Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

An Open Challenge to Neo-Darwinists: What Would It Take to Falsify Your Theory?

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A criticism which neo-Darwinists have frequently made of Intelligent Design is that it is not a “scientific” theory. ID, they say, explains the bacterial flagellum by saying “God [sic] made it”. However, they complain, it doesn’t say when God made it, how God made it, what material substrate God was acting on when he made it, etc. It therefore gives scientists nothing to go on, nothing to work with, nothing on which they can base experiments which could confirm or disconfirm the explanation.

In contrast, they believe, Darwinian explanations give scientists something to work on. The hypothesis that the flagellum slowly evolved, through a series of intermediate, functional steps, allows for testing. One can look for possible intermediate steps, e.g., the Type III secretory system, and confirm whether or not they exist in nature. One can study mutation rates and reproduction rates of bacteria, and calculate how many mutations have probably occurred over any given length of time, to see if enough time was available for the evolution of a flagellum, and so on. Thus, in their minds, Darwinism is a scientific theory, whereas ID is not.

It is clear that this line of argument presupposes a particular criterion for what makes an explanation scientific. To be scientific, a proposal, hypothesis or theory must be testable. We must be able to find evidence in nature that could confirm or disconfirm it.

Some ID critics narrow this down further, and say that scientific theories must be falsifiable. That is, ID cannot expect to be taken seriously as a scientific theory unless it is willing to specify a set of observations (taken directly from nature or resulting from experiments) that could prove it to be wrong.  ID must say what it would take to falsify the existence of the proposed Intelligent Designer.

Now there has been a long debate over whether falsifiability is a good criterion to apply to scientific theories. The most frequently cited champion of falsifiability is of course Karl Popper, and as everyone here knows, many philosophers of science have disputed Popper’s claims. I do not propose to enter into the arguments here. I will say only that I find falsifiability, if not an absolute requirement of any scientific theory, at least a highly desirable element in a scientific theory, and I will refer readers to Popper’s writings if they want a detailed justification of this. A brief justification, in Popper’s own words, is available on-line.

For the purpose of my challenge here, however, my own view on falsification is irrelevant.  Here I am going to agree, not out of personal conviction but purely for the sake of argument, with those neo-Darwinians who insist that scientific theories must be falsifiable. But then I am going to ask them to apply that standard to their own theory. I am going to ask them whether neo-Darwinism is itself falsifiable. I believe it is not, and that therefore, by their own criterion, it does not qualify as science.

Now I know that when this argument has been made in the past, neo-Darwinians have issued a standard answer.  They say that Darwinian evolution is easily falsifiable. All one has to do is find a Cambrian rabbit, or any other fossil that is so far out of sequence that the creature in question cannot have evolved by stepwise Darwinian means. This, however, for reasons given by others, is not an adequate answer. Many ID proponents have no problem with the notion of common descent. They have no problem with the notion that one creature has been used as the basis of a subsequent and more advanced creature. They therefore do not reject “evolution”, and they have no desire to find a Cambrian rabbit or a Jurassic monkey. What they reject is the Darwinian “chance plus natural selection” explanation of evolution. So what neo-Darwinians are being asked, when they are being asked about falsification, is not “What would falsify common descent?” It is: “What would falsify your theory that small, incremental steps, which occur due to genetic accidents, can be combined into useful new structures, up to and including the creation of entirely new functional body plans?”

This is the question that I am putting to neo-Darwinists today. What would it take to falsify your belief, for example, that land creatures are ultimately modified fish, transformed by slow, tiny and wholly fortuitous steps from gill-breathers to lung-breathers? What genetic, developmental, or other evidence would you accept as a demonstration that fish could not have become land-dwelling creatures via purely Darwinian means? What genetic, developmental or other evidence would you accept as a demonstration that the camera eye could not have developed by purely Darwinian means?

When ID people read Darwinian literature, we get the strong impression that Darwinians do not ask whether Darwinian means are capable of producing their alleged effects. They appear to be asking only how Darwinian means did so. And when one possible evolutionary pathway is shown to be impossible on scientific grounds, another pathway, always within Darwinian assumptions, is put forward to replace it. At no point, as far as we can see, do Darwinians ever say: “Well, maybe we have been wrong all along. Maybe Darwinian explanation cannot account for evolutionary change.” And so, when we read in Darwinian polemics that ID is “unscientific” because it will not commit itself to any model of the designer’s action specific enough to be falsified, we are rather irritated by the apparent double standard, because we have not seen such a falsifiable model in the Darwinist literature.

So, again, here is the challenge to neo-Darwinians: What would it take for you to concede, not just that this or that proposed evolutionary pathway is wrong, but that the entire Darwinian explanation of evolutionary change is wrong? What evidence would it take for you to concede that small, random, stepwise changes cannot produce the specific macroevolutionary effects that the fossil record appears to record? And the corollary question is: If you are unwilling to specify in advance what it would take to falsify neo-Darwinian mechanisms, are you willing, here and now, either to admit that neo-Darwinism is not a scientific theory, or to drop the requirement of falsifiability which you have laid upon ID?

Comments
"It is true, however, that we do not have detailed observational data of the evolutionary process operating over geological time at the genetic level." I think the problem goes beyond this. The evidence we DO have at the genetic level suggests that things are far more complicated and intricate than ever was expected. As an example of this let me direct you to this entry in Dr. Macneill's blog: http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/2007/09/gene-is-dead-long-live-gene.html. The evidence also fails to suggest that genetic change over time is capable of doing what is necessary for unguided evolution. So, what do we have? 1. We will likely never have observational data of evolution working at the genetic level over geological time. 2. The data we can observe fails to support that the necessary genetic change could've occurred naturally (IMO). "Most biologists would agree that the majority of mutations that change protein sequences or alter gene expression are harmful, because they perturb highly adapted biochemical and physiological systems. Mutations that generate "visible" phenotypes are usually manifestly deleterious, but the deleterious nature of most amino acid changes can also be inferred from the high degree of conservation of protein-coding sequences relative to noncoding DNA. Deleterious mutations impose a "load" (selective reduction in fitness) on populations; individuals either die or fail to reproduce, because they carry harmful mutations, a process MULLER 1950 termed "genetic death." HALDANE 1937 showed that the load imposed by a deleterious mutation was independent of its selective effect. This has become known as the Haldane-Muller principle and implies that the mutational load depends largely on the rate at which deleterious mutations occur over the whole genome, U. Haldane applied this principle to estimate the mutation load in Drosophila melanogaster by assuming that the mutation rate to nonlethal deleterious mutations was twice that to lethals, for which an estimate was available at the time. He concluded that populations would experience an ~4% depression in fitness through the elimination of deleterious mutations, a "loss of fitness," he suggested, which was "the price paid by a species for its capacity for further evolution" (HALDANE 1937 , p. 349)." http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/95/4/277 "The next big question that begs to be asked with regard to complexity, both organizational and genomic, is: was there a consistent trend towards increasing complexity during the 3.5 billion years of life evolution on earth? The most likely answer is, no. Even very conservative reconstructions of ancestral genomes of archaea and bacteria indicate that these genomes were comparable in size and complexity to those of relatively simple modern forms (88,89,91,93). Furthermore, reconstructions for some individual groups, and not only parasites, point to gene loss and genome shrinking as the prevailing mode of evolution (249). Considering that numerous prokaryotic groups undoubtedly have gone extinct in the course of life history, there is every reason to believe that, even prior to the radiation of all major lineages known today, the distribution of genome sizes and the mean complexity in prokaryotes was (nearly) the same as it is now." http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/gkp089v1 "The problem science has with the Intelligent Design movement, however, is the evidence of equivocation over who or what is meant by the Designer. Trying to develop a method of detecting design, irrespective of the nature of the designer, is a perfectly respectable scientific enterprise but that is not the issue." Design detection is the aim of ID though. Individuals have strong opinions about where the design came from, and of course an internet blog is the kind of forum these ideas will be expressed in. Have you checked out Panda's thumb or any of the blogs like that? The animosity coming from that side is far worse IMO, but certainly it is at least as bad. Why? Maybe because ID threatens the materialistic view of evolution that atheists cling to, maybe because it threatens the status quo. "As an example of the problem, consider tree rings. We can obtain information, not just about the tree itself but about the environmental conditions that affected its growth at different times in past. But is it true to say that the tree contains in those rings something called ‘information’?" I think, and I could be wrong here, that the information in question is genetic. If I gave you a lab manual containing instructions for synthesizing proteins would you say that lab manual contained information? I just looked on freedictionary.com and the definition for information as applied to computer science is "Processed, stored, or transmitted data.". I'm thinking DNA probably counts as information without ID making up its own definition. "A theory is neither verified nor falsified by pointing to a lack of evidence where you would not reasonably expect to find any in the first place. Yes, an evolutionary biologist might, at some point, be able to construct a speculative outline of the genetic pathway between the first amphibians and their fish-like ancestors but without any evidence to support it a critic could justifiably dismiss it as just another ‘just so’ story. But, if no genetic material in any form would be expected to survive from that period and the fossil record has nothing like the resolution needed to provide such a detailed picture, what would be the point?" So it can't be falsified.pharmgirl
March 6, 2009
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Thomas Cudworth @ 152
We simply don’t know if Darwin’s mechanisms are nuanced enough, subtle enough, intricate enough, to generate the complex, interrelated changes observed. We don’t know if Darwinian mechanisms can fully mimic intelligent design. And we have no right to assume that they can.
