Michael Behe On Falsification

_{Gil Dodgen

December 26, 2006

Intelligent Design}

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In the DVD Case For A Creator, in the Q&A section, Michael Behe was asked, How would you respond to the claim that intelligent design theory is not falsifiable?

Behe responded:

The National Academy of Sciences has objected that intelligent design is not falsifiable, and I think that’s just the opposite of the truth. Intelligent design is very open to falsification. I claim, for example, that the bacterial flagellum could not be produced by natural selection; it needed to be deliberately intelligently designed. Well, all a scientist has to do to prove me wrong is to take a bacterium without a flagellum, or knock out the genes for the flagellum in a bacterium, go into his lab and grow that bug for a long time and see if it produces anything resembling a flagellum. If that happened, intelligent design, as I understand it, would be knocked out of the water. I certainly don’t expect it to happen, but it’s easily falsified by a series of such experiments.

Now let’s turn that around and ask, How do we falsify the contention that natural selection produced the bacterial flagellum? If that same scientist went into the lab and knocked out the bacterial flagellum genes, grew the bacterium for a long time, and nothing much happened, well, he’d say maybe we didn’t start with the right bacterium, maybe we didn’t wait long enough, maybe we need a bigger population, and it would be very much more difficult to falsify the Darwinian hypothesis.

I think the very opposite is true. I think intelligent design is easily testable, easily falsifiable, although it has not been falsified, and Darwinism is very resistant to being falsified. They can always claim something was not right.

Comments

[...] Michael Behe writes: How do we falsify the contention that natural selection produced the bacterial flagellum? If . . . [a] scientist went into the lab and knocked out the bacterial flagellum genes, grew the bacterium for a long time, and nothing much happened, well, he’d say maybe we didn’t start with the right bacterium, maybe we didn’t wait long enough, maybe we need a bigger population, and it would be very much more difficult to falsify the Darwinian hypothesis [than it would ID]. [...]The Problem of Evil and Other Thoughts « ?? ?????: Thoughts and Meditations_{November 7, 2007
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Hi avocationist - thanks for replying. #After Gil's post 137 I felt that maybe I'd worn out my welcome. Also, to Michael: I don't think it's accurate to say that I refused to answer your question. As with any internet discussion, people reply according to their available time, their interests and the contingent path of the thread. Now that avocationist has made an effort to revive the discussion, I'll offer some thoughts. Looking back, I see that Michael addressed post #124 to me. In it he asked, " Also, if God is the way you said he is. Was he in the hurricane that hit New Orleans?" Later, avocationist responded to this by writing, "If God was not in the hurricane, does that mean it happened outside his will? Is there a place that God is not? Does it mean that God is present when good things happen to you but absent when bad ones do? How do you know it was not a good event? Can you judge the scheme of things?" It was to this that Michaels7 wrote, "Thanks for the reply, but I was awaiting JackÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s response and he refused." Here's what I think: anyone who believes in an omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-present God, as most Christians do, have two unsolvable dilemmas to confront: that of evil and that of free will. Millions of words have been written trying to explain how these are reconcilable with an omni-everything God, much less the benevolent and loving God of Christianity. I believe we cannot logically resolve these dilemmas because of he limitations of our nature. This is another example of my belief that we can't possible see the world as God sees the world. We are limited by the fact that we exist in time and space, and by having our rational understanding tied to our use of language. All of the world's great mystical traditions, including those in Christianity, recognize that the highest spiritual understanding is ineffable, and that the logical dilemmas that we face are resolved only by a humble acceptance of their mystery. So, yes God was "in the hurricane" that hit New Orleans, just as he is in every event, big or small, good or bad, but he was not "in the hurricane" in any special sense. I like avocationist's answer to this question, and I'm going to tell a story to illustrate it. This summer I gave a number of talks relating to the science standards issue in Kansas, and a part of the talk touched on this issue of how God acts in nature. I had pointed out that some people see some versions of ID as positing an interventionist God who generally lets nature run its course except for those moments when he steps in and designs things, and I pointed out that this was not really in keeping with the orthodox Christian concept of an omni-everything God. In the question-and-answer session, a lady said something like the following: "I have a daughter," she said, "who was born with only one arm because of a birth defect. I'm a Christian, and I have faith that what happens is for the ultimate good in his eyes even if it doesn't appear that way to us, so I have been able to accept this handicap of my daughter's. But I would be darned angry if the reason my daughter had no arm was because God just wasn't paying attention that day." =========================================== I would also like to respond to a point that avocationist made. He writes,
"All in all, your worldview is very close to ID, as is MillerÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s, and it is perplexing that you call yourself a mainstream believer in evolution. What you espouse is not at all the same. Your understanding of randomness and chance, that it only looks that way from our small perspective, is 180 degrees different than what the textbooks are teaching, or most prominent voices in the field are saying. If you have made any valid point, it is perhaps that there IS no mainstream evolution. As I keep hammering, once you posit any God at all, even the deistic one, you are no longer in the same kind of universe, and I respect Dawkins for seeing that.
