“Scientific” vs “Supernatural”
| December 15, 2008 | Posted by DonaldM under Intelligent Design |
An invitation to provide initial posts for discussion here at UD was recently extended to me. My name is Donald M and for those who have posted here for a while, I’m probably not a stranger. I’m a strong proponent of ID and I have serious doubts and reservations about several aspects of Darwinian evolution. My main area of interest is in the Philosophy of Science and the philosophical assumptions of science and scientific practice. While I am not a working scientist, I do hold a Masters degree in a scientific field. I’m grateful for the opportunity to share some thoughts here, and hopefully provide some fodder for useful discussion among participants.
With that brief intro, I’ll dive into my first contribution.
The January issue of Scientific American is focused entirely on the Evolution of Evolution. There are several articles on different aspects of Darwin and evolution. The article I want to focus on here is a critical piece by Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch of the NCSE (National Center for Saving Evolution Science Education). Entitled The Latest Face of Creationism in the Classroom, the article laments the fact that Science still has to deal with “creationism”…the favored term over Intelligent Design for purely pejorative reasons.
Indeed the comment right under the title says “Creationists who want religious ideas taught as scientific fact in public schools continue to adapt to courtroom defeats by hiding their true aims under ever changing guises.” In the body of the article Branch and Scott lament that Lousiana Governor Bobby Jindal signed the Lousiana Science Education Act into law this past June, over the strenuous objections of scientists. Convinced a creationist conspiracy is afoot they opine:
As always in the contentious history of evolution education in the U.S., the devil is in the details. The law explicitly targets evolution, which is unsurprising—for lurking in the background of the law is creationism, the rejection of a scientific explanation of the history of life in favor of a supernatural account involving a personal creator. Indeed, to mutate Dobzhansky’s dictum, nothing about the Louisiana law makes sense except in the light of creationism.
Laying aside any real or imagined conspiracies on the part of “creationists”, I want to focus on the contrast Branch and Scott make between a “scientific explanation” and a “supernatural account” of the history of life. There are so many assumptions built into this particular contrast its hard to know where to begin. First the clear implication is that a scientific explanation represents fact whereas the supernatural account represents some fuzzy religious idea. In other words, its an epistomological assumption about what represents true knowledge (science) and what does not (religion).
Secondly is the assumption that the naturalistic worldview of science takes precedent over the theistic worldview of anyone who purports that a supernatural creator had something to do with bringing about the existence of life on earth. So much for methodological naturalism. Clearly full blown philosophical naturalism is equated to science here, since the contrast is between science and the supernatural.
Third, is the unspoken assumption that somehow the science classroom is a worldview-free zone. Since they’ve contrasted science with supernatural, they clearly equate science with naturalism, so the real issue is which worldview ought to prevail in the science classroom and why. I wonder what Branch and Scott might say about a Bill to promote the teaching of philosophical naturalism in the disguise of science in the classroom?
55 Responses to “Scientific” vs “Supernatural”
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Again I ask, what does intelligence transform into complex specified information?
Raw materials.
Tat is how we humans and other designing agencies we know of do it.
And it is not “transform into CSI”. It is transformed into something containing CSI.
First of all, Donald is clearly correct. The distinction between “science” and “supernatural” is artificial and tendentious.
“Science” means simply knowledge. Newton’s view that the heavens declared the glory of God is no less scientific than the fantastic notion that the solar system could have come into being “by a set of curious chances.” In fact the case can be made that Newton’s view is more scientific, since it is based on common sense—on the information communicated directly to the mind through the senses, unmediated by theory and its potential corrupting influence.
Second, ID generates excitement specifically because of its resistance to naturalism. “Science” is not the antithesis of “supernatural,” but the antithesis of naturalism is certainly the existence of a supernatural being. Hence curious attempts here and elsewhere at distancing ID from the supernatural have the unnatural effect of pushing it toward naturalism and causing it to lose its saltiness.
Rest assured, it is the clear inference of a supernatural agent in the work of Behe, Dembski and Gonzalez that accounts for the burgeoning success of ID. The rest will soon be forgotten.