That animal morphologies are plastic was observed long before Darwin's time. Prior to Darwin, although no one had any detailed description of how it was done, this was attributed to God's handiwork, largely because no one had a better idea. Darwins' theory offered a mechanism for that change which did not require the hypothesis of divine or any other form of intelligent intervention. At the time of writing, though, the theory lacked a vital component in the form of a process of particulate inheritance. Mendel's work and the discovery of DNA filled in that gap and, in so doing, greatly strengthened its credibility. This and other more recent research has found more evidence which is consistent with the evolutionary process which you do not dispute. It is true, however, that we do not have detailed observational data of the evolutionary process operating over geological time at the genetic level. Whatever there might have been in the distant past has probably not survived in any detectable form to this day and we have not been around long enough as an intelligent species, let alone practicing science, to have been able to collect enough ourselves thus far. Whether that will still be the case in another million years, assuming we are still around in some form or other, there is no way of knowing. As for Darwinian mechanisms mimicking intelligent design, the only examples of intelligent design we have are our own handiwork. We have, for example, built digital computers, landed men on the Moon and sent space probes beyond our Solar System. These are no mean feats but, on the other hand, there is much in the biological world that is still way beyond our capacity to design and build although, again, whether this will always be the case we have no way of knowing. What we can say is that our existence opens the door to the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in this Universe which might conceivably have been influenced life on Earth. Beyond that we have little beyond the suspect analogical argument from design and highly controversial probabilistic claims.
Methodological naturalism does not automatically exclude intelligent design (understood as information) as a causal factor in nature. Yet neo-Darwinism remains opposed to intelligent involvement in nature *per se*, not only when that intelligence is conceived of as something external (as in “creationism”), but even when it is conceived of as something immanent (as in front-loaded evolution).
I agree that methodological naturalism does not automatically exclude intelligent design as a causal factor in nature. We ourselves are evidence of the presence of intelligent design in the Universe and I doubt you would find many scientists who would dispute that. The problem science has with the Intelligent Design movement, however, is the evidence of equivocation over who or what is meant by the Designer. Trying to develop a method of detecting design, irrespective of the nature of the designer, is a perfectly respectable scientific enterprise but that is not the issue. The sometimes extreme animosity expressed here and elsewhere towards evolutionary biology in particular and naturalistic science in general is obviously inspired by a perceived threat to the critics' religious beliefs. The writings of Philip Johnson, the Wedge Document and comments made here are evidence of that. An obvious inference from that is that, whether stated openly or not, the designer is the same as the believers God. Yes, the designer need not be the Christian God. It could be a highly-advanced extra-terrestrial intelligence although the ridicule heaped on Richard Dawkins for making a similar suggestion indicates otherwise.
The debate now is between the younger generation of biologists, who increasingly will be trained to think like engineers and computer programmers, versus the older generation of biologists, who were all trained in an “order out of chaos” mode of thinking reminiscent of 19th-century laissez-faire economists. In my opinion, the smart money is on the engineers and programmers.
I would certainly hope that these various disciplines will have a synergistic influence on each other rather than being seen as implacably hostile. I am bound to say, however, that I find John Wilkins's argument persuasive that it is misleading to think of biological systems as containing something called 'information'. Quite clearly, it means different things in different contexts which is bound to lead to confusion and equivocation, whether accidental or deliberate over what is meant in a given case. There is, of course, no reason why it should not be given a specific technical definition within a particular discipline but in that case extreme care needs to be taken to prevent it being confused with other meanings. As an example of the problem, consider tree rings. We can obtain information, not just about the tree itself but about the environmental conditions that affected its growth at different times in past. But is it true to say that the tree contains in those rings something called 'information'? The rings, after all, are simply the visual impression of the slight differences in the material of the tree's trunk caused by different growth rates in different years. Is it not more accurate to say that, in this case, 'information' refers to what is changed in - or added to - the mental model or mind of the observer. In other words, it is not something that inheres in the tree but rather in how that tree is represented in the mind of an intelligent observer and how that is related to other components of that representation.
I don’t see it as my job to do the Darwinists’ work for them, i.e., to take an armchair speculation and turn it into a viable hypothesis. It’s time the Darwinists stopped expecting the public to accept their account merely because no Cambrian rabbit has been found. It’s time they put their necks on the line, by articulating their mechanism with the precision that puts all truly scientific hypotheses at risk of falsification.
