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Who Will Be Michele Bachmann’s Science Advisers?

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Michele BachmannAn earlier post yesterday underscored Michele Bachmann’s support of ID. That she supports ID is fine and well. Back in 2005 George W. Bush supported ID in the same terms as Bachmann. But Bush also had as his science adviser “company man” John Marburger (the “company” being Darwinian naturalists).

Like a lackey wiping drool from his master’s mouth, Marburger quickly let the press know that regardless of what his boss had said for public consumption, the fact was that ID wasn’t science and needed to be kept out of the schools. And good servant that he was to his master, Marburger ensured that any policies that Bush would ever enact relevant to ID would keep Darwinian evolution squarely in the driver’s seat and keep ID from endangering the materialism that passes for science in our public schools. Bush never called Marburger on his opposition of ID.

So, far from commending Michele Bachmann for making some favorable remarks about ID (which plays to her natural constituency and can be read simply as a political move), I want to know who her science advisers will be, what concretely she would do as president to advance ID, and just how serious she is about taking on the bureaucrats and administrators (at the NSF? NIH?) who ensure that nothing but Darwinian materialist bilge gets funded. Is she willing to put her neck on the chopping block, and how could we know prior to the election?

Comments
Elizabeth Liddle:
Mung, I am not misrepresenting ID. I said that what is wrong with the ID position is extending inference about Design to inference about the supernatural.
And that IS a misrepresentation of ID. So yes, you are misrepresenting ID. You have not described anything that is wrong with the ID position, yet you claim that you have identified something that is wrong with the ID position. Extending ID beyond the detection of design to an inference about the supernatural is not something that ID does. To say that it does is to say something that is false.
If you don’t do it, fine. Some people do.
If they do so, then they have stepped outside the bounds of ID. You ought to be willing to acknowledge that fact. That's not a problem with ID. It may be some other problem, but it's not a problem with ID. ID is no different than any other field in science where people can take the results and extend them beyond what science can tell us. Do you call that a problem with science? I'd bet not. RegardsMung
June 25, 2011
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Dr Liddle:
I said that what is wrong with the ID position is extending inference about Design to inference about the supernatural.
The design inference is to causal process on empirically tested and reliable sign. That gets us to that tweredun. Whodunit is a different quesiton, but that twerredun is an important step to thast apart form being imnportant in its own right. In the case of cell based life on earth, the inference to design does not in itself demonstrate design by a specific designer within or beyond the cosmos, and that has been repeatedly stared by design thinkers and researchers, from the very first ID technical book, TMLO by Thaxton et al in 1985. What I find is that the projection "inference to supernatural cause" is being made by OPPONENTS of ID, the better to caricature and denigrate. At the next level, cosmological origins in light of evident origin at a finitely distant point in the past, and fine tuning for C-chemistry cell based intelligent life, that DOES point not only to cause but to a certain class of cause that -- even through a multiverse speculation -- is beyond the observed material cosmos, i.e. "nature." Indeed, it points to a necessary being one that has no external causal dependence and so is without beginning and without end, is powerful enough to build a cosmos, and is knowledgeable, skilled and purposeful enough to do it. In that sense that is super-natural, as an entity (including our cosmos) cannot cause itself. On pain or absurdity, the chicken and the egg cannot be one and the same. GEM of TKIkairosfocus
June 25, 2011
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Mung, I am not misrepresenting ID. I said that what is wrong with the ID position is extending inference about Design to inference about the supernatural. If you don't do it, fine. Some people do. And that is, IMO, a big mistake because it seems to stop people further investigating the nature of the inferred design process. And if they did, I would argue, they would find that evolutionary processes are capable of (non-intentional, non-supernatural) design. Or at least of producing CSI. # 38 Sand dunes; crystals; pebble arrangements; and, if you don't count proteins as living, prions.Elizabeth Liddle
June 25, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle:
That last thing does not “require living things to function”. We see it in non-living things as well, as long as they in some sense replicate themselves.
Such as? One example should suffice. Thank youMung
June 24, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle:
My own view, of course, is that what is “wrong” with ID as a position is ... that we can’t a) infer a “supernatural” agent, just because we infer Design.
