of an anthropologist.
Darwin took life as "given" - he didn't ask or answer the question "what is life v non-life/death in nature" nor did he posit a theory of abiogenesis.
In my view, Darwin should have formally declared life as an axiom or postulate in his theory. Contentious disagreements have multiplied from inferences due to that omission.
IMHO, the inferences aren't justified and aren't Darwin's fault. Yes, Darwin took "life" as a given without explicitly declaring that life exists. Falsifying that proposition would indeed cause TToE to fail that seems a totally irrational basis for complaint.
He also did not posit a theory of abiogenesis, or specify an "origin" of life. In the realm of modern science, that complaint seems to be an innovation developed specifically for TToE and "Big Bang" theories. I can't think of any other theories that get faulted for failing to formally declare the existence of or cause of creation of the physical entities they are investigating.
Does Rosen explicitly and formally posit the existence of life, specify exactly what differentiates living from non-living, or address the origin of the substance of the organisms he's investigating?
The information itself is not physical but may be, and may be measurable in bits (which are not necessarily binary under Shannon’s model) providing the Shannon entropy is measurable.
In sum, information under Shannon is the reduction of uncertainty (Shannon entropy) in the receiver (or molecular machine) as it moves from a before state to an after state.
It is the action of a successful communication, not the message or data itself.
It doesn’t matter if the message is DNA, a punched card, combination of keystrokes, a letter in the mailbox, a folder in the file cabinet, a database, a record, DVD, spoken word, thought, radio, television or TV content and so on.
Likewise the channel, encoding or decoding are merely elements. As long as sender and receiver speak the same language, the receiver’s uncertainty can be reduced by successful communication. The channel might be the airways or a wire or the USPS and so on.
That letter in your mailbox does not become information under Shannon until your uncertainty is reduced, i.e. you become informed.
Information under the Shannon definition is not physical per se.
Likewise I am successfully communicating when I pray to God, and God of course is not physical, I am the sender, He is the receiver. The spiritual channel of my prayer is not physical. And when God communicates to me, e.g. that Jesus Christ is Lord, that also is not physical.
That is the big difference between the words of God and the words of men. The words of God are spirit and life. The words of men are neither spirit nor life.
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned. - I Corinthians 2:14
…
Bottom line: there are no non-physical causations and they can not be created out of whole cloth from argumentation
And there is great resistance to this among scientists who tend to be empiricists. Mathematics is only quasi-empirical.
For instance, the concept of infinity is very useful in mathematics but it doesn’t translate well to a finite universe.
Null is mathematically informative – and in cosmology particularly helpful in contrasting a zero dimensional singularity to the absence of space/time and physical causality itself. But to other disciplines of science, it may be altogether unacceptable – the closest concept some can embrace is a vacuum which also exists “in” space/time and is therefore subject to causality.
What is the end of the extension of one divided by three, or pi?
And so on.
In appreciating the physical world through the Spiritual eyes of a Christian, to recognize that God is The Creator, His Name is I AM and that Jesus is the Word of God, Logos – one expands his domain to glimpse the unknowable.
You and I both know that Darwin did not theorize about abiogenesis. His was not a theory of origins of life but rather of speciation, origin of species. Nor was his a theory of what life "is."
But if you were to poll people on the street - or even Free Republic for that matter - you'd probably discover, as I have, that most people are under that impression. And, I suspect for that reason, many of them are upset with Darwin over something he never claimed in his theories in the first place.
When I look at what Darwin actually said it is not all that earth shattering. Living things change and adapt over time. Some are successful, some are not.
Likewise I do not find the intelligent design hypothesis to be all that earth shattering. Indeed, I wouldn't even call it a hypothesis, I'd call it an observation.
It simply says (paraphrased) that "certain features of life and the universe are best explained by intelligent cause rather than an undirected process." And, after all, many creatures are known to choose their mates thus affecting inherited traits. And it is not a substitute for the theory of evolution either, it applies only to certain features. Nor is it a theory of origins. It has no Holy writ, no milk, no meat.
Give me something meaty to chew on! Let's debate what life "is" not what it looks like. Let's look at origins of life, space/time, inertia, information, autonomy, semiosis! Let's discuss the philosophies involved - what can man know, what can he never know! Let's discuss formal cause, material cause, efficient cause and most especially final cause!
And most important of all, let's talk about Jesus Himself!
I've discovered that there are people both on the streed and here at Free Republic who simply will not accept that. There appears to be more to it than simple misperception.
I consider a "meaty" issue finding a methodology that will satisfy the complaints about materialism, and still provide an objective framework for scientists of dissimilar religious beliefs to collaborate effectively. That seems a pivotal matter in the entire debate, but I can't seem to find anyone who's willing to address it in concrete terms.
That is a vital Spiritual point among Christians and the root of many theological disputes.
Personally, I eschew all the doctrines and traditions of men across the board and lean instead on the words of God and the leading of the indwelling Spirit (Romans 8, John 15, I Cor 2):
Likewise it comes down to "Who do you believe?" in the crevo wars. And this issue stands as a good example of it.
A person may have been told by someone he believes or trusts - or determined by his own reasoning - that Darwin said something else, perhaps somewhere else, perhaps submitting to sinister influences or associations, that there was a subtext, a hidden agenda, perhaps even to "kill" faith in God as if that were possible.
