Bill Nye, Deniable Guy: Promoting Science and Rationality, He Blunders On Both

Not to mention, just where is it that Nye thinks evolution isn’t taught? It’s part of every public school curriculum in the nation. There may be some places where it isn’t the only thing that is taught but I think even those are extremely rare. And the number of home/private school kids that are taught young earth creationism exclusively is vanishingly small. This isn’t a legitimate problem, it’s just Christian bashing that lets a nitwit like Nye put a “legitimate” sheen on his bigotry.

Near the 9 min mark of the video, Nye develops his complaint against the teaching of young earth creationism into a non-sequitar. He thinks holding a YEC view will lead to all kinds of problems in the realm of science and progress – and this is why he has to get the message out. But this charge is demonstrably false.

In fact, I would wager if YEC were the prevailing belief among all people, science and progress would continue to march forward just as it did during the time of Kepler, Newton, Bacon, etc. because it’s not the YEC belief that is driving the desire to know and discover.

“Instead of mandating intelligent design, Discovery Institute seeks to increase the coverage of evolution in textbooks. It believes that evolution should be fully and completely presented to students, and they should learn more about evolutionary theory, including its unresolved issues. In other words, evolution should be taught as a scientific theory that is open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can’t be questioned.”

From here

@SteveK
That is what they say publicly and this is what they say when they think no one is listening:
“Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.”
“Governing Goals
To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.”
http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy

Also:

It believes that evolution should be fully and completely presented to students, and they should learn more about evolutionary theory, including its unresolved issues. In other words, evolution should be taught as a scientific theory that is open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can’t be questioned.

There are plenty of unresolved issues within evolutionary biology and they are taught all the time, although virtually only on the college level because the stuff that is controversial is much too advanced for schools. The problem here is that what the DI deems to be an “unresolved issues” are in actuality creationist arguments that have been refuted countless times and that are taken as seriously by the scientific community as the arguments of holocaust deniers are taken seriously by historians.

Andy,

That is what they say publicly

So you agree with Tom’s statement. Good.

and this is what they say when they think no one is listening:

There is no contradiction between the two statements. One says teach the science of evolution, the other says disrupt the materialistic philosophy.

No, they do that very rarely actually

But the point remains that they do teach challenges. So once again, you are agreeing.

Tom,

Andy, I know these people personally. They say the same things in private they say in public. They’re not hiding.

With your approach of cherry picking statements and sweeping everything that is older than a few years under the rug, that might be the case, but I don´t find your approach to be a reasonable one.

But if you want to stoke your fears with hidden conspiracy theories, then I won’t find it so easy to sympathize with you.

The one that promotes conspiracy theories is you, you are the one who suggests that what the DI promotes as “evidential challenges to evolution” are genuine challenges despite the fact that the scientific community virtually unanimously rejects these challenges as creationist nonsense. So, what you are saying is either a) that there either is a worldwide conspiracy to silence legitimate arguments against evolution or b) that pretty much all scientists that work in a field relevant for evolution are idiots.
What I say on the other hand is simply that american anti-evolutionism constantly changes its name but never changes its arguments, and that is demonstrably so.

you are the one who suggests that what the DI promotes as “evidential challenges to evolution” are genuine challenges despite the fact that the scientific community virtually unanimously rejects these challenges as creationist nonsense.

The only way a rejected evidential challenge can fail to be a genuine evidential challenge is if it lacked relevant evidence. Did the DI present evidence that wasn’t relevant to the theory?

I understand that biology textbooks still teach students about rejected evidential challenges and why they are rejected. I think that kind of talk is healthy.

Tom,

Feel free to consider me a liar, Andy.

I don´t think you are lying, I think you have been deceived.

Were you still looking for sympathy?

Please quote me asking for your sympathy, I can´t remember ever doing that but since you keep repeating this ad nauseam, I guess I must have done this at some point.

Meanwhile, you continue to duck the issue of what the DI is actually calling for

I am not ducking the issue, you do. I repeat what I said earlier:
“please give a specific example for such an “evidential challenge” that should be taught and provide a citation from the scientific literature (ideally a review) that elaborates on this challenge.
All of those “challenges” that are promoted by the DI that I have seen so far are either rehashed creationist arguments that have long been debunked or complete misrepresentations of the scientific literature. But maybe you have seen something different.”

Andy,

“please give a specific example for such an “evidential challenge” that should be taught and provide a citation from the scientific literature (ideally a review) that elaborates on this challenge.

Behe’s IC theory is (was) an evidential challenge that has since been rejected. As I said above, rejected challenges are still taught in schools today so I’m struggling to understand what you are actually objecting to.

SteveK

Behe’s IC theory is (was) an evidential challenge that has since been rejected. As I said above, rejected challenges are still taught in schools today so I’m struggling to understand what you are actually objecting to.

It is not Behe´s theory, Behe was just the first one to use the name “irreducible complexity”. Creationists have used the same arguments with the flagellum as their favorite example way back in the eighties. And a similar objection to evolution was already raised by one of Darwin´s contemporaries (St. George Jackson Mivart), not for molecular machines of course but rather for bigger biological structures (Darwin´s interactions with Mivart were one of the main reason for why the latest edition of the “Origin” is longer than the first edition).
And this is taught, but it is taught in university classes. This is too specialized for schools.

Tom @30, I take that to mean that there will be no answer to my repeatedly posed question:
“please give a specific example for such an “evidential challenge” that should be taught and provide a citation from the scientific literature (ideally a review) that elaborates on this challenge.
All of those “challenges” that are promoted by the DI that I have seen so far are either rehashed creationist arguments that have long been debunked or complete misrepresentations of the scientific literature. But maybe you have seen something different.”

SteveK,
it´s “Lamarck”. Also, feel free to address what I actually said.

Tom @35
that´s fine, and even if you wouldn´t be busy, you still don´t owe me an answer. If you want to discuss that issue later, that is fine by me and if you don´t want to discuss it, that is also fine by me.

Andy
How you manage to justify “the Discovery Institute now says x, I DON’T believe that and that settles it” is your problem, not mine.

Tom,
afaict, what we mainly disagree about is this:
You say that when the DI says that they want to “teach the strengths and weaknesses of evolution”, they actually mean exactly that.
I on the other hand say that the “strengths and weaknesses” schtick is just an attempt to sell the *exact same* debunked creationist arguments as before, only under a new name.
It would be very easy to prove me wrong, by showing that the “weaknesses” that the DI wants to have taught are recognized as actual “weaknesses” by the scientific community instead of being regarded as rehashed and long debunked creationist objections, or by showing that those “weaknesses” are in fact arguments that creationists and cdesign proponentsists have not already tried in earlier incarnations of american anti-evolutionism (“teach the controversy!”, “equal time for evolution and creationism!” etc.).
Also, I have presented evidence for my case, and honestly, I have a hard time thinking of better evidence for my claim here than the nature of the first textbook on ID “theory”.

Let me take the easy way out, since it’s hopeless anyway–you won’t listen–and just list some of their recent new arguments by way of links.

Aha, I won´t listen anyway eh? Right back at you.
Furthermore, it would have been sufficient to simply post one link and say “look at every single post on ENV”. How about we do the following – you select just ONE, the one argument you consider to be the very best, and then we try to find out whether it is either a) a rehash of earlier creationist arguments or b) a complete misrepresentation of the scientific literature or c) a genuine “scientific weakness” of evolution. I´ve actually met many of the people whose works were quoted on ENV or Uncommon Descent and not a single one of those would agree that their research has been fairly and accurately represented.

1. You’re paying attention to your inferences rather than the facts before you. The DI is calling for what it’s calling for. Clear enough.

You would make an excellent attorney… “but my client says he is innocent, how could this be any more obvious?!”

2. Your accusations of the DI hiding things are laughable. Everything is above-board and out in the open. I know most of their prominent people, and I know what they write, and who they are is what you see.

Great. Then please fill in the blank here:
“The first texbook on ID was written by literally just replacing “God” with “Designer” and “Creationists” with “Design proponents”. Design proponents still argued that ID is not creationism in a cheap tuxedo, and they were totally not lying when they said this because []”

3. Your charges against me amount either to I’m a blithering idiot or a liar.

If you insist. Could you please explain how, using the exact same standards of what constitutes “lying” and “idiocy”, what you said about me so far can be explained without assuming that I am dishonest or stupid? If you can´t – your point here would be…. what exactly?

4. The world has turned on its axis many times and made many revolutions around its star since the wedge document and cdesign propenentsists. You assume that what the DI has learned since then has been nothing but more effective subterfuge

I am very familiar with the relevant literature, I don´t “assume” this, I have a warranted belief in this being the case.

You are unwilling to grant that they might have actually learned something legitimate through early experiences.

Of course they might have. Any examples you can think of?

You have no personal exposure to them.

And you have no personal exposure to the scientists they write about. That, per se, doesn´t invalidate your views, but if you want to play the “I know those people personally” card – I can do the same.

You draw your conclusions based on second, third, probably even fourth-hand information. Tell me: how much do you know from primary sources?

Again, if you want to play this game – fine by me. I don´t know any “design proponent” personally, but I do know many biologists personally, including several whose work was “discussed” on ENV, I also have an advanced degree in that field. How much do you know about evolution from primary sources?

JAD

What qualifies Andy to tell other people, he does not personally know, what to believe or think?

Please quote me saying something that amounts to “you should believe x and think y”, if you cannot do that, the honest thing would be to retract this.

So without popular support and the support of the elites how are they going to succeed?

They aren´t going to succeed. But they will keep finding gullible guys with plenty of faith and money (e.g. Howard Ahmanson, Jr.) or influence (e.g. Rick Santorum), and they will keep spreading misinformation and sooner or later they will get the next schoolboard into a lot of trouble.

Maybe they are going to put something in the water? Is that what Andy believes?

Damn straight! Also, BENGHAZI!!!!

Andy strikes me as a troll driven by an unusually high degree of paranoia.

And if Andy would have a modicum of respect for your worthless opinion, that might just bother him a little.

SteveK,

Ignoring the pejorative ‘creationist’ term…

It is indeed pejorative but if it was used by creationists (or is indeed still used by creationists), then it is also accurate.

If they’ve been debunked via the scientific method then wouldn’t that mean that design theory is a scientific theory and not a theory rooted in religious argument?

Who said “debunked by the scientific method”? I just said “debunked”. Also, your inference is illogical – it boils down to “x has been debunked using the scientific method, ergo, x must be a scientific theory” – this is like presenting a scientific argument for why astrology doesn´t work and then concluding that astrology must be a “scientific theory” because it was debunked with science.

On the other hand, if the arguments haven’t been debunked in that way, then in what way do scientists mean when they say the arguments have been debunked?

Depends on the argument in question, they don´t all fail for the same reason.

Andy,

Depends on the argument in question, they don´t all fail for the same reason.

Can you give one example?

Andy, don’t be an idiot.
If the question is whether the client says he is innocent, then the answer, “but my client says he is innocent, how could this be any more obvious?!” is an obviously sufficient answer.

If the question is what the DI is calling for (saying out loud, in public), then what the DI says, out loud, in public, is what the DI is calling for.

Are you being deliberately obtuse here? I keep asking you to read what they MEAN when they say “weaknesses of evolution”, those alleged “weaknesses of evolution” are nothing but a rehash of the same flawed arguments and misrepresentations that they used before, not genuine weaknesses that the scientific community would recognize as such. This is like saying that the CIA could not possibly have “tortured” people because they used the phrase “enhanced interrogation” instead of “torture” – if the facts show that what happened was indeed torture, then “enhanced interrogation” was a euphemism. It is the same with “weaknesses of evolution”, merely *calling* something a “scientific weakness of evolution” doesn´t make it one.
Imagine that I said that theology students should “learn scholarly objections to the historicity of Jesus”, and it then turns out that by “scholarly objections” I actually mean the “arguments” presented in the Zeitgeist movie – would you then agree that merely *calling* something a “scholarly objection” doesn´t make it one?

Andy, see my point 4 here, and please explain to me while you’re at it, how do you keep yourself from falling asleep with all this old repetitive stuff?

This is a pathetic response – this boils down to “yeah, they were flat out lying back then, and the same people are in charge now, but we should ignore that because it was like… already several years ago, and even though they never apologized for lying back then, we should totally trust them now!”

Sure. They learned that the American public, American legal system, and scientists around the world weren’t open to a certain version of creationism

And so they tried to smuggle in the same debunked anti-evolution arguments under a new name.

In particular, they’ve learned that the word “creationism” has rhetorical baggage associated with it, baggage that they never carried, but which others have assumed that they did.

There is no need to “assume” this, we just have to read what they publish.

Second, you keep missing the obvious, easy, and simple point that what the Discovery Institute is calling for can be determined in quite a straightforward manner by finding out what they’re calling for. (Note, by the way, that “is” is a present tense verb. Your boring references to documents from 1987 and 1998 do stretch the meaning of what “is” is.

And again, you are either being deliberately obtuse or intellectually dishonest. Your entire case boils down to “if they call it a “scientific weakness of evolution” then it must indeed be a “scientific weakness of evolution”, even if all the evidence shows that those alleged “weaknesses” are rehashes of debunked creationist arguments or complete misrepresentations of the scientific literature”.

How much do I know about evolution from primary sources? About as much as I’m claiming to know. (Is Ernst Mayr a primary source? Francisco Ayala? The NAS? Stephen Jay Gould? Kenneth Miller?

Good, if you count that as primary sources, then you were completely wrong in saying: “You draw your conclusions based on second, third, probably even fourth-hand information. Tell me: how much do you know from primary sources?” – because I actually know everything I do know about this subject from “primary sources”.

We could mark that up as a third sign of your intellectual irresponsibility: you’re playing a fallacious game of tu quoque rather than owning up to your rather absurd means of drawing conclusions about people you do not know.

Your buddies at the DI have said plenty of rather unflattering (to put it at its mildest) things about named scientists, the scientific community in general and named institutions like the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Are you willing to say that you flat out disagree with ALL of those statements they made? If you don´t, how many of those scientists they talked about do you know personally? If you don´t know any – congratulations for your absurd means of drawing conclusions about people you do not know.