I do not see the view I am describing as being close to ID, in two important ways. ID posits that some things are demonstrably designed, and that this can be shown via the processes of science by showing that natural processes could not have produced them. I firmly disagree with that. That however, has not been the point of this discussion. My purpose has been to show that one can be a Christian and also accept evolutionary science. But I also want to make it clear that one can hold many different philosophical or religious positions (including that of materialism) and accept evolutionary science. Our metaphysical beliefs are choices we make based on factors that go beyond the understanding of the physical world that we reach through the limited means of science. I personally believe that one's metaphysics needs to be consistent with the findings of science, but I also respect that there are large questions that science can't answer and that there a variety of legitimate philosophical and religious belief systems available for people to consider.Jack Krebs_{December 31, 2006
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When Jack said that God is present in all things, he was probably speaking of God's omnipresence, an attribute of God that is widely believed. And no, God does not abandon us when disaster strikes. Consider the hymn "It is well with my soul" -- and the heartbreaking circumstances that inspired it: http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/i/t/i/itiswell.htm (Incidentally, this is the favorite hymn of Stephen Clapp, the dean of the Juilliard School -- a wonderful person and devout Christian .)Karen_{December 31, 2006
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Hi Jack, Did you seem my post to you #138? Yes, it's a shame so active a thread got submerged below the waterline, but you could take a look at 138, 139 and 140; all replies to you. Michael was referring to his question to you, if God is present in all things, then was he present in the destructive hurricane (or tsumnami!)?avocationist_{December 31, 2006
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I refused to do what???? I've spent a lot of time on this thread (which appeared to have come to an end), and appreciated the opportunity to do so. I have no idea what Michael7 is referring to, so Michael - would you like to clarify, please?Jack Krebs_{December 31, 2006
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Avocationist, Thanks for the reply, but I was awaiting Jack's response and he refused.Michaels7_{December 30, 2006
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I could not find an online reference (that I could access) for the original Pollock/fractal paper but here is something re the controversy over the paper. www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/books/02frac. you can also read the article for free by doing a search of -Pollock painting fractals and accessing the article that way.devilsadvocate_{December 30, 2006
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kvwells Interesting choice of using Pollock for an illustration of randomness. I remember reading a piece about fractal analysis of Pollock's paintings (sorry,I can't remember the reference if anyone else knows it please post) and his paintings reveal a significant presence of fractals. So the randomness is actually only apparent. The authors of the article thought the unique fractal characteristics could be used to identify forgeries. As to the intent or effect of his paintings: "For many, they arouse primitive feelings associated with such sonorous phrases as "the deep" or the "starry firmament", identifying a universe beyond the human. It was one of Pollock's singal accomplishments to give such magnitutude and impressiveness to the act of painting as to make us think of the mysteries of natural creation of that "first division of chaos" at the origin of our world."(Modern Art 3rd ed, 1992, Pub. Harry N Abrams) -My professor was right- that modern art class would come in handy some daydevilsadvocate_{December 30, 2006
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Jack,
The way Patrick describes it, one is still thinking about God as a being who usually is *not* part of natural processes, and who just occasionally Ã¢â‚¬Å“co-opts random processes.Ã¢â‚¬Â The view I am describing holds that God is present in *every* moment - his being pervades the natural world. The entire physical world, throughout all of space and time, is a holistic manifestation of his intelligent design.
