Posted on 09/26/2009 8:51:22 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
There are a lot of false urban legends promoted in academia about intelligent design (ID). They often start with myths promoted by misinformed critiques in scientific journals, court rulings, or even talks by activists at scientific conferences. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for this misinformation to then be passed down to college students, who may know very little about ID and lack the resources to correct their professors’ misinformed and misplaced attacks on ID. Not anymore.
If you’re a college student, recently gone back to school and expecting to hear a lot of anti-ID views from your professors, we’re pleased to present this “Back to School Guide” for students...
(Excerpt) Read more at evolutionnews.org ...
So, Newton and Einstein were wrong when they concluded that the universe must have had a designer based on their observations?
The questions remain, however, because you completely neglected to answer the one and never really answered the other although you commented on it....
Do you consider that nothing can be verified as accurate and true unless it can be reduced to a scientific experiment?
Why on earth do you need to experiment to test for something that is so patently obvious to the casual observer and even Dawkins admits that the universe and life give the appearance (illusion) of design?
Tell me the why.
Do you understand the concept of THEORY in a scientific context?
Do you think apples and oranges are incomparable?
But to your question, "Why on earth do you need to experiment to test for something that is so patently obvious..."
Let's us the two examples of genius you've already provided. By your logic, gravity doesn't warrant investigation - after all, what goes up, must come down.
Why do things fall?
Because of gravity, of course.
What's gravity?
The thing that makes things fall, dummy.
Talk about begging the question. Newton and Einstein both studied the concept of gravity and its consequences, and what they learned (and taught the rest of us), is that what is "patently obvious to the casual observer" means nothing. There is no "up".
“It’s more akin to ‘Oh, Professor...’”
No. Sorry.
And by the way, I would love to read the conclusion you say Einstein reached.
“I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
Albert Einstein
“So someone tell me, how would you do an experiment to test for intelligent design?”
I suggest you ask the SETI folks. How do they “do an experiment” to determine if a signal from space is “intelligently designed”? Or do you believe that the entire SETI project is “unscientific”?
Let me ask you another question. Why are so many so-called “scientists” today so hostile to the idea of ID? Great scientists of the past certainly expressed no such hostility. Quite the opposite:
“This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.” —Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), The Principia
“Overwhelmingly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us. ...the atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.” —Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)
“The more I study nature, the more I am amazed at the work of the Creator.” —Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)
“One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all. ... The better we understand the universe and all it harbors, the more reason we have found to marvel at the inherent design upon which it is based. ... I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life, and man in the science classroom.” —Wernher von Braun, father of the American space program
“I have said for years that speculations about the origin of life lead to no useful purpose as even the simplest living system is far too complex to be understood in terms of the extremely primitive chemistry scientists have used in their attempts to explain the unexplainable that happened billions of years ago. God cannot be explained away by such naive thoughts.” —Ernst Chain, Nobel-laureate biochemist
“So if one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure of order must be the outcome of intelligent design. ... The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.” —Sir Fred Hoyle, British astonomer (and self-professed atheist), from a lecture in 1982
“A superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology.” —Sir Fred Hoyle
“The Darwinian theory has become an all-purpose obstacle to thought rather than an enabler of scientific advance.” —Robert B. Laughlin, Nobel-laureate physicist
“Much of present-day biological knowledge is ideological. A key symptom of ideological thinking is the explanation that has no implications and cannot be tested. I call such logical dead ends antitheories because they have exactly the opposite effect of real theories: they stop thinking rather than stimulate it. Evolution by natural selection, for instance, which Charles Darwin originally conceived as a great theory, has lately come to function more as an antitheory, called upon to cover up embarrassing experimental shortcomings and legitimize findings that are at best questionable and at worst not even wrong. Your protein defies the laws of mass action? Evolution did it! Your complicated mess of chemical reactions turns into a chicken? Evolution! The human brain works on logical principles no computer can emulate? Evolution is the cause!” —Robert B. Laughlin, Nobel-laureate physicist
Is Intelligent Design Theory Scientific?
If you’ve ever participated in online debates about the theory of evolution, you know the standard arguments used by evolutionists. Their “trump card” is the claim that Intelligent Design (ID) theory is simply outside the realm of science. This claim is not that ID has insufficient empirical corroboration, although they often make that claim too. This particular claim is that ID is not even a valid scientific theory because it is “unfalsifiable.”