Apparently NASA is investigating in an organized way if life could have developed elsewherre.
http://www.popularmechanics.co.....96052.html
So the non earth solution must look like a viable alternative to the non ID crowd. Welcome aboard.
gpuccio,
You are not typical, and, again, that’s a compliment. You clearly do not make too much of empirical science, and try, it seems to me, to integrate it into a whole science. You are well aware of the value of inward science. It seems that you place more epistemic value in outward science than I do. Also, I proceed dialectically, and believe that I would not see as well as I do if I were to reduce my “double vision” to one.
The science entry at Wiktionary is poor, but it includes a fine quotation of Einstein (1951):
We now have considerable mathematical science of inductive learning, and know that it is possible only with prior assumptions. This is why Juergen Schmidhuber writes in A Computer Scientist’s View of Life, the Universe, and Everything
Interestingly, an incredibly simple “dovetailing” program generates all possible universes. It is easier, in a sense that Schmidhuber formalizes, for the Great Programmer to program all universes than to program a particular one.
What I like about Schmidhuber’s paper, apart from the immediate, clear, and concise statement of bias, is the playfulness of it. We are at play in our empirical science. We are not getting at Truth, but are vesting faith in the utility (perhaps Truth) of assumptions by which we develop belief about empirical phenomena.
I see the relation of I and it as inescapably ambiguous. I cannot cleanly distinguish it from my knowing of it. I should mention that there’s a distinction of I and thou implicit in empiricism. I can make sense of science only as a social game predicated on I-it and I-thou distinctions. Participants in the game embrace certain working assumptions — the (in)famous “ground rules of science.”
My general objection to ID is not at all an objection to you. I see most IDists as hapless contributors to the glorification of science. Like most atheists, they sweep under the rug the fact that empirical science begins by vesting faith in the utility of assumptions, and tell people that science-done-right gets us to the truth.
Empirical science is intrinsically incapable of demonstrating that Design is the Truth. I choose to believe in Creation, and in myself as a Creator. There are values in those beliefs that are qualitatively different from those of belief in a Great Programmer. I hope you understand that it is out of genuine concern for people around me that I oppose both atheistic and IDistic overvaluation of empirical science.
OK, DonaldM, there was plenty in my last post for a nascent philosopher of science to sink his teeth into.
Want to play?
Sal Gal:
“You are well aware of the value of inward science.”
“I hope you understand that it is out of genuine concern for people around me that I oppose both atheistic and IDistic overvaluation of empirical science.”
You know I am with you on that. But yes, I probably “place more epistemic value in outward science” than you do.
Barry Arrington says, “nothing about life appears to require a supernatural explanation,” but doesn’t this depend on whether the natural-supernatural distinction is valid?
Anyway it’s true that ID is simply design detection—design being a product of intelligence/agency/consciousness/free will. Design is not synonymous with the mind that produces it—it is distinct. The mind—including the mind of God—may or may not be “supernatural” (whatever that means), but inasmuch as its product (design) is instantiated in the natural order (in matter) we can ask what specific features might characterize it.
But then someone objects: “I see most IDists as hapless contributors to the glorification of science. Like most atheists, they sweep under the rug the fact that empirical science begins by vesting faith in the utility of assumptions, and tell people that science-done-right gets us to the truth.”
Good point—except that the road to truth has ditches on both sides. “Science” surely deserves a strong comeuppance—just recall the hysteria when John Horgan mentioned that science begins with philosophy—with a commitment to certain unprovables.
But then there are multicultural zealots for whom logic is a feature of the only culture we may abuse, Luddites against practicality.
So yes, I believe “that science-done-right gets us to the truth.” But that depends on what you mean by “science”. The ID lit I know sees no sharp boundary between empiricism and philosophy—only opposing ends of a continuum—and you can’t have one without the other.
In the rarefied realm of ultimate reality, of quantum weirdness and Eastern monism, it may be that person deixis (1st, 2nd, 3rd) blurs. But where we live and learn there is no language in which this dimension is not central.
Could somebody please try to make sense of my #26 post? Someone good at chemistry. Or can someone direct me to someone who would know? With my lack of knowledge, it looks bad for ID which bothers me and I need to know if that’s true or not.
squeehunter:
I would definitely say that it does not really mean anything.
