Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Does ID presuppose a mechanistic view of nature?

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The Nature of NatureThomas and Aristotle have loomed large on this blog recently. I would like to have weighed in on these discussions, but I have too many other things on my plate right now. I therefore offer this brief post.

One critic, going after me directly, asserts that I’m committed to a mechanical view of nature and that I develop ID in ways inimical to an Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of nature, according to which nature operates by formal and final causes. Life, according to this view, would be natural rather than artifactual. ID, by contrast, is supposed to demand an artifactual understanding of life.

I don’t think this criticism hits the mark. I have to confess that I’ve always been much more a fan of Plato than of Aristotle, and so I don’t quite see the necessity of forms being realized in nature along strict Aristotelian lines. Even so, nothing about ID need be construed as inconsistent with Aristotle and Thomas.

ID’s critique of naturalism and Darwinism should not be viewed as offering a metaphysics of nature but rather as a subversive strategy for unseating naturalism/Darwinism on their own terms. The Darwinian naturalists have misunderstood nature, along mechanistic lines, but then use this misunderstanding to push for an atheistic worldview.

ID is willing, arguendo, to consider nature as mechanical and then show that the mechanical principles by which nature is said to operate are incomplete and point to external sources of information (cf. the work of the Evolutionary Informatics Lab — www.evoinfo.org). This is not to presuppose mechanism in the strong sense of regarding it as true. It is simply to grant it for the sake of argument — an argument that is culturally significant and that needs to be prosecuted.

This is not to minimize the design community’s work on the design inference/explanatory filter/irreducible-specified-functional complexity. ID has uncovered scientific markers that show where design is. But pointing up where design is, is not to point up where design isn’t.

For the Thomist/Aristotelian, final causation and thus design is everywhere. Fair enough. ID has no beef with this. As I’ve said (till the cows come home, though Thomist critics never seem to get it), the explanatory filter has no way or ruling out false negatives (attributions of non-design that in fact are designed). I’ll say it again, ID provides scientific evidence for where design is, not for where it isn’t.

What exactly then is the nature of nature? That’s the topic of a conference I helped organize at Baylor a decade ago and whose proceedings (suitably updated) are coming out this year (see here). ID is happy to let a thousand flowers bloom with regard to the nature of nature provided it is not a mechanistic, self-sufficing view of nature.

This may sound self-contradictory (isn’t ID always talking about mechanisms displayed by living forms?), but it is not. As I explain in THE DESIGN REVOLUTION:

In discussing the inadequacy of physical mechanisms to bring about design, we need to be clear that intelligent design is not wedded to the same positivism and mechanistic metaphysics that drives Darwinian naturalism. It’s not that design theorists and Darwinian naturalists share the same conception of nature but then simply disagree whether a supernatural agent sporadically intervenes in nature. In fact, intelligent design does not prejudge the nature of nature—that’s for the evidence to decide [[I would change this parenthetical now; metaphysics needs to be consulted as well, 4.18.10]]. Intelligent design’s tools for design detection, for instance, might fail to detect design. Even so, if intelligent design is so free of metaphysical prejudice, why does it continually emphasize mechanism? Why is it constantly looking to molecular machines and focusing on the mechanical aspects of life? If intelligent design treats living things as machines, then isn’t it effectively committed to a mechanistic metaphysics however much it might want to distance itself from that metaphysics otherwise?

Such questions confuse two senses of the term “mechanism.” Michael Polanyi noted the confusion back in the 1960s (see his article “Life Transcending Physics and Chemistry” in the August 1967 issue of Chemical and Engineering News): “Up to this day one speaks of the mechanistic conception of life both to designate an explanation of life in terms of physics and chemistry [what I was calling “physical mechanisms”], and an explanation of living functions as machineries—though the latter excludes the former. The term ‘mechanistic’ is in fact so well established for referring to these two mutually exclusive conceptions, that I am at a loss to find two different words that will distinguish between them.” For Polanyi mechanisms, conceived as causal processes operating in nature, could not account for the origin of mechanisms, conceived as “machines or machinelike features of organisms.”

Hence in focusing on the machinelike features of organisms, intelligent design is not advocating a mechanistic conception of life. To attribute such a conception of life to intelligent design is to commit a fallacy of composition. Just because a house is made of bricks doesn’t mean that the house itself is a brick. Likewise just because certain biological structures can properly be described as machines doesn’t mean that an organism that includes those structures is a machine. Intelligent design focuses on the machinelike aspects of life because those aspects are scientifically tractable and precisely the ones that opponents of design purport to explain by physical mechanisms. Intelligent design proponents, building on the work of Polanyi, argue that physical mechanisms (like the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random variation) have no inherent capacity to bring about the machinelike aspects of life.

Darwinism deserves at least as much philosophical scrutiny from Thomists/Aristotelians as ID. It’s therefore ironic that ID gets so much more of their (negative) attention.

P.S. ID’s metaphysical openness about the nature of nature entails a parallel openness about the nature of the designer. Is the designer an intelligent alien, a computional simulator (a la THE MATRIX), a Platonic demiurge, a Stoic seminal reason, an impersonal telic process, …, or the infinite personal transcendent creator God of Christianity? The empirical data of nature simply can’t decide. But that’s not to say the designer is anonymous. I’m a Christian, so the designer’s identity is clear, at least to me. But even to identify the designer with the Christian God is not to say that any particular instance of design in nature is directly the work of his hands. We humans use surrogate intelligences to do work for us (e.g., computer algorithms). God could likewise use surrogate intelligences (Aristotelian final causes?) to produce the sorts of designs that ID theorists focus on (such as the bacterial flagellum).