A theory is neither verified nor falsified by pointing to a lack of evidence where you would not reasonably expect to find any in the first place. Yes, an evolutionary biologist might, at some point, be able to construct a speculative outline of the genetic pathway between the first amphibians and their fish-like ancestors but without any evidence to support it a critic could justifiably dismiss it as just another 'just so' story. But, if no genetic material in any form would be expected to survive from that period and the fossil record has nothing like the resolution needed to provide such a detailed picture, what would be the point? No one is asking design proponents to do "the Darwinists' work for them". It is to be hoped that what they are doing is conducting research of their own, such as running tests of the Explanatory Filter to validate it as a method of detecting Intelligent Design.Seversky
March 5, 2009
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Seversky: A good reply. I don’t find anything you are saying unreasonable or in any crude sense “wrong”. But I still maintain that Tiktaalik isn’t really all that important a find. Let me explain why. First of all, my position is *not* anti-evolutionary. I don’t deny the possibility that species can be transformed, by some means or other, into new species. If Michael Behe, one of the leading design theorists, can live with common descent, I can, too. So my position is not at all like that of those who are trying to disprove “evolution”. If fossils are found from time to time that provide “missing links” in a putative evolutionary chain, they don’t upset me in the slightest. Now, let’s look at Tiktaalik. Everybody knows that the first land vertebrates are supposed to have come from the sea, since the sea was the only possible non-miraculous source of land vertebrates. Therefore, on any evolutionary view, fish must have turned into land vertebrates by some series of steps. It is likely that this would involve an amphibious stage, followed by a reptile stage. So we would expect to see fishlike fossils, followed by amphibian-like fossils, followed by reptile-like fossils. Further, since we can roughly date the strata in which there were only fish, and roughly date the strata in which true reptiles are known to have first appeared, we will obviously predict that intermediate forms will appear in the intermediate strata. So we will look for forms like Tiktaalik in rocks of a certain date. And if we know that rocks of a certain date are found in a certain place on the earth, then we will look there for intermediate forms. So we look there, and in this case we find an intermediate form. There is no profoundly original scientific thinking in this process. Now let’s greatly oversimplify things, granting much more than Tiktaalik warrants, and say that Tiktaalik proves that land animals evolved from fish through a series of intermediates over a period of millions of years. So we have disproved the view of six-day literalists. Big deal! We still have no explanation for how this process happened. Oh, we have a general narrative for how it happened: small gradual changes plus natural selection. But on the level of nitty-gritty detail, we hardly have a clue. We simply don’t know if Darwin’s mechanisms are nuanced enough, subtle enough, intricate enough, to generate the complex, interrelated changes observed. We don’t know if Darwinian mechanisms can fully mimic intelligent design. And we have no right to assume that they can. When paleontologists, the NCSE, etc., beat their chests about discoveries like Tiktaalik, they show that they haven’t grasped that the game has changed. The game is no longer six-day creationism versus “evolution”. The new game is “evolution driven entirely by non-intelligent causes” versus “evolution driven at least in part by intelligent causes”. And it’s important to stress that the “intelligent causes” don’t necessarily have to be seen as interventions coming from outside nature; the intelligence may be, as it were, built into nature, in the fundamental properties of matter and life. Thus, all the Darwinian blathering about methodological naturalism is beside the point. Methodological naturalism does not automatically exclude intelligent design (understood as information) as a causal factor in nature. Yet neo-Darwinism remains opposed to intelligent involvement in nature *per se*, not only when that intelligence is conceived of as something external (as in “creationism”), but even when it is conceived of as something immanent (as in front-loaded evolution). Neo-Darwinism is built upon the assumption that evolution is ultimately accidental. And this assumption is coming under assault from within the life sciences community itself, e.g., people like Michael Behe and Michael Denton and Richard Sternberg. Fundamentalism, Genesis, the Scopes monkey trial, the desperate denial of intermediate fossils, denying the age of the earth, Flood geology – all of this is now irrelevant. Forrest and Pennock and Eugenie Scott and the NCSE can keep harping on it if they want, but the debate among serious theoretical minds has moved on and left them behind. The debate now is between the younger generation of biologists, who increasingly will be trained to think like engineers and computer programmers, versus the older generation of biologists, who were all trained in an “order out of chaos” mode of thinking reminiscent of 19th-century laissez-faire economists. In my opinion, the smart money is on the engineers and programmers. The only thing that can keep design thinking out of future evolutionary theory is an account of evolution that can demonstrate that reproductive accidents are a reliable engine for generating major new organs, systems, and body plans. Such an account goes far beyond the level of detail that Darwinian theory has yet provided. Darwinism needs to show in detail, not *that* the fin became a foot, but *how* the fin became a foot; not *that* lungs replaced gills, but *how* lungs replaced gills. And the *how* must be so thoroughly set forth that there is no room for intelligence to get a foot inside the explanatory door. On this front, I have yet to see anything from Darwinists but promissory notes. I’ll take up only one other point. In response to my falsification challenge, you ask: ‘How would *you* “test the notion of random mutation plus natural selection”’ It seems to me that in the practice of science, it is the job of the person who proposes a hypothetical mechanism to suggest experiments or observations that could potentially falsify it. So if the hypothesis is “that random mutations acted on by natural selection can turn a fish into an amphibian”, it is the responsibility of the hypothesizer to give enough details of the process (e.g., what allegedly happens at pinpointed locations along the DNA strand, or what specific selection pressures are allegedly operating on fish/amphibian limbs in seashore environments) so that either the hypothesizer, or someone else, can set up some kind of test (e.g., in which the activity in the genome can be manipulated or at least observed, or in which the alleged selective pressures can be confirmed). If the hypothesizer can’t be definite about what should happen in the genome or how to rank the factors involved in natural selection, then his mechanism isn’t testable at all, and the “hypothesis” isn’t strictly a hypothesis at all, but just a speculative possibility. I don’t see it as my job to do the Darwinists’ work for them, i.e., to take an armchair speculation and turn it into a viable hypothesis. It's time the Darwinists stopped expecting the public to accept their account merely because no Cambrian rabbit has been found. It's time they put their necks on the line, by articulating their mechanism with the precision that puts all truly scientific hypotheses at risk of falsification.Thomas Cudworth
March 3, 2009
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Thomas Cudworth @ 150 My apologies for the delay in replying to 145.
My objection here is twofold: (A) Had Tiktaalik *not* been found, the Darwinists could just give their usual explanation: “We don’t have as many transitional forms as we’d like because fossilization only occurs under ideal conditions. In fact, the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record is itself predictable in terms of our theory. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” So, while Darwinists treat finds like Tiktaalik as confirmation of their theory, and trumpet them loudly whenever they occur, the absence of such finds (and the absences outnumber the presences by a large margin) is not treated seriously as disconfirming evidence. It is argued that a transitional fossil will eventually be found (heads I win), or that it is unreasonable to expect very many transitional fossils to be found (tails you lose). The theory thus becomes immune to disconfirmation from the fossil record – short of the proverbial Cambrian rabbit.
The fact is that fossilization is a rare event so not only should we not be surprised at the fragmentary nature of the fossil record but we should also be wary of assuming that the large gaps in the record mean that nothing happened. A someone once said: "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Neither, of course, does it mean we can assume that the gaps are filled with what the theory says should be there. Nature has proven too many times before it is capable of springing surprises on the complacent. We have to accept that the less-than-satisfactory "we don't know" is the more appropriate response. But while the general paucity of fossil record should not be held to say anything for or against the theory of evolution, the success or failure of a specific prediction of the theory does. It is generally accepted that one test of the strength of a theory is its power of prediction. One that can lead us to previously-unknown and even previously-unsuspected knowledge is of enormous value. Does anyone doubt that, if an application of the Explanatory Filter had uncovered incontrovertible evidence of the involvement of an extraterrestrial intelligence in the history of life on Earth, it would be hailed as an enormous triumph for the theory of Intelligent Design? Yes, the discovery of the Tiktaalik fossils is rightly celebrated as a great success because it led the researchers to something they might not have found otherwise and, yes, it is unlikely that a failure to find anything would have received the same attention. Unfortunately, that is human nature but it has no relevance to the significance of the find as confirmatory evidence for part of the theory of evolution.
(B) Tiktaalik confirms, if it confirms anything, descent with modification rather than the Darwinian mechanism. At best it shows that sea creatures were transformed stepwise into land creatures. But that is an inference from the skeletal remains. Absent soft tissues and especially DNA, we can say nothing about the mechanism which produced Tiktaalik, or any other alleged member of the fish-to-amphibian series. All we can say is that it looks as if some sort of fish became something like Tiktaalik, and then something like Tiktaalik became something like a modern amphibian. [...] It is important to get the logic right here. If the *only* possible explanation for common descent were the Darwinian mechanism, then evidence for common descent would also be evidence for the Darwinian mechanism. But if there are *other* possible explanations for common descent, i.e., non-Darwinian explanations, then evidence for common descent does not establish the truth of Darwinism. Now it happens that there are other explanations for common descent: Lamarck-type explanations, Bergsonian explanations, Dentonian explanations, etc. A Lamarckian, a Bergsonian, a Teilhardian, a Dentonian and a Darwinian explanation would all predict that we would find a fossil like Tiktaalik. Therefore, the finding of Tiktaalik does not settle the dispute between Lamarckians, Bergsonians, Teilhardians, Dentonians, and Darwinians. It establishes (at best) the fact of evolution, not the mechanism of evolution. Thus, I ask the Darwinists: How can we test the notion of random mutation plus natural selection?