This is a claim about Intelligent Design. It's not a claim about Science, or what science can and cannot do. It's a false portrayal of Intelligent Design. ID get's use to "design." ID does not, from an inference to design, then go on to infer a supernatural agent. So your response about Science is relevant how? Do you ever plan to accurately portray ID in your posts here, or will you continue to misrepresent it?Mung
June 24, 2011
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Aussie: Now you know that libraries routinely censor books. Gkairosfocus
June 24, 2011
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Kairos - the very same book that I requested our local library to purchase (which they did!). I got it out, had a read and returned it. Then, when I went to look up something in it about a month later, it wasn't there. Not misshelved, not stolen as such, but not even in the system! When I asked about the whereabouts of the book nobody knew of it. "Computer says 'No'" Hmmm. Yeah, best if Ms Bachmann had her own copy ...AussieID
June 24, 2011
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Kairos; here is a recently loaded video: "Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design" a lecture by Dr. Jonathan Wells - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSSelSy5rPobornagain77
June 24, 2011
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A great point here is still that a contender is saying YES to creationism in the schools. Lets see the other republicans say no. The great prohibition against conclusions held by historic majoritys and present whateveritis on the great mutual heritage ideas of origins must come to a crashing end. Judges and elites BRING DOWN THESE WALLS OF CENSORSHIP. Creationist freedom should become another plank in the republican platform.Robert Byers
June 24, 2011
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Mung:
Elizabeth Liddle: My own view, of course, is that what is “wrong” with ID as a position is not that Design, and Intelligent Systems aren’t perfectly good (and extremely interesting) domains of study, but that we can’t a) infer a “supernatural” agent, just because we infer Design, and that b) we have a good Intelligent System to hand to explain living things in the form of evolutionary processes.
Sigh. Well Lizzie, your argument isn’t valid. It’s based on a false premise. So will you continue to cling to it irrationally? Frankly, I think I’m being too kind, for you are being doubly irrational. For in your second breath you tell us that a system that requires living things to function is itself the explanation for living things! OMG! Have you gone completely off your rocker or what? Would you please stop with the nonsense?
Actually, it isn't nonsense, Mung, but we do seem to start from such widely different points, that communication is a real issue. I know that when you try to paraphrase my claims, and they come out as nonsense, your understanding is that they reveal the underlying nonsense of the original. From my PoV, however, they reveal that you have missed my point! (Or, to put it more generously, that I have failed to convey it.) You say you dispute my premise. I'm not sure what you are regarding as my premise here, so let me try to go back to first principles with my claim. Science, to oversimplify somewhat, is about finding out what causes what. So, what causes an unsuspended object to drop is a force that is proportional to the mass of the object, which we call gravity. But what causes the mass of an object to exert a gravity? Right now, we don't know (as far as I know) although we are starting to discover something about the properties of gravity, and we can test our hypotheses about those properties by making predictions and then measurements to test the predictions. And, since Newton, we have also found several other "fundamental" forces. It is also possible that these "fundamental" forces may be "caused" by an even more fundamental force. If so, we don't know what that is, but we (well not me, obviously, but humankind) keep looking. And when we find that, the next step would be - why this force and not another force? What made this force the way it is and not some other way? Etc. In other words, science does come up against potential "fundamentals" (well physics does), but it only has the capacity to falsify the the proposition that the force in question is absolutely fundamental, not the capacity to verify it. And that obviously applies to a posited Prime Mover as well (God is, if you like, the Ultimate fundamental force, the uncreated creator). So that's why I say that science cannot (not Will not) conclude a supernatural cause. It cannot do so any more than it can conclude a fundamental force. It can only retain the null hypothesis that a force we now regard as Fundamental is indeed fundamental. But that does not stop us from detecting Design. We do it all the time. Now for my second point. I said: "we have a good Intelligent System to hand to explain living things in the form of evolutionary processes." You paraphrased this as: "a system that requires living things to function is itself the explanation for living things!" So let me rephrase: "we have a good Intelligent System to hand to explain living things in the form of evolutionary processes replication with variation in the capacity to replicate." That last thing does not "require living things to function". We see it in non-living things as well, as long as they in some sense replicate themselves. And, I would argue, we see it within living things as well, specifically, within living things with brains. It's a key mechanism of intelligence. Now, you may profoundly disagree, and probably do, but it is not non-sense. And when I get more than five minutes free at a time I will try to explain more in my repeatedly postponed response to Upright BiPed on the Barbs and Forrest thread Mark One. Cheers LizzieElizabeth Liddle
June 24, 2011
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Okie dokie (Amazon page here, why not somebody UPS her a copy? Maybe a cluster of key books?)kairosfocus
June 23, 2011
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G'day Rude, I agree totally with any politician who is favourable toward the ID position to have a bit of tutoring. How many times has an earnest politician (is that a slightly ironic joining of words?!?) put forth their belief and been immediately pilloried because they have not been able to adequately respond to (easy) questions. How embarrassing is it to see them stammer in front of a gloating Evo's one-liner? Bring on the tutoring!!!AussieID
June 23, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle:
My own view, of course, is that what is “wrong” with ID as a position is not that Design, and Intelligent Systems aren’t perfectly good (and extremely interesting) domains of study, but that we can’t a) infer a “supernatural” agent, just because we infer Design, and that b) we have a good Intelligent System to hand to explain living things in the form of evolutionary processes.