Comments
What "above" said. Thanks for spelling it out. :-)tgpeeler
May 7, 2010
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@tgpeeler -"You intimate that as science progresses, gaps in knowledge shrink. I’m pretty sure that isn’t true. In fact, I think the more science helps us understand about the material world the more intractable things get." That is correct. The notion that scientific discovery fills gaps and one day the gaps will all be filled is rather illusory. Discovery is great and I am not one to deny it, but what people often forget is that while science sometimes does close certain gaps it also opens up new and bigger ones. Simply put, one needs to look at two things. How many questions we have in totality and how many of those we have answered. Assume at time T0 we have 100 questions, 50 of which have been answered via the use of the scientific enterprise. Now at time T1, after a few scientific paradigm shifts (say 50-100 years later) we find ourselves with 600 questions, 200 of which have been answered. In absolute terms we can say that we know four times as much as we did before (assuming collective knowledge) but in relation to the now broader spectrum of questions/issues we have only succesfully answered 200/600. So comparatively speaking we went from knowing the answers to 50% of our total number questions, to now only knowing 33% of the answers to our total number questions.above
May 7, 2010
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Seversky @ 115 "If you write a definition broad enough to encompass the many technical meanings of ‘information’ then how are we to know which applies in a given situation? Unless you are careful to specify which you are intending then you are, indeed, open to the charge of equivocation. For example, the teleosemantic information we are exchanging in these posts is different from that of Shannon or Kolmogorov/Chaitin because the latter are not concerned with meaning." I still don't grant the point as I am not talking about information equivocally within the argument but seeing that it hangs you up that's why I backed off. As it turns out, I don't even need to refer to information at all, really. Even so, all kinds of information require language. "Your argument would stand if and only if we expose your hidden assumption which is that all the laws of physics are known now. Yet plainly we do not know all those laws." This is true, that there is no theory of everything yet. The one that will unite quantum physics and gravity. However, this doesn't mean the premise is not necessarily true. In principle, the laws of physics, natural laws, however you want to say it, deal with the physical world. That's the definition. But information is not physical. It's encoded into a physical substrate but it's not physical itself. It's a category error to say that anything in physics will ever be able to account for the symbols and rules of a language because that's just not what physics is about. If you change the definition of physics to include reference to the abstract world then the entire naturalistic enterprise seems doomed to me every bit as certainly as it is doomed by the failure to account for language. The key to all of this is language. How is something abstract expressed in the physical world? By language. "First, although physical theory points to the Universe beginning in the Big Bang around 13.75bn years ago, there is no theory that explains why or how the Big Bang itself occurred or what happened immediately after. Basically, for that we have nothing." Again I agree that there is no theory that explains why or how the BB occurred. But there are valid deductive arguments that predict a "Big Banger" as well as the BB itself. Or at least that the universe would have a beginning. And, as always, empirical evidence conforms to the conclusions of reason. "Second, suppose we had been able to observe that ballooning sphere of blisteringly-hot, incandescent plasma – without being instantly vaporized – could we have predicted all that followed based on what we know now? I doubt it, although it would be useful to hear from someone with a better knowledge of physics than mine." OK... But I don't see the "so what" that we couldn't predict how things have turned out solely by extrapolating from initial conditions and physical laws. I'm saying that's true but I don't know what conclusions you would draw from that. "Was everything we see now somehow latent in that primordial and undescribed singularity or was it injected later from outside? Again, we simply don’t know.Was everything we see now somehow latent in that primordial and undescribed singularity or was it injected later from outside? Again, we simply don’t know." It's not a matter of "simply" not knowing. It's also a matter of completely rejecting out of hand any argument that opposes the naturalist world view, because it, well, opposes the naturalist world view. "Like Mark Twain’s obituary, your claims about the death of naturalism are “greatly exaggerated”." We'll see. Place your bets. We'll all find out some day. "If a time ever comes when we can say with total confidence that we have a complete physical description of how the Universe works – a Theory of Everything – and if we find that we are unable to account for the emergence of language using that theory, then and only then will your argument stand." I still think you miss the fundamental point. You're making a category error. The material is the material and the abstract is the abstract, and the rules which govern the material will never, can never, by definition, govern the abstract. I don't care what PHYSICAL theories are developed, they will never explain information because information is abstract. "What we can say is that our science, based on the procedures and assumptions of methodological naturalism, has served us well so far in terms of exploring and explaining and exploiting what we see around us. It is not blind to the fact there is still a lot we don’t know. It does not preclude the existence of a god of some sort. It’s just that there has been no need, so far, to invoke one to explain something." While I applaud healthy skepticism on anyone's part there comes a time when people need to face up to reality and recognize logical errors. Anybody who thinks about things for just a minute realizes that there is still a lot that we don't know and probably will never know. It's called the problem of being human. We should all get over that. In the meantime, we should recognize the absolute authority of (right) reason in matters of truth. This is why naturalism fails. It's irrational. It's unreasonable. It can't begin to explain the things that must be explained. It can't account for consciousness, life, design, purpose, agency, language, information, morality, in other words, just about anything that really matters to human beings. The typical move of the naturalist is to deny the existence of those things, since they can't possibly ever explain them (check out eliminative materialism to see the lengths to which people will go to avoid facing up to the obvious facts of our existence). Most of those things I just mentioned can be denied without obvious contradiction but language and information cannot since to deny the existence of language and information, that they have real ontological status, is to USE the very things they deny exist. It's an obvious self-contradiction and therefore obviously false. If you don't see the need to invoke God to explain anything, then go ahead and tell me about why killing 6 million Jews, say, is wrong, morally WRONG, in terms of the naturalist world view. Or tell me why teaching ID as an alternative to evolutionary theory is evil. :-) You will quickly see that you cannot and you will then end up telling me that there is no real moral law. Prove me wrong. Explain to me how, in concept, in a finite universe, a thing can ever account for itself. Tell me how a universe containing, roughly, 10^21 stars, just popped into existence. If life only comes from life, i.e. cells only come from other cells, as cell theory says, then explain the origin of the first cell. You intimate that as science progresses, gaps in knowledge shrink. I'm pretty sure that isn't true. In fact, I think the more science helps us understand about the material world the more intractable things get. More later...tgpeeler