And if he believes those sources, your efforts to reason with him citing the absence of evidence in Darwin's theory will be futile.
However, there would have been evidence if Darwin had disclosed upfront in his theory of the origin of species - as an axiom or postulate - that he takes life as a "given" offering neither a definition of what life "is" nor an explanation of its origin.
It would be much easier to point to that evidence and say that whatever else he might have written or how anyone might have used the theory to advance their sinister theological or political agendas etc. is therefore irrelevant to the theory itself.
He omitted to mention his presuppositions.
And with so many issues in the crevo wars, the absence of evidence keeps the flames burning.
In my view, the objective framework is for scientists to approach their investigations more like the mathematicians and declare the axioms/postulates applicable to the investigation at hand, upfront and clearly.
If it's not relevant, it's not on the table in the first place. That gets the bias out whether theistic or atheistic.
If it's not relevant, it's not on the table in the first place. That gets the bias out whether theistic or atheistic.
How do you approach a debate if a theory holds it to be axiomatic that a cause can be arbitrary and undetectable empirically?
However, there would have been evidence if Darwin had disclosed upfront in his theory of the origin of species - as an axiom or postulate - that he takes life as a "given" offering neither a definition of what life "is" nor an explanation of its origin.
It would be much easier to point to that evidence and say that whatever else he might have written or how anyone might have used the theory to advance their sinister theological or political agendas etc. is therefore irrelevant to the theory itself.
If they chose to believe other sources rather than do the research and find out for themselves, I don't see how it would matther what Darwin wrote.
If the people they choose to believe tell them "Darwin said 'A'", and I tell them "No, Darwin said 'B'" they are going to believe that Darwin said 'A', whether he really did or not.
Sorry not to have gotten back sooner, Freedumb2003; I spent yesterday with my folks.
I have some questions regarding the passages in the above italics. It's good to know you're in the information processing business, since that makes you a good "go-to guy" for answers.
Do you consider data as physical quantities? It seems to me data are outputs of inputs that must be in "computable" form in the first place. Where you seem to see the "physical" here, I see only the formalism of input, output, and computability. Plus the thought occurs to me that not all problems within the human sphere are reducible to "computable" form.
How does data get translated into information, absent a subjective mind to do it? Is this the "God of the gaps" to which you were referring? But we're not even speaking of God here. We are speaking of subjective human intelligence, and whether or to what extent it has any right to be present in "science" today.
If that sounds silly, just consider: Science has relentlessly been purging the "subjective" ever since Francis Bacon. No science that is not completely "objective" can pass muster as science under this regime.
And yet the transition from data to information would seem to require a mind to effect it, the outcome of which Shannon referred to as "the reduction of uncertainty in the receiver." How can one have a model of information without taking the receiver into account? Or the sender, for that matter?
It seems to me that to say that something has "informational heft" is to speak analogically. It does not confer actual physicality on anything; it is little more than a figure of speech.
Just sending my questions/observations along to you, dear Freedumb2003, in this fit of "amorphous musing" I seem to be having....
Thank you ever so much for writing!
And yet the transition from data to information would seem to require a mind to effect it, the outcome of which Shannon referred to as "the reduction of uncertainty in the receiver." How can one have a model of information without taking the receiver into account? Or the sender, for that matter?I think you need to re-read Shannon ...
It is why it is so difficult to get a conviction on circumstantial evidence.
And it is the Achilles’ heel of evolution theory – indeed of all historical science theories (anthropology, archeology, etc.)
After all, not every creature that ever lived left a complete record of itself. What does survive is circumstantial evidence (a quantization of the continuum.)
Therefore, to superimpose the finding in the laboratory concerning bacterial evolution onto the paleontological record is to overstate what is knowable.
There are no laboratory experiments which can falsify an alternative explanation for the paleontologists’ discovery in the dig (e.g. God’s special creation, panspermia, Gaia/collective consciousness of the universe.)
And we see the tendency to superimpose, and the inability to falsify a superimposition, in the case at hand because Darwin did not disclose in his theory of the origin of species - as an axiom or postulate - that he takes life as a "given" – that he offers neither a definition of what life "is" nor an explanation of its origin.
Again “the absence of evidence is evidence of absence” is a rational and effective defense. The juror will fill in the blanks as he chooses.
One might conclude that Darwin didn’t say anything so we ought to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that means he didn’t have a position on such matters. That we cannot assume he had a motive for not mentioning his presuppositions or if he had any.
Another might say, just as rationally, that Darwin intentionally did not mention his presuppositions because most of his peers believed in God and if he had said what he really believed about a warm little pond and that God doesn’t exist, his theory would have been rejected out-of-hand. Which is to say, people tend to be self centered and therefore Darwin’s motive can be presumed to be self-serving.
Another might say based on his theological beliefs that Darwin was wittingly or not involved in a dark, sinister, Satanic plot to snatch away the faith of the weak and young prior to the end of days – that mentioning anti-God presuppositions would have revealed his hand – conversely, by not mentioning it, he would appear as an “angel of light” to those seeking earthy knowledge. Which is to superimpose a particular belief in end times prophecy, and the bloody historical record after his theory was published, onto Darwin as one of the actors, e.g.
And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. – 2 Cor 11:4
And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. – Matthew 24:11
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