Anyway, name one school board they got into trouble. Just one. Since you’re so insistent on examples.

Ah, is this the “the Dover school board had it coming for being stupid enough to believe the lies from the Dishonesty Institute” defense?

Tom,
one final comment because this is obviously not going to be productive and because I don´t like the way this conversation is escalating (and I presume you don´t like it either).
If you know people from the DI personally (maybe you even consider some of them to be friends), I can understand that you get defensive here. However, this goes both ways – the DI has published and endorsed plenty of defamatory material (the Expelled movie and most of the stuff written by Jonathan Wells are good examples) and I personally know several of those people that were attacked by the DI (not to mention that I work in the field and that I thus have every reason to take statements like “Intelligent design was being suppressed in a systematic and ruthless fashion” personally).

@Andy #54,
Thanks. I am still left with many questions but won’t pursue them because I’m not that interested in ID. I still don’t see where anything has been “debunked”.

BillT’s question about weaknesses is interesting. Maybe I’ll jump back in later.

Just a quick follow up to the above. As much Andy, as you may feel that the ID proponents may present a rehash of the same flawed arguments and misrepresentations that they have used before the secular community is equally as guilty with their claims about evolution. They believe evolution can account for morality, altruism, truth, beauty, humor, love and a host of human metaphysical characteristics well outside the bounds of naturalism. And all this when evolution can’t account for either the existence of life or the existence of evolution itself.

@Tom and BillT

Behe has provided empirical evidence that adaptive variations involving simultaneous changes in more than two genes happen very, very rarely. It’s so rare that the statistical likelihood of life having developed as it has, by neo-Darwinian means, in the time available, if there were any significant number of multiple simultaneous adaptive mutations required, is effectively zero.

No, Behe did not provide empirical evidence for this claim. He made some calculations based on empirical results that other people have produced. And his calculations are flawed, he tries the “classic” creationist approach of assuming that if some evolutionary change involves x mutations, all of those mutations have to happen simultaneously – so that he can multiply the individual probabilities for each mutation, get a huge number, and then say something like what you say here.
Problem is, this has nothing to do with biological reality. He didn´t provide any example for which this is *demonstrably* so (that all 3+ mutations had to happen simultaneously), and he also didn´t address the fact that we have plenty of counterexamples where this is demonstrably NOT so (where 3+ mutations did NOT have to happen simultaneously). Also, we now know that the example he discusses at length – Chloroquine resistance – in his book, is one of the latter cases (we also strongly expect that cases where 3+ mutations have to happen simultaneously are exceedingly rare for theoretical reasons, due to what has been found out about the phenomenon of “epistasis” so far).
This is a prime example of what I am talking about – Behe completely distorts the scientific literature (if you don´t believe me, I can point you to the primary literature here and you can write to the authors that published the relevant research and ask them if they believe that Behe´s spin is accurate – most scientists are happy to answer such emails from interested laypeople), and Behe does this to use an argument that creationists have already used generations ago – pretending without any rational basis (and ignoring all evidence to the contrary) that a set of observed changes:
a) had to happen (no alternatives are possible) and
b) had to happen simultaneously, so that the individual probabilities can be multiplied.
The way Behe (and Luskin) spin this, is highly dishonest – I´m happy to give you more details on this, but again, you don´t have to trust me here, feel free to write a mail to the researchers that actually worked on this stuff.

1. ID is an interesting and promising program of scientific study, whose results are controversial but whose efforts should not be politically stamped out.

99% of those “results” are DI people writing books and blogposts about actual research done by other people, other people who for some mysterious reason never agree with the DI spin – this is not “scientific study” and this is also not “controversial”. The opinions of the DI are not controversially discussed among biologists, they are rather taken as seriously as anti-Cantor cranks are taken seriously by mathematicians. You also have it exactly backwards about “politically stamped out” – since it fails across the board when it comes to science, politics is the only way the DI can try to stay in some sense relevant.

2. Much of the opposition to ID, such as Andy’s, is based on misinformation concerning the nature of ID as a research program and the motives and intentions of its proponents.

What demonstrably false claim have I made about the “nature of ID as a research program”?

3. Naturalism/materialism, one of the chief targets of ID’s research program, is a demonstrably false philosophy, with or without any science to show that is so.

Cool, could you then tell them to pester philosophy departments and leave scientists alone? That would be a nice change.

c. Nevertheless I think there are interesting points in its science that need evaluation.

That has been done, many times. What is your reason for not accepting that evaluation given that you recognize that you yourself lack the qualifications to make this assessment on your own?

e. I am convinced a fortiori that naturalistic evolution is wrong.

What reason do you have for singling out evolution here? In what sense do you believe naturalistic evolution it to be “more wrong” than naturalistic gravity, or naturalistic electricity, or naturalistic germ theory of disease?

BillT,

Just a quick follow up to the above. As much Andy, as you may feel that the ID proponents may present a rehash of the same flawed arguments and misrepresentations that they have used before the secular community is equally as guilty with their claims about evolution. They believe evolution can account for morality, altruism, truth, beauty, humor, love and a host of human metaphysical characteristics well outside the bounds of naturalism.

I disagree. They would be equally guilty when they tried to smuggle atheist literature that does make such claims into public school programs, or lobby for policy changes that would allow atheist teachers in public schools to indoctrinate kids with such beliefs. Afaict, the secular / atheist community does not do this, so there is no equal guilt here.
Also, you would of course be right if you say that biology doesn´t make moral philosophy superfluous, but that doesn´t mean that biology has nothing to say about morality (and especially altruism). Random example, think of the classic trolley problem:
“On your morning walk, you see a trolley car hurtling down the track, the conductor slumped over the controls. In the path of the trolley are five men working on the track, oblivious to the danger. You are standing at a fork in the track and can pull a lever that will divert the trolley onto a spur, saving the five men. Unfortunately, the trolley would then run over a single worker who is laboring on the spur. Is it permissible to throw the switch, killing one man to save five?”
and compare it to a slightly modified moral dilemma:
“You are on a bridge overlooking the tracks and have spotted the runaway trolley bearing down on the five workers. Now the only way to stop the trolley is to throw a heavy object in its path. And the only heavy object within reach is a fat man standing next to you. Should you throw the man off the bridge?”
– Research has shown that the overwhelming majority of people (independent of cultural background) would sacrifice one to save five in the first case, while the overwhelming majority would NOT sacrifice one to save five in the second case. Science cannot tell you what the correct way to behave would be in those two situations, but it can be used to find out *why* people make different judgments in situtations that (at least superficially) seem to be morally equivalent.

And all this when evolution can’t account for either the existence of life or the existence of evolution itself.

This is by design, it´s not even supposed to account for that.

Tom –

At about 7:25 in the MidPoint interview he lumps all evangelical families into one pile

Actually, no.

No, really! Go check! The questioner at 7:25, asks Nye to address “the evangelics [sic], if you will, those who believe in creationism” – emphasis added. And Nye’s been very clear about who he’s classifying as creationists – those who believe “the Earth is 6,000 years old”.

He doesn’t say anything about Evangelicals who aren’t young-Earth creationists. But yes, those who believe the Earth is 6,000 years old “are unable or are uncomfortable with using the scientific method”, as Nye puts it. I’ve used the illustration before, but saying that the Earth is 6,000 years old instead of over 4 billion years old is exactly like saying ‘scientists say that North America is about 2,500 miles east to west, but it’s actually less than 20 feet across’.

Tom –

In this he relies on a fallacy, the error of the false dichotomy. Notice his lack of awareness that the leaders of the Intelligent Design community, the Discovery Institute, have for many years been calling for more teaching, not less, on evolution, including both its strengths and the evidential challenges it faces.

Sorry, I’m with Andy, and know of no substantive “evidential challenge” raised by the DI. (More on this shortly.)

Tom –

calculations based on other persons’ empirical data count as empirical evidence

Only if the model the calculations are based on is correct. For example, if you calculate the odds of raindrops forming from water vapor in the atmosphere by water molecules bumping into each other and binding… you’ll find it’ll take a billion years before a raindrop falls. All of this is based on empirical measurement of intermolecular forces.

Yet rain still falls. How? Toss into your model dust in the air, nucleation sites that water can bind to.

What Andy is saying is that Behe’s models are thoroughly and demonstrably wrong.

To wit:

Assumptions about when mutations occur are now classified as creationist and non-creationist?! LOL

Indeed, they can be. If one organism has to have a whole set of mutations to give rise to some new molecule, mechanism, or trait – then it’s quite unlikely to happen, sure. But if the mutations can arise in separate organisms, and be combined by sexual reproduction, plasmid exchange, or whatever… then the odds are very different. Calculations are nice, but you need a good model to tie them to the real world.

Tom,

You’re right, though, Andy: biology (understood very broadly) has something to say about morality. It says that people have opinions we label as “moral” opinions.

It has much more to say than that, it can also provide some highly interesting explanations that moral philosophy could not find without science – I hinted at one such explanation in my last comment, the majority of people have utilitarian attitudes when they *have* to make a decision where either one or five people die, but they think very differently about the matter if you slightly modify the scenario so that *they themselves* have to harm or kill someone instead of just “letting it happen”, you need science if you want to know why this is so.

It doesn’t say whether any opinion is right or wrong however.

Sure, I said so myself, didn´t I.

Tom,

Funny. The next thing you said was,

Quote-mining isn´t “studying”.

I have omitted a part that is crucial for correctly understanding the part I quoted? Sorry! Could you please point out which crucial part I omitted?

Naturalism isn’t a red herring if the question is whether naturalistic evolution is a satisfactory evolution for life. Sheesh.

You originally only talked about naturalism being false, and the question of whether naturalism is true or false is a red herring.
If it would be rational to incorporate non-naturalistic explanatory factors within the framework of evolutionary theory, then it is very telling that you (“you” as in design proponents) cannot even convince a non-negligible fraction of biologists who do not subscribe to naturalism. There are plenty of evolutionary biologists that happen to be christians, and with a handful of exceptions, they all think that ID is garbage (if they are even aware of it at all, many biologists in countries other than the USA are not even aware of this nonsense) – have you never wondered why this is so?

The way you’ve framed the question, it includes a strong implied sideways glance at the problem of evil. Did you want to change the subject?

Nope, I was rather just curious how you believe this to work – whether you believe God to be some super-powerful genetic engineer (in a very literal sense) or if you do not, what else you mean by evolution not always working “in accordance with the regular and consistent operations of nature”

Andy, you can repeat it as often as you like, but naturalism is the question. I don’t have any particular disagreement with evolutionary theory except for the idea that it happened by purely naturalistic processes–which is the reigning view, unfortunately for those who hold to it.

And you can repeat as often as you like that naturalism is relevant here, it won´t change the fact that plenty of biologists do not subscribe to naturalism and virtually none of those biologists support ID. If you think it can be scientifically demonstrated that evolution required non-naturalistic interventions, cool, you are free to do that. But virtually everyone who studies this subject for a living, including christians and other people who do actually believe that some God intervened in evolution to give some people a “soul” or whatever, disagrees with you on this.

BTW: “Christians” is a proper noun.

Really? “Christ” is definitely a proper noun but “christians” seems to be a common noun, doesn´t it?

I suggest you simply be content with the thought that I believe God was involved in the process, not as a handyman/tinkerer, but as the creator of all matter, energy, space, physical law, physical processes; that creation is the first act of his providential involvement in the processes of the universe; that those providential processes continue at all times; and that somehow through those processes he directs certain things toward certain outcomes.

Thanks for the explanation. I fail to see however how this “not as a handyman/tinkerer” does not contradict this “somehow through those processes he directs certain things toward certain outcomes” – it doesn sound like a super powerful engineer. Don´t get me wrong, I see the difference between a “ground of all being” and a superpowerful engineer, but an entity that builds Behe´s “double CCC´s” / “directs certain things toward” making Behe´s “double CCC´s” happen, sounds like a super powerful engineer, not like a ground of all being.

Yeah, nowadays, it was very different back in Darwin´s time (the Catholic Church also initially didn´t like it very much when a literal interpretation of the Genesis flood was refuted about a century before Darwin published the “Origin”).

My understanding – and I could be wrong – is that the Church never had a dogmatic position so “different” and “didn’t like” is not a position of the Church. Nothing has changed.

Only if you are willing to accept that pretty much all of Genesis is a metaphor for something. And many christians were and are not willing to accept that and prefer literal interpretations of Genesis over science.

See, here you are forcing a conflict where none is required. It’s people like you that make the DI possible.

And all this when evolution can’t account for either the existence of life or the existence of evolution itself.

This is by design, it´s not even supposed to account for that.

Andy,

My point exactly.

That there is research into moral issues says nothing about the issue I raised.

And the idea that evolution hasn’t been touted, in the public sphere and implicitly if not explicitly in educational circles, as an explanation for the existence of morality, love, altruism, etc. isn’t just utter nonsense it’s absurd and more than a little disingenuous.

BillT,

And the idea that evolution hasn’t been touted, in the public sphere and implicitly if not explicitly in educational circles, as an explanation for the existence of morality, love, altruism, etc. isn’t just utter nonsense it’s absurd and more than a little disingenuous.

What is more than a little disingenuous is to conflate “public sphere” and “educational circles” here. Believe it or not, atheists, including atheist biologists, have the right to publish books about what they believe the philosophical implications of evolution to be – no matter how objectively stupid those books are, they have every right to publish them. What they are not allowed to do is teach their personal philosophical views in the science classroom of a public school.
You said that “the secular community is equally as guilty” – can you support the claim? Can you show that something analogous to this:
“The researchers polled a random sample of nearly 2000 high-school science teachers across the US in 2007. Of the 939 who responded, 2% said they did not cover evolution at all, with the majority spending between 3 and 10 classroom hours on the subject.
However, a quarter of the teachers also reported spending at least some time teaching about creationism or intelligent design. Of these, 48% – about 12.5% of the total survey – said they taught it as a “valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species”. ( http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13930-16-of-us-science-teachers-are-creationists.html#.VJR9rmcCCA )”
– is also done by atheist teachers?
Can you show that atheists are lobbying for policy changes that would allow atheist science teachers to indoctrinate kids in public school with their atheistic philosophy?
If you cannot show that, then the evidence supports my claim – that both sides are NOT equally guilty here.