How would you "test the notion of random mutation plus natural selection"? You point out that the Tiktaalik fossils tell us nothing about the genetic pathways that led up to it and, while this is true, it sounds too much like a glass-half-full/glass-half-empty distinction. You play down the significance of the Tiktaalik find and what it does tell us in favor of what it does not and cannot show. What purpose does that serve? But let's agree that the <Tiktaalik fossils are not going to provide any evidence of the genetic pathways life followed in far-distant past and then consider whether any evidence of those paths will have survived to the present. If the answer is that it is so highly improbable that we can safely ignore the possibility then is there any point in asking for such evidence at all? And if that is agreed then where do you think we look for data, however indirect, that random mutation and natural selection? It is not enough to claim that Lamarckian, etc explanations would have predicted Tiktaalik as surely as the Darwinian. The fact is they didn't, it is not at all clear that they could and until they do put forward well-founded predictions with the same fecundity as Darwinism we have no reason to think they can.Seversky
March 2, 2009
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Seversky: I replied to your latest post at #145 above. I mention this in case you didn't notice it amidst the off-topic flak which surrounded it. I apologize for the interruption. I thought your last post was good and I tried to write a thorough response. Constructive critics are welcome here, and we would be glad to hear from you again.Thomas Cudworth
March 1, 2009
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Thomas Cudworth (#147): "....Ray has launched into a tirade of self-justification....Among Ray’s complaints was the charge that direct quotations from his posts were not supplied. Well, here is one: '[R. Martinez; #126 & 128:] The Reform[a]tion said the Pope and the Vatican were totally corrupt. Nothing has changed. This is WHY we are Protestants. Ray Martinez, Protestant Evangelical.' It apparently never occurred to Ray that it might constitute an insult to the world’s largest group of Christians to gratuitously denigrate its leadership as 'totally corrupt'. It also apparently never occurred to him that his use of the pronoun 'we', with no antecedent specified, might be taken by a casual UD reader to imply that UD takes a Protestant Evangelical and anti-Catholic stance. I want to make it clear to all Catholic and non-Catholic readers who might have been appalled by Ray’s outburst that UD does not endorse anti-Catholicism, and does not endorse Protestant Evangelical Christianity or any other faith. UD is an open forum for all those of any religion (or of no religion) who are interested in seriously and respectfully discussing the possibility of the detection of intelligent design in nature. Catholics are as welcome here as Protestant Evangelicals." Ray Martinez: It is an undisputed fact that the Protestant Reformation came about because the Reformers had had enough of the Pope's anti-Biblical practices. The Roman Church had become totally corrupt. This is what led to the Reformation and the birth of PROTESTantism. We know the Reformers paid with their lives. They were burned at the stake. Martin Luther attacked papacy corruption. Today, his name remains revered. If the Catholic Church today ends up supporting Darwinism, and this seems to be the case, then this is the context of my quote. All Atheists support Darwinism/evolution because evolution says the Bible and Divine inspiration is false. If evolution did not support the Atheism worldview Atheists would not support Darwinism. Evolution presupposes Materialism and Materialism explicitly says that only unguided material causation exists in reality, Intelligent does not. Those are the objective claims of evolutionary theory. Again, this is why all Atheists are evolutionists. Darwinism is the Atheism explanation of life. Any Church, Protestant or Catholic, that gives aid and comfort to the Atheism explanation of life is totally corrupt. They are explained the exact same way the Bible explains an original Apostle betraying Jesus to His face with a kiss: under the direct control of Satan. Yes, the Bible explains how "Christians" could support the Atheism view of life while thinking that they are following Christ. RayR. Martinez
March 1, 2009
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Re: #147 Despite the gentle intervention of Timaeus, who disputed none of Ray’s ideas and made recommendations regarding only Ray's bedside manner, Ray has launched into a tirade of self-justification, showing that he completely missed the point about how he comes across. It is clear that Ray is incapable of seeing himself as others see him. Among Ray’s complaints was the charge that direct quotations from his posts were not supplied. Well, here is one: “The Reform[a]tion said the Pope and the Vatican were totally corrupt. Nothing has changed. This is WHY we are Protestants. “Ray Martinez, Protestant Evangelical” It apparently never occurred to Ray that it might constitute an insult to the world’s largest group of Christians to gratuitously denigrate its leadership as “totally corrupt”. It also apparently never occurred to him that his use of the pronoun “we”, with no antecedent specified, might be taken by a casual UD reader to imply that UD takes a Protestant Evangelical and anti-Catholic stance. I want to make it clear to all Catholic and non-Catholic readers who might have been appalled by Ray’s outburst that UD does not endorse anti-Catholicism, and does not endorse Protestant Evangelical Christianity or any other faith. UD is an open forum for all those of any religion (or of no religion) who are interested in seriously and respectfully discussing the possibility of the detection of intelligent design in nature. Catholics are as welcome here as Protestant Evangelicals. I recommend that we all follow the advice of Apollos and ignore all of Ray’s future posts on this and other threads, until he shows the minimal degree of humility expected in civilized conversation. As for myself, I will not respond to him here or on any other thread until he explicitly distances the “we” in his remark from the position taken both by Intelligent Design and by Uncommon Descent, and until he *directly*, *without qualification*, and *unambiguously* retracts his anti-Catholic remark and apologizes to all UD readers for making it.Thomas Cudworth
March 1, 2009
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Timaeus (#146): "I agree with the others that the discussion over the alleged conflict between ID and common descent has become non-productive, and I don’t want to pursue it...." It's become unproductive only because UD refuses to engage the conflict. They have decided to shut down all disagreement by various phrases that beg the question or they *assert* disagreement to be some type of ad hominem attack. Objective persons of any persuasion recognize these tactics to be rooted in the inability to address and/or refute. If UD declares the conflict a PRATT then this is the ultimate sign of the inability to refute and/or address. Again, objective persons understand that there is no such thing as a PRATT based on the assumption of an audience always containing new people who are undecided. Timaeus: "Yes, you did finally disagree with Dembski’s comments on common descent. But I think that Thomas’s point was that you had previously said (117, 125 etc.) that Dembski agreed with you and disagreed with Behe." 117 says no such thing. 125 says: "It clashes with Behe—-no doubt. Show me quotes by Johnson and Dembski?" I *asked* for the quote. Thomas provided. No where did I say that Dembski and I agree concerning evolution and common ancestry. I asked because I didn't know. Now I know. How could something so simple be misconstrued? But for the record: the Dembski quote provided by Thomas says ID can do two paradoxical things simultaneously: Cudworth quoting Dembski (#138): "Intelligent design is not and never will be a doctrine of creation....intelligent design has no stake in living things coming together suddenly in their present form. To be sure, intelligent design leaves that as a possibility. But intelligent design is also fully compatible with large-scale evolution over the course of natural history, all the way up to what biologists refer to as “common descent"...." The claim or explanation of ID says everything before the word "possibility" to be a an open possibility for ID, so is everything after the word "possibility," that is, "large scale evolution" and "common descent." Dembski's claims for ID are logically flawed. Aristotelian Logic says "A" cannot be "A" and not "A" AT THE SAME TIME. If you were educated in the West then your education presupposed Aristotelian Logic. ID cannot be open to Creationism and anti-Creationism (= "large scale evolution" and "common descent") AT THE SAME TIME. ID corresponds to Creationism because both accept the exact same agency of causation, Divine power and/or Intelligence. THIS IS WHY in my last post to Thomas Cudworth I identified Dembski's ID definitions and explanations to be reportive and stipulative. *These* definitions or explanations exist in a state of subjectivity in addition to being logically flawed. Again, I would like to stress that my criticism is based solely on the Dembski quote that Thomas Cudworth posted. Timaeus: "Thomas was trying to get you to see that Dembski disagreed with you and agreed with Behe, and to plainly admit that fact." I have shown that no where did I say Dembski agreed with me. After the quote was produced I have admitted that he does not. But on second thought: since the Dembski quote actually says ID is open to the possibility of Creationism how is it that we disagree? I am asking a real non-rhetorical question. Does Behe agree with the Dembski quote? The Dembski quote actually says, as I have shown, TWO THINGS: ID is open to the possibility of Creationism and large scale evolution and common descent. Timaeus: "Regarding your comment about William Dembski’s position, It may seem to you that you were attacking only Dembski’s argument, and not his personal religious beliefs. However, the way you worded things, that was not clear. Your words could be taken to mean that Dembski personally denies the divine inspiration of Moses, and you do not have the right to say or even imply that unless you have a direct statement from him to that effect." I completely disagree. The way I worded things was perfectly clear. Reiteration or what I said in sequential order: Based on Dembski's [possible] acceptance of large scale evolution and common descent, the same contradicts Genesis and the claim of the canon: Divine inspiration. I surely do not appreciate being misrepresented. I have chosen my words carefully. To say I attacked anyone personally is an egregious and verifiable misrepresentation. Simply scroll back and confirm. I am a guest here and I have done nothing but participate like a gentleman. I find it rather curious that these charges have yet to be accompanied by the quotes. This tells anyone with a brain that they are error or false accusations. RayR. Martinez