The notion that Intelligent Design theory is fundamentally “unscientific” is based on the philosophy originated by Karl Popper (1902-1994), who postulated a set of rules for science known as “Falsificationism.” The main idea is that a hypothesis or theory does not qualify as “scientific” unless it is “falsifiable” (which is independent of whether it is actually “true” or “false”). Popper is revered by evolutionists, but certainly even they would agree that we should not blindly accept his word as revealed truth. So let us consider some of the implications of his “falsifiability” criterion.
Consider first the hypothesis that “extraterrestrial intelligent life does not exist.” If a spaceship landed on earth carrying aliens from another planet, this hypothesis would obviously be disproved or “falsified.” If an intelligent message were indisputably received from a non-man-made source in space, that would also disprove the hypothesis. Hence, this hypothesis clearly meets the falsifiability criterion and is therefore “scientific” according to Popper’s definition.
Now consider the opposite hypothesis, namely that “extraterrestrial intelligent life exists.” How could this hypothesis be falsified? The only way to falsify it would be to prove that absolutely no intelligent life exists anywhere in the entire universe other than on (or from) earth. Because that is obviously impossible to prove, this hypothesis fails the falsifiability criterion and is therefore “unscientific.”
According to Popper’s criterion, therefore, the hypothesis that “extraterrestrial intelligent life does not exist” is “scientific,” but the opposite hypothesis, that “extraterrestrial intelligent life exists,” is not. But wait a minute ... if the former “scientific” hypothesis is disproved, then the latter “unscientific” hypothesis is obviously proved! Hence, a hypothesis about the natural world can be proved true yet still be “unscientific” according to Popper’s criterion. Popper’s definition of science is therefore misleading at best.
Popper’s followers readily concede that what they call an “unscientific” hypothesis can be true. For example, the hypothesis, “nutritional supplements can improve a person’s health,” is “unscientific,” yet it is also certainly true. The problem is that their misleading technical definition of science is used by evolutionists to deceive the public about Intelligent Design theory. Hence, many have been fooled into believing that, because ID theory is “unscientific” (according to Popper), it must also be untrue or somehow bogus.
Several years ago the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project was initiated. Large radio telescopes were set up to receive radio signals from space, and massive computing facilities were used to analyze those signals in search of “intelligent” messages that could be presumed to have originated from an “intelligent” life form. Apparently, nobody informed the SETI team that their motivating hypothesis — that “extraterrestrial intelligent life exists” — is “unscientific.” Or did SETI go to all that trouble and expense only to corroborate the hypothesis that extraterrestrial intelligent life does not exist?!
Suppose an apparently “intelligent” message were detected by SETI. The first question would be whether the message really originated from space and not from a man-made source, but suppose a man-made source could be ruled out. The next question would be whether the message really originated from an intelligent source, or whether it was merely a statistical fluke that only appeared to have come from an intelligent source.
Suppose the message contained the first 100,000 binary digits of pi, repeated indefinitely. Now, one cannot “prove” with absolute mathematical certainty that such a sequence cannot occur by random chance, but most reasonable people would agree that the probability is extremely low. In fact, most would agree that the probability of a such a signal originating from an “unintelligent” source is zero for all intents and purposes.
The repeating pi signal coming from a non-man-made source in space would therefore conclusively prove the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, and it would prove it even if the location and identity of the source were never determined. But according to Popper’s falsifiability criterion, the hypothesis that “extraterrestrial intelligent life exists” does not even qualify as “scientific.” Thus, SETI would be in the strange position of having proved a truly monumental — but “unscientific” — fact about the universe!
The hypothesis of extraterrestrial intelligence can shed some badly needed light on the philosophical debate over whether or not intelligent design theory is “scientific.” The philosophical question is not about how much order or complexity is needed to reasonably prove the existence of Intelligent Design; that is a scientific and mathematical question. The philosophical question is whether any amount of evidence for ID could be enough to get evolutionists to concede that ID is even a possible explanation. Apparently the answer is no, because they have ruled ID “out of bounds” from the start.