Andy,
You said design and evolutionary facts can co-exist

Only if you are willing to accept that pretty much all of Genesis is a metaphor for something.

ONLY plays a key role here. You used that term for a reason. If metaphor is my only choice then your comment is worse than I thought. I don’t think you meant this, so….

And many christians were and are not willing to accept that and prefer literal interpretations of Genesis over science.

I figured that the other “only” choice is a literal interpretation. If there had been other choices that don’t result in a conflict then I’m left wondering why your comment looked like a rebuttal of some kind?

Was the point of your comment to agree with me??

SteveK,

Was the point of your comment to agree with me??

Yes and no. You said “There’s no reason to do that because design and the facts of evolution can co-exist” – and I pointed out that they cannot co-exist if “design” means a largely literal interpretation of Genesis for you, and you are unwilling to reconsider that view, IF that is the case for someone (and it is the case for many), then “design” and evolution cannot co-exist for them.

Andy,

The idea that evolution isn’t taught in schools, as it should be, is ridiculous. I’m 62 years old and it was taught, again, as it should be, when I was in school in the ’50s/60s.

Where you are getting the idea that there is a serious effort to get creationism taught in the public schools when your own personal demon, the DI, isn’t even trying to do that is beyond me. (And BTW, you can make surveys say whatever you want and it seems clear you want to make anyone who ever thought about creationism your own personal boogie man.)

If you read my first post here (#1) you will find my thoughts on those that are making a big deal about creationism being taught.

Well, Andy, it means what you say it does “only if” you aren’t contradicting yourself.

Given your clarification, that’s how useful and enlightening I am finding your “only if” comment. Not very.

You’re good at making stuff up there Andy. I’ll give you that.

Jeepers, Andy.

“Hey Steve, what you said is true but I just wanted to add one very important point that you might have missed. It’s true only if you’re working with an understanding of the various concepts and details that makes what you’re saying actually true”

Well, duh!

SteveK,
sorry, I didn´t know that every “understanding of the various concepts and details” that disagrees with yours is so obviously wrong that it is silly to even mention the fact that many in fact do disagree with you.

BillT, I´m not interested in duking this out with you – have the last word if you like.

Andy from #97

You said “There’s no reason to do that because design and the facts of evolution can co-exist” – and I pointed out that they cannot co-exist if “design” means a largely literal interpretation of Genesis for you, and you are unwilling to reconsider that view,

Translation: and I pointed out that they cannot co-exist if “design” means something that results in them being unable to co-exist.

Gee, that’s what I said in #107.

*sigh*

Pointing out that people disagree with me doesn’t need to be pointed out. If this was the intent of your comment, it’s not very enlightening nor useful. You’re on a roll, Andy.

You’re welcome, Andy. That comment was within the context of me trying to understand how a pubic conflict arose in the first place. It wasn’t there to enlighten you about co-existence. It was there to emphasize the point I made later: Something prompted the move. Perhaps it was people like yourself back in the day saying that science has shown design to be nonsense.

SteveK,

Perhaps it was people like yourself back in the day saying that science has shown design to be nonsense.

Totally plausible! I or someone like me probably used a time machine to travel back to early 20th century to teach people about the Discovery Institute and Intelligent Design and why we think that ID is nonsense.

Andy,
You can stop now. I said *like* yourself – and take your own medicine, design doesn’t always mean ID.

SteveK,

and take your own medicine, design doesn’t always mean ID.

You don´t say! I didn´t know that and it was really stupid of me to not explicitly limit my claims to ID as promoted by the Discovery Institute. No wait… I actually did exactly that. Right from the get go:
“….and common design (as proposed by the DI)”
And I clarified it again later:
“Remember what I meant by “design”, I meant “ID” as proposed by the Discovery Institute and explicitly mentioned that this is ALL I am talking about here.”

You are being incredibly dishonest here.

Andy,

I also wouldn´t be surprised if that still is the main driving force

If the DI is currently the main force behind the design movement in science, and if they aren’t fundamentalist Christian’s, then something other than Christian fundamentalism is the primary driver.

If the DI is a lesser player in this whole movement then I’m sure you would have mentioned the biggest threat already. True?

If the DI is currently the main force behind the design movement in science, and if they aren’t fundamentalist Christian’s, then something other than Christian fundamentalism is the primary driver.

I don´t know to what degree the DI can be considered to be the main force behind american anti-evolutionism. The Answers in Genesis site for example gets much more traffic than UncommonDescent + ENV combined. On the other hand, I think the DI people are way ahead of other creationist groups when it comes to book sales. And I have no idea how to determine which creationist organization has the most political influence… Anyway, I wouldn´t sign the statement that the DI is the main force, it is just one force.

if they aren’t fundamentalist Christian’s

It would actually be interesting to know how many of them accept common descent (I know that Behe does or at least he claims that) and how many subscribe to mostly literal interpretations of Genesis, if you have the time, feel free to go through the list:
http://www.discovery.org/about/fellows
I know that the list includes several young earth creationists (e.g. Nelson and Hunter) and old earth creationists (e.g. Dembski), but I never bothered to count.

If the DI is a lesser player in this whole movement then I’m sure you would have mentioned the biggest threat already. True?

No. Also, note that you are setting up a false dichotomy where the DI is either a lesser player or the main force behind american anti-evolutionism – I don´t think that either label would be accurate.

Good job Andy at not addressing any of the points I actually made. Schoolyard bully, really?

Another dishonest comment about retrocausality designed to misrepresent others??

Off topic, but related nonetheless.

American Atheists announced on Wednesday that AtheistTV, its new television channel, will feature original programs proclaiming the truth about Christmas on December 24 and December 25, featuring scholars and celebrities from the atheist community.

BillT –

Yes, Ray, I get that this is a personal boogie man for you, too.

Let’s assume you’re right for a moment – the worst case obtains, and I have an intense personal loathing for the Discovery Institute in particular and creationists in general.

Now, which of the historical facts or scientific claims that I’ve made are invalidated by that?

However, if they had stuck to the science and not tried to make evolution the grand theory of everything (something you do here on an almost non-stop basis) I doubt there would be the “organized effort” that you seem to think there is.

Well, evolution really is the grand unifying theory of biology. Teaching biology without evolution (common descent, speciation, natural selection, etc.) is like teaching chemistry without reference to atomic theory. And – in undergraduate and K-12 science classes – who teaches evolution as “the grand theory of everything”? Hit me with your best shot.

And sure, yeah, the organized effort is all in my imagination.

Ray,

First of all I said evolution has been touted as the grand theory of everything not of just biology. And the truth is it falls short there as well. As I pointed out above, evolution can’t account for either the existence of life or the existence of evolution itself. Hard to see quite how unifying it is with those quite significant shortcomings. And that’s not to mention its inability to account for those pesky metaphysical human charteristics.

Tom,

Nevertheless in order to gain any traction, people who tout evolution as that explanation still owe us an explanation for what enabled it to get started. You can’t wash your hands of it that way.

Gain any traction… for what? The evidence for evolution is logically completely independent of how exactly the first darwinian replicator came to be. If I´d grant you for the sake of the argument that there cannot possibly be a natural way for how this happened, even if I´d grant you that your God was responsible for creating the first darwinian replicator, then the case for evolution would still be completely unchanged and biologists would still conclude that the claim that all life is related via common ancestry is true beyond any reasonable doubt.

And any theory that purported to explain as much as evolution does, but could not begin to point to an explanation of evolution itself, would be suspect on those grounds as well.

What is an “explanation of evolution itself” supposed to mean? I can only parse that to mean “an explanation of why there is such a thing as evolution to begin with”, but this would be equivalent to the previous point – an explanation of abiogenesis, because descent with modification is a logically inevitable consequence as soon as a darwinian replicator exists. So I guess this is not what you mean here, but what does “explanation of evolution itself” then mean?

And Andy I’m not sure we’re arguing over anything that important. You seem to be in quite an agitated state over what you see as some concerted effort to teach YEC. However, as someone who is a conservative Christian who follows trends within my faith closely and worked for many years for the largest Christiam ministry in the country I can only say I think you’re exaggerating the supposed “threat.’ Like I said I think the trend among Christians is toward a general acceptance of a reasonable understanding of evolution for those that don’t already which is certainly a minority position among Christians.

BillT,

You seem to be in quite an agitated state

*sigh*. Yeah, very “agitated”. Well then this:
“This isn’t a legitimate problem, it’s just Christian bashing that lets a nitwit like Nye put a “legitimate” sheen on his bigotry.”
– would make you positively hysterical. You might want to take some valium before you keep commenting, think of your health.
Seriously though, if you can´t resist the urge of writing crap like this, then I´d suggest the two of us stop interacting with each other.

Andy,

So you’re going all the way back to the first post on this thread to give your opinion on my opinion on Bill Nye instead of actually addressing the points I made. But I’m the reason we should stop interacting.

Andy,

And if I may offer a corollary to Tom’s post, the idea that there is some organized movement here in America to stifle or significantly change the way evolution is taught or include creationism or ID in school curriculum is simply not true. If I’m wrong it shouldn’t be hard to find the organizations and their associated websites and their information, advertising and lobbying efforts. Please, I’d be grateful to know. Or let me quote Ray on this;

Yes, there really is “a serious effort to get creationism taught in the public schools” – though it tends to be lots of local efforts.

? Which is it? A “serious effort” or “lots of local efforts”? they seem pretty much mutually exclusive to me. A number of uncoordinated, random local efforts are not a serious effort.

That’s why I criticized Nye in the first post though you ignored the reasons I gave before my criticism of him. This just isn’t a problem. It’s a bunch of hand waving by some prominent secularists and since I’m quite certain there really isn’t anything to it but hand waving it makes me wonder what is the real motivation for it.

And as for you point about religious fundamentalism’s influence on it let me for argument’s sake grant your point unconditionally. Now what? Should we pass some federal regulations or form a new federal agency to deal with this problem. Make it illegal to have fundamentalist views. Require reeducation for all the fundamentalists in the country. As I said, the whole thing adds up to a tempest in a teapot.

Tom,

Traction for the theory behind the theory, the theory that motivates Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Daniel Dennett, PZ Myers, the Panda’s Thumb site, TalkOrigins, John Loftus, Victor Stenger, Francis Ayala, the NCSE, Nick Matzke, Robert Pennock, Barbara Forrest, the NAS

1. It is ridiculous to include the NCSE and the NAS here and lump them together with PZ Myers and Jerry Coyne. The NCSE and the NAS bend over backwards to not offend religious sensibilities and the NCSE has adopted the position that evolution and Christianity are perfectly compatible – a position that they are very vocal about and one for which they have found allies in the clergy of all major denominations. Also, Ayala is religious, has given countless lectures on how evolution and Christianity are compatible, and has won the Templeton prize. And Matzke doesn´t identify as a new atheist either.
2. What makes you think that I was speaking about this “theory behind the theory”? I wasn´t. The DI´s “weaknesses of evolution” are factually wrong – based on flawed arguments and misrepresentations of the scientific literature. *That* is what I was talking about. I also honestly don´t care very much whether people accept that evolution is true and I also don´t care very much which philosophical conclusions people derive from this. What I do care very strongly about is that teachers present the scientific facts and arguments accurately and honestly, and teaching the “weaknesses of evolution” as determined by the DI is pretty much the exact opposite of that.

in its original statements on evolution (since amended, but hey, you won’t allow any grace to the DI for its amended positions),

This is the “original” statement of the NAS on evolution:
http://ncse.com/media/voices/national-academy-sciences-1972
And the only thing it says about religion is this:
“Whereas religion and science are, therefore, separate and mutually exclusive realms of human thought whose presentation in the same context leads to misunderstanding of both scientific theory and religious belief; ”
– what exactly do you find objectionable about this?

Miller and Levine in early textbook editions (ditto)

Given that Miller is a proud Christian, I find it rather hard to believe that he was talking about this “theory behind the theory” in early textbook editions. Citation needed.

and don’t just discount the reality that Dawkins’s books have been strong best-sellers—the theory behind the theory of evolution as it is portrayed exceedingly often

So what? Seriously – so what? No one is forced to buy them, no one is forced to read them, no one is forced to agree with him, and everyone is free to publish books to publicly disagree with him. If his philosophical views are taught in a science classroom, that would be a problem – but they aren´t and I am not aware of anyone who argues that they should be.

If all anyone were ever promulgating were such a sparsely interpreted theory, there would be hardly any dispute from anyone but young-earthers, of which I am not one.

That is factually wrong because evolution is taught exactly like that but we have plenty of people, who are not young earth creationists, who still dispute it.

But evolution is not presented that way very consistently or very often at all.

The place where it needs to be consistently taught like that is the science classroom, and it is consistently taught like that in science classrooms.

Tom,
I started writing a full reply but stopped in the middle because after reading this:
“You may not have been speaking about the theory behind the theory, but if you’re going to accept the theory without concern for the theory behind it, you’re not thinking it through adequately. Your choice.” – I can´t help thinking that you are either not being sincere or that I have overestimated your intelligence, and so I don´t really care about your opinion anymore. Have a nice day.

Andy,

I’m just looking to “win”? You’re the one employing the sarcasm and not addressing the issues I raised both in 146 and 151.

I did [sic?] address your points until very late in the thread…

Actually, you didn’t address a number of the points I made at all but that’s certainty your perogative.

Tom,
IMO, you have been unnecessarily condescending and provocative (e.g. “Don´t be an idiot”), several times. I fully realize that I also wrote several comments that were heavy on sarcasm and not exactly productive and polite, particularly in SteveK´s direction. However, if I am not misremembering, I replied to civil comments in a civil manner. If I did violate that principle in this thread, then I apologize.

Tom Gilson –

“evolution works without either plan or purpose … Evolution is random and undirected.”

Well… so far as can be told from science so far, that’s the case.