I understood that. That's why I said "pretty much everything is being interacted with all the time." My primary point was that it's very different from the viewpoint where a Designer--a clockwork God in this case--allowed for evolution to occur by designing the system and the natural laws which do not require constant adjustments (God is not present in every moment but it's a deterministic system where the results are inevitable). The position that the Designer is interacting all the time is closer to an ID position if you ask me. Also, do you yourself support this position or are you posing it as a challenge to the Christians here?Patrick_{December 30, 2006
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Jack The simplest way of describing the difference is to point out that what is chance to us is not chance to God. From our limited human perspective, the external world contains events that we experience as chance. Just because something appears as chance to you doesn't means it appears as chance to everyone who isn't you. Richard Dawkins famously said there is the illusion of design in nature. This is wrong. Design is not the illusion. Chance is the illusion. Einstein said God doesn't play at dice with the universe. Who are you going to believe; Albert Einstein or Dicky Dawkins? The choice is clear for me - Einstein - in a heartbeat. Evidently you also believe Einstein. Where you and I differ is in whether we believe math, science, and human intellect has the capacity to see through the illusion of chance to unveil the truth that nothing is left to chance. I have more confidence in math, science, and human intellect being able to discern the truth than you do. DaveScot_{December 30, 2006
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Jack, I should have said many or most Darwinists, and yes, I was referring to the atheistic, blind watchmaker-believing types. Also, it is certainly so that many religious people also have shallow ideas of God and have given them little deep thought. In fact, I rather like your take on things, and think quite similarly. You present yourself as one who has thought deeply, but you also are apparently some sort of Christian? The reason the kind of Darwinist I was talking about has shallow ideas of God, is that they have often dismissed God when young and full of hubris, and the God they rejected was a magical and perhaps distasteful one. From that time forward, little of depth tends to be added. One reason I may have misunderstood you was this: Likewise, we have seen time and time again that things that people once thought were the product of an intelligent agent turned out to not be, from the winds blowing to the causes of disease. Now you are back to the tiresome God of the Gaps argument. This is incompatible with what you have written about God being present in all processes. Yes, it was very unsophisticated of our ancestors to think that angels pushed the planets around. But if God is present in all processes, and if we see the incredible array of interlocking laws upholding our marvelous universe, then in what way is it wrong to say that planetary motion (for example) is the product of an intelligent agent? All in all, your worldview is very close to ID, as is Miller's, and it is perplexing that you call yourself a mainstream believer in evolution. What you espouse is not at all the same. Your understanding of randomness and chance, that it only looks that way from our small perspective, is 180 degrees different than what the textbooks are teaching, or most prominent voices in the field are saying. If you have made any valid point, it is perhaps that there IS no mainstream evolution. As I keep hammering, once you posit any God at all, even the deistic one, you are no longer in the same kind of universe, and I respect Dawkins for seeing that. Perhaps the problem for people like you is that you have not found an explanation for how evolution occured that appeals to your personal theology. I actually haven't found one either, but I am sure ID is on the right track, and that NDE has outlived its usefulness. I hope you don't find it offensive that I consider you and Miller IDists. You (I think) believe in God, maybe a personal God, and you think God sees the future and is present in all processes, and foresaw and planned life forms, in events that often (always?) only appear to be random. +++++++++++ Michael, If God was not in the hurricane, does that mean it happened outside his will? Is thee a place that God is not? Does it mean that God is present when good things happen to you but absent when bad ones do? How do you know it was not a good event? Can you judge the scheme of things?avocationist_{December 29, 2006
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Jack Krebs:
As I have been describing, one can accept evolutionary science from a theistic view.
Jack is a nice guy, and has made a valiant defense of this thesis. But it won't fly, primarily because it has no wings. "Evolutionary science," as generally promoted, is not science at all. It is a glorified extrapolation from an extremely simplistic and primitive 19th-century notion that was born primarily out of a desire to produce a creation story for the death-of-God philosophical movement of that era. Attempts to prop up this transparently simplistic and primitive 19th-century notion will continue for some time, but they will eventually fail, because the underlying assumptions are wrong.GilDodgen_{December 29, 2006
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Joseph writes,
And if the designer is not the Ã¢â‚¬Å“God of Christian TheologyÃ¢â‚¬Â then Jack KrebsÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ scenario is moot.