February 28, 2009
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Ray at 144: I agree with the others that the discussion over the alleged conflict between ID and common descent has become non-productive, and I don’t want to pursue it, but may I make some practical comments about the art of polite debate, comments which may help smooth things over between you and your conversation partners? Yes, you did finally disagree with Dembski’s comments on common descent. But I think that Thomas’s point was that you had previously said (117, 125 etc.) that Dembski agreed with you and disagreed with Behe. Thomas was trying to get you to see that Dembski disagreed with you and agreed with Behe, and to plainly admit that fact. It would therefore have been intellectually gracious if, before attacking Dembski’s position, you had said something like: “I see now that I misread and misunderstood Dembski’s position, and that Dembski agrees with Behe. I spoke too hastily. I thank you for the correction.” Direct admissions of error make subsequent conversation much less prickly. Regarding your comment about William Dembski’s position, It may seem to you that you were attacking only Dembski’s argument, and not his personal religious beliefs. However, the way you worded things, that was not clear. Your words could be taken to mean that Dembski personally denies the divine inspiration of Moses, and you do not have the right to say or even imply that unless you have a direct statement from him to that effect. Perhaps what you meant to say was: “I am sure that Dembski is a sincere believer and personally accepts the divine inspiration of Moses, but I believe that he makes an intellectual error in failing to see the threat to divine inspiration that is contained in common descent.” If that is what you meant to say, that is what you should have said. What you did say could easily be understood as an attack on a particular person’s religious conviction. Such an interpretation would be natural, given your previous anti-Catholic remark, which I even as a non-Catholic found offensive. It is important, before posting anything, to ask oneself, not merely, “Is my position true?”, but also, “How will this way of expressing my position come across to others?” I think you need to pay more attention to that second question. No matter how right your conclusions may be, if you come across as belligerent, doctrinaire, religiously judgmental, or unwilling to directly concede error, no one is going to listen to your arguments with a sympathetic ear. T.Timaeus
February 28, 2009
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I thank Seversky (#143) for returning us to the topic of the discussion. First, let me say that I have no problem with the first three paragraphs, where Seversky gives his account of science. I do have a problem with his fourth paragraph, where he says: “In spite of Paleyist attempts to minimize its significance, Tiktaalik was just such a test. If the researchers had found nothing in the Devonian rocks it would have been a failure of evolutionary theory and would have tended to disconfirm it. In the event, the discovery of the fossils was a triumph of prediction for the theory and is evidence tending to confirm it.” My objection here is twofold: (A) Had Tiktaalik *not* been found, the Darwinists could just give their usual explanation: “We don’t have as many transitional forms as we’d like because fossilization only occurs under ideal conditions. In fact, the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record is itself predictable in terms of our theory. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” So, while Darwinists treat finds like Tiktaalik as confirmation of their theory, and trumpet them loudly whenever they occur, the absence of such finds (and the absences outnumber the presences by a large margin) is not treated seriously as disconfirming evidence. It is argued that a transitional fossil will eventually be found (heads I win), or that it is unreasonable to expect very many transitional fossils to be found (tails you lose). The theory thus becomes immune to disconfirmation from the fossil record – short of the proverbial Cambrian rabbit. (B) Tiktaalik confirms, if it confirms anything, descent with modification rather than the Darwinian mechanism. At best it shows that sea creatures were transformed stepwise into land creatures. But that is an inference from the skeletal remains. Absent soft tissues and especially DNA, we can say nothing about the mechanism which produced Tiktaalik, or any other alleged member of the fish-to-amphibian series. All we can say is that it looks as if some sort of fish became something like Tiktaalik, and then something like Tiktaalik became something like a modern amphibian. That this doesn’t get us to the Darwinian mechanism can be shown by reflecting upon a sequence of changes in any modern technological invention. We could line up a series of automobiles from the Model T Ford through to the Ford Mustang, and in terms of body shape, engine design, etc., it would be easy to show that each model was a “transitional form” between earlier models and subsequent models, with some similarities and differences. That would not prove that the transition was caused by accidents which fortunately produced new, driveable cars. We know that in fact each new car model looks like the previous one because some old ideas were retained in the design even as new ones were added. The sequence is properly explained by design, not by chance. Similarly, the sequence that led from fish through Tiktaalik to amphibians, even if accepted as THE sequence by which land animals emerged, does not answer the important question, i.e., “Was this sequence the result of chance mutations, or was it in some way guided to a pre-determined end?” I would like to focus on point (B), because it is the crucial one. The absence of fossils like Tiktaalik puts *both* common descent *and* the Darwinian mechanism in question. The presence of fossils like Tiktaalik makes common descent much more likely, but does not confirm the Darwinian mechanism which explains common descent. The Darwinian mechanism needs a separate test of its own, above and beyond all tests for common descent. My complaint is that the Darwinians do not or will not provide a test for the mechanism, independent of the test for common descent. It is important to get the logic right here. If the *only* possible explanation for common descent were the Darwinian mechanism, then evidence for common descent would also be evidence for the Darwinian mechanism. But if there are *other* possible explanations for common descent, i.e., non-Darwinian explanations, then evidence for common descent does not establish the truth of Darwinism. Now it happens that there are other explanations for common descent: Lamarck-type explanations, Bergsonian explanations, Dentonian explanations, etc. A Lamarckian, a Bergsonian, a Teilhardian, a Dentonian and a Darwinian explanation would all predict that we would find a fossil like Tiktaalik. Therefore, the finding of Tiktaalik does not settle the dispute between Lamarckians, Bergsonians, Teilhardians, Dentonians, and Darwinians. It establishes (at best) the fact of evolution, not the mechanism of evolution. Thus, I ask the Darwinists: How can we test the notion of random mutation plus natural selection? It is not enough to say that random mutation plus natural selection, if true, would produce the fossils that we see, because other explanations would produce the same fossil record. It is not enough to say that no Cambrian rabbits have been found. Darwinians must show (to come back to the illustration I used in response to another critic on this thread) that Woody Allen, despite his 98-pound-weakling physique, is actually capable of snapping Hulk Hogan’s spine. If Darwinians can convince me, with a detailed account at the genetic and developmental level, based on the experimentally established capabilities of genomes and developmental processes, that random mutations plus natural selection could have produced the whole sequence from fish through Tiktaalik to amphibians, I will join them in cracking open a bottle of champagne to celebrate Tiktaalik as confirmation of Darwinism. Until then, I can just as reasonably suppose that Tiktaalik was produced by deterministic front-loading, by alien biochemists, by a life-force, or by the finger of God. So the question remains, what experiments or observations do Darwinists propose that could either verify or falsify their proposed mechanism? What would it take to get a Darwinist to accept that random mutation plus natural selection could *not* have produced certain crucial transitions? Is there *anything* (beyond out-of-sequence fossil finds) which Darwinists would accept as falsifying the mechanism once and for all? Or is the mechanism so general and so elastic (because our knowledge of genetics and development and past environments is still so hazy) that Darwinism can be stretched to cover any contingency at all, just by imagining different mutational sequences or different ancient environmental conditions? If the latter is the case, is Darwinism a scientific theory at all, or just a naturalistic “metanarrative”?Thomas Cudworth
February 28, 2009
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Thomas Cudworth (#142): "It is sad that you cannot admit when you are in error. You challenged me to produce a quotation from Dembski which supported Behe’s view, and I met the challenge, with just one of the many passages from Dembski’s writings that I could have quoted to make the point. Your response was to play with technical-sounding terminology like “stipulative” and “reportive” in order to paper over the fact that Dembski bluntly disagrees with you about the proper definition of ID. That is simply pathetic." My previous reply plainly said that Dembski and I disagree. I explained why. You have chosen not to address the reasons or points of disagreement with any substance----so be it. "The fact is that, though you would like ID to mean the same thing as “creationism”, the world’s major ID theorists say that it does not. In view of the central place of Dr. Behe and Dr. Dembski in the public discussion, and in view of the fact that you have not produced a single book or significant article in defense of ID, your opinion is simply negligible." This says "we are right only because we have published and you have not." No one needs to be told as to what is wrong with this "argument." "One final remark: I believe that Dr. Dembski would be quite angry with your accusation that he denies the divine inspiration of Moses and that he has “given away the store”. I think he would take that as an outrageous slur against his personal faith. This says "disagree with us means you are attacking the man." I did no such thing. I attacked position. RayR. Martinez
February 28, 2009
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Thomas Cudworth @ 15
Seversky’s mention of Tiktaalik shows that he has not grasped the challenge. He should read the fourth-last paragraph carefully.