First of all, the problem of chirality of aminoacids (existing proteins are made only of L aminoacids, while spontaneous formation of aminoacids a-la-Urey_Miller always occurs in racemic mixtures) has always been a big problem for OOL theories, but certainly not the biggest. Let’s say it’s a collateral issue.
I would say that, being completely unable to solve the real issues, comeone is trying to give some new imaginary answer to the collateral ones, like this.
The proposed answer remains IMO extremely artificial and incomplete. First of all, it remains absolutely unreasonable that aminoacids could form in he abundance of concentrations necessary to make that kind of processes happen, in absence of life, enzymes, and so on. The Urey-Miller model is extremely ineffective in generating aminoacids. Do you really believe that primordial oceans were filled with aminoacids generated by lightning? And then? An enantiomeric eccess of L asparagine was created somehow in some point of the ocean, and by magical processes of gradual recristallization all the existing aminoacids were converted to L form? And that would be when? After the RNA world? Before?
In your place, I would not be too worried by OOL theories: they are nothing but propaganda fantasies. Shapiro recently recognized that existing theories have no credible foundation, and that completely new approaches have to be developed.
And remember, creating in the lab extremely artificial conditions which bear an extremely small occurrence of something which is vaguely in the direction of what the researchers really would like to demonstrate is not a good answer, from many points of view.
Rude:
“In the rarefied realm of ultimate reality, of quantum weirdness and Eastern monism, it may be that person deixis (1st, 2nd, 3rd) blurs. But where we live and learn there is no language in which this dimension is not central.”
A good way to put it. That’s why, while remaining deeply interested in that ultimate reality, I would not completely neglect what Sal Gal calls the “epistemic value in outward science”.
Joseph (msg #30):
“ID does NOT require “God” and it certainly does not require the supernatural.”
Self-evidently false.
Where does Joseph get these utterly false beliefs that make no sense?
I blame the leadership of UD.
ID indicates the work of invisible Designer. That Designer is God. God is supernatural.
You have ignored the content of my posts. You have also ignored the fact that everything I said is referenced.
Now I will reference again and I suppose that you will ignore again while writing the most nonsensical stuff I have ever seen.
“My thesis is that all disciplines find their completion in Christ and cannot be properly understood apart from Christ.”
–William Dembski, “Intelligent Design” (1999).
(Genesis 1:1) “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth….(John 1:1)….In the beginning was the Word [= Christ], and the Word was with God….”
Ray
Squeehunter @ 38;
Further to gpuccio’s excellent answer, bear in mind that any laboratory replication of alleged early-earth conditions, at all, ever, is by definition the work of an intelligence which is working towards a directed end. This is no less true if the intelligence concerned fosters the conceit that it is in fact trying to work “unintelligently”.
So in other words, the most that any such experiment of any sort can ever prove is that its outcome can be brought about by an intelligent agent acting with a purpose. This may be the very opposite of the agent’s intended purpose at the time, but nevertheless remains true.
These efforts are therefore by definition ID-friendly, whatever their outcome. That their proponents cannot see this is a fact that often baffles me.
“ID does NOT require “God” and it certainly does not require the supernatural.”
Self-evidently false.
Evidence please.
Where does Joseph get these utterly false beliefs that make no sense?
It is not a belief. What I said is a fact. And a fact that your whining will not change.
ID indicates the work of invisible Designer.
Evidence please. Or else you prove you are an intellectual coward.
That Designer is God.
How do YOU know?
I don’t think it is “God”.
I am not a Christian and I am not religious.
ID is an a-religious approach to the question on how things came to be the way they are.
That is another fact.
Wm Dembski is NOT ID.
For you to conflate him with ID just proves you have an agenda. One built on willfull ignoarnce.
BTW an atheist can accept ID. And that is because it doesn’t require a deity nor does it require the supernatural.
However you could prove me wrong by posting the data that refutes what I said.
Data, not words from an IDist.
BTW your posts are content-free. IOW nothing to ignore.
However I have noticed tat instead of data all you post are quotes. Quotes are meaningless as they reflect an individual’s ideas. And those ideas do not necessarily reflect ID.