Well, what I have been discussing is a Christian view (although not the only Christian view), but some of the same thoughts would apply to other philosophical and religious perspectives. There are definitely people who believe in direct intervention by physical intelligent agents and there certainly are Christian views which believe in multiple supernatural interventions by God. These are all different ways of understanding the world, although some of them are not compatible with the findings of mainstream science and some of them are. Also, when I wrote, "As I have been describing, one can accept evolutionary science from a theistic view," Joseph wrote, "Just donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t try to present it like that in a science classroomÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ " I wouldn't, and I wouldn't expect any one else to do so. A science teacher might (but not many would want to) have a lesson on different ways science is understood by different religious perspectives, but this would be a "current events" type of lesson, not a lesson in science itself.Jack Krebs_{December 29, 2006
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And if the designer is not the "God of Christian Theology" then Jack Krebs' scenario is moot. Jack Krebs: As I have been describing, one can accept evolutionary science from a theistic view. Just don't try to present it like that in a science classroom...Joseph_{December 29, 2006
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I agree with Jack Krebs. Orthodox Christian theology would say that Ã¢â‚¬Å“God is present in every moment.Ã¢â‚¬Â I'm not sure that's orthodox. It seems instead that it is almost pantheism by proxy. The orthodox Christian view is probably more that God is sovereign over time but not necessarily present "in" every moment of it or every willed action that takes place in Nature/space-time/ matter/etc. Christ prayed, "Thy will, not my will be done." and taught people to pray, "Thy will be done..." Why? Maybe God's will isn't being done and the wills of other minds are playing out in chains of events, ultimate sovereignty does not necessarily equal determinism "in every moment." It seems to me that claims about design are statements about the will. You're right, it may be that the only way that detecting design can comport with Christian theology is for Christians to admit that God's will isn't being done. I don't have a problem admitting that but I know some who will. It is those Christians who most desire security and nurture that will tend to be against ID...so go back to the feminization of Christianity which results in many Christians wanting God to be their security blanky and so on. It matters little if all the scriptural or historical evidence goes against their theology of Nicety if the same psychological dynamics that govern those who want to nurse at the teat of Mother Nature hold. This rightly leads us to see how the ID argumentÃ¢â‚¬â€œtrying to detect Ã¢â‚¬Å“intelligent designÃ¢â‚¬Â as distinct from Ã¢â‚¬Å“natureÃ¢â‚¬Â and Ã¢â‚¬Å“chanceÃ¢â‚¬ÂÃ¢â‚¬â€œis contrary to Christian theology. I'm not sure what orthodox Christianity is or is not but there is much written in biblical texts about Satan, the Prince of this world and so on and so forth. That was what the "Prince of peace" called some invisible being that it seems that no one ever sees, apparently not challenging its dominion. So it would seem that the Christ of Christianity said that a malevolent being has dominion over the world. All of this is rejected by Deists who believe in a clockwork God and Christ as a good moral teacher but what Christ actually said was that you can't serve two masters or both types of Prince, etc.etc. All of which assumes that there are more wills involved in the world than just God's will always happening moment by moment, either by the tick tock of Deism or the moment by moment clock of theistic determinism. Was Jesus mistaken to refer to some events as predetermined and treat others as indeterminate acts of will? At any rate, you're going beyond the claims of ID proponents by assuming that all design detection is therefore a detection of God's will that was preordained since the creation of the world or sustained moment by moment as we go and so on. It is perfectly possible to infer that something is willed without arguing further about the type of mind that would will things so. However, Darwinists have never been able to take a neutral view of theology and at their most obvious tend to rely on negative theology and "pandas thumb" type arguments to this day. E.g., "What type of intelligence would design this? Well, then it must be a natural selection again or somethin'. " At a broader level they've always relied on Victorian era theology in the majority of their assumptions as well, a lot of Darwinian reasoning doesn't work without it.mynym_{December 29, 2006
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mike1962 writes,
Ã¢â‚¬Å“DarwinismÃ¢â‚¬Â, as used by me and others here, apparently, refers to the Blind Watchmaker Hypothesis (BWH.) No plan. No forsight. No intent. It is not meant to refer to the idea of Ã¢â‚¬Å“evolutionÃ¢â‚¬Â, per se, i.e, change over time, or common descent.