May 7, 2010
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intelligent design theory is an effort to empirically detect whether the "apparent design" in nature observed by biologists is genuine design (the product of an organizing intelligence) or is simply the product of chance and mechanical natural laws.
-John G. West, Discovery Institute http://www.discovery.org/a/1329lastyearon
May 5, 2010
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tgpeeler @ 102
But in the case of evolution, the flawed reasoning is held onto with a (literally) death grip. Let’s have some more fun with modus tollens. If evolution were true (If P), then we would see transitional fossils (Then Q). But we don’t see ANY transitional fossils (~Q). Therefore, evolution is not true
Of course you can have a great deal of fun with logic. Just like you can use a computer to play a Star Wars video game or a simulation of a spaceship that could fly men to Mars and back. One would be a fantasy, one would be based on established facts and theories. One would be fun, one would be of practical use to science. I leave you to guess which. In that context, referring to the claim about the lack of transitional fossils, whoever told you that is just flat out wrong.
Let me point out the huge error here. You are conflating tree rings and rocks and weather with information. The tree rings and the weather and the rocks do indeed result from physical processes over time. However, those physical processes ARE NOT THE INFORMATION. The information was derived or produced by the scientist ABOUT the trees, rocks, and weather. Big difference.
ID proponents attack evolutionary theory on the grounds that our genes contain information and that information could not have got there by natural processes. My argument is that information is what intelligent agents like ourselves derive from our observations of natural phenomena, it is not necessarily a property of the phenomena themselves. I cited tree-rings and weather as examples of that claim. We can extract information from such systems without ID proponents claiming it must have been put there by some intelligent designer.
Please read what you wrote carefully. In one sentence you say “evolution offers an explanation of how those changes came about through natural processes over time.” This is true. NATURAL processes. i.e. Physics. But then you say it doesn’t exclude the possibility of God. Say what? If God isn’t physics then you have just contradicted yourself. Probably just careless.
No, it is just pointing out that science cannot exclude the theistic claim that God created the Universe as we see it, which includes the process of evolution, then, having "lit the blue touch paper", stepped well back to watch the fireworks.
One last thing regarding being true to my “faith.” I suspect you are using that term as it is often used today. That is, to believe something without evidence or reason or cause. This is why I have come to hate the word. “Faith” in the New Testament means one of two things. It’s an act of the will. To trust that something is true based on reason and evidence. Or it means a body of doctrine believed.
I use "faith", like you, to mean either a "body of doctrine" believed, which is more or less equivalent to a religion, or unevidenced belief. The impression from the New Testament is that God places great store in faith in the latter sense. Doubting Thomas is held up as someone who, while not a bad person, failed to live up to that ideal whereas, for agnostics and atheists, he is so much of an ideal he should be their patron saint - if they believed in such things.Seversky
May 2, 2010
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tgpeeler @ 101
That is precisely why I use a generic, dictionary definition of the word. It’s general enough to include ALL of the technical definitions under its umbrella. I don’t see how it could be any broader or inclusive than what I put in my post.
As Michael Behe found at the Dover trial, you should be wary of broad definitions. If you write a definition broad enough to encompass the many technical meanings of 'information' then how are we to know which applies in a given situation? Unless you are careful to specify which you are intending then you are, indeed, open to the charge of equivocation. For example, the teleosemantic information we are exchanging in these posts is different from that of Shannon or Kolmogorov/Chaitin because the latter are not concerned with meaning. Neither is it the same as what is alleged to exist in the human genome for example. But talking about 'information' in our DNA could mislead people who are not aware of the different meanings into thinking that they are the same thing, that DNA contains a 'message' written by some intelligent designer, which is not the case.
Now there is an invalid form of argument called affirming the consequent and I want to illustrate it because people in science make this mistake all the time without realizing (maybe) what they are doing. It goes like this. If it pours down rain for hours and the sidewalks are not covered (If P), the sidewalks will be wet (Then Q). The sidewalks are wet. (P) Therefore, it rained. (Q) Notice that the conclusion doesn’t NECESSARILY FOLLOW (the argument is NOT valid) even if the premises are true. Why? Because maybe the sprinklers made the sidewalks wet instead of the rain. It COULD BE true that it rained but it’s not NECESSARILY true that it rained. Do you see this? “Scientists” who should know better make this kind of argument all the time. If evolution is true then we would expect to see fossil x at strata y. (for example) We do see fossil x at strata y therefore evolution is true. This commits the same fallacy. In fact, there could be another reason for those fossils being where they are.