Sigh. Well Lizzie, your argument isn't valid. It's based on a false premise. So will you continue to cling to it irrationally? Frankly, I think I'm being too kind, for you are being doubly irrational. For in your second breath you tell us that a system that requires living things to function is itself the explanation for living things! OMG! Have you gone completely off your rocker or what? Would you please stop with the nonsense?Mung
June 23, 2011
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lets get rid of the NSF, the NIH, the education department, among others, and let researches compete in the private market for their funding.tsmith
June 23, 2011
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If anyone running for president of the lone super power claims to support intelligent design or in any way proposes to emasculate the regnant Darwinism, that person should be contacted and at some point if at all possible be tutored personally by some of our leading ID lights. No, I'm as cynical of politicians as the next guy, but I also know that there are better politicians and worse politicians. Though no one is perfect, an imperfect but basically honest proponent is preferable to an outspoken enemy. Western civ is hanging in the balance---very few of its elites see anything worth preserving. I say the wholesale implementation of all the changes needed to preserve our liberty may not be feasible all at once. But any movement in that direction is to be applauded. Better to have fought and lost than to have caved without a struggle. Let's not give up before we have to. Perhaps it's in the cards that we win if we fight the fight.Rude
June 23, 2011
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I don't think that Michele Bachman is nearly as malleable or subject to compromise as George Bush proved to be because Her philosophy of life is far more defined and unified. Also, she has, to some extent already entered into the fray, having attempted to introduce legislation on behalf of intelligent design. So, I think she is the real deal.StephenB
June 23, 2011
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F/N: ID is not inferring to a designer as such, whether in or beyond the cosmos, but on tested reliable signs to design as a key causal process. Design as a process, is habitually associated with designers, and lists of suspects can be put on parade and identified using essentially forensic methods of warranting a whodunit conclusion long since hammered out in the courtroom. (Try Greenleaf's 3-vol was it series on evidence for a start, here is vol i ch 1. A lot of the issues being knocked about today were satisfactorily worked out 150 years ago, just in corners of the intellectual world that have been largely forgotten.)kairosfocus
June 23, 2011
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Hey, kairosfocus! A lot to agree with you on there! Including the schooner! *closet communitarian here too* :DElizabeth Liddle
June 23, 2011
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Dr Liddle: It almost hurt to put up Dr Jakubowski's project for a suggestion on priority funding as it is not an ID project. It is an ID relevant project, indeed it speaks straight to the origin of life challenge; though I doubt Jakubowski has that in mind. It is also up my sustainable development street: substitute small Caribbean island communities for your 40 - 100 techs and 40 - 100 machines and it drops right out. It also tickles my open source itch -- I'se be a closet communitarian, after all. And it scratches my space exploration itch too, whilst being a robotics heavy project. (The TED talk discussion runs straight into the Moon exploration project via clay to Aluminum.) It even points to a way to build/transform global applied science research culture: think, create the GNU core for civilisation renewal, where firms fund common core research, as do govts etc, and value added is the way to make money. But, the project is ID-relevant, through OOL issues and the von Neumann Self Replicator. That opens up nasty, nasty politics, as you can see from what we have had to deal with here at UD. At least, Jakubowski is now a TED fellow. For a whole string of reasons, I would love to see him heavily funded. And, BTW, I would like to add a C21 Schooner to the list of machines -- sustainable, seaborne trade that can be carried out by communities. BTW, as soon as Dembski said big name scientists denied NAS membership on ID sympathies, the name Fritz Schaeffer -- one tier below Nobel Prize winning level, I gather [Quantum Chemistry] -- rushed straight to my head. Read up, he is featured in Johnson's Reason in the Balance. I dunno if he is on the list for sure, but he sure went through the wringer in his uni over ID sympathies. The other projects proposed above would run right into the same buzz-saw. GEM of TKIkairosfocus
June 23, 2011
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Interesting, kf :) I guess what I find interesting about these proposals (all of which sound interesting) is - do you really think these would be censored in some way? They all sound perfectly fundable to me (but then of course I'm a Brit). Not than any funding is easy to get (and increasingly, mostly rightly IMO, an important case these days has to be made for the "impact" your study will make on real life problems), but I can't see any obvious bar to funding any of these proposals. Can someone explain? (Again, this is not a rhetorical question!) My own view, of course, is that what is "wrong" with ID as a position is not that Design, and Intelligent Systems aren't perfectly good (and extremely interesting) domains of study, but that we can't a) infer a "supernatural" agent, just because we infer Design, and that b) we have a good Intelligent System to hand to explain living things in the form of evolutionary processes. So I don't want to kid anyone (e.g Dr Dembski, who may not know my views) that I am an ID supporter - I'm not. But that doesn't mean I don't think that some ID points are valid, and some counter-points aren't. And all those research proposals look pretty interesting to me. Best of luck :)Elizabeth Liddle
