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).
You've just constructed a model of "nature", complete with built in assumptions of what it can and cannot do.
those aren’t assumptions, they are tested evidences- and again, IC is beyond a simple natural model because nature can’t stepwise build the IC, nor can it provide the info and metainfo needed to keep the species fit and thriving
[[You’ve just constructed a model of “nature”,]]
Well no- because nature is incapable of providing hte necessary ‘non species specific info’ needed to move species beyond hteir own kind- again, this isn’t an assumption, this is proven out in various experiments where mutations- the primary vehicle behind the hypothesis of macroevolution- showed that nature (somehtign hte experiemnts were modelling) can only work on ifo already present (and not very efficiently either-) but can not produce new non species specific info needed to move the species beyond it;’s own kind- it can only really create less fit- less thriving abominations (with occassional neutral effects- which incidently also results in loss of info)
You could perhaps argue that God had a ‘model’ of construction/creation/assembly- but again, you have to argue that His model is ‘above’ nature- supernatural (even htough certain natural laws are used- there’s still the element of supernatural inthat He provided Designed IC and info and metainfo (perhaps not info- but definately metainfo) that nature could not provide-
Will think more on this tonight
Testing evidences that "nature" is not capable of something is like proving a negative. You're implicitly claiming to have tested every possible cause, and saying they all failed.
Seems like a reasonable supposition that molecules do not "arrange themselves" into complete living systems, absent some guide (information). This "mathematical proof" to which you refer, what did it look like? Who created it?
How ironic! LOLOL!
Thank you ever so much for your excellent essay/post, dear CottShop!
I do not know what it looks like, or who created it. It is not my assertion that it exists, only that I have, at various times, been presented with the argument that it exists. It seems based on a misperception that because mathematics is involved, the hypothesis has been "proven" in the absolute sense that applies to mathematical proofs.
As far as the molecules not "arranging themselves" being a "reasonable supposition", it is still supposition.
Going back to the original quesions about needing to declare axioms "up front" when positing a theory, was this declared as axiomatic with regard to that theory?
Were the processes of developing and applying the models that describe the atoms and molecules themselves any less an exercise in “intelligent design”?
I suspect however that we are mixing apples and oranges - or more specifically, intelligent design, relational biology, irreducible complexity, information theory and molecular biology and complex systems theory.
Like you, I'm not aware of a mathematical proof of intelligent design.
But if tacticalogic would like to see a mathematical proof with regard to biological systems, that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, I strongly recommend he read Rosen's Life Itself.
The book has nothing to do with the intelligent design hypothesis.
And concerning information theory and molecular biology, Yockey literally "wrote the book." But he also does not argue for intelligent design.
Concerning mathematical models, Shannon's "mathematical theory of communications" is the root of information theory per se. The model has survived well since the 1940's and is highly transportable to all kinds of applications, including molecular biology.
And Rosen doesn't leave the reader hanging in Life Itself - he offers an excellent circular model for relational biology. His model is new, though, and has not yet built a track record.
And finally, the subject of complexity is well, complex. To make sense of it, one ought to start at the root and build a sense of the terms involved including complexity, chaos, entropy, randomness, probability and order. The meanings of such terms in mathematics are not always the same as in science or in common usage.
betty boop wrote an outstanding essay contrasting combinatorics to Bayesian probability.
Frankly, people will often choose one or the other model depending on which one helps their presupposition. Creationists often use combinatorics to argue there was not enough time for biological evolution. Evolutionists use combinatorics to argue against the "just so" objections. And either side may toggle back to arguing for Bayesian probability if that is convenient.
It's quite subjective!
And there are many methods which can be used to analyze complexity which fall in two different categories: least description and least time. They include functional complexity, algorithmic complexity, Kolmogorov complexity, etc.
And then there are theories concerning the rise of complexity (or order depending on how one is arguing) - e.g. self-organizing complexity, cellular automata, chaos theory.
Irreducible complexity is yet another theory for analyzing complexity. Personally I don't care for it because it is backwards looking. I'd much rather deal with forward looking complex system theories.