I thought that was probably the case, but this usage confuses science with the philosophy of materialism. As I have been describing, one can accept evolutionary science from a theistic view. The key element - the elephant in the room in this discussion - is the subject of chance and contingent events. There is a significance difference between discussing chance from the limited viewpoint of science versus the viewpoint of theology. The simplest way of describing the difference is to point out that what is chance to us is not chance to God. From our limited human perspective, the external world contains events that we experience as chance. However, as I described in a previous post, most Christians accept that at times events which appear as chance to us are actually key elements in bringing about God's will and design. So Christians who accept evolutionary science can understand that the divine guidance present in evolution, just as the divine guidance in our daily lives, contains elements that appear as chance to us. Here's another way of trying to describe this distinction: because we are embedded in time and space, we experience causality - as one moment flows into the next, things are consistently correlated with earlier states. Furthermore, to us, causality is local: things can only influence other things with which they are in contact during consecutive moments. This experience of nature that we have is an expression of God's underlying intelligence, and thus it contains an internal consistency and integrity. Therefore, when we do science we discover regularities and order, and we find coherent explanations for aspects of the physical world in terms of other aspects of the world that are adjacent, so to speak, in time and space - explanations which, as I have said, contain elements of chance, contingency and randomness. But this is not how God experiences the world. He is omnipresent, existing at all times immediately and simultaneously. To him, one moment does not cause the next, nor are events not in proximity isolated from each other. All that is and ever shall be is a whole, already created, with each moment as much an act of creation as any other moment. God is not limited to causing things through the types of causality we can experience. Therefore, a Christian who accepts evolutionary science can speak as a scientist and understand that evolution proceeds by processes which are local in time only and contain elements of chance in the variations of the genetic process and, at the same time believe as a Christian that the overall state of the world, including the eventual evolution of human beings as a physical creature, are just as God has planned.Jack Krebs_{December 29, 2006
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Jack, This response is comming a bit later than I would have liked, but I thought it worth offering, nonetheless... Re: #74,
Thanks for the response, Crandaddy
Thank you for keeping us on our toes with your insightful and provocative comments. :-)
I have no idea what difference you think I misunderstand here - and I know the difference between ontology and epistomology. Can you explain more what point youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re making here.
If you understand the difference between the terms, then you should also understand that our best epistemic resources may or may not be reflective of an item's ontology. Why, then, do you speak of natural mechanisms as a possible implementation of design? This may well be the case, but we could never understand it with our reasoning capacities. Any inference to designing agency must rest upon the insufficiency of other causal types to account for what is perceived. Without contrasting causal types, it's clear that there can be no way to differentiate between intelligent and unintelligent causes. In fact, appeals to where's, when's, how's, etc. are irrelevant to a design inference precisely because they are rooted in the natural causes which are used as foil to defend the understanding that design is present!
As I said much earlier in this thread, I fight it hard to imagine how one could gather and process the relevant data needed to Ã¢â‚¬Å“include a rigorous probabilistic elimination of chance hypotheses such as is the focus of DembskiÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s work.Ã¢â‚¬Â[...] Do you, or anyone, have ideas about how to do that?
I'm not a mathematician, so I'm not in a position to propose such a rigorous mathamatical approach. My position could be summed up as follows: Any epistemic defense of the presence of an intentional cause must fundamentally rest upon the insufficiency of natural causes to account for a given phenomenon. The degree to which a chance hypothesis could be rendered improbable would seem to be quite relevant to the strength of a design hypothesis. Re: #75,
One reason is that throughout the history of mankindÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s search for knowledge, we have seen time and time again that what appears to us to be the case turns out to be only just that - an appearance, but not the actual case.