Before taking up Thomas Cudworth's challenge, let me outline my perspective on science. I think we can assume that from the earliest days people have been trying to make sense of what they observed happening in the world around them. Lives would have depended, for example, on knowing where and when food could be found with least risk to the hunters or gatherers or when was the safest time to drink at a waterhole shared by many other species. Observation alone would have been sufficient to reveal these times and places if enough time were spent in one place but an explanation of why these were true would have been more valuable because it could have been taken to unfamiliar territory and used to find food and drink more safely there. At root, science is simply a highly-formalized and rigorous development of that process. The problem, however, has always been that for any set of observations, where there are two or more competing explanations - and on the assumption that one of the possible explanations is more accurate than the others in that it corresponds more closely than the others to what it is trying to explain - we are confronted with the need to find a means of choosing between them. The obvious solution is to finds ways of testing them against the reality they are supposed to model. The key word here is "test". In science, a theory can be viewed as an explanatory framework constructed around an initial set of data which become evidence for that theory if they can be fitted snugly within it. This initial evidence can often be sketchy so, once a theory has been formulated, the hunt is on to find more data to fill out the picture. A good theory should predict where to look and what you should expect to find when you look there. If you find what is predicted then that tends to support the theory, if you don't find it then that tends to undermine or, if you like, falsify it. In spite of Paleyist attempts to minimize its significance, Tiktaalik was just such a test. If the researchers had found nothing in the Devonian rocks it would have been a failure of evolutionary theory and would have tended to disconfirm it. In the event, the discovery of the fossils was a triumph of prediction for the theory and is evidence tending to confirm it.
Now I know that when this argument has been made in the past, neo-Darwinians have issued a standard answer. They say that Darwinian evolution is easily falsifiable. All one has to do is find a Cambrian rabbit, or any other fossil that is so far out of sequence that the creature in question cannot have evolved by stepwise Darwinian means. This, however, for reasons given by others, is not an adequate answer. Many ID proponents have no problem with the notion of common descent. They have no problem with the notion that one creature has been used as the basis of a subsequent and more advanced creature. They therefore do not reject “evolution”, and they have no desire to find a Cambrian rabbit or a Jurassic monkey. What they reject is the Darwinian “chance plus natural selection” explanation of evolution. So what neo-Darwinians are being asked, when they are being asked about falsification, is not “What would falsify common descent?” It is: “What would falsify your theory that small, incremental steps, which occur due to genetic accidents, can be combined into useful new structures, up to and including the creation of entirely new functional body plans?”
Coming now to the fourth-from-last-paragraph from the original post, which I am accused of not reading carefully enough, we find that the discovery of a fossil rabbit from the pre-Cambrian era would not be accepted as evidence against the process of "chance plus natural selection". But, apart from some diversionary references to common descent, we are not told why not. Darwin proposed a mechanism whereby the gradual accumulation of tiny, incremental changes over millions of years, shaped and channeled by environmental pressures, could bring about major changes in morphology and lead to the formation of new species. This is clearly a very long, very slow process which can take billions of years to move from a narrow range of relatively simple organisms to the huge diversity of complex living things we see around us today. A rabbit is but one contemporary outcome of that process and to find the fossil of one far out of sequence in pre-Cambrian strata, long before such a relatively sophisticated organism should have had time to evolve, would be clear evidence against the Darwinian mechanism of evolution through random mutation and natural selection. This is not sufficient for Thomas Cudworth, however, he wants much more, much more:
But what mechanism produced Tiktaalik from its supposed ancestors? What mechanism produced Tiktaalik’s supposed descendants from itself? How does Seversky propose testing the hypothesis “Tiktaalik evolved from an earlier fish by means of random mutations plus natural selection”? What Seversky hasn’t grasped is that he needs to supply more than a sketchy morphological pathway for Tiktaalik’s line; he needs a working, nuts-and-bolts model of the genomic changes, developmental adjustments, etc. – a model that does not just sound good on paper but can be tested, as in: “I propose that Part X and Part Y and Part Z of the genome changed in precisely ways A and B and C, and that this had developmental results D and E and F, and that the new phenotype underwent selection pressures G and H and I, and here is how we can test to find out if all of those things could in fact have happened.”
Quite apart from the fact that he is asking for the "pathetic level of detail" that was scorned by William Dembski, we have to ask if it is a practical test. Suppose critics of Fred Hoyle's theory of the nucleosynthesis of carbon in stars refused to accept it unless a probe were sent back in time to gather samples from the cores of ancient stars, would that have been a practical test and hence good grounds for rejecting the theory unless it were performed? While it would indeed be a test of the theory the fact that it would be beyond the limits of current science and technology make it so impractical as to be worthless. Equally, while a detailed step-by-step reconstruction of the genetic pathway leading up to Tiktaalik would be valuable, assuming have we the knowledge needed to be able to construct one, the fact that it is highly improbable that any genetic material fossilized, let alone survived until the present, means it is unlikely there will be anything against which to confirm the hypothesis. Again, this would make the test so impractical as to be worthless but its impracticality speaks neither for nor against the theory.Seversky
February 28, 2009
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Ray: It is sad that you cannot admit when you are in error. You challenged me to produce a quotation from Dembski which supported Behe's view, and I met the challenge, with just one of the many passages from Dembski's writings that I could have quoted to make the point. Your response was to play with technical-sounding terminology like "stipulative" and "reportive" in order to paper over the fact that Dembski bluntly disagrees with you about the proper definition of ID. That is simply pathetic. The fact is that, though you would like ID to mean the same thing as "creationism", the world's major ID theorists say that it does not. In view of the central place of Dr. Behe and Dr. Dembski in the public discussion, and in view of the fact that you have not produced a single book or significant article in defense of ID, your opinion is simply negligible. One final remark: I believe that Dr. Dembski would be quite angry with your accusation that he denies the divine inspiration of Moses and that he has "given away the store". I think he would take that as an outrageous slur against his personal faith. Consider yourself lucky that I am chairing the discussion on this thread, and not Dr. Dembski. Were he still performing disciplinary chores for UD, I suspect that, having made such remarks, you would find yourself out in the cold for an extended period of time. And I cannot say that such a penalty would be entirely unfitting for remarks so personal and doctrinaire. I suggest that you take a few days off from posting, in order to regain some perspective. In the meantime, I shall follow the advice of Apollos, and refrain from replying to any further comments of yours.Thomas Cudworth
February 28, 2009
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Thomas Cudworth (#138): Quoting Darwin: “Lamarck … first did the eminent service of arousing attention to the probability of all change in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world, being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition.” David Clifford, Ph.D. Cambridge University. http://www.victorianweb.org/science/lamarck1.html Clifford writing in the Lamarck bio: "In 1809 he published his most famous work, Philosophie Zoologique. This volume describes his theory of transmutation. The theory that Lamarck published consisted of several components. Underlying the whole was a 'tendency to progression', a principle that Creation is in a constant state of advancement. It was an innate quality of nature that organisms constantly 'improved' by successive generation, too slowly to be perceived but observable in the fossil record. Mankind sat at the top of this chain of progression, having passed through all the previous stages in prehistory. However, this necessitated the principle of spontaneous generation, for as a species transformed into a more advanced one, it left a gap: when the simple, single-celled organisms advanced to the next stage of life, new protozoans would be created (by the Creator) to fill their place." Ray Martinez (#117): "Lamarck relied upon spontaneous generation (Divine involvement) to sustain descent (David Clifford, Ph.D., the Victorian Web, Lamarck biography)." TC (#138): "....and the denial of miraculous interposition (contra your assertion in #117 above)." As we can see I did not make an assertion; rather, I wrote a referenced fact. I do not wish to argue the apparent