There's lots of material written on the subject which pretty much proves that such demarcations are futile.
But separating things that are clearly scientific from religious ideas rewritten in the language of science is much easier, this isn't a gray area at all. Within the scientific community there is no controversy, they can tell the difference quite easily.
Why is this not getting through to you? I'm referring to philosophy of *science* (i.e., the business of defining exactly what science is). You do realize that philosophy != religion and that philosophers think about lots of things (including science), right? Here's a few resources for you:
L. Laudan, "The Demise of the Demarcation Problem," in Ruse, Science?, pp. 337-50.
and, here's a choice quote from Meyer which sums up the position I put forth here:
... When I say that design and descent are methodologically equivalent, I mean that both approaches to origins are equally capable or incapable of fulfilling the demands of various demarcation criteria, whether strictly methodological, epistemic, or semantic.
and another one:
The use of demarcation arguments to settle the origins controversy is also problematic because the whole enterprise of demarcation has now fallen into disrepute. Attempts to locate methodological "invariants" that provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for distinguishing true science from pseudoscience have failed. Most philosophers of science now recognize that neither verifiability nor testability (nor falsifiability) nor the use of lawlike explanation (nor any other criterion) can suffice to define scientific practice.
So, at this point, if you still disagree with these statements, I would simply once again suggest a perusal of the material I recommended (after that, you still may not concur, but at least you will have the chance to after having actually read it:-)).
It's based on the same underlying theory as the fields of: forensic science,...
Except for the fact that forensic scientist often try to reconstruct past events, I don't get the connection.
The practice of forensic science accurately (and to the criterion of 'beyond a reasonable doubt') identifies the activity of intelligent agents in the committal of crimes in the past. The only difference here is that 'design of life' is not a crime.
... cryptology/information science,...
Which is where we get genetic algorithms, probably the best evidence of what evolution can do - including things like generate "irreducible complexity", incorporate new information, and even do some things better than humans can (like certain kinds of design work).
Which is where we also get the detection and decryption of encrypted signals; i.e., we can detect when a stream of seemingly random noise contains a message. No ID theorist I know objects to evolution as a mechanism for refining designs (neither in theory nor in practice--because obviously it is used in practice). They rather object to neo-Darwinism (which is essentially the marriage of Darwin's theory of natural descent, abiogenesis, & the philosophy of materialism). In particular, the 'abiogenesis' and the philosophical underpinnings are what give ID theorists the most concern--no one objects to the explanatory powers of descent (or evolution) alone.
What happened to those predictions that in the future the average user will be able to code just by throwing some GUI elements together and maybe even describing the program to the computer a bit and having it generate the program for you? How far away are we from that day?
Those predictions were simply naive. Complexity of programming is not going away anytime soon. If it were, then we would have hard AI (i.e., natural language processing, etc.) by now (something many also naively predicted).
I'm not talking about introduction to philosophy of science here, but rather a bit more depth than that...
You want to say that the philosophical assumptions underlying science aren't being admitted, even though they are explicitly discussed at the beginning of everyone's education in science. You can't ignore a fact, claim the opposite, and then try to get out of it by stating that you're going "more in depth".
It's not just the philosophical assumptions though yes that's part of it. It's also the business of actually demarcating science from pseudo- and non-science. That's the philosophy you seem to be missing. There's lots of material written on the subject which pretty much proves that such demarcations are futile.
Even if you choose to attempt (and I say attempt because it really is impossible) to demarcate science along some reasonable boundaries, ID should be included (and if your choice of demarcation criteria somehow excludes ID, then evolution is also equally excluded).
Science only explains the physical world in terms of the physical world - that's the boundary. As long as the version of ID that you're proposing includes supernatural influence (God designed it), it's not science. Versions of ID without the supernatural (at least so far) end up merely being appeals to ignorance - which don't explain anything.
Well, ID itself does not say anything about the designer--that's why I claim it is science. It's much more than an appeal to ignorance too. It's based on the same underlying theory as the fields of: forensic science, cryptology/information science, SETI, etc.
Obviously, I'm familiar enough with 'methodological naturalism' to critique it. Let me repeat just to make sure I'm clear (since you seemed to only focus on snippets instead of the spirit of the last post):
1 - I'm not suggesting that we replace the axiom 'God does not exist' with 'God does exist'. Rather, I'm suggesting that scientists (both theist and atheist) recognize (and be transparent about) when their preferred form of that axiom comes into play in forming their conclusions.
2 - As I said, materialist methods can (and I believe eventually will) be used to prove ID. Even if you choose to attempt (and I say attempt because it really is impossible) to demarcate science along some reasonable boundaries, ID should be included (and if your choice of demarcation criteria somehow excludes ID, then evolution is also equally excluded).
