'Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics': Supernatural Selection

The New York Times ^ | 14 April 2002 | JIM HOLT

[VadeRetro]

This is, of course, a mis-use of the word "to know." What your friend is saying is: "I feel that it's true."

You know he didn't know; I know he didn't know. But he didn't know he didn't know.

[PatrickHenry]

You know he didn't know; I know he didn't know. But he didn't know he didn't know.

I know he didn't know. He didn't know how to know. (But you knew that.)

[VadeRetro]

You know, I don't think he knew what knowledge is.

[longshadow]

encrypted, and groping.....

[PatrickHenry]

{{STEALTH MODE}} Fondling ...

[AndrewC]

The intersubjective analysis takes place every time we use the scientific method, whether explicitly or casually in our everyday lives. Our knowledge about what's real & what's imaginary, our knowledge about how the world works, etc. It's all built on learning the difference between mere subjective belief, and subjective belief that's been validated in the objective world outside our brains.

Nice wordy argument about nothing. Farmers knew nothing about celestial mechanics, yet pretty much had planting and harvesting times down fairly pat. This is across isolated and noncommunicating societies worldwide. Science was not involved, good observation was.

[AndrewC]

Second part

In one sense that statement has it 1/2 correct, but it's almost totally wrong in another sense. We knew how to dream of things not real for a long time. But we didn't rise out of the dust until we learned to subject our dreams (by which I assume you & I mean any inspiration, idea, speculation, leap of associative thinking, etc.) to the filter of our shared intersubjective knowledge of how the real world works. (Hey, almost like mutation + natural selection!)

Real progress could never have gotten off the ground until both items were present. Sabertooth's assertion that our individual subjective thoughts - I assume he's referring to a person's introspective belief that God exists - gives the theist a dataset of 1, but tried to suggest that an atheist therefore has 0 pieces of data for nonbelief.

To be useful dreams must be actualized is a given. Progress can be dreamed. Failure can be predicted. Pain can be avoided. You don't have to hit your thumb with a hammer to know that it will hurt. I don't need WWF testimony to verify that a full grown Kodiak will have me for lunch in a mano a mano hoedown.

[AndrewC]

Surely you don't deny that everyone has subjective beliefs, and that many people are certain that other people are telepathically communicating to them by way of voices in their head? My point is we have 250 million conflicting "datasets" in America alone.

Preposterous question since a belief by definition is subjective. 250 million is low, but is a "valid" observation. Now, who gets to decide which ones (if any) are correct?

[Chico]

Okay' guess it's snips and snails and puppy dog tails; that'll have to do.

[AndrewC]

This is, of course, a mis-use of the word "to know." What your friend is saying is: "I feel that it's true." He doesn't really know it. Faith is feelings. Strong, often unshakable feelings. Scientific observation is knowledge.

know   Pronunciation Key  (n)
v. knew, (n, ny) known, (nn) know·ing, knows
v. tr.

1. To perceive directly; grasp in the mind with clarity or certainty.
2. To regard as true beyond doubt: I know she won't fail.
3. To have a practical understanding of, as through experience; be skilled in: knows how to cook.
4. To have fixed in the mind: knows her Latin verbs.
5. To have experience of: “a black stubble that had known no razor” (William Faulkner).
6. 1. To perceive as familiar; recognize: I know that face.
   2. To be acquainted with: He doesn't know his neighbors.
7. To be able to distinguish; recognize as distinct: knows right from wrong.
8. To discern the character or nature of: knew him for a liar.
9. Archaic. To have sexual intercourse with.

v. intr.

1. To possess knowledge, understanding, or information.
2. To be cognizant or aware.

What we have here,... Is failure to communicate.

[F16Fighter]

Here's a posit for you -- If one is to buy the evolutionary model that man has ascented from amoeba to his present form, shouldn't that ascent should logically and mathematically follow the course into eventual godhood?

In this vein, Evolution can be considered both a science AND a religion.

[Phaedrus]

In 1996, for example, Pope John Paul II said that the theory of evolution had been ''proved true'' and asserted its consistency with Roman Catholic doctrine.

Well, this is a lie. Do I smell a whiff of desperation? Here's the 1996 Magisterium, and here's a relevant excerpt:
Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man.

But all you really have to know about this hit-piece which, not incidentally, is full of lies and mischaracterizations is:
Jim Holt writes a column about philosophy and science for Slate.com.