The one thing they all have in common though is that order cannot arise in an unguided physical system. Period. There are always guides to the system - whether initial conditions, rules, space/time, physical causation, physical laws and constants, etc.
The intelligent design "hypothesis" essentially observes that the best explanation for "certain features" is that a guide was intelligent.
As I said before, I view the intelligent design hypothesis to be more of an observation - after all, many creatures are known to choose their mates thus affecting the inherited traits of their offspring.
Apples and oranges...
I'll agree there's some "apples and oranges" with regard to different theories.
This started off as a discussion that would (I hope) help clarify the issue of methodology. Looking at different theories for examles, it's easy to get caught up in the details of the theories themselves and end up with with "apples and oranges" comparisons. That wasn't my intent, and I've tried to avoid it but it can be a challenge when the theories themselves present so many opportunities for discussion aside from the original question.
I wonder what other websites our resident anti-science propagandists visit.
[[And concerning information theory and molecular biology, Yockey literally “wrote the book.” But he also does not argue for intelligent design.]]
Wouldn’t information theory necessarily be3 ID (unless one tries to argue that nature somehow creates information/metainformation? I don’t see how one can escape at least inferring the possibility that an ID is needed for metainformation unless they appeal to the ‘intelligent nature’ of nature itself?
[[Creationists often use combinatorics to argue there was not enough time for biological evolution.]]
Some argue that it’s biologically imposible regardless of how much time is thrown at it- impossible no matter what stage you start the proposed process of macroevolution at
[[Irreducible complexity is yet another theory for analyzing complexity. Personally I don’t care for it because it is backwards looking.]]
I think it also looks at hte problem from ‘start to finish’- just as Miller tried and failed to ‘build complexity naturally’ from the ground up when he tried to describe how complex mammilian blood clotting ‘could have evolved’ naturally, ID looks at systems, examines the natural aspects and sees whether they could have evolved fro mthe ground up (at least soem of them ore indepth articles from lesser known ID scientists do- As well, Demski and others on his site go from ground up- ISCID (.org I beleive) also takes this approach on many issues- Sites like IRC and AnswersinGenesis and others mostly do take the back to front approach, and a lot of their articles are not very indepth, but they do have some pretty technical articles- you just have to really look for them on the site- but most of hteir articles are less technical and more general speaking for hte public
[[The intelligent design “hypothesis” essentially observes that the best explanation for “certain features” is that a guide was intelligent.]]
I have to point out here that that is a bit of a generalization- as mentioned, when you realyl start digging, you find many terrific articles describing whther nature is capable of what is being examined from the ground up or not, and they also point out the impossibilities that nature faces, and why they are impossible naturally, and describe scientificaly, why an intelligent designer was needed behind certain key constructions- Evos poo poo this as ‘appealing to the supernatural’ yet Evos ignore the impossibilities, and and must appeal to a ‘supernatural nature’ if these impossibilities are to be overcome naturally
haven’t really read through this site yet, but looks like it might be worth checking out- Cornelius discusses the fallicies used by some evolutionists, and explains the biological problems associated with their claims
http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2009/10/graeme-finlay-evolution-is-true-part-ii.html
Me too, dearest sister in Christ! And for the same reason you indicated here —
...I view the intelligent design hypothesis to be more of an observation ....
That's how I tend to think of irreducible complexity: an inference from general observation that is directly opposed to the idea of reductionism (which itself is a general idea). I don't think of it as a "model" per se, and even wonder if it is model-able. But if it were, it would be like you say: "backward looking." Thus any idea of "inversely causal meta-information" [final cause], as Alex Williams termed it, for example, is ruled out in advance. Science shouldn't begin by ruling things out. Or so it seems to me, FWIW.
And that there are always "guides to the system" — i.e., "initial conditions, rules, space/time, physical causation, physical laws and constants" — seems so patently obvious to me I wonder why anyone would even question it....
Thank you so very much for your outstanding essay/post, dearest sister in Christ!