Gonzalez, the co-author of “The Privileged Planet” is on record saying that ID does not require a belief in “God”.
Bith Behe and Minnich are on record saying that ID does not require the supernatural.
Ray ray cannot refute either of those claims and instead just keeps repeating irrelevant quotes.
Thanks Ray, you have proven to be ID ignorant.
Ray:
excuse me, but while I am not too interested in distinctions between natural and supernatural (that is becoming really tiresome), I must say that your quoting Dembski to demonstrate that ID is necessarily linked to a conception of a God seems a very unfair procedure.
Dembski is a Christian and a theologian, and so? Isn’t it allowed any longer to have personal religious beliefs? Does a scientist need to be an atheist? Is atheism less a philosophy of reality than religion?
I am tired to debate always the same trivial issues. If you want to confront ID, please do that on serious ground. ID implies a designer (one or more). Certainly, a designer which could design biological information was not certainly Dawkins. So, the field is somehow restricted.
But there are many possible hypotheses for the designer, and everybody can choose. First of all, even if one thinks of a God, that God can be conceived in many different ways. The only requirement is that such a God may be a designer.
Moreover, one can certainly think of intelligent forces inherent in nature itself, still to be discovered. You could argue that such a position would be similar to an immanent God, but all depends on how one thinks of it.
The designer could be physical or no physical. the classical hypothesis of aliens and panspermia remains a possibility.
One could believe that the whole universe is a living being, or that our planet is. One can believe in a vital force, in some form of non physical intelligence, or in whatever else you can imagine. One can also accept the implication of a designer, and refute any hypothesis about who the designer could be. After all, there is no reason why anyone should be obliged to entertain a theory of everything. Science can well remain contented with partial knowledge.
The fact remains that ID implies an intelligent designer. Any designer who in principle could be able to design and implement biological information satisfies the requirements for ID.
Is it so difficult to understand this simple fact?
Ray
William Dembski’s personal beliefs have no bearing on ID in general. It may surprise you to learn that there are a number of ID proponents who are not Christians and some who aren’t even theists. As a scientific program, ID does not need to identify the designer. It need only infer actual design from the evidence of biology. ID is perfectly content to let philosophers and theologians debate the identity of the designer.
The book you reference from Dembski has more to the title than you gave. It is Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology In other words, Dembski is writing this book first from his theological perspective. But his perspective is neither required for all of ID nor is it shared across all of ID.
YOu wanted the data to refute what you said, there it is!
Sal Gal
SOrry, I’ve been away for a couple days on a business trip. Still am, actually!
Sal Gal
I’m really not sure what your point is here. There isn’t a single discipline that doesn’t begin with certain assumptions and their “utility” as you put it. Science is just one of those. Indeed it is difficult to see who we can even reason without assuming certain things ie we have rationale minds, that we actually perceive things around us, that nature is uniform etc etc.
Your whole argument is predicated on a set of assumptions. So, what’s your point? That “science done right gets us to truth” is a false assumption? Or is there something else about assumptions you don’t like? It really isn’t clear what you’re driving at.
Again, what’s your point? You allude to (I think) Martin Buber’s I and Thou. How does this relate to science. If your point is that science can not get at all truth, you get no argument from me, and I’m sure no argument from several others who regularly contribute here. But if your point is that there is something inherently fishy about assumptions that gunks up the works with respect to discovering truth, then be more specific. WHich assumptions and what’s wrong with them?
THis argument only makes sense if it is ID’s arugment that ID can get us to ALL truth. But that is not ID’s argument. Why is empirical science incapable of providing a basis for the truth of actual design?
You seem to have a beef with ‘assumptions’, but haven’t told which assumptions, what your beef is, and why you seem to think these assumptions are not a good thing. All the while, you imply assumptions of your own to even make your argument. Do you not see that?
— R. Martinez: “Now I will reference again and I suppose that you will ignore again while writing the most nonsensical stuff I have ever seen.”
—-“My thesis is that all disciplines find their completion in Christ and cannot be properly understood apart from Christ.”
Please pay very careful attention to the word, “context.”