Search this link for the phrase “mouse genes”. You’ll see a graph of the distribution of ‘distances’ (number of differences) between 2019 different human and mouse genes. It fits a bell curve extremely well. There’s no discernible ‘signal’ of any guidance to the gene changes.

The ID types have been looking for such signals. They haven’t found any yet, as I’ve noted before. The clotting cascade, the vertebrate immune system, and the bacterial flagellum – none of their proposed examples have worked out.

Until and unless they do, it really does appear that evolution works without guidance.

BillT –

What, we should abandon the fundamentals of our faith because some people have used them to question or oppose the truth evolution?

If the fundamentals of your faith lead you to demonstrably false conclusions… then yeah, I’d hope you’d re-evaluate. As Winston Churchill put it, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”

That’s not the same thing as forcing people to give up their faith. But it is an argument against teaching demonstrably false things in public schools.

Ray,

I’m a bit pressed for time but for you to claim that evolution hasn’t been strongly touted in the public sphere as a substitute for the existence of God, an explanation for of life and the creation of the universe, an explanation for mortality (like you do) and every other human metaphysical characteristic is laughable. Not quite though as laughable as your Pakistan analogy where the trend here, of course, is toward secularism and away from religiosity thus the polar opposite of what is happening Pakistan.

Remember, not I nor Tom nor it seems even the DI are in support of the teaching of creationism so if you want to rail against that please find someone who is to rail against.

And like I said about the fundamentals of our faith , that some use it to tout creationism or oppose evolution is neither here nor there as it’s certainly not part of the the mission of the vast majority of conservative American religious institutions.

Andy,

The “random and undirected” aspect of evolution is a conclusion based on a) reproducible experiments that show mutations to be random wrt fitness (in the sense that the fitness difference that would be caused by a mutation is statistically independent of the probability of this mutation happening), b) natural selection not having an “oracle” / having no foresight, and c) observations about the fossil record that show that evolution proceeded in an opportunistic manner, with no stable trends towards any discernible goal.

You are way more an expert in this area, but (b) and (c) are questionable – at least it seems that way to me.

Regarding (b), does natural selection select anything and everything (from the biology) in random fashion? My understanding is that it does not do that.

Regarding (c), what you’ve said here sounds like a contradiction. Evolution proceeds in a way that is limited to opportunistic outcomes (whatever this means), yet these outcomes remain unguided toward anything specific, such as opportunistic outcomes?

Then again, maybe I’ve misunderstood the intent of your comment.

BillT –

I’m a bit pressed for time but for you to claim that evolution hasn’t been strongly touted in the public sphere as a substitute for the existence of God, an explanation for of life and the creation of the universe, an explanation for mortality (like you do) and every other human metaphysical characteristic is laughable.

Several problems here:

1. “The public sphere” is rather large. It’s much larger, in fact, than ‘public school K-12 classes and undergraduate college courses’. Which one was Nye – and am I – talking about?

2. Evolution as “an explanation for” “the creation of the universe”? Gonna need an example or two.

3. You need to read more carefully if you think I propose evolution as an explanation for morality. A component, perhaps, but hardly sufficient by itself, and in a pinch not even necessary.

And of course the situation in Pakistan is different! I’m comparing the pattern of behavior, not the content! Sheesh!

Remember, not I nor Tom nor it seems even the DI are in support of the teaching of creationism so if you want to rail against that please find someone who is to rail against.

So why get upset at Bill Nye when he ‘rails against’ people who actually do support the teaching of creationism? Remember who’s replying to who…

Tom Gilson –

He doesn’t have to say it in class.

Careful. You wouldn’t want to open yourself to charges of witch-hunting. Heck, maybe we should disqualify the people on those ‘lists of scientists [actually usually engineers or medical doctors] who accept creationism’ from teaching courses?

he’s told me to my face he couldn’t even be courteous around Christianity

You know, the last time you brought that up I pointed out to you that Myers’ actual behavior is quite a bit more moderate than his rhetoric.

At this point, I want actual quotes from his class illustrating what you “bet”. (How much do you want to bet, anyway? Shall we say $50, to be donated to the charity of the winner’s choice?)

Ray,

Oh, I agree it doesn’t disprove guidance, per se. But it’s just one more opportunity for guidance to be displayed… where none is observed. Eventually, after enough opportunities, absence of evidence starts looking awfully like evidence of absence.

Yes, the case for evolution being unguided is an excellent one (and not only based on the absence of evidence for guidance). that´s why we teach it. But again, that refers to the physical world – if there is something about humans (or other organisms) that neither reduces to nor emerges from the physical, then it cannot be a product of evolution and evolutionary biology has nothing to say about it. In that sense, teleological views about human nature can easily co-exist with the scientific view that evolution is unguided. At least that is how the religious biologists I know reconcile their religious beliefs with their scientific beliefs.

Tom,

Except for this, of course: I think the evidence that evolution could not have happened just by unguided processes seems very interesting. From a layman’s perspective, it has some persuasive power. That’s why I’d like to see it remaining out there for discussion.

Well, it depends on what “out there” and “discussion” means. Example, look at those Discovery Institute “Key Resources for Parents and School Board Members”:
http://www.discovery.org/a/2112
The arguments for ID are most certainly “out there”, and as long as we have freedom of speech and the ID folks won´t change their minds, they will remain “out there”. But is it a “discussion”? Yes and no. People certainly discuss it – but it isn´t a scientific controvery in any sense, the DI bypasses academia completely and goes straight to the laypeople.
And the material that they do present to laypeople is, IMO, a hodgepodge of debunkend arguments and misrepresentations. Lets take one random example from the link above – the “Scientific Dissent From Darwinism: Over 800 Scientists Skeptical of Neo-Darwinism”. This list could not be more misleading, the statement that people signed is this:

“We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

There is no need to be “skeptical” here, it is actually undeniably true that random mutation + natural selection can NOT account for all the known “complexity” of life. Just three random examples of the top of my head that can NOT by explained by random mutations + natural selection alone: variation in stickleback armor plates (this is due to developmental plasticity), the peacock´s tail (due to sexual selection), the distribution of AB0 blood types in humans (due to genetic drift). So I actually agree with the claim that this “dissent from Darwin” list makes. Does that mean that I support ID and / or think that any central claim of evolutionary theory (like common descent) is not scientifically well established? Absolutely not. And that is why the list is completely and utterly meaningless and does not represent any support for the ID position what-so-ever. And that is not to mention that the overwhelming majority of people on the list are not any more qualified to make statements about evolution than the average layperson, because they are either not scientists at all but rather engineers, or scientists that work in fields that have little or nothing to do with evolution.
The way this list is presented by the DI – as something that provides support for their position – could not be more misleading, but will of course ring plausible to laypeople who are sympathetic to their position. They are still free to present it in that way of course (no one is forced to read it or to agree with them after all), but they will not and cannot start any reasonable and productive discussion with such moves.
If there are people who are genuinely curious about trying to find out whether there might be scientific evidence for “design” / “guidance” in our natural history (maybe there is, I think all the evidence we have speaks against it but if someone still thinks its worth pursuing this, who am I to stop them), then my recommendation for them would be to ignore the DI completely, read Del Ratzsch´s “Nature, Design and Science” (which deals with similar questions as Bradley Monton´s “Seeking God in Science” does, but which is, unlike Monton´s book, very well researched and reasoned), and start from scratch.

SteveK,

This is all well and good, however, the mixed message that the NAS is sending (see #174) legitimizes statements to the contrary.

I don´t think so. This publication is about the teaching of evolution, about teaching science / biology, the “lack of grand design” refers to biological evolution and only to biological evolution. This doesn´t legitimize teaching that would entail that there can not possibly be anything about humans that was purposefully created (e.g. a soul). The same document that you refer to also says:

The committee listened carefully to this discussion, Singer said, and what it learned is captured in the eloquent conclusion to the 1984 report: “Scientists, like many others, are touched with awe at the order and complexity of nature. Religion provides one way for human beings to be comfortable with these marvels. However, the goal of science is to seek naturalistic explanations for phenomena within the framework of natural laws and principles and the operational rule of testability.”

This is the spirit in which the convocation was held. “My hope,” said Singer, “is that we all respect the religious beliefs of one another, of students and their families. I think you can find ways to teach evolution that are scientifically rigorous but avoid contentious challenges to individuals.”

Adding to the problem is the inability of the public to distinguish between a scientist reporting facts about the theory and a scientist reporting his/her opinion about what those facts mean.

Dawkins gets up on stage and speaks with authority on the subject of evolution – because he is one. It should come as no surprise that the general public cannot separate fact from opinion when Dawkins himself doesn’t seem to know the difference. If he does, he’s not saying much to help clear the air.

Tom –

I conclude from meeting with her that her efforts were not part of any such coordinated effort at all.

A la Pakistan, “there doesn’t need to be an organized, centrally-coordinated effort” [emphasis added]. She didn’t spontaneously get the idea of ‘creationism’ out of nowhere, springing forth fully-formed like Minerva from the brow of Jove. There are plenty of churches pushing the idea that ‘it’s either the Bible or evolution’, along with “research” institutes like the DI claiming that evolution is scientifically invalid, along with groups laboring to revise public school curricula in (to use a slightly imprecise term) a more ‘conservative’ direction.

Sometimes these ideas intersect, and it’s almost like a crystal precipitating out of solution. Add in actual catalysts like the Thomas More Law Center offering legal representation, and…

@Andy:

Yes, the case for evolution being unguided is an excellent one (and not only based on the absence of evidence for guidance). that´s why we teach it.

I do not know what you mean by unguided, but with that caveat, and given Divine Providence, it is an undeniable fact that Evolution, if it occurred (and something in its close neighborhood has to be conceded by even the most ardent of Creationists), was guided. Slightly less provocative, as far as the scientific evidence goes, and as a layman, I can confidently assert that the evidence for guided Evolution is at least as good as unguided one.

But again, that refers to the physical world – if there is something about humans (or other organisms) that neither reduces to nor emerges from the physical, then it cannot be a product of evolution and evolutionary biology has nothing to say about it.

Even if everything about humans (or other organisms) was reducible, or was supervened upon, by the physical, the above would still stand.

GHeiner,

Here’s the killer argument: If evolution’s true then the story of Adam and Eve isn’t true, which would mean there would be no original sin, which would mean Jesus died for no reason. But that would also mean Christians throughout history have been believing a nonsense for all this time. How could they? Were they idiots? No, of course not! So Adam and Eve did exist and evolution isn’t true. QED.

Genesis as a whole doesn’t correspond with evidence we have discovered. You can rationalize about God designating an original couple of humans as Adam and Eve, if you like.

Evolution doesn’t require a designer in order to transform organisms into increasingly complex and well-adapted forms. A designer is superfluous. That’s why evolution is such a ground-breaking theory. You know that. The idea that God might have guided it is theoretically possible of course – in the same way anything is possible – but completely unnecessary.

Why did He use this evolutionary method that doesn’t require Him?
Why did He use a method that takes billions of years?
Why didn’t He just create the creatures straight off?
Why did He describe creation in such a misleading fashion?
Do you believe in a talking snake?
Why did He create Ebola and cancer and AIDS?
Why did He send his son to clear up a mess that He created?

I don’t actually want your answers.

There’s a simple explanation: He didn’t. There is no He. All those questions fall away and we can look at reality as it is rather than having to find increasingly complicated explanations to force what we see into an ancient model of reality. It’s so simple, yet you can’t countenance it. You’re so caught up in justifications and logic. You’re wasting so much of your life trying to justify nonsense – and so many people do – I find it such a pity. And I feel so frustrated that I can’t help you out of it.

“Nonsense” is too harsh a word. There is a lot of common sense in the Bible and I wonder if that’s what is misleading you into thinking that the fantasy parts are true too.

These are questions that we can either find out answers to or we can’t. I’m willing to accept that there are things we cannot know. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t need someone to make up a comforting story.

Woah, there. I didn’t say that Christianity was a comforting story!

It’s a bloody, nasty story and, in my view, the concepts of “justice”, “sin” and “evil” lead people directly away from empathy and love.

BillT,

Empathy and love are emotions borrowing from theism! That’s hilarious! I’m utterly flabbergasted. How the heck did you reach that conclusion? No, on second thoughts, spare me the details. It’s just not worth the typing.

Tom –

The DI actively opposed the Dover school board’s actions.

Well, several of their later actions. The actual history is a little more nuanced than just “actively opposed”.

Tom – Search the first link in #208 for “early 2004”. The DI was happy to provide materials for the board’s review, and asserted attorney-client privilege for their earliest communications. If this were a trial and we the jury, we wouldn’t be allowed to speculate, but this isn’t a trial and we aren’t a jury. Later, after it became clear that the board had made obvious their religious rather than scientific motivations, the DI advised them not to proceed because they’d ruined their usefulness as a test case. Even the Thomas More Law Center talked about “this strategy that they’ve been using, in I guess Ohio and other places, where they’ve pushed school boards to go in with intelligent design, and as soon as there’s a controversy, they back off with a compromise. ”

As to the John Freshwater incident: can you show evidence of some group urging him to do what he did

He wasn’t the one who made all the creationist materials he handed out (and then collected back again so as to prevent parents from learning about them). And, again, I have said repeatedly that you don’t need a centrally-coordinated, hierarchical organization to push an agenda.

The agenda and the techniques are very different, but al-Qaeda doesn’t need a rigid hierarchy to be effective either. (Again, I emphasize that I’m comparing only the organizational style, not motives or morals.)

And then there’s the annual introduction of legislation on the state level all over the country to allow teaching creationism and/or intelligent design in science classes. Yeah, Nye and the rest of us are just jumping at shadows, riiiiight.

The Rutherford Institute’s role in this: were they actively trying to push a long-term creationist agenda? Or were they coming alongside a Christian teacher who needed legal representation? How do you know?

Door number 1, and I know because they tried to do the exact same thing in Dover… as I, y’know, linked to. Third link in #208. Maybe a little of door number 2 as well, but numero uno was definitely involved.

SteveK – A response.