The boundary between philosophy and science becomes blurred when you accept the fact that demarcation is futile. If you do not accept that, then I would submit to you that you are the one who needs 'help'. I'm not talking about introduction to philosophy of science here, but rather a bit more depth than that--and it's pretty evident that you have not read such material.
Whoa there partner. I didn't mean to overstate my point--I simply meant that the British occupation was not entirely bad for India (not that it induced any sort of 'epoch'). I definitely do have an euro-centric view of things having been born and raised in the west, but I'm under no illusion that this view is absolute truth. It's clear that you know a lot more about this topic than I and it is quite interesting stuff that I hope to have time to read about in more depth soon. Most of my understanding about such topics has come from Dinesh D'Souza thus far and I'd definitely recommend him to you if you're not already familiar.
No, sir. I think you're the anomaly here. If that definition doesn't prove it, then you seriously are quite out of whack. You realize that 'entity' is a very general word, right--much like the word 'thing'. How far do you have to stretch 'thing' to make it fit money and information?
Is that supposed to be HD? I mean, it definitely looks better than other online videos but it's no where near the quality of my HDTV (and I can still see blur artifacts from the mpeg-esque encoding).
Winning the HD format war will most likely not mean much at all to them. Online delivery of content is the future (and local harddrive-based storage of said content where required or desired).
Well, whatever the amount is, it isn't the sort of number that you can be certain of to very many significant digits is it? This whole business of historical science is quite vague isn't it?
He threw out a wild scenario in which ID could become an actual theory. But you missed the point of his talk - even if ID turned out to be true for life on Earth, the original complexity would have to develop somewhere else through a process like evolution. The only way to have intelligence without evolution (or a similar process), is magic - and that can't be part of a scientific theory.
Only if one of the axioms in your system of reasoning is:
'God [or a supernatural creator] does not exist'.
People do not for the most part even realize that this axiom is one of their more basic ones which affects most every other theorem built on it. I'm not suggesting that we instead replace that axiom with its negation (although in my personal system of reasoning, it is so). I am simply suggesting that scientists simply be honest that they start with such materialist assumptions and that those assumptions do, whether they realize it or not, affect their ultimate interpretations of the data and their conclusions. You may claim that systems of reasoning are not completely scientific, but philosophy has value too (especially when truly seeking truth).
I do realize though that purely materialist methods cannot answer the question 'Who designed this?' (unless we actually make contact with aliens responsible for life here and they 'prove' it), but materialist methods can lead you to conclude that someone designed it.
And that was Dawkin's point - the order of "first life, then intelligence, last design" is the only way to rework ID so that it fits into a materialist framework.
Yes, I have money to spend. Not enough to actually create a company that makes quality products, though. And even if, I know there aren't enough people to actually make such a company viable.
I wasn't suggesting that you spend your money to make a company that makes quality products. Rather that you spend your money to buy quality products and thus support companies that make them.
That's the drawback of capitalism, and this is also where it is quite similar to communism: If you happen to have a nonstandard request, you're out of luck.
To a certain degree, yes. I think you can make all the nonstandard requests you want though if you're willing to pay more for them. Capitalism is very good at filling niches where there is profit incentive to do so.
No, I'm quite aware that some people think that ID is a valid theory. The problem is, they're wrong. The "evidence" they base it on consists mainly of a mis-understanding of the idea of "information" (the genetic code is information, which they mistakenly think implies intelligence), and an appeal to credulity in the form of the concept of irreducible complexity. Both are severely flawed, and fail to provide a reasonable foundation for a scientific theory.
No, the 'evidence' ID is based on is such evidence as accepted in many other fields: forensic science, cryptography/information science, SETI, etc. These other fields make conclusions based on the same underlying theory. Why, in your view, does SETI exist at all if the activity of intelligence is not perceptible? Or, how does our legal system manage to convict and execute murderers where the criterion of proof is 'beyond a reasonable doubt'?
As for "Dawkins let the panspermia cat out of the bag", that's just nonsense. Panspermia has been suggested millions of times before, and what he said was nothing new.
You're absolutely right--it is not new (and I never said it was). In fact, panspermia is the same conclusion that Francis Crick came to upon discovering DNA double-helix and its complexity.
The 'cat' I was referring to was the implicit admission of the scientific status of ID inherent in Dawkins' response.
[Besides that, I do not personally need to prove that ID is 'scientific' but many of you materialists do require it. What you fail to see is that demarcating science is a futile effort. Any criteria you choose will at the same time exclude ID *and* evolution (at least the popular notion of it as taught in science class) or result in an inconsistent system of reason. I would recommend reading some philosophy of science if you do not accept this--philosophers of science long ago gave up demarcating science.]