June 23, 2011
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Dr Liddle: The no 1 project I would be looking at -- mind you, I do not have vote in the US -- would be some version of Jakubowski's Open Source Ecology Global Village Construction set, industrial civ 2.0, open source plus value added. Think, kinematic self replicator tied to a network where maybe 40 - 100 techs and a like number of key machines can clone a functional civilisation. I'd love to tie in unis in the net, on the principle that if the tax payer funded the study, the results are GNU. Stage 1, transforming technological civilisation, making it much more modular, distributed and networked. Resiliency in the teeth of what may well be coming. That is a global transformation by itself. Stage 2: solar system colonisation. (And beyond, if we can find a way to do that. Don't put all your eggs in one basket and all that.) How's that an ID research project, you ask. Easy: kinematic, stored information self-replicating systems. GEM of TKIkairosfocus
June 23, 2011
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johnnyb - thanks! That was exactly what I was looking for! Anyone else?Elizabeth Liddle
June 23, 2011
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Dr Dembski, Thanks for the response! I cant think of any non-ID supporters who've bucked the establishment ..would you count Peter Deusberg? ..and who are the pro-ID people...or would these be people we havent heard of?RodW
June 23, 2011
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RodW: I know scientists who have specifically been denied membership in the National Academy of Sciences because of their sympathy (not outright support) of ID. In one case, the scientist was explicitly told that members voted again his admission because he had signed the Dissent from Darwin list. Independent-minded scientists (not necessarily ID supporters) who have paid a price for bucking the established scientific bureaucracy would be at the top of my list.William Dembski
June 23, 2011
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How much money typically gets granted to the NIH for things that are theoretical in nature and supported by a materialist bias? I would be happy with a cut in funding for research that is guided by those materialist assumptions.The Road - Veteran
June 23, 2011
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I agree 100% with what mung said, if anything funding should go to those who can make a case that there is anything insightful that can arise from their research and not to anyone who is best able to fill out paperwork or sway politicians. There is more than enough money being wasted under our current system to warrant a different approach altogether. Then again, maybe I am taking Michael Polanyi's thesis from "The Logic of Liberty" a bit too seriously?Jeffrey Helix
June 23, 2011
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I am against government funding for either side.
^tragic mishap
June 23, 2011
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Mung, Would you be against government funding if it was handed out exclusively to educational institutions? I think students would benefit after all, and it would enhance our educational system. Yesterday I was thinking exactly like you, but I was thinking about this for a while today and yesterday, and I think there's some merit to government funding. The issue is balanced funding to opposing views. I don't think evolution research should not be funded; it should just be more balanced. A danger might be a new perception that something "religious" is now being sanctioned by the government, and then we would have to deal with the fallout. Keeping it private could then be seen as the wisest choice. I think ID research could easily be funded through the private sector as it is now being done, but such research doesn't bring ID to institutions of learning where I believe it belongs, and where there are many who desire to learn it and/or teach it. The larger issue though is having true support from politicians. It used to be that politicians would say they were pro-life in order to attract voters, but their actual legislative records revealed no action. That largely changed in the last couple of decades when more pressure was placed on them for action - sadly though, not enough. I think it's great that President Bush mentioned his support for ID. Now we need leaders who will actually step forward, follow through and support it. I'm not necessarily endorsing him, but Senator Rick Santorum seems to be one of the few politicians who has vocally (at least) supported ID. It would be great if we could get a few Democrats on our side as well.CannuckianYankee
June 23, 2011
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Elizabeth - I can tell you the projects I would love to get funding for. 1) Investigation into Turing Oracles as a model of human cognition (see here for more info. For background this lecture is useful. 2) Convert my qualitative computational model of irreducible complexity into a quantitative one. 3) Look for systems of coordinated mutations. 4) Look for systems where individual mutations affect a multisystem integration. I.e. a mutation causing a change to protein A in system X also causes a change in protein B (because it overlaps or similar in DNA) in system Y, to allow them to covary together in a harmonious fashion. (I predicted the existence of these in an earlier conference abstract on VDJ recombination based on design principles).johnnyb
June 23, 2011
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I am against government funding for either side.Mung
June 23, 2011
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