Tom,

I hope you’ve had a good Christmas and New Year. I was just visiting this page and found this blog interesting. I hope you don’t mind my coming into it so late. There is much I may have missed in the comments section, though I did skim through it. I just have some question really…

If I understand correctly you say that naturalism has been undermined by philosophical arguments and that is why you believe scientists are wrong when they proceed to use it (presumably either naturalism outright or even methodological naturalism?). OK, if you are correct about naturalism being wrong, that seems like a reasonable conclusion.

So my question is then what has or should proceed from this? What would science look like if it used supernaturalism? Given the position that naturalism has been undermined by philosophical arguments, it seems that many people would have seen that error and proceeded with a new kind of science. So could you point out some of the fruits of that labor, or even just the best example?

In my mind, one of the strongest benefits of the scientific method is its ability to gain new insight through verifiable, repeatable testing. What new insights have been given to us through supernatural science? How have these improved the state of scientific understanding and led to new knowledge?

Thank you for your time.

Wonderful then! Regularism in your view must be circumventing false naturalism and coming up with better answers. Could you point out some of those? Or just the best one?

Supernatural Science??
There is no such animal – the Naturalism vs Supernaturalism (which, as a Christian, I will take to be grounded in Biblical Christian Theism) debate is about the metaphysical context in which the practice of science takes place.
When I work in Quantum Field Theory or General Relativity (yes, I am a professional physicist who is also a Biblical Christian theist), or medical diagnostic imaging (which is what pays my salary :), or whatever, I don’t use a different physics – I use the same physics that any professional physicist working in those areas would use. I ask the same questions of nature, and use the same methodologies to try to work out the answers.
Are you implicitly equating Young Earth Creationism or perhaps Intelligent Design with ‘supernatural science’? If so, just stop right now.
I would suggest that you go over to http://www.biologos.org and http://www.asa3.org and read the material there to get a better perspective of how other professional scientists who are also Christians think about the relationship between science and Biblical Christian theism.
This article, http://biologos.org/uploads/projects/louis_scholarly_essay.pdf, is a good place to start.

Go over to http://www.amazon.com and search for John Polkinghorne’s books (he is a physicist and Christian theologian) – he has an excellent perspective on that relationship and articulates it very well.

Metaphysical Naturalism has no real answer to the foundational questions – those things that make science possible. Eugene Wigner asked the question in his essay “On the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences” (see https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html) for a copy of the article); a classic example of Munchausen’s Trilemma if ever there was one – physicist Max Tegmark has his own answer (see http://arxiv.org/pdf/grqc/9704009.pdf for one of his papers, or his book, “Our Mathematical Universe”) – mathematics works so well to describe Nature because Nature is inherently mathematical.

At the end of the day, though, when I step back and reflect on something that I have learned about physics, my reaction is to worship God for His marvelous and elegant creation ( Psalm 19 and Romans 1:20, for example). I was reading Anton Zee’s text book “Einstein Gravity in a Nutshell” a while back – in it he derives both Electrodynamics and General Relativity from just three principles: The Principle of Stationary Action, Lorentz covariance, and of course, the basic symmetries implied by a (3+1 dimensional spacetime). The derivation of Electrodynamics is particularly beautiful – as he puts it, “we did not go looking for electromagnetism, electromagnetism came looking for us”. It is worth the read (math alert!).

@BillL
Ah, I see 🙂
The problem is that too many people, scientists included, assume that methodological naturalism is identical to ontological naturalism.

I think the confusion is about the fact that the scientific enterprise, as a human endeavor, must make certain axiomatic assumptions in order to get off the ground.

Or what of its own presuppositions? Science cannot account for them because they are philosophical in nature. Indeed, science comes to the table with a priori metaphysical commitments firmly in place. For example:

(1) the existence of a theory-independent, external world

(2) the orderly nature of the external world

(3) the existence of truth

(4) the existence of the laws of logic

(5) the existence of ethical values used in science

(6) the uniformity of nature and induction

(7) the existence of numbers

These second-order philosophical claims undergird the entire scientific enterprise. To be sure, scientific inquiry cannot get off the ground without these presuppositions in place.

– See more at: http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2014/12/how-science-religion-converge-part-5-of-5.html#sthash.uE8c90MV.dpuf

To which I would add, as I have already alluded to,
(8) the applicability of abstract mathematics to describe the Laws of Nature.

These are just brute facts under Metaphysical Naturalism, whereas they have a firm foundation in the very Nature and Character of YWHW (the God of Biblical Christian Theism).

The way I see it (and as many of my Christian physicist colleagues see it), God designed the ‘Laws of Nature’ (the inherent properties and dynamics of {spacetime, particles and fields (or whatever the ‘stuff’ of the physical universe really is)}, and implemented them into His Creation; not only did He implement them, He actively sustains His Creation and ensures its consistency (Colossians 1:15-20, Jeremiah 33:19-21) . He is the guarantee that those presuppositions under-girding the scientific enterprise are valid. From a theistic perspective, the business of science is to discover what those ‘Laws of Nature’ are, nothing more, nothing less, and that we can do so by observing just how the natural world does, in fact, behave.

That being said, under Christian Theism, God is not constrained by those laws – Nature is His to command, and she is an obedient creature – if God introduces new contingent events into the stream of cause and effect, Nature complies, even if those new events don’t conform to Nature’s inherent dynamics.

This quote, from that Biologos article I linked to, sums it up very nicely for me:

By getting rid of the miracle stories in the Bible, Bultmann and his followers hoped to make the Christian
story more palatable to modern man. Although I recognize the emotional weight of this sentiment, I am
not convinced that it is an intellectually coherent approach, mainly for reasons of self-consistency. If the
New Testamentitself asserts, both directly and indirectly, that the historicity of the resurrection is
foundational to Christianity, then it would seem to stand or fall by that fact. As a physicist, I have a natural
penchant for wanting to see how an idea relates to more basic principles. And to analyze the validity of a
quote like the one above, we must take a cold hard look at our fundamental presuppositions. In the words
of John Polkinghorne:
If we are to understand the nature of reality, we have only two possible starting points: either the
brute fact of the physical world or the brute fact of a divine will and purpose behind that physical
world.
Where does each of those two fundamental starting points take us? When we use them to construct a
worldview, what kind of sense does it make of experience, morality, truth, beauty, and our place in the
world? These are not easy questions. There is so much mystery around us. Perhaps the best way to move
forward would be to borrow Mermin’s tapestry analogy and carefully investigate whether the different
threads of historical evidence, philosophical consistency, and personal knowledge can be woven together
into a worldview that is robust. In particular, does our tapestry posses those qualities of coherence and
(surprising) fruitfulness that characterise the best scientific tapestries?
If I start from the brute facts of nature, I personally am unable to construct a tapestry that is both rigorous
and rich enough to make sufficient sense of the world. By contrast, if I assume a divine will and purpose
behind the world I believe that I can construct a much more compelling tapesty that incorporates all of the
threads of human existence. Within that purposeful world, the case for Christianity is much more
persuasive. To use a famous quote from C.S. Lewis:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen-not only because I see it, but because by it,
I see everything else.

“God designed the ‘Laws of Nature’ “…where is the evidence for this?

Tom says “It seems a whole lot cleaner for science to keep the God/supernatural words out of the picture completely”. I wonder then if theists feels religion should stay out of science? Victoria at 225 does not seem to think so. She argues for theistic presup as a basis of science. That seems a claim scientists are right to question or examine.

Getting back to evidence, I wonder what is the compelling evidence for preferring a God model to the explanation of reality versus a more naturalistic model, apart from the God model offering the poetic explanatory closure Victoria alludes to.

Victoria –

These are just brute facts under Metaphysical Naturalism

I can’t quite agree. I would say, for example, that 3 and 4 are pretty well unavoidable for any coherent worldview at all. They’re not things for which evidence can be adduced, but that doesn’t mean there’s no rational reason for assuming them. Once you have them, 7 follows. Number 1 has a similar basis to 3 and 4, in that assuming the converse is automatically self-defeating and pointless.

I’d say that 2 and 6 are either identical, or aspects of the same thing. And neither are presuppositions, but instead observations. They could be disproven. I mean, scientific inquiry could proceed without 2 and 6… it just wouldn’t succeed.

Mathematics being a special case of the laws of logic in action, it seems to me that 8’s just an extension of 3 and 4. It’s certainly not clear to me that the “effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences” is “unreasonable”. (Indeed, I may be misinterpreting things, but Wigner’s thoughts on “the present laws of heredity and of physics” – just seven years after the discovery of DNA’s structure – looks uncannily like Haldane’s writings.)

@GrahamH
The double ?? is a typo – not meant to convey anything 🙂

Victoria –

Think about it – such a simple principle that leads to profound results (symmetries and conservation laws for example).

Could it have been different? If so, in what way? I mean, could e^(i*pi) have equaled -2?

Well, that’s the point, right?

Er… no, I’m making a different point from what I take Kunkle (and you, by quoting) to be putting forth. So far as I can tell, you’re saying that science needs to assume 2 and 6. I’m saying that those are, rather, hypotheses to be tested, that have so far not been disproved. Those are, epistemologically, very distinct.

Also, what guarantees that Nature will always have those properties from one moment to the next?

Nothing guarantees it. Possibly what we’ve been seeing for the last couple hundred thousand years is just the result of a Really Unlikely quantum fluctuation, and in a few minutes the law of averages will catch up with us. If that’s the case, though, there’s nothing we could conceivably do about it, so I’m not planning on losing any sleep over the notion.

But thanks… you’ve just agreed that 2 and 6 could be disproved, so it follows that they are so-far-confirmed hypotheses, rather than presuppositions.

(And Happy New Year to you, too. Hope your holidays were great.)

Ray,
To avoid delving into the comedy routine that G. Rodrigues is referring to, please see the below video. I know that you were at one time familiar with this topic, but you keep opening your mouth and showing us that you’ve forgot and need to be reminded.

SteveK – Since I have said on this site that Humans don’t get to have logical certainty about the real world and I don’t think humans get metaphysical certainty a video aimed at disproving “the idea that science can guarantee knowledge, true infallible knowledge” hits… rather wide of the mark. Certainty isn’t available, but we can work out degrees of confidence.

Victoria – Do you have a reason to assume a priori that “Nature” shouldn’t be describable mathematically? What would a universe that couldn’t be described mathematically look like, and how would you differentiate it from a world that violated 2 or 6, or 3 and 4?

It seems that Anton Zee has much more depth of insight and understanding that Ray will ever have.
On page 141 of his text Einstein Gravity in a Nutshell, he lists 7 reasons why the action principle is so important.
His fourth reason says this:

The fundamental interactions we know about – the strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational – can all be described by the action principle(*). As you will see in this book, the action principle provides a natural route to special relativity, electromagnetism, and Einstein Gravity. The action, rather than the equations of motion (the Euler-Lagrange equations, that is – my addition) furnishes the language of quantum field theory….
(*) Why this is should be so represents a profound mystery

The little footnote is all he mentions of this – given his style, I’d surmise that he thinks that anyone who is going to claim understanding of this physics will recognize the mystery.

#241 – correction: “…more insight and depth of understanding than Ray will ever have”
🙂

@GrahamH

What kind of evidence would you accept as sufficient motivation to investigate Christianity further? Where are you going to look for the answers? How will you evaluate those answers?

As Ray said above, we are not guaranteed certainty (although from a Christian viewpoint, once you take that step of faith and trust in God, you do get it on an ex post facto basis – Hebrews 11:1 ).

You have to make the best and wisest decision you can, based on all of the available information that God has provided. You have to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and you can’t simply choose to discard the ones that don’t fit your preconceived notion of what the picture is. I’ve read other skeptics here who say they are applying Ockham’s Razor when they opt for Naturalism – reading their comments, they wield it like a clumsy butcher knife, instead of the surgeon’s scalpel it was meant to be.
The razor only applies when you have two or more arguments that explain *all* of the data equally well. As Einstein said, “a theory should be as simple as possible, but no simpler”.

If there is no evidence or convincing philosophical argument, then the God hypothesis does not need any further thought or action.

And regardless of the lack of evidence, I do not see the explanatory power in what is claimed. The God hypothesis raises more questions than answers. I think it is attractive to those seeking explanatory closure to deep questions. Something untrue or fantasy can easily offer explanatory closure. I am interested in what is actually true.

Melissa That’s great. What is this convincing philosophical argument?

@GrahamH:

And if you say the basis of science is something or someone behind a curtain, it is ok for scientists to examine, comment or debate that claim.

They can certainly comment, debate or examine the claim, but their position of scientists qua scientists is *irrelevant* abd has no special authority or expertise because the question is not a scientific one.

I also don’t quite buy the argument that because naturalism can’t fully explain things, that is evidence for the claim of God.

And quite right you do not because proving naturalism false does not prove the existence of God. But given that the majority of objections to the existence of God come from naturalists, if it can be proves that Naturalism is false one big impediment will have been removed, and a very serious one, to belief in God.

Which of course leads to the next point; Melissa gave some of the arguments for Theism, what exactly is the evidence and the arguments, linking evidence to conclusions, for Naturalism? I would say that the sum total of evidence is exactly zero, but on all probability you know something that I do not, so please, do share.

SteveK –

This is not a *scientific hypothesis* to be tested – as you stated above.

I’m afraid you miss the point. I’m not claiming the “problem of induction” is a scientific hypothesis. I’m not even disputing the problem of induction.

I’m saying that while scientific hypotheses don’t produce “true infallible knowledge”, we can nevertheless characterize how certain we are about various hypotheses. As you would know if you’d read the links in #239.

If someone makes a claim like there is a God, and it is a personal God, that created everything ex nihilo, and provides ultimate morality, etc – a denier of that claim only has to show if the claim is worth considering further or not. The denier does not have to replace it with an alternative claim that satisfies the theists desire for knowing now what created the universe and what is ultimate reality, and whatever else they require (such as a guarantee there is life beyond death).

Melissa

Aquinas 5 ways and Kalam are philosophical arguments with no evidence to back them up. For example, the whole first cause thing and actuality and potentiality. No evidence. There is no evidence the universe was created ex nihilo from nothing, and no one knows if there ever was “nothing”. Can you give me one example of a non-temoral and non-material cause that we can verify? Nope.