Theorizing about the implications of a hypothesis doesn't automatically give any credence to the hypothesis in question, despite your assertion. I can say "if unicorns existed, jousting matches in medieval times would have been very different" without admitting "scientific status" re the existence of unicorns.
Read this . Dinesh fairly well sums up my view on the 'Dawkins/Stein' video there (and his analysis is fairly straightforward to anyone who takes the video on face value instead of interpreting it through pre-conceived biases).
Yep, I realize that. And, I think it's safe to say that amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and many plants would be wiped out by a catastrophic asteroid. So, according to this, it would take at least a billion years for those to evolve again.
Two problems with that-- 1) 100 million years (the average time between catastrophic asteroid collisions with earth) is not nearly enough time to produce the current scenario.
I'm not sure (a) where you get that average from, or (b) why you think it is relevant. Even if catastrophic asteroid collisions each (or at least, the most recent one, which is the only one that matters) reset life on Earth to the beginning, or at least eliminated everything with even the most primitive brain, you would use the most recent catastrophic collision, not the average. In fact, fairly complex creatures -- with, on the grand scale, fairly well-developed brains -- survived the most recent asteroid collision, so its completely irrelevant.
Ok, so now you can tell me exactly when the last life-resetting asteroid collision occurred? The reverse prophetic powers of you evolutionists never ceases to amaze me! I used the average because it is the only number we have. Even if you adjust the number by 3 standard deviations (to cover 99.7% of the possibilities), it will be quite a small number in cosmological terms.
"Beneficial mutations" are those with produce a fitness benefit. Fitness is defined by offspring surviving to reproduce. The definition of which mutations are "beneficial" is not consistent with them simply dying out the way you describe.
So, it's only 'by definition' that you can explain this? What about actual empirical evidence? You can define things all day long to be whatever you want, but if your definitions do not actually explain (or represent) what happens in nature, they're worthless (at least for this pursuit).
What 'chicken and egg' problem? You've articulated no actual problem that meets that description that actually applies here.
The 'chicken and egg' problem is this-- natural selection cannot be the raison d'Ãtre for the original self-replicating cell (and if you can accept it larger subsystems such as brains). You must have self-replication before you can have genetic transference and 'change over time'. Admittedly, this is easier to see when looking at a single cell and not larger sub-systems.
Do you realize how complex self-replication is? John von Neumann built what he believed was the simplest self-replicating cellular automaton in the completely artificial [i.e., 'pure'] environment of mathematics and yet, it contained hundreds of moving parts. If you were to do such within the laws of chemistry and physics, needless to say, there'd be orders of magnitude more moving parts!
You seem to be giving the 'half an eye is no use' argument an airing, except with brains, or some other feature - and you treat it as a dirty little secret the 'evolutionists' brush under the carpet. *That's* intellectual dishonesty. The question has been answered over and over again, until we're bored of it. Please read The Blind Watchmaker before you suggest again that it's "one of the single biggest problems with evolutionary theory".
Yes, that's exactly the argument. And, though I've not read the entire book, I'm familiar with its arguments. Although it offers imaginative theories for what might have happened, there's two problems with them. One-- there's **WAY** less detail than should be required by true scientific scrutiny. Two-- they're just imaginations about what *might* have happened. I'm sorry, but that is not hard science.
Hmm, I *think* I've managed to extract what you meant to write from what you did write. But you're going to have to cite some examples of this dogmatism, hypicrisy and intellectual dishonesty to convince me. Making sure the culprit is representative of "science", though, and not some arbitrary zealot.
Well, my response to the blind watchmaker is the perfect example. Evolutionists are far too quick to pat themselves on the back when they really have not offered sufficiently detailed explanations. And, the popular scientists which you see indoctrinating children on such TV stations as Discovery fail to admit (and in fact most often suppress or gloss over) what they do not know and all too often present their 'theories' (and imaginations) as absolute fact. That's dishonest enough for me (especially when you see the effects it has on society).
At this point, you may say that 'scientists' are not responsible for what happens in the popular media. But, there's a problem with that-- the same well-respected (and highly qualified) scientists appear in the popular media making outrageous claims and yet, the scientific community does not reprimand or denounce their activities. Silent approval is approval nonetheless.
A slight genetic change may not result a slight change in results, and vice versa. And any mututation is extremely unlikely to result in anything other than a reduction in fitness; most mutations are either without outward effect or fatal. With a sufficiently large population and a sufficiently large time, the chance of eventually getting a beneficial mutation increases to the point of being reasonable.