If your charge is that some scientists can make an explanation sound more certain than it actually is, then I would agree. Scientists are only human and they can be carried away by enthusiasm for their pet hypotheses and theories - and for funding for them - like anyone else. It hardly needs to be pointed out that the more zealous followers of the various faiths are prone to the same flaw. The other thing to bear in mind is that, if you are getting some of your information about science through the popular media, journalists have been known to exaggerate the certainty of a new hypothesis in the interests of a more dramatic report. My observation is that, when pressed, scientists are well aware of the provisional nature of their explanations. For example, if you were to ask the researchers who used the theory of evolution to predict where to find the Tiktaalik fossils, I am sure they they would not claim that the discovery proved evolution true beyond all doubt. They are well aware that, if the prediction had failed, it would count against the theory but not necessarily prove it false - although critics of evolution like yourself would no doubt have seized upon it as doing just that. Equally , I am sure that they are well aware that their successful prediction is more evidence that counts in favor of the theory but does not prove it true in all respects beyond all doubt.
If naturalism is true (if P), then the laws of physics can be used to explain everything, including language (then Q). This is true by definition. This is what naturalism IS and language, after all, is certainly part of the set of “everything.”) But physics cannot explain language. (~Q) (I will back this up below.) Therefore, naturalism is not true. (~P) In fact, if physics can’t explain language then not only is naturalism not true it’s not even possible for it to be true. It’s NECESSARILY false.
Here we have a good example of an argument that is valid but where the conclusion is not necessarily true because the premises are shaky. As you say, if naturalism is true then we should be able to construct a reductive explanation of a phenomenon like language by a chain of cause-and-effect linking the fundamental "laws" of physics to the phenomenon itself.
Second, you can attack the truth of either premise. But the first premise is true by definition. So that leaves the second premise (Physics can’t explain language.) as the only target left. In other words, if you can’t PROVE that physics (or “natural processes”) CAN account for or explain language, then the argument stands and naturalism is necessarily false.
Your argument would stand if and only if we expose your hidden assumption which is that all the laws of physics are known now. Yet plainly we do not know all those laws. First, although physical theory points to the Universe beginning in the Big Bang around 13.75bn years ago, there is no theory that explains why or how the Big Bang itself occurred or what happened immediately after. Basically, for that we have nothing. Second, suppose we had been able to observe that ballooning sphere of blisteringly-hot, incandescent plasma - without being instantly vaporized - could we have predicted all that followed based on what we know now? I doubt it, although it would be useful to hear from someone with a better knowledge of physics than mine. Third, supposing we had come back later when things had settled down a bit. The Universe would be filled with clouds of undifferentiated hydrogen, shaped by the nuclear forces and acted on by gravity, all of which had 'condensed' out of the plasma as it cooled. Observing that, based on current knowledge and thinking, could we have predicted the Universe we observe now, including complex objects like ourselves? Was everything we see now somehow latent in that primordial and undescribed singularity or was it injected later from outside? Again, we simply don't know.
So, the laws of physics, which describe matter and energy and their interaction, HAVE NOTHING TO SAY, EVER, about why “cat” means a certain kind of mammal and why “act” means to do something, something done, or a segment of a play. Clearly there is something else at play here and it is information, which is encoded by said language, about which, physics has nothing to say. Nor will it ever have anything to say because information is immaterial and physics is about the material world. This is so, so simple and easy and it is so, so devastating to the naturalist world view. The game is over. We win. Rather, the truth wins. As it always does in the end.
Like Mark Twain's obituary, your claims about the death of naturalism are "greatly exaggerated". If a time ever comes when we can say with total confidence that we have a complete physical description of how the Universe works - a Theory of Everything - and if we find that we are unable to account for the emergence of language using that theory, then and only then will your argument stand. The flaw that undermines all attacks on naturalism of this kind is the unwarranted assumption that we know all there is to know about the basic physics of the Universe. But, as I argued above, this simply isn't true. It might be that we find there is something like a vast, unimaginable intelligence behind it all; we might be all living in a giant Matrix-like simulation. We just don't know yet. What we can say is that our science, based on the procedures and assumptions of methodological naturalism, has served us well so far in terms of exploring and explaining and exploiting what we see around us. It is not blind to the fact there is still a lot we don't know. It does not preclude the existence of a god of some sort. It's just that there has been no need, so far, to invoke one to explain something.Seversky
May 2, 2010
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Where is Seversky??tgpeeler
April 29, 2010
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@ ilion You said: "The only workable strategies for getting *any* materialists to abandon materialism are those which continuously hit them in the face with the absurdity of it … and that means speaking in *their* language" To be honest, I'm not sure if that is even possible seeing how materialism is the religion of the modern age. What I would suggest instead is exposing materialism and its abhorrent reality to the public for what it truly is. In addition one would need to redefine the nature of the debate to indicate what is truly at stake here. The age old false dichotomy of religion vs science needs to go. The true core of the issue is Materialism vs non-materialismabove
April 28, 2010
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@stephenB You said: "Exactly right. If Kant had not been able to sell the noumenal world as unknowable, Darwin would never have been able to sell design as an “illusion.” The corruption of philosophy always precedes and informs the corruption of science." That is a very interesting idea. Do you mind elaborating a little one that to help me make the connection between the two a little more clear in my mind? Thanksabove
April 28, 2010