Evolutionists often point out that Intelligent Design theory “makes no testable predictions and explains nothing.” But what “testable predictions” can be made based on the hypothesis that extraterrestrial intelligence exists? None. So, what do evolutionists say about the potential for intelligent messages from deep space? Do they insist that such messages wouldn’t prove anything and should simply be ignored? Of course not — yet that is the logical equivalent of the evolutionist position on ID. The irony is that evolutionists would probably be the first to embrace the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence because it would transform the origin of life from a “miracle” to a “statistic,” as Carl Sagan once explained. Indeed, most or all of the SETI participants probably are evolutionists!
Both professional and amateur evolutionists will continue to arrogantly assert that Intelligent Design theory cannot possibly be “scientific.” If a famous philosopher said it, apparently that’s all the “proof” they need — common sense notwithstanding. And that’s just the start of their many dubious assertions. After explaining that ID is “unfalsifiable,” many evolutionists then proceed to explain that it has indeed been falsified anyway! “It can’t be done, but we did it anyway just for good measure!” And the significance of the fact that their premise and their conclusion are identical apparently escapes them.
Another popular evolutionist canard is that Intelligent Design theory is nothing more than a cover for Biblical creationism. Never mind that many ID advocates were originally evolutionists before they studied the matter in depth. By the same “logic,” evolution could be considered a cover for atheism or communism, of course. Karl Marx himself wrote, “Although it is developed in the crude English style, this [Darwin’s On the Origin of Species] is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view.” Both atheists and creationists may indeed be biased, but attributed biases are never directly relevant to the actual validity of any scientific theory. The validity of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is completely independent of whatever personal biases he may have had!
In any extended online debate over evolution, some genius will inevitably declare that Intelligent Design is meaningless until the actual “Designer” is physically located and identified. That is logically equivalent to claiming that an intelligent message from deep space would not prove the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence until the source of the message was explicitly located and identified. It is the logical equivalent of claiming that a computer program cannot be considered intelligently designed if the identity of the designer is unknown. It is also logically equivalent to claiming that police cannot conclude that a murder was committed until they identify the murderer.
A related and equally absurd notion is that purely naturalistic evolution must remain the accepted theory until the “Designer” can be understood and explained scientifically. That is the logical equivalent of a prosecutor claiming that a criminal defendant must be presumed guilty unless or until another culprit is found. The truth is that, just as a criminal defendant can be exonerated before an alternative suspect is identified, purely naturalistic evolution can be disproved before an alternative theory is fully understood or even available.
The ultimate irony here is that, given Popper’s definition of science, the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution itself is based on an “unscientific” foundation. How did the first living cell come to be? If Intelligent Design is categorically rejected, then that first cell must have come together more or less by random chance. Mathematicians and physicists have argued (and claim to have proved) that the simplest conceivable living cell is far too complex to have come together by random chance, but evolutionists always reply that, given enough time and space, “anything” can happen. In this case, the evolutionists are correct: proving that the first cell could not have formed by random chance is impossible. It would be like proving that the full text of the Gettysburg address never spontaneously appeared on the Sahara desert due to random winds. But that is just another way of saying that the purely naturalistic hypotheses of abiogenesis is unfalsifiable, hence “unscientific” according to Popper’s falsifiability criterion. [When cornered with this undeniable fact, evolutionists usually claim that abiogenesis is “separate” from evolution. But that’s not quite true: evolution depends on abiogenesis. Evolution obviously could not have occurred if the first living cell had never come into existence!]
The point here is not that Intelligent Design theory is true and purely naturalistic evolution is false. The point is that reasonable people can disagree on the issue, and both positions should be respectfully permitted to co-exist in the spirit of free and open inquiry. Alas, that is far from what is happening today. A misleading definition of science is being used to exclude ID a priori. A judge recently ruled that even mentioning ID is prohibited in the science classes of a particular public school system. That kind of censorship is certainly more in the spirit of the Soviet Union than of the United States. Professors have been publicly censured by their peers for espousing ID. One can only wonder if Isaac Newton would be censured today for his professed belief in the intelligent design of the universe.