Two problems with that-- 1) 100 million years (the average time between catastrophic asteroid collisions with earth) is not nearly enough time to produce the current scenario. 2) Even a beneficial mutation must be so beneficial that it entirely dominates a given species. What if the species is already quite populous? It seems that such beneficial mutations would be few and far between and would simply die out before dominating a given species.
And, fully-functional brains do not just come about all at once (in a single mutation), do they?
Uh, no. But once you have creatures with simple brains -- which have some utility -- incremental increases in particular capacities could come as small mutations.
A problem with that too (in addition to the second problem above)-- Just where do you get these simple brains which have some utility? Until these clumps of cells become a functional brain, they are a detriment instead of a benefit and thus not advantageous to pass on to successive generations. Natural selection can only 'select' from a number of changes to an *existing* functional system--it cannot be the force which creates the system to begin with.
In my view, this is one of the single biggest problems with evolutionary theory (and I'm actually quite surprised that you brought it up here).
I should have been more specific. I was referring to slight mutations in the progression towards a fully functional complex sub system. The problem with this 'theory' is that the subsystem must remain functional at every stage and slight mutations must offer substantial benefit in order for the individual to dominate the species. This domination seems quite unlikely to me to result from slight modifications (mods which are far more likely to be detrimental as your OP pointed out).
As for ID-- it seems to me that the science has become more dogmatic, intellectually dishonest, and hypocritical than the Catholic church ever dreamt of. They have become greater than their successor in they very ways that they so stood against.
Yes, but what you fail to understand is-- panspermia or no panspermia, ID is a valid theory. Dawkins' acceptance of the possibility of panspermia (and hence the detection of such) is equivalent to acceptance of the scientific basis of ID itself. Whether the designer is an alien life form or God is beside the point.
It looks like now that Dawkins' let the cat out of the bag, he is attempting damage control. But, go back and watch the video again. There were no edits--he implicitly admitted the scientific status of the theory of ID by referring to one potential conclusion that you may arrive at by it being proved (namely--panspermia). That, in my view, is but one of the inevitable many victories in store for ID theorists.
If you truly believe that, let me ask you one thing--
How did evolution take place for millions or billions of years without many generations of animals? Genesis is very clear in that death did not exist until sin entered the world (which happened with fully mature animals all around).
Also, by all estimates, a catastrophic life-ending asteroid hits earth on average every 100 millions years. So, for any evolutionary theory to fit, it must happen in that timeframe and not a larger one. Even evolutionists admit that is not enough time to produce what we currently see.
Yes, that is Dawkins' answer to Intelligent Design. This is not a reference to anything pertaining to evolution. Stein asked how ID could be applied to science, and the ONLY way is if alien life (intelligent) seeded Earth (design). Why is this the only answer? Because a deity is not science. Your God is not scientifically verifiable. Therefore it (and anything pertaining to it... your Bible, creationism, cdesign proponentists, etc.) cannot be a scientific answer to anything.
ID does not say anything of deities. The point is that the activity of intelligent design is detectable. And, in fact, that is a point that Dawkins' apparently now concedes by his mentioning of the plausibility of the detection of evidence of panspermia. Dawkins is only more comfortable with panspermia than with theism due to already held beliefs about the non-existence of God (which is a prime example of what many proponents of evolution have done over the years--they start with 1 - 'God cannot possibly [or does not measurably] exist and thus cannot have created life on earth', and build a system of reason upon that). But, they have failed to consider that if you change your first axiom to something more like this:
A detectable higher-intelligence cannot possibly [have] exist[ed] and thus cannot have created life on earth.'
things get very interesting very quickly.
And for further reference, Stein was referring to life on Earth, not life in "the universe", something that IDists do not believe in either.
Well, I'm an 'ID theorist' and I have no idea what you just said we do not believe in. As I said before, there are considerable numbers of ID theorists who believe in panspermia (and reasonbly so) and the rest make no conclusion about alien life at all (as that is currently beyond the scope of ID theory which is concerned with detecting intelligent activity and not with speculation about the designer's (or designers') identity). That is not to say that the question of the designers' identity is beyond science, but it's a little early in the game for such speculation, I think.
There sure is a lot of visual processing going on that is breathtaking in its capability, but however that works it's unrelated to the usual method of solving intercepts!
How so? Obviously some of circuitry of the spider's brain is hardcoded to solve that problem. Who is to say whether that is the 'usual' method or not? All methods which reach the correct answer are by definition 'related'--they are related by (at the very least) their conformance to the problem structure.
Might? How is it that a slight mutation could produce anything other than a reduction of fitness (in the short term)? And, fully-functional brains do not just come about all at once (in a single mutation), do they?
In my view, this is one of the single biggest problems with evolutionary theory (and I'm actually quite surprised that you brought it up here).
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There's lots of material written on the subject which pretty much proves that such demarcations are futile.