An argument by itself is not evidence. An argument needs evidence to support it. Inferences need evidence to support that they can be applied. Aquinas and Kalam fail.

GrahamH,

Aquinas 5 ways and Kalam are philosophical arguments with no evidence to back them up.

I realize the below summary is just a summary, but which steps do you think have no evidence backing them up?

The First Way: Argument from Motion

1) Our senses prove that some things are in motion.

2) Things move when potential motion becomes actual motion.

3) Only an actual motion can convert a potential motion into an actual motion.

4) Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect (i.e., if both actual and potential, it is actual in one respect and potential in another).

5) Therefore nothing can move itself.

6) Therefore each thing in motion is moved by something else.

7) The sequence of motion cannot extend ad infinitum.

8) Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.

Aquinas….fail(s).

Just like that, in three sentences, Graham concludes eight hundred years of philosophical argumentation surrounding possibly the greatest thinker, theologian and philosopher in human history. And we were here to witness it.

SteveK

A few quick things:

First up I have a metaphysical issue I can’t seem to get past. Where is the evidence such inductive rules derived from a set of observations applies outside of space and time, even when the inductive rules themselves require space and time?

It is a fallacious idea that empirically observed phenomena can be taken as axioms that apply to circumstances outside the conditions they were created.

This is the fallacy of composition objection that probably puts at an impasse at this point. But for the purposes of more discussion on your points:

I am aware Aristotle taught that the First Mover and the Final Cause are one. In other words, he says the principle of all motion is final causation.

But our intuitions about motion, cause and effect are due to patterns and entropy or the arrow of time in the universe. But outside the universe, we don’t know the patterns and the arrow of time, so we simply can’t assume causality applies. Where is the evidence it does? Do you know what conditions exist outside the universe to confirm they can adhere to your inductive rules (from Aquinas)?

Where is the evidence of an example of a non-temporal and non-material cause that we can verify?

Putting that aside that for the moment then…

I’d like to hear your evidence for 7 before I comment on it. You present it as simply an assertion.

On 8, where is the evidence for the massive leap that goes from the need for a first mover and this has to be God? The first issue is it seems to make a massive leap with no evidence (where is it?), and which God anyway?

Even if you granted the argument except the last half of 8, you don’t get awfully far.

I believe theistic claims have 3 core problems:

It’s not well-defined (God, faith, etc. is loosely defined and has many different, mutually exclusive claims)
It adds unhelpful layers of complexity that open up more questions, or requires question-begging or special pleading, and
It’s completely unnecessary anyway to advance our knowledge and understanding of reality.

But, happy to be proven wrong.

Melissa – That is great news! I would be willing to concede….once I am given the evidence.

Melissa

If you, or other theists, are not willing to provide evidence for their claims, that’s fine and the discussion ends there. It is not like Aquinas 5 ways are not controversial.

I was hoping your mocking previous remarks represented a high level of confidence that you have compelling evidence to clear up my objections. This site is for that type of discussion after all, regardless if you think my level of knowledge, education and intellect is inferior to yours.

I have heard no sensible rebuttal to my objections, so I don’t have to provide further objections you deem “serious” without any further explanation of what that means. That is an astonishingly conceited proposal for polite discourse.

Your choice. I’ll await to hear some evidence from others (if there is any).

GrahamH,

I have heard no sensible rebuttal to my objections, so I don’t have to provide further objections you deem “serious” without any further explanation of what that means. That is an astonishingly conceited proposal for polite discourse.

A serious objection would display some understanding of the arguments. Rather than claiming that there is no evidence for the actuality/potentiality distinction, it would address either the reality of change or propose some other way of understanding how things can change. Since you have failed to provide a sensible objection I don’t feel especially compelled to provide you with a sensible rebuttal, although I did ask you to clarify whether you were actually disputing the reality of change.

A claim that there is no evidence for God is so obviously false that it is very hard to take the person who makes the claim seriously at all. It is not a serious objection. No one is taking empirically observed phenomena can be taken as axioms and I’m not sure what inductive rules you think are being applied outside of time. That’s a lazy objection, the crux of the argument is that no thing that is a mix of potentiality and actuality can even continue to exist without something actualising it here and now.

Polite discourse does not include insinuating that our beliefs are motivated by a desire for comfort rather than to have true beliefs, so I suggest you drop the moralising. You might want to keep in mind that that belief of yours is the type of belief that could function to protect you from ideas that might threaten your worldview.

@GrahamH:

Where is the evidence such inductive rules derived from a set of observations applies outside of space and time, even when the inductive rules themselves require space and time?

As predicted, GrahamH shoes no inking of understanding of the arguments. They are neither “inductive rules” (although there is a sense in which they are abstracted from sense, experiential data), neither they are the sorts of rules that themselves require space-time; not that the latter is important because the First Way is wholly operative *within the created order* and never makes assumptions about what is “outside”.

Look, I will repeat what I said: you have absolutely *no* idea what you are talking. You seem to think that Aquinas arguments are some sort of quasi-scientific arguments that have to be judged by the same standards. Newsflash: they are not. If you want to learn and then put your objections, that is fine. On the other hand, if you want to play the the fool mouthing off about what he does not understand, the floor is whole yours, un-Christian as this sounds, as I always appreciate a good show of buffoonery.

Where is the evidence of an example of a non-temporal and non-material cause that we can verify?

The obvious answer is there is none, because by definition the only thing we can check up with our senses is… wait for it… sensible objects, which by definition, are material and localized in space-time. But the only force this argument could have is if a priori we know there are *only* material things, which of course is what is in dispute, so this is nothing but question-begging.

On 8, where is the evidence for the massive leap that goes from the need for a first mover and this has to be God?

You have a point here, but only a very minor one. The argument itself only proves the existence of First Mover. Aquinas then devotes hundreds of pages (supplemented by thousands more by his commentators) of painstaking deduction to prove the traditional attributes: Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnibenevolence, etc.

SteveK –

Okay, but what did “hypotheses to be tested” mean in #235?

I think I see the specific issue. What I said to Victoria was “So far as I can tell, you’re saying that science needs to assume 2 and 6. I’m saying that those are, rather, hypotheses to be tested, that have so far not been disproved.”

Now, those specific points are, as listed by Victoria:

(2) the orderly nature of the external world
(6) the uniformity of nature and induction

Reflecting for a moment, I can’t really make sense of the phrase “uniformity of… induction”. So I think we have to assume that (6) has two parts: 6a (“uniformity of nature”) and 6b (“induction”).

Your confusion makes sense, and I apologize, because I didn’t properly distinguish them. I’d say that (6a) is either identical to, or a consequence of, (2), and it was (6a) that I was talking about in #235. (6b), though, is different. I grant that (6b) is not a scientific hypothesis.

(2) and (6a) are, though. Indeed, by some viewpoints we’ve already disproved (2) and (6a) – look at Quantum Mechanics, where things are only probabilities, and state changes “just happen”, in ways that can’t, even in principle, be predicted.

That said, (6b), “induction” is only a ‘problem’ if metaphysical certainty, “true infallible knowledge”, is required. If we’re willing to work with probabilities, and degrees of confidence, it’s no problem at all, as I’ve explained.

G. Rodrigues –

Slightly less provocative, as far as the scientific evidence goes, and as a layman, I can confidently assert that the evidence for guided Evolution is at least as good as unguided one

Since the “guidance” you seem to be talking about (in light of 272) is by definition (I almost want to say “by design”) completely unrelated to “scientific evidence”, you would seem to be technically correct. Though you could simply have said, “No scientific evidence could ever prove to me that evolution wasn’t guided,” and been a lot clearer, though I concede you would have had fewer opportunities for pedantry.

@GrahamH #263

I think G. Rodrigues said it best so read his comment.

SteveK,

I read this after posting my comment in #183. I see high-profile scientists doing the exact same thing (going directly to the public, that is) a-la Dawkins, Harris, Krauss, etc (albeit different areas of science) and the public is left in a state of confusion as to what is science and what is philosophy and personal opinion. No wonder there is confusion. Dawkins public speaking tours are aimed at setting the record straight in the name of science and reason, yet his talks are littered with speculation, non-science and non-reason.

I think I fully agree with you here, Dawkins is remarkably clueless when it comes to philosophy and he failed spectacularly in educating himself about some of the subjects that he writes and speaks about (he has written some great books IMO but his The God Delusion is an embarrassment). In this respect, I´d agree that both sides are pretty much equally bad. However, Dawkins (or other popular atheist authors that are not exactly well educated in philosophy) is not writing textbooks and supplementary materials for school teachers for the teaching of philosophy classes… If he would, I´d join you in demanding that this dreck has to be kept out of classrooms 😉

@Andy:

That means that the fitness difference that a mutation causes is statistically independent of the probability of this mutation occuring in the first place – it couldn´t be any other way if evolution is unguided, but it absolutely could be different if evolution would be guided

I am sorry, but this is incorrect on several counts. Look, I am going to give you one scenario where everything you say is absolutely correct and *everything*, down to the last detail is providentially guided.

(1) God is omniscient.

(2) God has knowledge of all the possible worlds (*).

(3) God actualizes one of the possible worlds.

In this scenario, God chooses a world history in every single detail, not one escaping His notice (or to quote the gospels, not a single sparrow drops dead without His knowledge) and yet everything *in* the world has all the features you say it does. And the scenario I have just described *just is* one aspect of Divine Providence.

(*) using “world” in the technical, modal sense. Replace it by universe or totality of the created order if it is less confusing.

The other two lines of evidence you list afterwards are spurious in other senses as well, even if I granted their cogency (as I said before I am not competent to judge the arguments pro and con). For example, they rely on an unwritten assumption of what God would do, presumably based on what we intelligent beings would do. Quite obviously, God wanted for there to be mature human beings, but human beings do not drop out of their mother’s belly fully formed but go through a period of maturation, so the obvious inference is that God wished not only for mature beings but the whole *process* of maturation as well. Similar remarks apply to Evolution.

Then there is the issue with “guided”. But *of course* Evolution is guided in some senses — for example in the sense of greater adaptation. Without this teleological background Evolution theory is not even a coherent theory. And before you jump the gun on my mention of teleology, I am using it in a very specific technical sense as is used in Aristotelean-Thomistic metaphysics. This notion, by itself and in isolation, does no imply Consciousness or God or whatever, although Aquinas Fifth Way does go from it to the existence of God. But the argument is a metaphysical argument and there is no need to drag it for the current purposes.

This contradicts what you said earlier however. You said “I can confidently assert that the evidence for guided Evolution is at least as good as unguided one” – but if science cannot answer this question “in any meaningful way”, then there obviously also cannot be any evidence for or against the idea that evolution is unguided (at least no scientific evidence).

But that is exactly what I meant, or intended to mean anyway; it is at least as good because there is exactly none. What there is some data that is read through the lenses of some metaphysical position — which *is* fine, after all that *is* what I am doing here so I can hardly complain — but let us not confuse the orders of knowledge, shall we?

Where exactly am I doing this?

See above. And below.

While under the hypothesis that evolution is guided, they a) could be different and b) would be expected to be different, particularly if the “guidance” is provided by someone who has a plan / a goal in mind.

Both (a) and (b) are non-sequiturs for (some of the) reasons I already expounded. Furthermore, and just to underline my previous point, what you are engaging in is Philosophical argument; you bring some assumptions to the table, mix in what we know best about the world around us and derive your conclusions, which is what I said you were doing.

You seem to be talking about a God who grants certain organisms a non-physical “soul” – but even if we assume that this indeed happens, it would have nothing to do with biological evolution per se. Biology doesn´t concern itself with non-physical things, if there is something about humans (or other organisms) that is not reducible to or emergent from the physical, then evolution has nothing to say about it at all.

With all the qualifications I already made (and some more, which are actually important as well), fine by me. When discussing the Hamiltonean in loop quantum gravity, I am not offended by the fact that Thiemann did not put a God-term in there. It is not exactly a modern discovery, or even a concession to modern discoveries, that the natural order can be discussed without bringing God into the picture; precisely because it is *natural*.

@G Rodrigues

I am sorry, but this is incorrect on several counts. Look, I am going to give you one scenario where everything you say is absolutely correct and *everything*, down to the last detail is providentially guided.

(1) God is omniscient.

(2) God has knowledge of all the possible worlds (*).

(3) God actualizes one of the possible worlds.

In this scenario, God chooses a world history in every single detail, not one escaping His notice (or to quote the gospels, not a single sparrow drops dead without His knowledge) and yet everything *in* the world has all the features you say it does. And the scenario I have just described *just is* one aspect of Divine Providence.

Agreed. However, what you describe here would be an example of a) guidance and b) lack of guidance being completely and utterly indistinguishable in every conceivable way. In your scenario, I´d argue along the line of Flew´s “Theology & Falsification” ( http://infidels.org/library/modern/antony_flew/theologyandfalsification.html ) and point out that the claim “evolution is guided” is completely meaningless qua being 100% indistinguishable from its negation.
Furthermore, note the difference between “possible” and “plausible”, I provided three reasons for why I think that the claim “evolution is unguided” is plausible, you reply by pointing out that guidance is still possible given the observations I describe. Mere possibility however is almost trivial, every claim that is not logically self-refuting can be shown to be possible if you are allowed to make up an arbitrary number of arbitrarily far-fetched ad hoc hypotheses to support it. Example: it is possible that the earth actually has the shape of a flat disc, despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary, I just have to assume that God has an unknown (to us) reason to both a) create the earth with the shape of a flat disc and also to b) make us believe that the earth is actually spherical, by clouding our judgment every time we think about this subject. This is possible, but it certainly isn´t plausible.

The other two lines of evidence you list afterwards are spurious in other senses as well, even if I granted their cogency (as I said before I am not competent to judge the arguments pro and con). For example, they rely on an unwritten assumption of what God would do, presumably based on what we intelligent beings would do.

Then I would ask you if you would be able and willing to list some conceivable observations that would either support or contradict the notion that x (e.g. “evolution” or “brownian motion”) is “unguided”. Can you name any? If you cannot, which would mean that “guidance” and “lack of guidance” are completely indistinguishable, what meaning does the word “guidance” then have?