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Wm.Dembski:ID’s critique of naturalism and Darwinism should not be viewed as offering a metaphysics of nature but rather as a subversive strategy for unseating naturalism/Darwinism on their own terms. … ID is willing, arguendo, to consider nature as mechanical and then show that the mechanical principles by which nature is said to operate are incomplete and point to external sources of information … This is not to presuppose mechanism in the strong sense of regarding it as true. It is simply to grant it for the sake of argument — an argument that is culturally significant and that needs to be prosecuted." Exactly. And while I am not really an IDist … nor an overly-educated professor of philosophy, being merely a lowly computer programmer … I have understood this from the time I first heard of ID, back in 2000/2001. And, since one must talk to one's audience in its own language, I believe it to be the far better mode of argumentation that going on about how much better A-T is than materialism. The materialists aren't listening the claim, and don't care that it may be true, that A-T works better than materialism -- so long (longer, more than likely) as they are allowed to pretend that materialism "works," they will cling to it. The only workable strategies for getting *any* materialists to abandon materialism are those which continuously hit them in the face with the absurdity of it ... and that means speaking in *their* language.Ilion
April 28, 2010
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StephenB, the thing that constantly amazes me about this is the lack of understanding of how important TRUTH is or not even caring about WHAT IS TRUE. I am supremely interested in that if only for selfish reasons. I have discovered after long and painful experience that my best interests have never been served by me believing BS. I don't really care, per se, WHAT the truth is, I only want to know WHAT IT IS so I can act accordingly. Why people hang on and hang on to obviously false positions is just mystifying. Pretending that reality is one way when it is another has never really worked out for me. I hope to see a reply from Seversky if only because that will give me the opportunity to thank him for pushing me on "information," for two reasons. First I think my reply to his objection is improved and second because I think the argument is even stronger with "language" as the consequent rather than information. Who can argue with what a language is? It will be interesting to see what he says about it. Regarding the "illusion" of design, I couldn't agree more. If there is NO DESIGN in the universe, well then there isn't. But if there isn't, how in the hell do we know about its illusion??!!! GAAAH. It makes me nuts(er). I raised some naturalist ire on one long string of posts that went about 400 long. I think it may have even been on U.D. I said that in my experience naturalists weren't willing to make any intellectual commitments, to be intellectually honest. The reaction was immediate and hostile. For another 300-350 posts I kept pestering, to no avail. Even after I called them out they wouldn't acknowledge any first principles. But you and I are the irrational ones. Right...tgpeeler
April 28, 2010
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---tgpeeler: "To claim to not be able to know about the “real” world is to make a claim to know about the “real” world. Kant says we can know the phenomenal world but not the noumenal world. If that is true, then how does he know the difference?? If we can’t know anything about the noumenal world then how is he aware of it? What nonsense. It’s a shame that so much philosophy is divorced from reason." Exactly right. If Kant had not been able to sell the noumenal world as unknowable, Darwin would never have been able to sell design as an "illusion." The corruption of philosophy always precedes and informs the corruption of science. By the way, you would have enjoyed some of last years dialogues. When I confronted Darwinists with the non-negotiable principles of right reason, they claimed that [a] those principles do not apply to the real world or [b] I was just making them up. Seriously. In other words, they unwittingly confessed that they do not accept reason as a standard for debate or for interpreting evidence. Its on the record.StephenB
April 28, 2010
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re myself at 101. I just looked at the illustrative modus tollens midway through post 101 and realized that I mixed up my Ps and Qs :-) on the conclusion. I said: "If it pours down rain for hours and the sidewalks are not covered (If P), the sidewalks will be wet (Then Q). The sidewalks are wet. (P) Therefore, it rained. (Q)" It SHOULD say: The sidewalks are wet. (Q) Therefore it rained. (P) Regrets for any confusion...tgpeeler
April 27, 2010
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StephenB @ 93 "He went on and on about how the mind creates, classifies, and finalizes universals and that we can’t really know much about the real world or the kind of reality that Dr. Geisler had just explained with such eloquence." This is one of the glaring contradictions in Kant's thinking. To claim to not be able to know about the "real" world is to make a claim to know about the "real" world. Kant says we can know the phenomenal world but not the noumenal world. If that is true, then how does he know the difference?? If we can't know anything about the noumenal world then how is he aware of it? What nonsense. It's a shame that so much philosophy is divorced from reason.tgpeeler
April 27, 2010
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above I guess great minds think alike! ha ha ha. Maybe yours is but mine... :-) John 14:6 tells us who the Truth is. It all fits.tgpeeler
April 27, 2010
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@tgpeeler Once again I find myself in agreement with you sir. You said: my “faith” is never in conflict with truth because my “faith” is to relentlessly search out the truth. That is what I refer to as Faith (capitalized) and is in my opinion a perfect representation of what truly lies at the heart of Christianity.above
April 27, 2010
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Gaah. Another one. Re. the Genesis old vs. young discussion, I didn't mean to say the "Biblical" interpretation since that's what's being interpreted. I meant to say a literal interpretation. In other words, it seems reasonable to me that given the preponderance of the evidence for the age of the universe that probably that is more reliable than a modern and literal interpretation of an ancient language. Just saying... Hugh Ross has written extensively on this and I think very credibly.tgpeeler
April 26, 2010
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Sev, I mean "please read carefully what you wrote." There's always one more error...tgpeeler
April 26, 2010