But separating things that are clearly scientific from religious ideas rewritten in the language of science is much easier, this isn't a gray area at all. Within the scientific community there is no controversy, they can tell the difference quite easily.
Why is this not getting through to you? I'm referring to philosophy of *science* (i.e., the business of defining exactly what science is). You do realize that philosophy != religion and that philosophers think about lots of things (including science), right? Here's a few resources for you:
and, here's a choice quote from Meyer which sums up the position I put forth here:
... When I say that design and descent are methodologically equivalent, I mean that both approaches to origins are equally capable or incapable of fulfilling the demands of various demarcation criteria, whether strictly methodological, epistemic, or semantic.
and another one:
The use of demarcation arguments to settle the origins controversy is also problematic because the whole enterprise of demarcation has now fallen into disrepute. Attempts to locate methodological "invariants" that provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for distinguishing true science from pseudoscience have failed. Most philosophers of science now recognize that neither verifiability nor testability (nor falsifiability) nor the use of lawlike explanation (nor any other criterion) can suffice to define scientific practice.
So, at this point, if you still disagree with these statements, I would simply once again suggest a perusal of the material I recommended (after that, you still may not concur, but at least you will have the chance to after having actually read it :-)).
It's based on the same underlying theory as the fields of: forensic science, ...
Except for the fact that forensic scientist often try to reconstruct past events, I don't get the connection.
The practice of forensic science accurately (and to the criterion of 'beyond a reasonable doubt') identifies the activity of intelligent agents in the committal of crimes in the past. The only difference here is that 'design of life' is not a crime.
... cryptology/information science, ...
Which is where we get genetic algorithms, probably the best evidence of what evolution can do - including things like generate "irreducible complexity", incorporate new information, and even do some things better than humans can (like certain kinds of design work).
Which is where we also get the detection and decryption of encrypted signals; i.e., we can detect when a stream of seemingly random noise contains a message. No ID theorist I know objects to evolution as a mechanism for refining designs (neither in theory nor in practice--because obviously it is used in practice). They rather object to neo-Darwinism (which is essentially the marriage of Darwin's theory of natural descent, abiogenesis, & the philosophy of materialism). In particular, the 'abiogenesis' and the philosophical underpinnings are what give ID theorists the most concern--no one objects to the explanatory powers of descent (or evolution) alone.
What happened to those predictions that in the future the average user will be able to code just by throwing some GUI elements together and maybe even describing the program to the computer a bit and having it generate the program for you? How far away are we from that day?
Those predictions were simply naive. Complexity of programming is not going away anytime soon. If it were, then we would have hard AI (i.e., natural language processing, etc.) by now (something many also naively predicted).
So, no one will trade guns and ammo for food and water? I call bs.
I'm not talking about introduction to philosophy of science here, but rather a bit more depth than that ...
You want to say that the philosophical assumptions underlying science aren't being admitted, even though they are explicitly discussed at the beginning of everyone's education in science. You can't ignore a fact, claim the opposite, and then try to get out of it by stating that you're going "more in depth".
It's not just the philosophical assumptions though yes that's part of it. It's also the business of actually demarcating science from pseudo- and non-science. That's the philosophy you seem to be missing. There's lots of material written on the subject which pretty much proves that such demarcations are futile.
Even if you choose to attempt (and I say attempt because it really is impossible) to demarcate science along some reasonable boundaries, ID should be included (and if your choice of demarcation criteria somehow excludes ID, then evolution is also equally excluded).
Science only explains the physical world in terms of the physical world - that's the boundary. As long as the version of ID that you're proposing includes supernatural influence (God designed it), it's not science. Versions of ID without the supernatural (at least so far) end up merely being appeals to ignorance - which don't explain anything.
Well, ID itself does not say anything about the designer--that's why I claim it is science. It's much more than an appeal to ignorance too. It's based on the same underlying theory as the fields of: forensic science, cryptology/information science, SETI, etc.
Obviously, I'm familiar enough with 'methodological naturalism' to critique it. Let me repeat just to make sure I'm clear (since you seemed to only focus on snippets instead of the spirit of the last post):
1 - I'm not suggesting that we replace the axiom 'God does not exist' with 'God does exist'. Rather, I'm suggesting that scientists (both theist and atheist) recognize (and be transparent about) when their preferred form of that axiom comes into play in forming their conclusions.
2 - As I said, materialist methods can (and I believe eventually will) be used to prove ID. Even if you choose to attempt (and I say attempt because it really is impossible) to demarcate science along some reasonable boundaries, ID should be included (and if your choice of demarcation criteria somehow excludes ID, then evolution is also equally excluded).
