Re: [asa] Re: ID without specifying the intelligence?

Iain,
You are neither sanctimonious, nor a prig. BTW, what's a prig? :)

>So I get a bit suspicious of ID because it would seem to be aiming to prove
the existence of a Designer.

Be suspicious of the IDM (ID Movement).

IDT (ID Theory), on the other hand, need rigorous definitions of its
components in order to even be evaluated.

An example of what I mean:
I believe it was Ernst Mayr who wrote in his 2002 book What is Evolution,
that evolutionary theory (or was it Darwinism, I forget) is comprised at
least 8 separate and independent concepts. So, it begs asking, when someone
is against evolution, which of these concepts is one against? Without an
answer one cannot have a coherent discussion. The same is true of IDT.

And if one wants to discuss the IDM, one has to identify the various groups
and beliefs. Its about people.
IDT, on the other hand is about math.

Protagonists on both sides of course seem to have a primary goal of making
sure there are no rigorous definitions to be had. I see that there is an
almost constant confusion between IDT and IDM on this listserver, and
unfortunately it tends to degrade the discussion into noise. Maybe its
merely the nature of the internet at play, but one would think a bunch of
scientists would want to increase the signal-to-noise-ratio.

One idea on how to do that on the internet: Consider how wikipedia
eliminates noise. They "revert" pages. They ban ip addresses of
vandals. And they have a community process (albeit an imperfect one) of
voting inadequate material, and problematic participants, off the
island. Its not perfect, but works somewhat. I know Randy is looking at
various measures, perhaps wikipedia technology and policies would help.

Best Regards,
David Clounch (ASA member)

On 9/16/07, Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Peter,
>
> I believe you deserve an answer, even if others don't. As you say, we
> need light, not heat, but all too often this list just generates heat & when
> I comment on it I get called a sanctimonious prig. So be it - this is the
> way I wish to conduct discourse. Periodically I have also descended into
> sarcasm and name-calling, and I always regret it later. I'm not pretending
> I'm in any way perfect in this respect.
>
> I believe that Science is the study of natural phenomena - the laws that
> govern the way things behave. To be scientific, a theory must be able to
> make predictions - and if the theory is successful, the predictions will be
> verified - if they are not verified, the theory is thereby falsified. A
> good example is Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which predicted
> that gravitational bodies "bent" space time. This was confirmed by
> observations during a total eclipse of the sun of stars close by. Their
> positions were deflected by exactly the amount predicted by the theory.
>
> I therefore don't believe that Science can be used to study or prove the
> supernatural. Consider answers to prayer, for example. It is not as if God
> is some form of mathematical equation into which you plug a prayer and out
> comes a predictable answer. Prayer is, at heart, the earnest and honest
> endeavour to discover God's will. It is impossible to predict when and in
> what manner our prayers will be answered. In a passage in Isaiah 55 God
> states that his thoughts are higher than our thoughts - as high as the
> heavens are above the earth. That being the case, how could we who are so
> much lower even begin to predict "scientifically" what God will do.
>
> Because the supernatural is concerned, therefore, with things that are not
> predictable, then science cannot deal properly with supernatural phenomena,
> because science deals with predictable things. That is a limitation of
> science.
>
> So I get a bit suspicious of ID because it would seem to be aiming to
> prove the existence of a Designer. As I've said earlier, I think it's
> immaterial whether the Designer is infinite (God) or just a sufficiently
> intelligent alien being. Both appeals are unscientific, in that they make
> no further predictions that can be tested.
>
> The only other point I'd like to make at this time concerns honesty and
> dishonesty. You'll frequently see creationists accused of lying (and if
> Michael Roberts can provide a concrete reference to his oft-repeated claim
> that Henry Morris said it was OK to lie for the Kingdom of God, then I'll
> use that in any future dialogue I have with YEC's. At the moment we only
> have Michael's word, which for all I know is just based on hearsay).
>
> But it does seem to me most worrying that many YEC's don't seem to have as
> high regard for the truth as they should. I gave as an example the way my
> (honest) YEC friend has disproven Humphreys' White Hole cosmology and yet
> no-one in the YEC camp has listened to him, and they still promote it. His
> rebuttal is very clear, but no-one has acknowledged it because it's not what
> they want to hear. Do you agree that's a cause for concern?
>
> The other example is Ted today with the Billy Graham quote. Clearly BG is
> not a YEC, and yet, apparently the Creation museum claims that he is. This
> is something that also should cause you concern. A Christian museum should
> pay scrupulous attention to the truth.
>
> I also do find that many YEC's I've tried to reason with aren't really
> willing to engage in reasoning about facts and evidence presented to them.
> The usual cycle of events is that a friend writes to me and says "What do
> you think of this?" ( e.g. Blood cells found in a dinosaur fossil). I
> look it up on the web and find the real story, which is very often one of
> dreadful misrepresentation of the science, and point this out. Then what
> usually happens is that my correspondent will ignore it and switch to
> something else ... ahh, but what about this, and this and this. All of
> these I could almost certainly find the rebuttal for quite easily, but I
> simply don't have the time. [ Incidentally, with the dinosaur blood
> "claims", the fact is that the researcher who made the discoveries (Mary
> Schweitzer) is a devout Christian herself, and she is distraught at the way
> creationists have distorted her research to suit their own ends.
>
> In my view much of this is not so much deliberate dishonesty, as wishful
> thinking. I was for a time persuaded of the YEC approach, and I certainly
> didn't change my mind by being accused of being a liar. But I was engaging
> in wishful thinking, whereby you just see what you want to see, rather than
> facing up to the evidence with an open and honest mind. Wishful thinking is
> a form of dishonesty, but I think it becomes so instinctive after a while
> that the wishful-thinker doesn't even realise they are doing it.
>
> Regards,
> Iain
>
>
>
>
>
>

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Received on Sun Sep 16 12:06:39 2007