Quite obviously, God wanted for there to be mature human beings, but human beings do not drop out of their mother’s belly fully formed but go through a period of maturation, so the obvious inference is that God wished not only for mature beings but the whole *process* of maturation as well. Similar remarks apply to Evolution.

Yup, and I can demonstrate that the world could possibly be a flat disc – God just had some completely unknown reason for wanting to make us believe that it is spherical although it is actually flat.

Then there is the issue with “guided”. But *of course* Evolution is guided in some senses — for example in the sense of greater adaptation.

In this sense, everything that is and could possibly be is “guided” – this world we live in seems to have certain rules (like the laws of thermodynamics for example) and everything is “guided” to produce results according to those rules, and similarly, in a hypothetical alternative world that would be completely random and lack all order / lawfulness, everything would be “guided” to result in maximal lawlessness.

Without this teleological background Evolution theory is not even a coherent theory.

You´ve lost me here. What teleological background are you speaking of here (I don´t see how this sentence is connected to what you wrote earlier) and how would the lack of it make evolutionary theory incoherent?

But that is exactly what I meant, or intended to mean anyway; it is at least as good because there is exactly none. What there is some data that is read through the lenses of some metaphysical position — which *is* fine, after all that *is* what I am doing here so I can hardly complain — but let us not confuse the orders of knowledge, shall we?

I disagree. As I mentioned above, I can provide reasons that make the claim that evolution is unguided plausible, you have only mere possibility so far.

Both (a) and (b) are non-sequiturs for (some of the) reasons I already expounded. Furthermore, and just to underline my previous point, what you are engaging in is Philosophical argument; you bring some assumptions to the table, mix in what we know best about the world around us and derive your conclusions, which is what I said you were doing.

I still don´t see where I am smuggling in any philosophical assumptions that you would disagree with. The closest you came to pointing out where I made such assumptions is your point about what God would or would not do. And to this I would reply that God of course could guide something in a way that would be completely and utterly indistinguishable from a lack of guidance, but that is not an objection to my argument, that is like an attorney saying “of course all the evidence points to the accused being guilty, but maybe God actually killed the victim and had a reason to make it look as if my client did it” – possible certainly, but it does nothing to dismantle the argument.

Andy,

I disagree. As I mentioned above, I can provide reasons that make the claim that evolution is unguided plausible, you have only mere possibility so far.

What does this say about the position of the NCSE – are ‘plausible’ and ‘mere possibility’ synonymous with ‘perfectly compatible’? In #153, you said:

The NCSE and the NAS bend over backwards to not offend religious sensibilities and the NCSE has adopted the position that evolution and Christianity are perfectly compatible

Just asking if the NCSE statement is accurate given your comment.

Andy,
You said the more reasonable view is that evolution is unguided. I didn’t read everything you wrote, but I assume you’re saying this because this is the scientific view of evolution and not just Andy’s opinion. If that is the case then that position is not compatible with Christianity and the NCSE statement is inaccurate.

What am I missing – seriously? I’m not trying to create a disagreement where none exists.

SteveK,

You said the more reasonable view is that evolution is unguided.

Yup. And as I pointed out many times now in this thread, unguided evolution is perfectly compatible with the special creation of “souls” (or whatever other non-physical thing you have in mind) because evolution doesn´t have anything what-so-ever to say about stuff that isn´t reducible to or emergent from the physical.

I didn’t read everything you wrote, but I assume you’re saying this because this is the scientific view of evolution and not just Andy’s opinion. If that is the case then that position is not compatible with Christianity and the NCSE statement is inaccurate.

For certain conceptions of what “Christianity” entails, this is certainly true. However, why should mere “Christianity” necessarily entail that our physical bodies must have been created by a guided process? (again for emphasis: I am talking about our physical bodies and do not make any claim about anything that transcends the physical world) I don´t see how mere Christianity would logically depend on this and I know, and have personally spoken to people that identify as Christians and who do not believe that evolution was guided.

Andy,

Ok. Fair enough. If so, then isn’t your assertion that there is nothing to distinguish directed and undirected evolution wrong. Directed evolution, as we understand it, will always result in sentient creatures because that’s what it was designed to do. Given that unguided evolution can’t explain its own existence, our existence nessesarily, or the existence of all those things that “transcends the physical world” it would seem guided evolution is certainly plausible and maybe more likely given what currently exists.

BillT,

Ok. Fair enough. If so, then isn’t your assertion that there is nothing to distinguish directed and undirected evolution wrong. Directed evolution, as we understand it, will always result in sentient creatures because that’s what it was designed to do.

I am not asserting that guided and unguided evolution cannot be distinguished, I think they can and as I pointed out above, I think the evidence clearly favors unguided evolution. G Rodrigues pointed out that God of course could have wanted to actualize a world where the evolutionary process looks the way it does in our world – where it has all the features we would expect if it is not guided. However, if we assume this, then it would be the case that guided and unguided evolution would become completely indistinguishable.

Given that unguided evolution can’t explain its own existence

But guided evolution can? Then please explain the existence of guided evolution using nothing but guided evolution itself as an explanation.

or the existence of all those things that “transcends the physical world”

Evolution cannot produce anything non-physical, guidance doesn´t change that at all – I cannot ask you which exact mutations God magically inserted into which ancestral population and how those mutations cause the development of a “soul”, because a “soul” is not a physical thing (or at least it is not assumed to be one) and thus logically cannot possibly be the result of mutating physical hereditary material. If there are things that trancend the physical world, evolution has nothing to do with it either way – this is true whether evolution is unguided and it is exactly as true if evolution is guided.

SteveK and G Rodrigues

So you both agree with me then, that the philosophical arguments presented (Aquinas/Kalam) do not offer evidence for God. As G Rodrigues says in response to my objection that the arguments at best only prove a first cause or mover:

You have a point here, but only a very minor one. The argument itself only proves the existence of First Mover.

So the arguments do not offer evidence for God. Only a first cause/prime mover. You have to go elsewhere to find the evidence. Maybe you guys can be a bit more specific on this crucial point?

He also says I am a fool and buffoon (SteveK gave support to his comments). But guys, because I believe in the Golden Rule, I promise to converse with you both respectfully and I am not interested in belittling or calling anyone names. I don’t believe I have ever done that to anyone. If any of you want to be at that level, up to you, but getting back to the argument:

So where is the evidence God is the first cause?

Other problems with Aquinas/Kalam:

Where is the evidence that everything which begins to exist must have a cause? Lots of things do, but if experience has taught us anything it’s that our observations are limited and generalizing can get you in trouble, especially in areas you don’t know about (such as the rather broad spectrum of “everything”). As soon as one premise fails to be completely established, the deduction fails and the argument is of little use.

There are obvious additional flaws as well – namely that most theologians will exempt God from the first premise (saying something like, well, He didn’t begin to exist, He always existed, and therefore doesn’t need a cause) but that begs the question and assumes the conclusion the argument is setting out to prove.

@GrahamH

There are obvious additional flaws as well – namely that most theologians will exempt God from the first premise (saying something like, well, He didn’t begin to exist, He always existed, and therefore doesn’t need a cause) but that begs the question and assumes the conclusion the argument is setting out to prove.

That´s not a double standard though, if the premise is “everything that begins to exist has a cause”, then something that did not begin to exist is obviously exempt from this. It is also not a case of begging the question, the conclusion is entailed by, but not included in the premises (as is the case for every logically valid argument).
The argument from motion is afaict logically valid (and I think that it is widely considered to be logically valid among philosophers). What you can do is question the premises or argue that what it demonstrates cannot reasonably be called a “God”. The latter approach is IMO the best atheist response to the argument. The “first mover” logically must have certain attributes, like being immutable for example, which in turn implies that it must also be impassible, and saying that something that is immutable and impassible can also love, will, condemn, forgive etc.pp. is quite a stretch, to put it at its mildest (I´d call it self-refuting).
If you can argue that point sufficiently well, then you could go as far as granting the truth of the premises of the argument from motion, but still point out that worshipping this “first mover” makes about as much sense as worshipping the sun – there is no reason to and neither the sun nor the first mover would know or care that you are doing it anyway.

Hi Andy

The reason it begs the question is because none of the premises establish the something that did not begin to exist. It is simply assumed as the alternative of whatever began to exist.

“Things that begin to exist need causes” was allegedly derived from a set of observations of things with causes that themselves began to exist.

I think the Kalam should be restated as:

◾Everything which begins to exist might have a cause
◾The universe might have begun to exist
◾Therefore, the universe might have a cause

GrahamH,

The reason it begs the question is because none of the premises establish the something that did not begin to exist. It is simply assumed as the alternative of whatever began to exist.

Sorry, my bad – I thought you are talking about Aquinas’ first way and so my response was about that and not the Kalam.

I think the Kalam should be restated as:

◾Everything which begins to exist might have a cause
◾The universe might have begun to exist
◾Therefore, the universe might have a cause

You can do that but if you want to be consistent you need to do that – include a “might be” at every step – with every syllogism you use ;-). It is always the case that a premise might be false (and a conclusion based on it thus as well), even if you use an additional argument to argue for the truth of the premises of the first argument, this second argument will then again have premises that could be false, and so on and so forth.

So what premises are untrue? Or are you saying that because we can’t establish the first with certainty that we must reject the syllogism? Or are you saying something else?

OK, just to clarify. Are you very confident that the sun will rise tomorrow? Are you very confident that an experiment into the boiling point of water will return the same results wherever it is rung so long as it is given the same parameters?

We could all easily name something that began to exist that required a cause – this is our every day experience. Could you name something that began to exist that didn’t have a cause? That would be an arrow to the heart of the Kalam, no?

I suppose the premise that the universe began to exist is contested in some scientific circles. However, I would think that the general consensus is still that the universe began to exist. Though I suppose I could be wrong on this.

@Andy:

First my apologies; to borrow from Pascal, I wrote a long comment because I did not have the time to write a shorter one.

I´d argue along the line of Flew´s “Theology & Falsification” (http://infidels.org/library/modern/antony_flew/theologyandfalsification.html) and point out that the claim “evolution is guided” is completely meaningless qua being 100% indistinguishable from its negation.

Yes, you could argue that way. But to be a successful argument at least two conditions need to be met:

(1) I was advancing a Scientific claim, for which the falsification criteria is relevant. Since I was not, you cannot.

(2) If Flew’s positivism, under which that specific article was written and on which it is based, was not discredited and completely untenable. Since it is not, you cannot.

note(s): I should add, but just as an aside, that even the weaker Popperian falsificationism *cannot* be the whole story; it is certainly an important ingredient, maybe even the most important, in how to evaluate Scientific theories, but it is not the complete story.

You complain about “evolution is guided” being a “completely meaningless” claim presumably because it is indistinguishable from its negation, as *if* its negation is in fact “distinguishable” in any of the senses you seem to find relevant. After all, you certainly do not mean “distinguishable” as capable of being decided, at least in principle, by the methods of Science. Or are you suggesting that we can rewind History and check out the different paths? And if that is not what you are suggesting, what exactly are you suggesting? I will get back to your plausibility arguments below, but for now, let me say that you seem to be forgetting that History is only a science in the sense of being a systematic body of knowledge, not in the modern sense of the hard, empirical senses, not even in the broader Aristotelean sense. And the historical half of Evolution theory is not even History in the proper sense of the term, since it relies not on written records but on the mute stare of dumb rocks.

As for your arguments for Evolution being unguided, I stress once again that they are not scientific arguments, so what *is* the point of all this talk of “distinguishability”? What is is what is and what was is what was, so what meaning can have “distinguishability” in regards to different world histories? Your alleged inference from “Evolution is unguided” to “We see exactly what we expected to see” is not only shaky (and I am being charitable), it is certainly *not* a scientifically testable prediction. As I have said, I know next to nothing about the subject, but I would be seriously surprised if there were peer-reviewed papers on the relevant fields actually arguing the matter. And if there are, it is a sure sign of decadent scholarship.

I may be misunderstanding you, but your possibility argument is positively baffling (you make it more explicit in #292, .2). So the History of the world could have been different. Now I should add that you are smuggling here a not-insubstantial metaphysical hypothesis — and I just insert this in order to substantiate my claim that you are indeed smuggling metaphysical assumptions in practically every turn of phrase, not because I disagree with it. In theological terms, this means that it is possible that God could have actualized a different world. How does *that* make the world’s history more or less guided or unguided? This is like arguing because it is possible that I was doing something else other than typing this comment, there is no reason for typing this comment.

Now I think you are laboring in error partly, or even completely, by my fault, especially on the term “guided”, so let me try to be clear on what I mean: in one sense of the word, *every* single event is guided as there could not even be such a thing as an unguided event, such being a metaphysical impossibility. Furthermore, Divine Providence tell us that every single event concurs with God’s overall plan, even if in any given specific instance *we* may not be able to understand how or why.

Apparently, you think this collapses into triviality. I am not sure what to answer. This would be like, after having proved the infinitude of the primes, I were asked what evidence could possibly sway me in the direction of its denial, that is, that the set of primes was finite, and then being told that the claim collapses into utter triviality because it is indistinguishable from its denial. My response would be to shrug my shoulders and maybe add that the person so responding is simply missing the point.

@GrahamH:

He also says I am a fool and buffoon (SteveK gave support to his comments).

Let’s start with this. What I wrote was:

On the other hand, if you want to play the the fool mouthing off about what he does not understand, the floor is whole yours, un-Christian as this sounds, as I always appreciate a good show of buffoonery.

So, not only you do want to play the fool, you also show that you a have creative relationship with the truth.

You have been making some rather strong claims (“no evidence” for this or that) about your opponents, so the intellectually responsible course is to actually know what they hold and show where they go wrong. But it seems clear by now that expecting intellectual responsibility from you is about as fruitful as expecting a dog to learn calculus. With that settled, let us get back to the buffoonery.

So the arguments do not offer evidence for God. Only a first cause/prime mover. You have to go elsewhere to find the evidence. Maybe you guys can be a bit more specific on this crucial point?