The boundary between philosophy and science becomes blurred when you accept the fact that demarcation is futile. If you do not accept that, then I would submit to you that you are the one who needs 'help'. I'm not talking about introduction to philosophy of science here, but rather a bit more depth than that--and it's pretty evident that you have not read such material.
Whoa there partner. I didn't mean to overstate my point--I simply meant that the British occupation was not entirely bad for India (not that it induced any sort of 'epoch'). I definitely do have an euro-centric view of things having been born and raised in the west, but I'm under no illusion that this view is absolute truth. It's clear that you know a lot more about this topic than I and it is quite interesting stuff that I hope to have time to read about in more depth soon. Most of my understanding about such topics has come from Dinesh D'Souza thus far and I'd definitely recommend him to you if you're not already familiar.
It's a lot like how people turn their heads to look at car accidents when driving by.
No, sir. I think you're the anomaly here. If that definition doesn't prove it, then you seriously are quite out of whack. You realize that 'entity' is a very general word, right--much like the word 'thing'. How far do you have to stretch 'thing' to make it fit money and information?
Is that supposed to be HD? I mean, it definitely looks better than other online videos but it's no where near the quality of my HDTV (and I can still see blur artifacts from the mpeg-esque encoding).
Winning the HD format war will most likely not mean much at all to them. Online delivery of content is the future (and local harddrive-based storage of said content where required or desired).
Well, whatever the amount is, it isn't the sort of number that you can be certain of to very many significant digits is it? This whole business of historical science is quite vague isn't it?
He threw out a wild scenario in which ID could become an actual theory. But you missed the point of his talk - even if ID turned out to be true for life on Earth, the original complexity would have to develop somewhere else through a process like evolution. The only way to have intelligence without evolution (or a similar process), is magic - and that can't be part of a scientific theory.
Only if one of the axioms in your system of reasoning is:
'God [or a supernatural creator] does not exist'.
People do not for the most part even realize that this axiom is one of their more basic ones which affects most every other theorem built on it. I'm not suggesting that we instead replace that axiom with its negation (although in my personal system of reasoning, it is so). I am simply suggesting that scientists simply be honest that they start with such materialist assumptions and that those assumptions do, whether they realize it or not, affect their ultimate interpretations of the data and their conclusions. You may claim that systems of reasoning are not completely scientific, but philosophy has value too (especially when truly seeking truth).
I do realize though that purely materialist methods cannot answer the question 'Who designed this?' (unless we actually make contact with aliens responsible for life here and they 'prove' it), but materialist methods can lead you to conclude that someone designed it.
And that was Dawkin's point - the order of "first life, then intelligence, last design" is the only way to rework ID so that it fits into a materialist framework.
There, fixed that for you.
Yes, I have money to spend. Not enough to actually create a company that makes quality products, though. And even if, I know there aren't enough people to actually make such a company viable.
I wasn't suggesting that you spend your money to make a company that makes quality products. Rather that you spend your money to buy quality products and thus support companies that make them.
That's the drawback of capitalism, and this is also where it is quite similar to communism: If you happen to have a nonstandard request, you're out of luck.
To a certain degree, yes. I think you can make all the nonstandard requests you want though if you're willing to pay more for them. Capitalism is very good at filling niches where there is profit incentive to do so.
No, I'm quite aware that some people think that ID is a valid theory. The problem is, they're wrong. The "evidence" they base it on consists mainly of a mis-understanding of the idea of "information" (the genetic code is information, which they mistakenly think implies intelligence), and an appeal to credulity in the form of the concept of irreducible complexity. Both are severely flawed, and fail to provide a reasonable foundation for a scientific theory.
No, the 'evidence' ID is based on is such evidence as accepted in many other fields: forensic science, cryptography/information science, SETI, etc. These other fields make conclusions based on the same underlying theory. Why, in your view, does SETI exist at all if the activity of intelligence is not perceptible? Or, how does our legal system manage to convict and execute murderers where the criterion of proof is 'beyond a reasonable doubt'?
As for "Dawkins let the panspermia cat out of the bag", that's just nonsense. Panspermia has been suggested millions of times before, and what he said was nothing new.
You're absolutely right--it is not new (and I never said it was). In fact, panspermia is the same conclusion that Francis Crick came to upon discovering DNA double-helix and its complexity.
The 'cat' I was referring to was the implicit admission of the scientific status of ID inherent in Dawkins' response.
[Besides that, I do not personally need to prove that ID is 'scientific' but many of you materialists do require it. What you fail to see is that demarcating science is a futile effort. Any criteria you choose will at the same time exclude ID *and* evolution (at least the popular notion of it as taught in science class) or result in an inconsistent system of reason. I would recommend reading some philosophy of science if you do not accept this--philosophers of science long ago gave up demarcating science.]
