2020-09-08, 11:57 PM
(2020-09-08, 10:01 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]I sense a pronounced hostility towards the notion of there being something like the Christian God of the scriptures (especially the Old Testament). I think I share a little of that, but that doesn't change the fact that there is much scientific worth in the research and thought of the major proponents of ID in the DI.
This assumption of hostility is why I referenced Edward Feser, a Catholic Theologian who obviously is not trying to undermine belief in Christianity. I actually never realized how flawed the IDers' hopes were until I read his (IMO damning) criticisms of the movement's strategy for reconciling evolution with the Biblical God. His previously linked-to remarks regarding "Signature in the Cell" (linked for convenience) are pretty much on point - even a "Made by Yaweh" message in DNA cannot be construed as definitive evidence, as it's not as if "Made by Quetzacoatl" should mean mass conversion on the part of IDers. His point is not that ID cannot show some evidence of intervention, but rather this evidence is never going to point to the big-G God.
But that's also why I mention alternatives - it doesn't matter whether one's idea of the big-G God is the Christian's Yaweh, the Hindu's Isvara, or the Neo-pagan's Divine Mother. The problem is what any IDer wants to claim as potential evidence for this big-G is fatally flawed because it starts with the assumption of a mechanistic universe created by the big-G and then has to explain the intervention of probability manipulation at a later date. This, as I point out in my last post you quoted, opens a serious can of worms.
Yet to be clear, the failure of ID to provide satisfactory evidence for a big-G God doesn't mean such a god doesn't exist (obviously Feser believes in Yaweh after all). As I've said earlier at least fine-tuning, for example, deals with the fundamental constants of the known physical universe and thus can suggest the hand of such an entity. There's also philosophical arguments like the ones Feser provides in his excellent book Five Proofs of God, though I do think the classical theist "God of Philosophers" is less like Vishnu or Yaweh and more like the One of Neo-Platonism who Plotinus tells us it is pointless to worship...something for another thread...
Quote:Any apparent conflicts between their scientific findings regarding the evident operation of some sort of intelligent design process in the remote evolutionary past, and the supposed capacities and characteristics of the scriptural God, should most likely be ascribed to the human limitedness and sometimes folly of fundamentalist religion.
But the flaw is that is there are various candidates for the designers but the field of ID, AFAICTell, does not put any serious effort into discussing the viability of these options. Contrast this with physicists discussing the pros and cons of the varied explanations for what is going on with the collapse of the wave function.
Take some of the examples Dembski mentions - Aliens and the Simulation Hypothesis. We can look at Ufology and the varied arguments for the idea we're in a Simulation and see how likely it is that the designer(s) are aliens (or "neighbors" as Vallee suggests in Passport to Magonia) or the programmers of our supposed Simulation.
That Dembski compares ID to manipulation of a RNG shows that IDers can see if you really need a big-G God to weight the probabilities of mutation. A variety of PK-type experiments could be done, for example take some germs and see if adaptability to some anti-bacterial or anti-viral agent occurs at a faster rate if someone is focusing their own mind on this goal. Then see if invocation of some spirit, perhaps by ritual, improves things.
If you can get good results or provide evidence of aliens or the Simulation, then it's much more likely that some lesser spirit/alien/programmer weighted the dice of mutation in the past, for the same reason that a ham sandwich [in] my house is more likely made by me than God suddenly conjuring one up in my home.
Quote:To repeat my earlier challenge, "So what if these Christians generally ascribe the role of the intelligent designer to the God of the scriptures. That doesn't change the validity of their scientific findings. If you think it does, please cite where and how, for instance in Catholic Michael Behe's insights into irreducible complexity, and into the basically creatively impotent and genetically devolving nature of Darwinist evolution."
The problem is not with their findings, but a serious scientific field cannot just stop at a convenient point because going any further begins to intrude on personal religious beliefs. It is fine to have a particular preference for who one thinks the designer is, but there is no legitimate argument for why the identity of this designer is not subject to at least some scientific investigation and definitely some a priori argumentation. (Consider that the Hard Problem of Consciousness is an a priori argument for the failure of physicalism.)
Quote:Do you have any arguments for the invalidity of intelligent design as elucidated by these mainly Christian thinkers and scientists, for instance of the concept of complex specified information as (beyond a certain level) the unique product of intelligence, and of the concept of irreducible complexity and its unachievability by blind processes such as Darwinism?
It's not that the idea of intervention in the evolutionary process by intelligent beings is necessarily flawed or wrong, it's that there is no good reason not to take things further and evaluate via science who the designer(s) is(are).