contradiction between Darwin and Clifford. I wish to only say that both of us have supported our respective claims. Thanks for the Darwin quote. I had forgotten about it. TC: "Note the words 'ALL change' (implying macroevolution)...." Those words do not correspond to macroevolution as WE understand the term since the rise of Darwinism. Lamarck proposed what scholars call a "ladder view" of progressive change. Clifford called it a "chain." Neither description has any correspondence whatsoever to Darwin's branching tree. Here is what Darwin said in 1859 about Lamarck 1809: "You often allude to Lamarck's work; I do not know what you think about it, but it appeared to me extremely poor; I got not a fact or idea from it" (F. Darwin ed. "Life & Letters" 1887 Vol. 2, page 215). OUCH! Then you quote Dembski at length. The excerpt says ID has no problem with "large-scale evolution" and "common descent." Dembski is using a reportive and stipulative definition of ID. Both categories are valid to define words and terms, however. Definitions, if challenged, MUST have correspondence to scholarship and/or facts or they are invalid. Both "Intelligence" or "Intelligent" and "Design" are terms that have a very long pre-history in the History of Science. Each word corresponds to an attribute of a supposed invisible Designer. But more specifically each word presupposes the agency of "Divine power" operating in reality causing biological production. On the other hand, the terms "transmutation" and "common descent" or any of the synonyms have an equally long history. SINCE DARWIN 1859 they presuppose the absence of Divine power and advocate unguided material agency operating in reality causing biological production. The point is that the evolutionary terms belong to a paradigm (Darwin 1859) that says Divine power is NOT operating in reality. Dembski ignores these objective facts. This is why his definition or explanation of ID is reportive (means what anyone says it means) and stipulative. Again, both reportive and stipulative are vaild; but they are not objective, or based on etymological or cultural renderings (two other valid categories to define words and terms). Both historic ID and Darwinism have their own unique terms to describe their agency of biological production. For Dembski or Ken Miller to raid one anothers terms and place them contrary to the agency of causation that they have always described is anti-objective and confusion, that is, the fusion of contrary concepts and ideas. But, however, like I said, Dembski can stipulate any rendering he so desires, and he has. Persons like me can come along and point out the major problems, which I have. William Dembski is a Protestant Christian. The source of his faith, the Bible, is anti-evolution and anti-common ancestry. Genesis says original species all had a sudden origin via Divine power operating IN reality. Evolution, since Darwin 1859, says Divine power is absent from reality, that is why unguided material is proposed. Darwinism also says sudden origin of species is false. The point is obvious: the objective claims of the Bible and Evolution contradict diametrically. By defining ID to accommodate the main claims of Darwinism, Dembski is saying Moses was not Divinely inspired. With all due repsect he has given away the store. We would expect this from Ken Miller, but not from a soldier of Christ. In the N.T. Jesus, the eternal Logos in the flesh, validated the Book of Genesis. Ray Martinez, Protestant Evangelical, Old Earth-Young Biosphere Creationist, Paleyan Designist, student of British Natural Theology-species immutabilist.R. Martinez
February 27, 2009
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R. Martinez is a troll. He shows up periodically, performs some Kung-fu moves in the mirror, proclaims his foes vanquished, then disappears back to his mom's basement. On every occasion, some well-meaning folks attempt in vain to engage him on an adult level. According to his behavior, he's probably one of the following: a child; a frequent traveler on the short bus; or a sock puppet who lacks the commitment to be convincing. I'll allow for a very small chance that he is sincere, and that the puffiness of pride is contributing to both his rude behavior, and his delusion that he makes any sort of reasonable argument. I recommend one of the following: 1) ignoring him; 2) pointing and laughing; 3) insisting that he straighten up his act if he wants to eat at the adult table.Apollos
February 27, 2009
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Ray: In replying to your remarks, I find that words almost fail me. Perhaps the best thing for me to do is to quote a couple of the people on whose opinion you think you are relying. Charles Darwin, *The Origin of Species*, Sixth Edition (Modern Library), “An Historical Sketch”, pp. 3-4: “Lamarck ... first did the eminent service of arousing attention to the probability of all change in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world, being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition.” Note the words “ALL change” (implying macroevolution) and the denial of miraculous interposition (contra your assertion in #117 above). William Dembski, *No Free Lunch*, section 6.2, p. 314: “First off, intelligent design is not a form of anti-evolutionism. Intelligent design does not claim that living things came together suddenly in their present form through the efforts of a supernatural creator. Intelligent design is not and never will be a doctrine of creation.... intelligent design has no stake in living things coming together suddenly in their present form. To be sure, intelligent design leaves that as a possibility. But intelligent design is also fully compatible with large-scale evolution over the course of natural history, all the way up to what biologists refer to as “common descent” (i.e., the full genealogical interconnectedness of all organisms). If our best science tells us that living things came together gradually over a long evolutionary history and that all living things are related by common descent, then so be it. Intelligent design can live with that result and indeed live with it cheerfully.” So Darwin tells you that you are wrong about Lamarck, and Dembski says directly, in his most important theoretical work, that you are wrong about ID. And we’ve already established (since you haven’t denied it) that you have attacked Bergson and Denton without having read them. You have also cited a work by Secord (whom I have never heard of) which apparently makes the utterly false and easily disprovable claim that all of Darwin’s supporters were atheists (his most ardent supporters were in fact Anglican clergymen). You have also stated that Darwin was an atheist, based on his autobiography, yet in my complete copy of his autobiography, he never calls himself an atheist; he calls himself at various points sceptical, agnostic, and theistic. He certainly denies the truth of Christianity, but that does not make one an atheist. Overall, then, your scholarship leaves much to be desired. I suspect the problem is autodidacticism, and if that is the case, then I suggest that you acquire some formal training before making more public statements in the area of the history of science. You’ve also imputed to Michael Behe insincere motivations which you have no business imputing. Has he conveyed these motivations – which contradict all the relevant statements in his published work – to you personally? If so, please provide the documentation. Otherwise, please have the decency to withdraw your remarks and issue an apology to Dr. Behe. Finally, your anti-Catholic statement, aside from its intrinsic offensiveness, is destructive of the coherence of ID as an intellectual movement. ID’s leading biological theorist, Michael Behe, is Catholic, and many of ID’s key supporters, here on UD and elsewhere, are Catholic. Ray, if you want to lead a Protestant evangelical anti-evolution crusade, UD is not the place to do it. UD is a focal point for ID supporters of all kinds, including many who accept common descent, and many who do not share your religious views. Please leave the religiously partisan remarks aside, and please make sure you read both ID writers and historical sources with care and understanding before you comment on them. I do not have the authority to ban anyone from posting here, nor, if I did have such authority, would I ever exercise it (except under the most extreme provocation), because I am committed to freedom of speech and to the freedom to express unpopular ideas. However, if I had the power, I would certainly consider suspending your posting privileges until you apologized both to Michael Behe and to all Catholic ID supporters for the remarks made above. On those two points, you are definitely in violation of basic social decencies, without which a controversial site like UD will soon break down into barbarism.Thomas Cudworth
February 27, 2009
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You win Ray. Atom Hehe...you mean you were unable to refute Mr. Martinez's non-ID related arguments?ab
February 27, 2009
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You win Ray. AtomAtom
February 27, 2009
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Atom (#133): "ID isn’t about that. It doesn’t start with presuppositions about whether or not something was actually designed; that is the conclusion...." Atom: I just obtained controlling interest in a bridge in Brooklyn, looks like a cash cow, email me if you want in. RayR. Martinez
February 27, 2009
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Atom (#133): "I can direct you to ICR.org and Answers-in-Genesis.com where you can find many like-minded fellows interested in showing G-d’s glory through Creation." AiG, like most Fundamentalists, accept mutability/evolution like all Atheists and yourself. I reject the main claim of Materialism (= species mutability). "Sorry I didn’t have time to read your whole post...." Or you are unable to address and refute. RayR. Martinez
February 27, 2009