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Seversky @ 79 continued... "If we define truth as the extent to which our models or explanations correspond with what we observe, the the test must be empirical. If the conclusions of our reasoning are at variance with what we observe then there is most probably a flaw in our reasoning. What is actually there is the test not what we argue should be there." I have no real problem with this. In fact, you have precisely described the problem with evolutionary theory!! The conclusions of the theory are at great variance with what "we" see. (The fossil record for example. Zero transitional forms.) But in the case of evolution, the flawed reasoning is held onto with a (literally) death grip. Let's have some more fun with modus tollens. If evolution were true (If P), then we would see transitional fossils (Then Q). But we don't see ANY transitional fossils (~Q). Therefore, evolution is not true (~P). See how easy this is once you get the hang of it? God I love modus tollens. p.s. I tried this on my wife one night. It went like this. Her: "Honey, wouldn't you rather be doing chores (or something) rather than watching golf?" Me: let me explain modus tollens to you, Sweetie. If I wanted to be doing chores (If P), then I'd be doing chores (Then Q). But I'm not doing chores (~Q). Therefore I don't want to be doing chores (~P). She didn't think it was nearly as funny as I did. I wonder why?? As it turns out, amateurs, and I'm one, should not try this at home. :-) "Dendrochronologists can obtain information about the climate in which a tree has grown by studying the rings in its trunk. Geologists can infer much about the distant history of the Earth from the study of rock strata. Meteorologists forecast weather and describe climate from observations of things like temperature and barometric pressure. None of that information was put there by anyone as far as we know. It is all the result of physical processes acting over time." Let me point out the huge error here. You are conflating tree rings and rocks and weather with information. The tree rings and the weather and the rocks do indeed result from physical processes over time. However, those physical processes ARE NOT THE INFORMATION. The information was derived or produced by the scientist ABOUT the trees, rocks, and weather. Big difference. "Again, this raises the question of the nature of information. Is it a property of the system we are observing or of the models we construct to represent those systems in our minds. Is the red color of a rose a property of the flower itself or the way our minds represent the narrow band of light wavelengths reflected by the petals?" This is probably a technical conversation for another time about the metaphysics of properties. I don't have the time or the expertise, to be honest, to really go into that off the top of my head. But it's irrelevant anyway so it doesn't matter. If you'll recall, I took information out of the argument so I'll be cavalier about this and say: Who cares? :-) "Evolution refers to the process of changes that we observe happening to living things now and which we infer also happened to them in the past. The theory of evolution offers an explanation of how those changes came about through natural processes over time. It does not require the existence of a god but neither does it exclude the possibility. Whatever some of its proponents believe personally, the theory itself is silent about the existence of God." Please read what you wrote carefully. In one sentence you say "evolution offers an explanation of how those changes came about through natural processes over time." This is true. NATURAL processes. i.e. Physics. But then you say it doesn't exclude the possibility of God. Say what? If God isn't physics then you have just contradicted yourself. Probably just careless. "There is no obvious conflict between deistic beliefs and the theory of evolution since there is nothing in the nature of God, as usually understood, which would prevent Him from using evolution as a part of His creation if He so chose." Aah. Equivocation rears its ugly head once again. The "theory of evolution" says "natural processes ONLY." So when God "does it" guess what? It's no longer natural processes ONLY. In one short paragraph you managed to use the term evolution in two completely different ways. "There is perceived to be conflict between some tenets of theistic belief and the theory, although it should be noted that there is disagreement amongst theists about the nature and extent of God’s direct intervention in the world." This is, of course, true. But I don't see the relevance, actually. If you've been keeping up there is disagreement among theists (and Christians - can you say Catholic and Protestant?) about a lot of things. :-) "The problem for theists is where there is a conflict between what they believe and what science reports, how do they resolve it. If they insist that their beliefs take precedence over anything else then that is their choice but they cannot claim to be acting scientifically or even reasonably. On the other hand, if they give science priority then they are not being true to their faith." There is no problem for theists or Christians (me) when there is a conflict between what science reports and what "I believe" (I assume you mean the Bible). Here's how it works out. If general revelation (what you would call science) conflicts with special revelation (what I would call the Bible) THEN, since God cannot contradict Himself (because part of His essence is REASON), there is either a misunderstanding on the part of science or a misinterpretation of scripture. And this merely requires further investigation. For example, there is a huge disagreement with "old universe" Christians (like me) who think the universe is probably about 13.7 billion years old and "young earth creationists" who think the earth/universe was created about 10,000 years ago. Both positions are possible so the determination is who has the better data? (This is just me, now.) If pressed, I would say I think in this case that science has the better evidence and that most likely the Biblical interpretation of 6 literal days in Genesis is incorrect. In other words, in this case I'll guess that science has the answer and that the days of Genesis 1 and 2 are not literal days. (See Hugh Ross at Reasons to Believe for details.) In either case, it's not something that I'd die for. The universe is as old as it is and whatever that is, well that's what it is. But it's not devastating to my world view that the universe is billions of years old. If I find out someday that I was wrong about this, well, no big deal. One last thing regarding being true to my "faith." I suspect you are using that term as it is often used today. That is, to believe something without evidence or reason or cause. This is why I have come to hate the word. "Faith" in the New Testament means one of two things. It's an act of the will. To trust that something is true based on reason and evidence. Or it means a body of doctrine believed. In this sense, the faith of physics today is the atomic theory of matter. It's what physicists believe based on reason and evidence. So my "faith" is never in conflict with truth because my "faith" is to relentlessly search out the truth. That is, how things really are. And if John 1:1 is true and Jesus is "the Word" the logos, then that explains a lot of things and it behooves me to pay attention to Him. If he isn't, of course, well then, he's not and he can safely be ignored. But it would be a very bad thing to get that wrong, man. We all need to make the right call on that, whatever it is. Being the natural born coward that I am, I have investigated this very, very carefully and I sincerely recommend that you do, too. I'm sure you are about a million times smarter than me so just look for the truth. You'll find it. Now I can go to bed. :-) Her: Honey, don't you want to come to bed? Me: If I wanted to be ... nah, better not. Yes, Dear! Be right there!!tgpeeler
April 26, 2010