Centuries ago the church was the ultimate authority, and dissenters from orthodoxy were excommunicated and punished for their supposed heresy. But science and the church have reversed positions in modern times, and secularized scientific institutions now have the upper hand. Scientists who deviate in their public writings or teachings from the prevailing naturalistic orthodoxy are now ostracized, ridiculed, and sometimes even denied tenure or research funding. Those dissenters are modern day Galileos who are standing up to the Neo-Darwinian dogma and the misleading attacks by its believers, who fear the truth just as the church did centuries ago.
Overwhelmingly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us ... the atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words. —Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)
Baloney.
Popper may have been an atheist, and may personally have admired Darwin's theory, but he knew a real science from a real worldview. He once said of Darwinism that it was not so much a true science as it was a "metaphysical research programme," i.e., a certain philosophically-determined way of looking at things that could provide a basis for asking certain kinds of questions (and therefore filtering out certain kinds of answers) about phenomena regarding origins of life and origins of species.
Much later in his life he claims to have "recanted" his earlier position, but he never completely reversed himself. He claimed that he now admitted that certain processes were "possible" without commenting on the infinitesimally small probabilities of those processes; nor was he acquainted at that time (or even up until the end of his life) with any of the arguments from the ID camp, including the unsolvable problem of a quaternary digital code inside the cell. He never understood, or at least never admitted, that the real problem to be solved regarding life is not "complicated biochemistry," because most of the biochemistry is straightforward; the real problem is information. Where did the information come from? especially since the theory that treats of that subject -- "information theory" -- asserts that random processes (such as randomly caused mutations, or changes, in a configuration of discrete elements) always results in deterioration of information, not an addition to it.
Popper is bad choice for the anti-ID camp to side with because he was also extremely critical of Darwinism in fundamental ways. He even gave a very positive review to an early (1970s) critique of Darwinism by a lawyer named Normal MacBeth, whose book "Darwin Retried" effectively uses a kind of "cross-examination" approach to showing the many weak links in the Darwinian case for evolution.
You didn't Im sure
Wow, just puke up whatever your liberal handlers indoctrinate you with, eh?
Exactly!
Most of the Old and New Testaments are meant to teach good behavior. The creation Fairy tale is a very tiny part of the Bible. When the flock begins to hear ID, ID, ID, and more ID, they got to get out before they go crazy.
source/link?
Don’t know about you, but I have a graduate degree in a scientific discipline from one of the largest research universities in the United States. NO puking involved.
I will take that as an “I don’t know”
You left out Galileo’s recantation of the Helio centered astronomy, given under duress.
I don’t give much credence to that either.
“I will take that as an “I don’t know””
And I will take your lack of reply to my question exactly the same way. But since you couldn’t answer my question, your question becomes irrelevant.
You are typical of the evolutionists who post here who have not a clue about what real science is.
One more thing. Since you are so concerned about experimentation, what experiment do you propose to support the theory that life originated by purely naturalistic mechanisms, with no ID? Has such an experiment been tried? If so, what was the result?
Again, the typical evo tactic of conflating educational level with intelligence.
Likely in any college profs class there are going to be some students who have equal or greater cerebral firepower than the professor. They may not have had the opportunities to study that the prof had, but that in no way is an indication that they are not capable of understanding what the prof is teaching.
Funny how evos want drones who don't question anything.
Tell me, if you're so sure that the ToE is correct, why do you object to students challenging the professor. You'd think that any professor worth his salt would appreciate a student who is thinking and trying. And again, if the ToE is correct, the prof should be glad to set the student straight.
At least a student who challenges is motivated.
Do you consider that nothing can be verified as accurate and true unless it can be reduced to a scientific experiment?
Why on earth do you need to experiment to test for something that is so patently obvious to the casual observer and even Dawkins admits that the universe and life give the appearance (illusion) of design?
And by the way, I would love to read the conclusion you say Einstein reached.
“I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
Albert Einstein
I never said anything about Einstein believing in a personal God. Stop putting words in my mouth and misrepresenting what I said.
My question was merely .....So, Newton and Einstein were wrong when they concluded that the universe must have had a designer based on their observations?
I have no opinion on it.
I don’t think such a question is scientific, but if I come up with an experiment, I will let you know.
The problem is the “G-d created the world 5 minutes ago with all the fossils in the ground” argument. Can’t prove it or disprove it. I do know that I don’t get phonecalls from G-d at work, or emails, but perhaps that is just me.
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