What we have here is just another Leftie Atheist book reviewer who has no allegiance whatever to the truth.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

The case they make against Darwinism...

It's interesting that the author uses these term. Is there any background on the author?

[Sabertooth]

Sabertooth's assertion that our individual subjective thoughts - I assume he's referring to a person's introspective belief that God exists - gives the theist a dataset of 1, but tried to suggest that an atheist therefore has 0 pieces of data for nonbelief.

I think if you look again, you'll see that I was suggesting that an atheist couldn't be sure he had a data set of one, not that he necessarily had a set of zero.

[The_Reader_David]

I hardly see a contradiction in the testable hypostheses that the genome and information-theoretic content of protein structures will have certain information-theoretic properties. It may well be false, but at least it is scientific in the Popperian sense.

I also don't see that I'm trying to have anything "both ways"--unless you are very doctrinaire. The information-theoretic insights of the ID crowd and the chaotic-dynamics approach of the punctuated equalibrium evolutionists are complementary. I suspect a fruitful interplay would already have begun if evolutionary biologists were not hamstrung by the absolutist materialists in their ranks, for whom (usually gradualist) Darwinism with ontological randomness (rather than epistemological randomness or law-constrained stochastic processes) and a tautological version of natural selection functions as an atheistic creation myth. S. Kauffman of the Santa Fe institute is looking for an extra law of thermodynamics applicable to open systems. Every model of self-organizing complexity anyone comes up with is obviously designed (models always are) and gives the feeling of being very clever and special (e.g. "most" cellular automata are boring).

Before it's all over, I'm quite certain that there will be extra laws of "fitness" discovered, and maybe even extra fundamental laws like the ones Kauffman is trying out (to the discomfort of the evolution-as-argument-from-no-design atheists), and that the stochastic element will remain (to the discomfort of creationists who would like everything to be purposeful).

Personally, I'm happy with the God who not only plays dice, but rolls them where you can't see them, as one (I forget which) quantum physicist commented in contradiction to Einstein's dictum.

[Condorman]

Fondling ...

Yer gonna get a warning!
Neener, neener, neener!

{Loaked=ON; Status=CLURKING}

[AndrewC]

Yer gonna get a warning! Neener, neener, neener!

Just what FR needs, Henry Fondling (and daughter).

[The_Reader_David]

Darwin's insight will stand, but the abuse of that insight as an atheistic argument-from-no-design falls the moment one uncovers enough law-like behavior in the notion of fitness. One can discern laws in the behavior of a particular animal breeder: e.g. sheep with lighter colored wool are favored.

The problem is that one needs a general theory of fitness. (Indeed without it, "natural selection" is tautologous--a thing is fit because more of its offspring survive to reproduce and more of its offspring survive to reproduce because it is fit. One can make up "just-so stories" about both of a pair of seemingly opposed traits to explain how each is more fit.)

I would outline what I expect the characteristics of such a general theory to be:

• A space of ecologies
• For each point of the space (ecology), a set of niches
• For each niche a set of characteristics (each modelled by say a real variable)
• Sets of organism genotypes and organism phenotypes
• A map from organism genotypes to organism phenotypes
• Maps from organism phenotypes to niches, and to a value for each characteristic
• Dynamical laws taking an ecology and population of genotypes as inputs and giving the same as outputs.

Stochastic perturbation of the genotypes (random mutation) and external changes to the ecology (e.g. meteor impacts) will, for any reasonable dynamical system, give rise to something like Gould's punctuated equalibrium. On the other hand, the whole set up looks an awful lot like a recursive computer program, so the argument-from-no-design collapses.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Religion can answer it, but it's a matter of faith whether you accept that answer as true.

One problem is that "religion" is really "religions" and "that answer" is "those answers."

[Gladwin]

It may well be false, but at least it is scientific in the Popperian sense.

I am not really up on Popper, but aren't creationism, ether in the vacuum, Lamarckism, etc, scientific in the Popperian sense?

A Popperian scientific theory is one that is falsifiable, so there are lots of those. Even evolution is falsifiable, if only in the gross sense.

Most theories aren't going to be thrown out even if additional data proves them to be inaccurate, until another theory comes along that is more accurate. Even then, they will still be used in some instances. Most science is about building mental models to explain collected data. As long as you know the limits of the theory you are using, you can go ahead and use Newtonian mechanics, for example.