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Seversky @ 79 "Dictionaries are a good place to start for definitions but that is all. Lexicographers compile lists of past and present usages of words. One problem they face, however, is condensing often complex and ill-defined fields of research into a few sentences at best. Information is one of those areas. Tgpeeler provides the Merriam-Webster versions but we also know from a previous post by William Dembski that Seth Shostak compiled a list of upwards of 40 distinct technical definitions of information and complexity. There is a great deal of confusion and equivocation about which version of information is being discussed here." I beg to differ. Information is not one of "those areas" of equivocation or confusion. I know, and everyone else knows, exactly how I am using the term "information." The idea of information is indeed a rich and complex one in the sense that there are many different technical definitions that can be used in different circumstances. That is precisely why I use a generic, dictionary definition of the word. It's general enough to include ALL of the technical definitions under its umbrella. I don't see how it could be any broader or inclusive than what I put in my post. There is no equivocation going on here, unlike in your post in which there are two examples. One you may be innocent of, the other you are at best careless and sloppy in your thinking but I'll get to those later. In any case, I do not use the term "information" in one way in one premise and another way in another premise or the conclusion. That is equivocation. The fact that different people use the word in slightly different ways in different fields is irrelevant to the argument I make. But because I am sensitive to your "information issues" I will make the argument without reference to information at all and it will still destroy naturalism. heh heh. I don't know why this didn't occur to me much sooner. Dense, I guess. "Reason, like its formal cousin logic, or mathematics or a computer are all means of manipulating data according to a set of rules. But they are all prone to the same flaw – in computer terms ‘garbage in/garbage out’. It is possible to construct a perfectly valid argument that leads you flawlessly to a nonsensical conclusion. In other words, reason is powerless unless you have reliable data to reason about." This is partly true. You are only talking about valid arguments and in this you are correct. An argument can be valid but if the premises are false the conclusion will be false, too. But that's not what I'm talking about or what I've done. My argument is valid, that is, properly constructed. And the premises are true, that is the argument is sound. Therefore, the conclusion is necessarily true. So what I am going to do, again tonight because I want you to see this, is construct my argument one more time and explain every little detail of it as I go along. I am going to use a modus tollens form of argument. It is valid. That means if the premises are true then the conclusion is necessarily true. It goes like this. If P is true, then Q will be true. But Q is not true. (~Q) Therefore, P is not true. (~P) Let me illustrate with a simple example before I redo mine again. If it pours down rain for hours and the sidewalks are not covered (If P), the sidewalks will be wet. (Then Q) The sidewalks are not wet. (~Q) So it did not rain. (~P) You can see that this is necessarily true. The argument is constructed properly (is valid) and the premises are true (is sound) so the conclusion necessarily follows. Now there is an invalid form of argument called affirming the consequent and I want to illustrate it because people in science make this mistake all the time without realizing (maybe) what they are doing. It goes like this. If it pours down rain for hours and the sidewalks are not covered (If P), the sidewalks will be wet (Then Q). The sidewalks are wet. (P) Therefore, it rained. (Q) Notice that the conclusion doesn't NECESSARILY FOLLOW (the argument is NOT valid) even if the premises are true. Why? Because maybe the sprinklers made the sidewalks wet instead of the rain. It COULD BE true that it rained but it's not NECESSARILY true that it rained. Do you see this? "Scientists" who should know better make this kind of argument all the time. If evolution is true then we would expect to see fossil x at strata y. (for example) We do see fossil x at strata y therefore evolution is true. This commits the same fallacy. In fact, there could be another reason for those fossils being where they are. With that brief background in modus tollens, we can now look at my argument with fresh eyes. If naturalism is true (if P), then the laws of physics can be used to explain everything, including language (then Q). This is true by definition. This is what naturalism IS and language, after all, is certainly part of the set of "everything.") But physics cannot explain language. (~Q) (I will back this up below.) Therefore, naturalism is not true. (~P) In fact, if physics can't explain language then not only is naturalism not true it's not even possible for it to be true. It's NECESSARILY false. Before I explain why physics (or "natural processes" as you say in your post - same thing) can't explain language let me tell you how to defeat this argument. There are two and only two ways. You can attack the structure of the argument. You can claim it's not valid. But it is valid so that option is gone. Second, you can attack the truth of either premise. But the first premise is true by definition. So that leaves the second premise (Physics can't explain language.) as the only target left. In other words, if you can't PROVE that physics (or "natural processes") CAN account for or explain language, then the argument stands and naturalism is necessarily false. Now here's why physics (natural processes) cannot account for language. A language, BY DEFINITION, in the most general form, is a set of symbols and a rules governing the use of those symbols. So the problem for the naturalist is plain for everyone to see. Physics has nothing to say about symbols or rules. In fact, the laws of physics (I'm going to stop saying "natural processes") are expressed in the language of mathematics. This is something that I don't have time for tonight but it has astonished physicists and mathematicians for decades, if not centuries, if not millennia. What breathes the "fire" into the equations? How is it that a string of mathematical symbols can express a fundamental truth about the universe? But I digress. So, the laws of physics, which describe matter and energy and their interaction, HAVE NOTHING TO SAY, EVER, about why "cat" means a certain kind of mammal and why "act" means to do something, something done, or a segment of a play. Clearly there is something else at play here and it is information, which is encoded by said language, about which, physics has nothing to say. Nor will it ever have anything to say because information is immaterial and physics is about the material world. This is so, so simple and easy and it is so, so devastating to the naturalist world view. The game is over. We win. Rather, the truth wins. As it always does in the end.tgpeeler
April 26, 2010
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StephenB @98 Thanks for the memory. I think people argue with him at their peril. He never had a book in his house until he was out of high school. Now he's written 50 or 60. I need to email him and let him know he's being fondly remembered.tgpeeler
