At 10:29 AM 10/05/2000, you wrote:
>Chris
> >Finally, echoing Arnhart, the theistic ID position is based almost entirely
> >on ignorance. It's the "God of the Gaps," again. Since we do not *know* how
> >life originated, we *cannot* argue that it must have been design. Since we
> >do not have *any* specific evidence of an actual *instance* of divine
> >intervention (and just how would we know it was *divine* intervention,
> >anyway?), we cannot claim to know that such interventions have occurred.
> >The strongest claim we can make is that we are *ignorant* of such things.
> >And ignorance means *ignorance*, not an excuse to make any damn arbitrary
> >claim we happen to want to believe because it fits our desires or religious
> >beliefs. (This is something many of the *non-theistic* ID theorists need to
> >learn as well (Bertvan?).)
Bertvan
>Hi Chris,
>I have stated repeatedly that a profession of ignorance would be acceptable
>to me. And ignorance means ignorance, not an excuse to make such arbitrary
>claim such as, "We know exactly how it happened. It was random variation and
>natural selection," just because that is the only explanation we can think of
>that fits a materialistic philosophy. I'm convinced there was a lot more to
>it than that simplistic explanation.
Chris
Interesting. Just after you *agree* that ignorance is not an excuse to make
arbitrary claims, you effectively make one based on your ignorance.
Further, I may as well point out, that without something equivalent to the
amount of evidence and research involved in modern evolutionary theory,
your claims that design was involved is itself grotesquely simplistic. It
does not actually explain anything. It merely makes the question one of how
to explain the origin of the supposed intelligence that you claim exists in
things. If you deny that it has an origin, then you have even *worse*
questions to answer. The claim "it was intelligent design" (which is
approximately the extent of your theory, is thus almost so simplistic as to
make it nearly devoid of meaningful *objective* content. But, then, perhaps
its only purpose is psychological.
And simplistically is exactly how you treat it yourself. You have no
meaningful specification of what this intelligence is, of how it works, of
how to detect it empirically, of how to distinguish it from purely blind
"mechanical" processes, of how to validate any of its alleged attributes
(creativity, free will, spontaneity, etc.). You give no meaningful
empirical predictions by means of which to test it, nor, in general, do you
specify what kinds of facts might, if they were found to be the case,
refute it. It resides, apparently, in a realm of mental fog, in which
nothing is definite (except that it, supposedly, is real), in which nothing
is detectable about it that cannot be shown to be equally possible (indeed,
even *necessary* in some cases) with strictly naturalistic causation, etc.
In short, considering the almost perfect emptiness of your theory in
objective terms, and the vast richness mathematically demonstrable as
possible with a replication and branch-by-variation method,
you are *hardly* in a position to be criticizing evolutionary theory as
*simplistic.*
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