From a theological perspective, Dembski (and myself) believe that the designer is God. That is a faith-based statement coming from a believer.
From a scientific perspective, Dembski (and myself) understand that systematic inferential methods cannot reach the identity of a designer. That is an empirically-based statement coming from a researcher.
Do you not yet understand the difference between accepting the theological meaning of Scripture and observing patterns in a DNA molecule? Or, are you under the mistaken impression that one can do one or the other but not both?
StenvenB
Ray will not enter a debate on the evidence. He knows the strength of his case.
DavidM:
“You wanted the data to refute what you said, there it is!”
But you never quoted anything I said.
You re-pasted quotes from Dembski and the Bible that I quoted.
I am sure Dembski disagrees with your handling of his plain quote from “Intelligent Design” (1999).
And what you wrote is not data. It was, in this case, unsupported opinion that made no sense, unlike the OP which made total sense, unlike Barry Arrington’s reply which made no sense.
Ray
gpuccio (msg. #44):
“The fact remains that ID implies an intelligent designer….
….Is it so difficult to understand this simple fact?”
Ray Martinez (msg. #41):
“ID indicates the work of invisible Designer.”
Ray
StephenB (msg. #47):
“From a theological perspective, Dembski (and myself) believe that the designer is God. That is a faith-based statement coming from a believer.”
From a theological perspective, Dembski and I believe that the Designer is the Genesis Creator, and the Logos of St. John. This is a fact-based statement coming from a believer. Our faith is based on facts like Intelligence and Design (= attributes of invisible Creator) seen in every aspect of nature.
Ray
Sal Gal:” I see most IDists as hapless contributors to the glorification of science. Like most atheists, they sweep under the rug the fact that empirical science begins by vesting faith in the utility of assumptions, and tell people that science-done-right gets us to the truth.”
You are confusing “tautologies” with the “first principles” of right reason.
A TAUTOLOGY consists of smuggling the conclusion into the assumption. When that happens a person isn’t reasoning at all. FIRST PRINCIPLES consist of self-evident truths that we must all assume in order to reason in the first place. We don’t reason “to” them, we reason “from” them; if they are not assumed, all rationality ceases.
—–R. Martinez: “From a theological perspective,Dembski and I believe that the Designer is the Genesis Creator, and the Logos of St. John. This is a fact-based statement coming from a believer. Our faith is based on facts like Intelligence and Design (= attributes of invisible Creator) seen in every aspect of nature.”
I hate to pile on, I really do. So many are disassembling your comments. Still, your contradictions are so blatant, I can’t just let them sit there.
[A] If you use a quote by Dembski, then stay with Dembski. Don’t start talking about “our faith” in the context of his quote. ID believers are all over the map. Also, there are no “facts” in his quote, only references to articles of faith.
[B] The first half of your paragraph refers to articles of faith; the second half of your paragraph refers to the design inference. They are two different things, but each is CONSISTENT with the other. That means that both can be true at the same time and under the same formal circumstances.
[C] The Gospel Logos theory is a revealed truth that must be taken on faith. It cannot be logically inferred from evidence. Dembski obviously believes it and appeals to it as a faith COMPLEMENT to other scientific facts that he has verified scientifically by drawing inferences to the best explanation.
Without realizing it, you are conflating faith statements with logical inferences.
And ray, just because no one has seen the designer(s) does not mean the designer(s) is(are) invisible.
Heck I have never seen the programmer who wrote “Microsoft Word”- does that make him/ her invisible?
ID is about the DESIGN, not the designer(s).
Joseph (msg. #54):
“And ray, just because no one has seen the designer(s) does not mean the designer(s) is(are) invisible.
Heck I have never seen the programmer who wrote “Microsoft Word”- does that make him/ her invisible?
ID is about the DESIGN, not the designer(s).”
Commentary makes no sense and it is completely illogical. This is self-evident.
But since Joseph posted the comment he must think it makes sense. This is proof of incredible ignorance or confusion.
Neither Joseph or StephenB make any sense in their posts. Again, it is self-evident. I think the reason why DonaldM and Barry Arrington have abandoned the topic is because they do not want to hurt someones feelings and say the things I have said.
I am through here in this topic.
Ray