April 26, 2010
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Seversky, I am bummed. I just lost about a thousand word reply to your post @ 79. It will have to wait for tomorrow now. That will teach me to throw away the Word Doc before the post makes it.tgpeeler
April 26, 2010
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@ Upright BiPed I've been reading UC for about a month or so and found the discourse here very interesting and the conduct of the members very respectful so I decided to start posting. What I described above is my experience dealing with militant atheists/materialists and reading their literature. It's rather sad I'd say. @Phaedros Thanks for the video. It's very relevant to the ideas we were discussing earlier.above
April 26, 2010
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Upright BiPed- "I do not know how long you’ve lurked at UD, but if it has not been long, then you could not possibly know how apt your comment was. Those that come to UD to argue design must be among the most imaginative cynics in the world, they are professionals not at logic – but at a brand of transparent and selective hyper-skepticism which simply knows no end." We can thank Carl Sagan and Dawkins for that. Ultimately it's lazy reason or Sophistry really.Phaedros
April 26, 2010
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Phaedros @ 91 Thanks for the link. Whole new world.tgpeeler
April 26, 2010
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above, "The main thrust of their argument comes not from empirical support or logic but an underlying cynicism and extreme skepticism." I do not know how long you've lurked at UD, but if it has not been long, then you could not possibly know how apt your comment was. Those that come to UD to argue design must be among the most imaginative cynics in the world, they are professionals not at logic - but at a brand of transparent and selective hyper-skepticism which simply knows no end. They take an ideological stance which cannot be allowed to give ground to either science or reason, and then they project that fault onto the proponents of design. It is a comedy.Upright BiPed
April 26, 2010
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@StephenB I can say I've had very similar experiences with atheists and nihilists. The main thrust of their argument comes not from empirical support or logic but an underlying cynicism and extreme skepticism. What I eventually realized is that once you turn these tactics againsts them, their ideology collapses like a house of cards... In the case of the nihilist though, none of that is even needed... The ideology collapses by its own merit (or lack thereof) as it is self-refuting and incoherent.above
April 26, 2010
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tgpeeler @88: About thirty years ago, as I was completing my undergraduate work at a large urban university, I noticed a little blurb inviting students to witness a debate between Dr. Normal Geisler and a local philosophy professor who will remain nameless. The central question read as follows: “Is Christianity Credible.” Entering the lecture hall and expecting maybe fifty people or so, I was floored when I discovered that the entire building was filled to overflowing. I suspect that the audience numbered a thousand or more, consisting largely of curious students and a number of nihilistic professors who had come to witness their hero, the philosophy professor, do a number on the “Christian fundamentalist.” Since it was a forming period in my life, I was playing close attention to both players, especially that formidable looking, well respected skeptic wielding a copy of Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” and pondering his presentation with the look of one who was about to fill the room with his superhuman intelligence. Then the debate began. Geisler, who obviously understood his subject matter inside and out, went through an entire summary of Christian apologetics in twenty minutes, starting with Thomas’ five proofs, complete with richly conceived metaphors and analogies, and finishing with an equally impressive and compelling account of the Old Testament prophecies that had become manifest in New Testament history and the almost impossible odds of anything like that happening by chance. After thirty years, I still remember his examples and word pictures. His opponent, apparently aware of the brilliance of what he had just heard, hoped to neutralize the preceding points, striving valiantly to explain Kant in twenty minutes. He went on and on about how the mind creates, classifies, and finalizes universals and that we can’t really know much about the real world or the kind of reality that Dr. Geisler had just explained with such eloquence. But it was of no avail. Indeed, I remember thinking at the time, “Good grief, is that all they’ve got.” What was so comical was his continual lifting up of Kant’s book, waving it over his head, and pleading with his listeners to believe that the answers were really in there—as if he had not had more than enough opportunity to make the case himself. What was most entertaining of all, though, was the reaction of the nihilist professors in the audience. Incredibly, not one challenged the substance of what had been said or even bothered asking a relevant question. Quite the contrary, many of them were (I am not exaggerating) shrieking, wailing, and fuming at Dr. Geisler, insisting that he didn’t really mean what he was saying and that he knew he was being dishonest. I still remember one female sociology professor, twisted and bulging in a full face frown, as she spewed out her mindless accusations. She was angry that her students had been mislead, but she didn’t have a clue about how that might be so. That was one of my earlier clues that most of these so-called halls of higher learning in the United States are really more like slave dungeons where young skulls full of mush go to get their brains washed and dry cleaned.StephenB
April 26, 2010
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above @ 85 again "For me evolutionary theory is simply a story about the variation we see in living things that is still a work in progress." It's the "for me" part of your statement that gives me pause. I understand what you are saying but the word "evolution" as used in these kinds of arguments has a pretty specific meaning. It includes common descent, natural selection, genetic variation, no design and therefore no designer. To say that things "evolve" in the way you use the word is completely different than if Dawkins or Scott use the word. So to use it in any other way is equivocal (unless that is pointed out up front). My point is that no matter what version of the naturalist story comes next and even forever after that, they are all NECESSARILY false for the same reason. Thanks again.tgpeeler
April 26, 2010
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVHZrSuXZkY&feature=related Here's a 5 part video of Stephen Meyer in discussion with RC Sproul. I think it's in part 3 or 4 where they discuss epistemology and even Anthony Flew.Phaedros
April 26, 2010
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