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Ray (if I may call you by your first name), If ID doesn't jibe with Genesis, or the Koran, or the Vedic Scriptures, that's fine; it is only the science of design detection. It isn't YEC or OEC, or any other grand overarching narrative of how we got here. It simply develops methods for detecting design in systems and tests the systems on earth (and the cosmos themselves) for design. You can argue all day about Genesis, Theos, etc. but that isn't ID. Not to say ID is incompatible with Genesis; it is compatible, just as it is also with (designed) common ancestry. If you hate Common Ancestry from a biblical perspective, that's fine (and some would say commendable.) I can direct you to ICR.org and AnswersinGenesis.com where you can find many like-minded fellows interested in showing G-d's glory through Creation. ID isn't about that. It doesn't start with presuppositions about whether or not something was actually designed; that is the conclusion (or not, depending on the levels of CSI and other markers present.) Sorry I didn't have time to read your whole post, but I'm guessing most of it was side issues unrelated to ID anyway. AtomAtom
February 27, 2009
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Atom (#127): "....ID can accommodate both because a Designer could have designed one master organism that produced all others (within the limits of physics and information theory), or several separate organisms. Both options are valid ID options." Standard theistic evolutionism attempting to trick naive Christians into accepting anti-Genesis common ancestry. What is your source for a Designer creating this way? Intelligent Design presupposes biological reality to reflect the work of invisible Creator. There is no source for any Divine Being creating through common ancestry. Common ancestry PRESUPPOSES the non-existence of the GENESIS Creator (= God). Next: In addition, to advocate what you have advocated, that is, Designer creating one master organism or several which produce all others corresponds directly to how Charles Darwin ended "On The Origin Of Species" (1859:490). This ending is advocating Deism (Ruse 2005). Deity is external to reality and initiates biological First Cause via breathing life into a form or a few forms. Deism says Deity is NOT involved with reality thereafter. Darwin advocated Deism because his theory excluded a place for God. Now, what is your source for a deistic Deity? The Genesis Theos (= Theism) is directly INvolved with biological production IN reality. Are you telling me that Theists like William Dembski and Phillip Johnson accept Deism? Since Deism accepts the non-involvement of God in reality the view corresponds with Atheism which says God is not seen in reality. Charles Darwin was an Atheist as early as 1837 and 1838 (Autobio:85-87). These Autobio pages were dated by his son Frank to be speaking of the two years 1837 and 1838 (see footnote by F. Darwin, page 85). During these same two years Darwin conceived his evolution theory (Autobio:124) and wrote both private notebooks advocating Materialism, while admitting to being a Materialist (Notebooks M and N: 1838-1839). The point here is that when Darwin ended the "Origin" advocating sourceless Deism he was doing so to evade being identified as an Atheist. He HAD to account for First Cause because if he didn't he would be admitting to Atheism. Atheism believes that matter and life have eternal existence because no Deity exists to have caused their existence. Do you understand? Common ancestry is a predetermined conclusion once God is excluded from reality. It is a one horse race, the only option for Atheists. ID does not accept common ancestry because ID says Theos/God is not an absentee landlord (Dembski 1999). Species are immutable. God supervises nature hands-on just like Genesis portrays. There isn't ANY evidence of evolution ever occurring on this planet. There is plenty of evidence for evolution if the atheistic assumptions and presuppositions of Materialism are accepted. Darwinism is Materialism (= anti-science, also known as Scientism (Smith 2001)). Ray Martinez, student of British Natural Theology, Old Earth-Young Biosphere Creationist, Paleyan Designist.R. Martinez
February 27, 2009
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Mr Martinez, it is not my opinion that
"Behe *chose* to “accept” common ancestry and human evolution in order for his IC evidence to not be dismissed as originating from a Creationist. His strategy has failed and now he is stuck."
This would be yours.Upright BiPed
February 27, 2009
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Thomas Cudworth (#120): "....the face of the fact that the Roman Church allows evolution as a permitted view of origins, which it would not do if evolution implied only the chance mechanisms put forward by Darwin.” Ray Martinez (#126): "The Reform[a]tion said the Pope and the Vatican were totally corrupt. Nothing has changed. This is WHY we are Protestants. Ray Martinez, Protestant Evangelical" I re-pasted the above in order to make a spelling correction (R.M.). Thomas Cudworth (#120): "Those of us who have carefully studied the original writings of Darwin, the history of science, and so on, would prefer not to have to go into damage control mode to deal with careless statements made by those on our own side. We would rather direct our attacks against the Darwinists. So please, concentrate on getting your history and your science right." Once again: ALL of my claims were supported by recognized scholarship. ALL of your claims are gross error. Your comments above seat yourself as an authority. RayR. Martinez
February 27, 2009
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Mr. Ray Martinez, I'll assume that you're not a troll and that you're speaking your honest mind, to give you the benefit of the doubt. As someone who has followed or been a part of ID for most of my adult life, I can tell you that ID as a restricted science makes no claim about common descent. It shouldn't, either. ID is not Creation Science, nor should it try to be. ID is a tool, with a limited set of questions that it addresses or answers. Anyway, that being said, ID can accommodate both because a Designer could have designed one master organism that produced all others (within the limits of physics and information theory), or several separate organisms. Both options are valid ID options. So you're not going to persuade many here with arguments that ID can't accept CD, since it is easy to show how both options can work well within an ID framework. AtomAtom
February 27, 2009
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Thomas Cudworth (#120): "You can of course define terms any way that you want to. You can define 'evolution' to mean what I am calling “Darwinism”. In that case, evolution is obviously opposed to ID." Nobody can define terms anyway they like. Terms MUST be defined to correspond with facts established by recognized scholarship and reality. You are merely advocating Ken Millerism on the opposite side of the street. William Dembski has published much against Theistic Evolutionism. "Evolution" was accepted as being caused by unguided material (= natural selection). The concept presupposes the falsity of Genesis. This is BASIC stuff. Good grief! "....the face of the fact that the Roman Church allows evolution as a permitted view of origins, which it would not do if evolution implied only the chance mechanisms put forward by Darwin." The Reformtion said the Pope and the Vatican were totally corrupt. Nothing has changed. This is WHY we are Protestants. Ray Martinez, Protestant EvangelicalR. Martinez
February 27, 2009
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"The primary difficulty with your position is that it clashes with that of many leading ID supporters. For example, Michael Behe accepts common descent, but is arguably the world’s leading proponent of intelligent design. How do you square that with your position?" It clashes with Behe----no doubt. Show me quotes by Johnson and Dembski? Behe *chose* to "accept" common ancestry and human evolution in order for his IC evidence to not be dismissed as originating from a Creationist. His strategy has failed and now he is stuck. "I will not remark in detail on the various historical errors in your comments. They show lack of knowledge of the primary sources, and lack of knowledge of the history of evolutionary theory. I would recommend not relying so much on web sites and evangelical sources, and making more use of a university library, or even taking a course on the history of science." All of my claims were supported by scholarship, unlike yours. Your comments above correspond to the inability to refute. I challenge you to back up any of your claims. My expertise is in the History of Science. In later editions of the "Origin" Darwin included a historical review of transmutation. He is a primary source. I suggest that you begin with Darwin. RayR. Martinez
February 27, 2009
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Ray, ID is NOT anti-evolution. "Evolution" can mean several things. ID can be considered anti-blind watchmaker as being the sole driver. ID does NOT say anything about universal common descent. The debate is about the MECHANISMS! So what we have are people arguing against ID when they don't even understand what is being debated.Joseph
February 27, 2009
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Re #106. The “something about whales” was an example of a complex integrated system arising. Or don’t whales count as complex integrated systems?
Not arising from scratch. That is what ID states. But anyway as I have stated there isn't anything in ID which states tat whales could NOT evolve from a land mammal. The debate is about the MECHANISMS. Was it a blind and undirected search? Or was it guided via internal programming?Joseph
February 27, 2009
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Mark Frank, I read the paper. What I didn't understand I asked biology professors about. I also had Dr Doug Axe's explanation to go by. You can read Dr Axe's response: Bold Biology for 2009Joseph
February 27, 2009
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