Theorizing about the implications of a hypothesis doesn't automatically give any credence to the hypothesis in question, despite your assertion. I can say "if unicorns existed, jousting matches in medieval times would have been very different" without admitting "scientific status" re the existence of unicorns.
Read this . Dinesh fairly well sums up my view on the 'Dawkins/Stein' video there (and his analysis is fairly straightforward to anyone who takes the video on face value instead of interpreting it through pre-conceived biases).
Yep, I realize that. And, I think it's safe to say that amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and many plants would be wiped out by a catastrophic asteroid. So, according to this, it would take at least a billion years for those to evolve again.
Two problems with that-- 1) 100 million years (the average time between catastrophic asteroid collisions with earth) is not nearly enough time to produce the current scenario. I'm not sure (a) where you get that average from, or (b) why you think it is relevant. Even if catastrophic asteroid collisions each (or at least, the most recent one, which is the only one that matters) reset life on Earth to the beginning, or at least eliminated everything with even the most primitive brain, you would use the most recent catastrophic collision, not the average. In fact, fairly complex creatures -- with, on the grand scale, fairly well-developed brains -- survived the most recent asteroid collision, so its completely irrelevant.
Ok, so now you can tell me exactly when the last life-resetting asteroid collision occurred? The reverse prophetic powers of you evolutionists never ceases to amaze me! I used the average because it is the only number we have. Even if you adjust the number by 3 standard deviations (to cover 99.7% of the possibilities), it will be quite a small number in cosmological terms.
"Beneficial mutations" are those with produce a fitness benefit. Fitness is defined by offspring surviving to reproduce. The definition of which mutations are "beneficial" is not consistent with them simply dying out the way you describe.
So, it's only 'by definition' that you can explain this? What about actual empirical evidence? You can define things all day long to be whatever you want, but if your definitions do not actually explain (or represent) what happens in nature, they're worthless (at least for this pursuit).
What 'chicken and egg' problem? You've articulated no actual problem that meets that description that actually applies here.
The 'chicken and egg' problem is this-- natural selection cannot be the raison d'Ãtre for the original self-replicating cell (and if you can accept it larger subsystems such as brains). You must have self-replication before you can have genetic transference and 'change over time'. Admittedly, this is easier to see when looking at a single cell and not larger sub-systems.
Do you realize how complex self-replication is? John von Neumann built what he believed was the simplest self-replicating cellular automaton in the completely artificial [i.e., 'pure'] environment of mathematics and yet, it contained hundreds of moving parts. If you were to do such within the laws of chemistry and physics, needless to say, there'd be orders of magnitude more moving parts!
You seem to be giving the 'half an eye is no use' argument an airing, except with brains, or some other feature - and you treat it as a dirty little secret the 'evolutionists' brush under the carpet. *That's* intellectual dishonesty. The question has been answered over and over again, until we're bored of it. Please read The Blind Watchmaker before you suggest again that it's "one of the single biggest problems with evolutionary theory".
Yes, that's exactly the argument. And, though I've not read the entire book, I'm familiar with its arguments. Although it offers imaginative theories for what might have happened, there's two problems with them. One-- there's **WAY** less detail than should be required by true scientific scrutiny. Two-- they're just imaginations about what *might* have happened. I'm sorry, but that is not hard science.
Hmm, I *think* I've managed to extract what you meant to write from what you did write. But you're going to have to cite some examples of this dogmatism, hypicrisy and intellectual dishonesty to convince me. Making sure the culprit is representative of "science", though, and not some arbitrary zealot.
Well, my response to the blind watchmaker is the perfect example. Evolutionists are far too quick to pat themselves on the back when they really have not offered sufficiently detailed explanations. And, the popular scientists which you see indoctrinating children on such TV stations as Discovery fail to admit (and in fact most often suppress or gloss over) what they do not know and all too often present their 'theories' (and imaginations) as absolute fact. That's dishonest enough for me (especially when you see the effects it has on society).
At this point, you may say that 'scientists' are not responsible for what happens in the popular media. But, there's a problem with that-- the same well-respected (and highly qualified) scientists appear in the popular media making outrageous claims and yet, the scientific community does not reprimand or denounce their activities. Silent approval is approval nonetheless.
A slight genetic change may not result a slight change in results, and vice versa. And any mututation is extremely unlikely to result in anything other than a reduction in fitness; most mutations are either without outward effect or fatal. With a sufficiently large population and a sufficiently large time, the chance of eventually getting a beneficial mutation increases to the point of being reasonable.