How do you not "rule out" what you cannot perceive? There's an inherent limitation that's a consequence of being material that puts us in the context of materialism.
Creation science seems to be even more limiting, in that it starts with a predermined conclusion and axiomatically excludes anything inconsistent with that conclusion.
Truly, some of these topics can range from A to Z, e.g. complexity. And worse, the correspondents are often speaking different math theories, so there is a tendency to get derailed.
Well, let's look at the history of the atom and you tell me, tacticalogic.
The atom was originally conceived, by Democritus, ~400 B.C., as the fundamental building block of the universe. It was imagined to be a uniform, homogeneous, indivisible, and extremely teensy physical object, not observable to the human eye. The important point here was for over 2,000 years, the atom was believed to be not deconstructible into more basic parts: it was "ultimate." It was the type of object that Newtonian mechanics could deal with as capably as it did celestial bodies — which was probably where people got the idea that the Newtonian system describes the "universal" and "fundamental" laws of the universe. That is, ultimately physics is "the" most fundamental and universal law of nature, and biology is merely a "special case" of it. That was, and in many cases still is, the basic presupposition of many working scientists and theorists today.
The interesting thing is that, in the mind of Democritus, the idea of "atom" could arise in the first place — especially since there was no possible way for such a crittur to be observed, either directly or under the technological capabilities of the time, and for a very, very long time thereafter.
It wasn't until J. J. Thompson discovered the electron, in 1897, that the "classical" atomic theory began to unravel. No longer could people plausibly speak of an atom as an indestructible body, for it seems to have had "parts" after all. Niels Bohr proposed an atomic model that looked like a miniature solar system, with a central body (the then still undefined nucleus), and its satellites (the electrons); but quickly realized that this model couldn't reflect the real physical situation. For under the then-known dynamical laws, the electrons would soon enough lose their orbits to the inexorable gravitational pull of the nucleus, and come crashing down into it. Such a model had no "stability."
The model's shortcomings drove him to entertain quantum explanations; now Bohr's atom is, "visually," little more than an ambiguous smudge, an amorphous blob. (Though the satellite model of the atom is the one most people think of when they think of an "atom" nowadays.) Then it was discovered that the nucleus itself had "parts." And some of them are composed of quarks — which have not until this day ever been "isolatable" for study as "discrete" objects. Plus all kinds of new particles were discovered, including such exotics as anti-particles....
And so on and so forth; science progresses on the insights and experimental designs of creative observers. It seems obvious to me that intelligent observers and designers are at the root of scientific theoretical progress.
It seems this is not the sense in which you understand the term "intelligent design." Yet both intelligence and design seem indispensable to the conduct of science.
Question: If intelligence and design are indispensable to science, maybe that might tell us something about the structure of the world in which science operates?
Just asking....
My "original question" was, essentially, "If the methodology of the scientific method (methodoligal naturalism) is not acceptable, what exactly does it need to be changed to or replaced with to rectify that situation?"
It might. Starting with the the observations of a molecular biologist that life is "irreducibly complex", and thus requires departure from normal methodology in order to investigate it, does that same premise apply to the molecules themselves. Why does the departure only start when the molecules are incorporated into a living organism, and what are the consequences if it does not?
The comment that was in reply to seemed to amount to an argument that because the methodology used to investigate something had to be intelligently designed it was evidence that what was being investigated must have also been intelligently designed.
But the point is, why should you think that "all we humans are" are material objects, and nothing else?
That, in effect, humans and all of biology "reduce to" — that is, are ultimately explainable by — physics and chemistry, and nothing else? Leading theorists for decades now have been telling us that biological information — which is neither physical nor chemical — is indispensable for biological organization.
Question: Do you draw any distinction between "perception" and "visualization?" Or, when you say "perception," do you mean only sense perception? Arguably, we humans are strongly conditioned by sensory experiences, not only as individuals, but arguably as a species. But do we actually "reduce to" sensory experience?
Or might the noun "perception" itself encompass a wider field than that which can be experienced by sense perception, direct or as technologically aided?
Just asking. Trying to get on the same page with you here....
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