Naturalistic science has explained a great deal, yes, but I can see no good a posteriori reason to believe that it should run the table. Certain mental phenomena, for example, appear to be fundamentally impossible to reduce naturalistically (or at least physicalistically).crandaddy_{December 29, 2006
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Jack Krebs:
IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m not sure what you mean by Ã¢â‚¬Å“DarwinistÃ¢â‚¬Â, but I am a supporter of mainstream evolutionary theory
"Darwinism", as used by me and others here, apparently, refers to the Blind Watchmaker Hypothesis (BWH.) No plan. No forsight. No intent. It is not meant to refer to the idea of "evolution", per se, i.e, change over time, or common descent. It is only meant to refer the particular brand of philosophy masqerading as "science" that insists that no designer is needed or possible, and that "modern evolutionary theory" actually *demonstrates* (rather than merely imagining) how the genomic information has progressed on this planet.mike1962_{December 29, 2006
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126. mike1962 Great stuff! I believe this is what NDE's call "openin' a can o' Dawkins" on somebody.kvwells_{December 29, 2006
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125. Jack Krebs Actually the idea of God as a programmer is well founded on the idea that this is what we observe in biochemical systems - programming. To say that we know God programs because we see that he's programmed stuff is not to say that's all he does or has done in creating. We cannot know in the millionth part how God acts, but we can look where we can see. And when we look at bio. we see programming and great complexity and therefore design.kvwells_{December 29, 2006
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BTW- How can one possibly believe that the level of control of random movement expressed in biochemical systems could itself be the result of random processes? I know this is the old "disorder only begets more of the same only worse" argument but it is sincere question.kvwells_{December 29, 2006
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123. Rude Where is his prowess as a designer manifested the mostÃ¢â‚¬â€in the program or in some chance configuration that emerges from it? Bueno, Rude. I really enjoyed thinking about that question. Maybe another way to consider it: Can we tell which is the more skilled draughtsman between Cezanne and Pollock by analyzing their most popular works? We can't, because we know Pollock's concern was not at all the control of line and tone to describe recognizeable everyday objects. However, we can absolutely determine which of the two artist's works are not wholly accidental. We cannot be very sure about many of Pollock's painting as being works of intent without knowing so beforehand. This is precisely because Pollock chose to incorporate a high level of randomness in his mode of expression. This is why (I assume) ID is mainly concerned with biochemistry. This is where, in the human observation space, the mitigation or direction of random effects is most strongly expressed and most incontravertible.kvwells_{December 29, 2006
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michael7,
But if theyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re going to allow Guessing into the Science Room, then all bets are off and you must allow all forms of Guessing into the Room.
But to qualify as "science" only anti-designer guessing is allowed, since that's what science IS. Everything else is just pseudoscience. Guessing that involves prehuman intelligences is like positing the existence of fairies and leprechauns. Do you still believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy too? What college did you attend? Some Bible college in the deep south? What are you trying to do, establish a THEOCRACY or something? Get real, the idea of a designer has been debunked over and over in the scientific literature. Don't you know anything? Don't you follow the consensus about such things? Don't you watch the National Geographic channel? There is no designer and Dawkins is his prophet. ;)mike1962_{December 29, 2006
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Rude writes,
Suppose a computer programmer designs a program with a random function. Where is his prowess as a designer manifested the mostÃ¢â‚¬â€in the program or in some chance configuration that emerges from it?
I don't think the metaphor of God as a computer programmer is a very good one. For God the "program" (the laws of nature and the chance and contingent events which occur as those laws operate) and the events that emerge as those combinations of law and chance unfold are equally transparent. God knows the end result just as well and immediately as he knows the initial conditions. The metaphor of God as programmer is really that of a deistic view of God - one where God gets the ball rolling and then sits back and watches the world unfold, possibly stepping in every once and a while to tweak the parameters. This is in diametrical opposition to the idea of God as creatively active in every moment, which is definitely the more orthodox Christian view. Also, when I wrote Ã¢â‚¬Å“To one who has this view of God, there is nothing that is more designed than anything else - there is nothing special to detect because every aspect of the world is equally special, and equally a product of the natural processes in which God creatively resides.Ã¢â‚¬Â Rude wrote,
No wonder the secular-materialist elites have trouble distinguishing humans from mosquitos and defending the rights of weak and vulnerable humans.