Two problems with that-- 1) 100 million years (the average time between catastrophic asteroid collisions with earth) is not nearly enough time to produce the current scenario. 2) Even a beneficial mutation must be so beneficial that it entirely dominates a given species. What if the species is already quite populous? It seems that such beneficial mutations would be few and far between and would simply die out before dominating a given species.
And, fully-functional brains do not just come about all at once (in a single mutation), do they?
Uh, no. But once you have creatures with simple brains -- which have some utility -- incremental increases in particular capacities could come as small mutations.
A problem with that too (in addition to the second problem above)-- Just where do you get these simple brains which have some utility? Until these clumps of cells become a functional brain, they are a detriment instead of a benefit and thus not advantageous to pass on to successive generations. Natural selection can only 'select' from a number of changes to an *existing* functional system--it cannot be the force which creates the system to begin with.
In my view, this is one of the single biggest problems with evolutionary theory (and I'm actually quite surprised that you brought it up here).
What "problem" are you referring to?
The 'chicken and egg' problem so to speak.
I should have been more specific. I was referring to slight mutations in the progression towards a fully functional complex sub system. The problem with this 'theory' is that the subsystem must remain functional at every stage and slight mutations must offer substantial benefit in order for the individual to dominate the species. This domination seems quite unlikely to me to result from slight modifications (mods which are far more likely to be detrimental as your OP pointed out).
As for ID-- it seems to me that the science has become more dogmatic, intellectually dishonest, and hypocritical than the Catholic church ever dreamt of. They have become greater than their successor in they very ways that they so stood against.
Yes, but what you fail to understand is-- panspermia or no panspermia, ID is a valid theory. Dawkins' acceptance of the possibility of panspermia (and hence the detection of such) is equivalent to acceptance of the scientific basis of ID itself. Whether the designer is an alien life form or God is beside the point.
It looks like now that Dawkins' let the cat out of the bag, he is attempting damage control. But, go back and watch the video again. There were no edits--he implicitly admitted the scientific status of the theory of ID by referring to one potential conclusion that you may arrive at by it being proved (namely--panspermia). That, in my view, is but one of the inevitable many victories in store for ID theorists.
If you truly believe that, let me ask you one thing--
How did evolution take place for millions or billions of years without many generations of animals? Genesis is very clear in that death did not exist until sin entered the world (which happened with fully mature animals all around).
Also, by all estimates, a catastrophic life-ending asteroid hits earth on average every 100 millions years. So, for any evolutionary theory to fit, it must happen in that timeframe and not a larger one. Even evolutionists admit that is not enough time to produce what we currently see.
Yes, that is Dawkins' answer to Intelligent Design. This is not a reference to anything pertaining to evolution. Stein asked how ID could be applied to science, and the ONLY way is if alien life (intelligent) seeded Earth (design). Why is this the only answer? Because a deity is not science. Your God is not scientifically verifiable. Therefore it (and anything pertaining to it... your Bible, creationism, cdesign proponentists, etc.) cannot be a scientific answer to anything.
ID does not say anything of deities. The point is that the activity of intelligent design is detectable. And, in fact, that is a point that Dawkins' apparently now concedes by his mentioning of the plausibility of the detection of evidence of panspermia. Dawkins is only more comfortable with panspermia than with theism due to already held beliefs about the non-existence of God (which is a prime example of what many proponents of evolution have done over the years--they start with 1 - 'God cannot possibly [or does not measurably] exist and thus cannot have created life on earth', and build a system of reason upon that). But, they have failed to consider that if you change your first axiom to something more like this:
things get very interesting very quickly.
And for further reference, Stein was referring to life on Earth, not life in "the universe", something that IDists do not believe in either.
Well, I'm an 'ID theorist' and I have no idea what you just said we do not believe in. As I said before, there are considerable numbers of ID theorists who believe in panspermia (and reasonbly so) and the rest make no conclusion about alien life at all (as that is currently beyond the scope of ID theory which is concerned with detecting intelligent activity and not with speculation about the designer's (or designers') identity). That is not to say that the question of the designers' identity is beyond science, but it's a little early in the game for such speculation, I think.
Maybe the 'magical force' you are looking for is 'entropy'?
There sure is a lot of visual processing going on that is breathtaking in its capability, but however that works it's unrelated to the usual method of solving intercepts!
How so? Obviously some of circuitry of the spider's brain is hardcoded to solve that problem. Who is to say whether that is the 'usual' method or not? All methods which reach the correct answer are by definition 'related'--they are related by (at the very least) their conformance to the problem structure.
Might? How is it that a slight mutation could produce anything other than a reduction of fitness (in the short term)? And, fully-functional brains do not just come about all at once (in a single mutation), do they?
In my view, this is one of the single biggest problems with evolutionary theory (and I'm actually quite surprised that you brought it up here).