This is a non-sequitur. First of all, I am not describing the views of a "secular-materialist" - I am describing the views of many Christians. Secondly, believing that everything is designed, and that no one thing is more specially designed than another, does not imply at all that one can't make distinctions about the value of different things.Jack Krebs_{December 29, 2006
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Jack, However well intentioned your argument. It is a strawman in disguise. "As my friend Keith Miller has pointed out (and I paraphrase) , it is odd to think that the bacterial flagellum contains more evidence of design than does the properties of light and water that produce a rainbow." Sorry, who said that from ID proponents? I am unaware of any such argument. Or is this merely Miller projecting his own thoughts onto ID? "The fact that we have come to pretty thoroughly understand the latter and not the former does not mean that they are qualitatively different manifestations of GodÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s being." Again, please point to specific quotes in ID paper, books or material. Personally they all speak of Design. Did you not watch the movies produced by Illustra Media in conjunction with DI? They complete the whole picture, not just the flagellum. The Privledged Planet, watch that? I don't remember talk about the flagellum in that movie. Could be wrong. Dr. Ross is constantly pointing to design in astronomy, the laws that govern our solar system, light properties, constants, finely tuned, etc., and other scientist, mathematicians, physicist point to design and laws in their respective fields too. So, should it not be obvious that a biochemist, biologist and geneticist point to design in their fields? And with the complexity unfolding and being discovered each day, is it so surprising a mathematician is involved in genetic probability theory? In regards to "orthodoxy" I feel a kinda Buddha moment with nature. I is you as you are me and we are all together. Just a little humor. Maybe you can point to actual scripture from the Old or New Testaments? And elaborate more clearly your meaning? You think that the sacrifice of Christ on the cross was a chance happening event? Or Paul on the road to Damascus? Judas betrayal not foretold? The entry of Christ on a donkey not foretold? And the hundreds of other examples? Also, if God is the way you said he is. Was he in the hurricane that hit New Orleans? These seem like silly questions, but they are a way of demarcation to draw clear lines in the sand.Michaels7_{December 29, 2006
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Ã¢â‚¬Å“To one who has this view of God, there is nothing that is more designed than anything else - there is nothing special to detect because every aspect of the world is equally special, and equally a product of the natural processes in which God creatively resides.Ã¢â‚¬Â No wonder the secular-materialist elites have trouble distinguishing humans from mosquitos and defending the rights of weak and vulnerable humans. Ã¢â‚¬Å“As my friend Keith Miller has pointed out (and I paraphrase), it is odd to think that the bacterial flagellum contains more evidence of design than does the properties of light and water that produce a rainbow. The fact that we have come to pretty thoroughly understand the latter and not the former does not mean that they are qualitatively different manifestations of GodÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s being.Ã¢â‚¬Â But isnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t that the point? ID is willing to say that both are designed whereas the oppositionÃ¢â‚¬â€that is the Ã¢â‚¬Å“theisticÃ¢â‚¬Â oppositionÃ¢â‚¬â€will admit to design in the early stages of the Big Bang and maybeÃ¢â‚¬â€just maybeÃ¢â‚¬â€in the origin of life. Suppose a computer programmer designs a program with a random function. Where is his prowess as a designer manifested the mostÃ¢â‚¬â€in the program or in some chance configuration that emerges from it? OopsÃ¢â‚¬â€started this and had to leave for a whileÃ¢â‚¬â€not much for me to say what with Joseph saying it so well.Rude_{December 29, 2006
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Jack Krebs: And last, Joseph offers a quote from Max Planck which ends, Ã¢â‚¬Å“We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind.Ã¢â‚¬Â I disagree with Planck in respect to the word Ã¢â‚¬Å“must.Ã¢â‚¬Â There are many different philosophical ways to understand the world. Believing in a Ã¢â‚¬Å“conscious and intelligent mindÃ¢â‚¬Â behind the universe, be it the Christian God or some other concept, is one way to understand the universe, but there are other legitimate and widely held ways which do not make this assumption. Planck's assumption was based on years of scientific research. Philosphy, if it factored in at all, would have only been a small factor. As for legitimate and widely held ways that do not hold that assumption- let the testing begin. Because as I see it following Planck's lead means I can only be as scientifically compotent as he. And I can live with that. People in Kansas could only dream of being so fortunate ;) .Joseph_{December 29, 2006
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Arnhart: Orthodox Christian theology would say that Ã¢â‚¬Å“God is present in every moment.Ã¢â‚¬Â Therefore, Ã¢â‚¬Å“the entire physical world, throughout all of space and time, is a holistic manifestation of his intelligent design,Ã¢â‚¬Â and Ã¢â‚¬Å“there is nothing that is more designed than anything else.Ã¢â‚¬Â Then it is obvious that ID is NOT advancing Christian Theology. Arnhart: This rightly leads us to see how the ID argumentÃ¢â‚¬â€œtrying to detect Ã¢â‚¬Å“intelligent designÃ¢â‚¬Â as distinct from Ã¢â‚¬Å“natureÃ¢â‚¬Â and Ã¢â‚¬Å“chanceÃ¢â‚¬ÂÃ¢â‚¬â€œis contrary to Christian theology. That's wrong. "The Privileged Planet" demonstrates that nature itself is intelligently designed. However accidents do happen. Was what Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, et al., doing contrary to Christian Theology when they saw science as a way of uncovering and understanding "God's" handiwork? No. And all IDists are doing is uncovering and attempting to understand the design. But the only way to truly do that is to see it for what it is- an intentional design.
Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind."--Albert E=MCC
Arnhart: This should also lead us to see how the orthodox Christian view of the entire physical universe as intelligently designed could be compatible with evolutionary theory. Only if that view can also be compatible with anything...Joseph_{December 29, 2006
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What an interesting and diverse group of responses to come home to. Gil writes,
The only problem is that mainstream evolutionary theory proposes a directionless, unguided, goalless process, without intent or purpose, that produced humankind, and Christian theology proposes that humankind was intentionally created as a goal and for a purpose. These two views are utterly and hopelessly irreconcilable.
Some people, including some prominent scientists, are materialists and thus interpret the findings of science as implying that evolution is a "directionless, unguided, goalless process, without intent or purpose." However, other people, including some prominent scientists, are Christians and obviously disagree with the materialists about this. It is a standard Christian belief that God fulfills his purposes in ways that are mysterious to us. For instance, a chance meeting with someone might change one's life tremendously, and one might subsequently believe that that encounter and its consequences was meant to be as part of God's plan for one's life. The fact that the encounter appeared to be a chance event to us does not mean that it wasn't a vehicle for the manifestation of God's will and design. These issues are disagreements about philosophy and theology, and they are worth discussing. But the materialists do not speak for science itself, even though some of them may claim to be able to do so. chunkdz writes,
Perhaps it is hubris to imagine that we Ã¢â‚¬Å“pretty thoroughly understandÃ¢â‚¬Â the properties of light and water that produce a rainbow.
I agree with his statement, and much of what chunkdz says to support it. Our scientific understanding of light is solid in one sense, and yet vacuous in another. Science is a limited form of knowledge. As it learns more and more about how the world works it also uncovers more and more the fundamental ways in which the nature of reality is mysterious and unknowable. But I disagree with chunkdz when he writes,
Rather, design (to me) is revealed by the trend of science to reveal greater and more profound complexity, while naturalistic explanations become more and more impotent. I believe this is epitomized in the study of human consciousness. The thought that we can somehow break sentient thought down to itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s component parts , and describe it as a program of firing neurons seems ludicrous. But in the attempt we will continue to open up an infinity of unanswerable questions, and stochastic explanations fall like sand through the filter.
Naturalistic explanations are quite potent within the scope of their applicability. Neurons really do fire in our brains (accompanied by many other biochemical events), and there is a great deal of potent learning to be gained by a reductionistic approach to understanding our the brains works, and how what happens in the brain correlates with our conscious experience. But one can pursue reductionistic explanations without thinking that reductionistic explanations are the only type of useful or valid explanation there is. And last, Joseph offers a quote from Max Planck which ends, "We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind.Ã¢â‚¬Â I disagree with Planck in respect to the word "must." There are many different philosophical ways to understand the world. Believing in a "conscious and intelligent mind" behind the universe, be it the Christian God or some other concept, is one way to understand the universe, but there are other legitimate and widely held ways which do not make this assumption.Jack Krebs_{December 29, 2006
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Mr. Arnhart, so then the Ark of the Covenant (specified according to Torah by YHWH himself) wasn't any more designed than the pile of dirt the structure rested on? Obviously, you are ignoring one key factor: INFORMATION. The information/specificational properties of one designed object can be greater than of another. The more information of specified nature, the easier it is to infer design. I can design a rule based system (spacetime/physics) but then I can also further design complex machines within that rule based system. The machines have additional information content (as well as a formal, teleological component). This really is quite simple, I'm surprised you overlook it.Atom_{December 29, 2006
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