Now what you said can be read in at least at two ways: you as an atheist are perfectly fine with the argument because it “only” proves that a First Mover exists. This is the response of a pinhead, so I will make the charitable assumption that you mean something else. I take it that you do not understand the First Way, but grant for the sake of argument that it is correct, and ask — well what are you asking? Are you asking for a specific argument that shows that the First Mover has a specific divine attribute? Or are you asking why is the First Mover the Biblical God?

Where is the evidence that everything which begins to exist must have a cause?

What evidence could settle this? This principle is a *metaphysical* principle, so it is *not* evaluated like *scientific* laws are evaluated in which you go out into the world, collect data, and make an inductive case for them. So you have a couple of options here: you take the intellectually responsible course and actually learn *why* the principle is an indubitable one and then place your objections, if you actually have them. I suppose you can also argue that metaphysics is all bunk — which, and I should warn you, *would be* a show of buffoonery, but *this* time I am all too glad to dismantle it into fine powder.

Oh, and just to not let you forget about it: the evidence you have presented until now for naturalism amounts to exactly zero, so by your criteria we should take it as false.

Andy,

If that is what you believe, fine, I still don´t see why you think that Christianity cannot possibly be true unless literally everything is “guided”.

This is not my belief about Christianity, Christianity teaches that God is in control – always – and God sustains everything – always. You and I can ponder how that plays out and in what sense God is doing something, but everything is guided by God nonetheless.

I guess I can’t expect the NCSE and NAS to know what Christianity entails and so I suppose I can forgive them for thinking that there is no inherent conflict. My hope, as far as this conversation goes, is that you will understand why people see a conflict.

@Andy:

I should probably wait for your second part, but I will add this, as it can offer some potential clarifications.

But if you do agree with it, then you also agree that it is, at least in principle, possible to distinguish whether an action was planned or not.

But I deny this. And what is most amazing, is that this argument is at bottom the ID’ers strategy, and also the reason why (or one of the reasons why) Aristotelean-Thomists tend to disagree with them vocally, and oft violently. Should I gather that your problem with ID’ers is not that they are not doing science, but doing it badly?

From the fact that you can make plausible inferences about human intentions based on a series of factors, it simply does *not* follow that you can make likewise inferences about God — say by looking for cyphers in nature, secret clues or whatever, in a similar manner that Shakespeare-deniers hunt his works for secret whispers of the “real” author. This is just bad philosophy (and bad theology, but I assume that is not your concern).

Wrt evolution, there are conceivable observations that could only be observed if someone with a plan would be guiding it – but we do not observe any of those, we rather observe only those that would be expected if there is no plan behind it.

What type of argument are you suggesting establishes this? I am not denying that you indeed did gave arguments, what I deny is (1) that they are scientific arguments in the proper sense of the term; in particular, there is exactly zero support for them from Evolution theory; for an analogy, there is as much support for them as there is support from GR that Eternalism is true — there is *always* some metaphysical assumption that is doing the real work with invocations of GR being added just for show. As a corollary, the alleged “distinguishability” criterium is pure bunkum (2) that the arguments are any good.

I already explained (2), but I will try it again. So one of them runs like follows (from #276):

Another line of evidence would be fact that the vast majority of all species that ever lived are extinct. Extinctions and even mass extinctions are common events over geological timescales. And one of the main reasons for these extinctions is, that organisms cannot adapt fast enough to a fast or rapidly changing environment (e.g. after a big volcano eruption or meteor impact). If evolution were guided, this wouldn´t have to be this way at all, whoever is guiding it could help organisms adapt or even anticipate changes (something that evolution cannot do in principle, evolution lacks foresight) and equip organisms with the necessary changes in advance.

As I pointed out, it is undeniable that God wants mature human beings, and possibly, He could have had us sprout from the ground fully formed, but that is not what happens, so that is not what He intended, so it follows that He not only intended mature human beings but the *full* process of maturation. Likewise, with Evolution, granting that everything occurred as you say it did. Period, end of story, your argument fails. Your conditional “If evolution were guided etc.” is a non-sequitur and is based on picturing God on the model of engineers (e.g. why did not God found some more efficient way?), but once again, this is a horrible and completely false picture of God that any Aristotelean-Thomist (and that is what I am defending here) will deny strenuously, viciously and to its last dying breath — I am not exaggerating, well not much anyway.

Now, you seem to have something different in mind with “guidance” – your “guidance”, where everything is “guided” would of course imply that literally everything, from brownian motion over volcano eruptions to anencephaly, was “guided” to turn out exactly the way it did turn out (note that this also includes the choices we make then btw).

Yes, that is what is implied by the AT notion of teleology. While I understand that you may find this strange, since in one sense it differs from what we most commonly think of when we think about guidance (but in another sense, it *is* just what we ordinarily mean by guidance, heh), what I do not understand, in fact I am completely baffled, is why you think first that “guided” in this sense implies everything “turn[ing] out exactly the way it did turn out”; there is neither any inference to modal collapse, nor any implied determinism or even violation of Free Will (but I grant that one or more of these issues are more difficult to tease out).

@G Rodrigues

But I deny this. And what is most amazing, is that this argument is at bottom the ID’ers strategy, and also the reason why (or one of the reasons why) Aristotelean-Thomists tend to disagree with them vocally, and oft violently.

Alright. So if you deny this, would you agree that the criminal justice system should be abolished because it is in principle impossible to distinguish whether something was done deliberately or happened by accident? If you do not agree, please explain why you do not agree.

Should I gather that your problem with ID’ers is not that they are not doing science, but doing it badly?

Exactly.

From the fact that you can make plausible inferences about human intentions based on a series of factors, it simply does *not* follow that you can make likewise inferences about God

Lets take this apart. Here you seem to agree that it is possible to make “plausible inferences about human intentions based on a series of factors” – why should that be possible? Lets switch roles for a second here. I will now deny that this is possible – I will assert that you can *not* make any plausible inferences about human intentions. How would you argue against this?

Wrt evolution, there are conceivable observations that could only be observed if someone with a plan would be guiding it – but we do not observe any of those, we rather observe only those that would be expected if there is no plan behind it.

What type of argument are you suggesting establishes this? I am not denying that you indeed did gave arguments, what I deny is (1) that they are scientific arguments in the proper sense of the term; in particular, there is exactly zero support for them from Evolution theory; for an analogy, there is as much support for them as there is support from GR that Eternalism is true — there is *always* some metaphysical assumption that is doing the real work with invocations of GR being added just for show. As a corollary, the alleged “distinguishability” criterium is pure bunkum (2) that the arguments are any good.

Then please provide an argument of your choice that you would deem “scientific in the proper sense of the term”, and point me to the difference between this argument and my arguments that make mine not “scientific in the proper sense of the word”.

As I pointed out, it is undeniable that God wants mature human beings

?? Observe: I deny that God wants mature human beings. See how easy that is? I can go further: I deny that God wants anything at all.

He could have had us sprout from the ground fully formed, but that is not what happens, so that is not what He intended, so it follows that He not only intended mature human beings but the *full* process of maturation.

And the “full of process of maturation” just happened to be an incredibly clumsy and inefficient way that included countless detours, like giant reptiles for example, because God didn´t only want mature human beings, but also to watch and kill some dinosaurs because…. something. Sure, that is possible. Possible and absurd.

Likewise, with Evolution, granting that everything occurred as you say it did. Period, end of story, your argument fails. Your conditional “If evolution were guided etc.” is a non-sequitur

That doesn´t make any sense. A conditional cannot be a non-sequitur, only a conclusion can be a non-sequitur (I don´t say this to nitpick, I really have no idea what you tried to say here).

and is based on picturing God on the model of engineers (e.g. why did not God found some more efficient way?), but once again, this is a horrible and completely false picture of God that any Aristotelean-Thomist (and that is what I am defending here) will deny strenuously, viciously and to its last dying breath — I am not exaggerating, well not much anyway.

I am not “picturing God on the model of engineers ” here or picturing God in any other way.

Yes, that is what is implied by the AT notion of teleology. While I understand that you may find this strange, since in one sense it differs from what we most commonly think of when we think about guidance

Well I guess we´ll just have to accept that I can say “evolution is unguided” and you can say “evolution is guided” without contradicting each other – because what I understand guidance to mean doesn´t seem to be in any way similar to what you understand it to mean, so we are not talking the same language here.

what I do not understand, in fact I am completely baffled, is why you think first that “guided” in this sense implies…

I retract that, I don´t believe that “guided in this sense” implies anything at all because I don´t have the foggiest idea about what “guided in this sense” even mean and the only thing I understand about it is that it has absolutely nothing to do with how I understand the word guidance.

@SteveK

This is not my belief about Christianity, Christianity teaches that God is in control – always – and God sustains everything – always. You and I can ponder how that plays out and in what sense God is doing something, but everything is guided by God nonetheless.

And let me guess, determinism is false and libertarian free will is true and you believe that this doesn´t contradict God “always being in control” and “everything being guided by God” at all, correct?

You don’t consciously intend every movement of your legs from moment to moment yet you will insist that Andy intended to take each step and run. John did not consciously intend his every movement that night, yet John intended to do what John did otherwise it would not have occurred. What is animating John, if not John?

What you say here is that everything that your body does is intended by you, else it wouldn´t happen. This is the definition of “intention”:
“Intention is a mental state that represents a commitment to carrying out an action or actions in the future. Intention involves mental activities such as planning and forethought.”
And, to take a random example, here is the definition of the word “spasm”:
“In medicine, a spasm is a sudden, involuntary contraction of a muscle, a group of muscles,[1] or a hollow organ such as a heart, or a similarly sudden contraction of an orifice. It most commonly refers to a muscle cramp which is often accompanied by a sudden burst of pain, but is usually harmless and ceases after a few minutes. There are a variety of other causes of involuntary muscle contractions, which may be more serious, depending on the cause.
The word “spasm” may also refer to a temporary burst of energy, activity, emotion, Eustress, stress, or anxiety unrelated to, or as a consequence of, involuntary muscle activity.”

Do you now see the problem with your claim that “John intended to do what John did otherwise it would not have occurred”?

…God of course could have wanted to actualize a world where the evolutionary process looks the way it does in our world – where it has all the features we would expect if it is not guided. However, if we assume this, then it would be the case that guided and unguided evolution would become completely indistinguishable.

Andy,

This cuts both ways. If God has done so, then the evolutionary process looks the way it does because it’s His world and you would be only assuming it was “our” world.

But guided evolution can? Then please explain the existence of guided evolution using nothing but guided evolution itself as an explanation.

But if it’s guided evolution then it doesn’t have to explain itself as it does in unguided evolution. We have the guider to provide what we and you acknowledge that unguided evolution can not explain. And that’s not a “god in the gaps” explanation as we both agree that evolution is limited to the physical.

But guided evolution can? Then please explain the existence of guided evolution using nothing but guided evolution itself as an explanation.

I don’t have to because a world with guided evolution isn’t limited to evolution as an explanation as a world with unguided evolution is.

And I couldn’t agree more with your last paragraph. But yet, those things that “transcend(s) the physical world” undeniably exist and they could exist only in a world with a being capable of guided evolution.

@Gavin:

An object which is not moving, and which does not interact with any moving object, becomes two or more moving objects.

The first sentence is wrong because, to take the muon example, the muon is in motion (that is, changing), and the second is likewise because for example the muon is interacting with the Higgs field.

I make the same suggestion that I made to GrahamH; I am not particularly phazed by the use of expressions such as “rubbish”, as it is common in the give and take of dialectical situations to apply some emotional pressure, but it would be nice if you would spare us your particular ignorant brand of it.

Gavin – be prepared to go through the looking glass…

Thomistic metaphysics offers solutions to problems that are only problems if certain other Thomistic arguments are accepted. God is the nominee for the unmoved mover–if you need an unmoved mover. However, the need for an unmoved mover has to be established by something like Aquinas’s First Way. But this already presupposes a particular metaphysical perspective. So, you need the argument to accept the metaphysics and you need the metaphysics to accept the argument.

Aquinas’s First Way, for instance, argues that the change in the world implies the existence of per se causal series, and that per se causal series cannot be ungrounded, ie. one can’t have a series of movers in which all of the motion is dependent on the subsequent movers’ being moved. That is obviously a very brief sketch but the conclusion that Aquinas draws from that is that there is a being which lacks the potential to change.

The key problem for them is there is no need whatsoever for a prime mover or an uncaused cause or a (metaphysically or logically) necessary being. I do not see the lack of such things as a puzzle or problem at all no more than the lack of a luminiferous ether is any longer a problem for physics.

I suspect its attraction relies more on a form of personal incredulity that “there just has to be God to explain all this”.

The state of the muon is completely described by two parameters, its spin and its momentum. The spin is intrinsic; it does not represent motion. If the momentum is zero, which is a perfectly fine momentum for the muon, then there is no motion at all. Both the spin and the momentum are conserved quantities. If there are no relevant background fields (other than the Higgs, of course) and the muon does not encounters another particle, then spin and momentum are constant. The muon is not changing. Muons don’t age. They don’t have little fuses that burn down. They don’t have timers. Left alone (with the constant companionship of the Higgs field, of course) a muon doesn’t change in any way until the moment it decays.

GrahamH, Thanks for the warning. I’ve been there. I’m sticking to number 3 because its primary flaw is not that it is poorly defined (in fact it seems quite clear), or that there is no evidence for it, or that it is an over generalization. No, the primary problem with number 3 is that it is false. We know it is false because it makes a clear claim about a necessary requirement for motion and there are carefully studied, well understood processes giving rise to motion that contradict the claim. The decay of the muon is one. The claim that the muon is in motion (i.e. changing) is also false. We’ll see if I can stay out of the rabbit hole with this strategy.

“Experiencing the elapsing of proper time” while standing perfectly still is not “in motion” according to the usual definition of “in motion.” Do you want to define motion to include motion through time?

Put another way, who’s to say that the decay we see isn’t validation of the First Way where the unmoved mover is causing the potential decay to become actual decay?

Anyone?

@SteveK:

The commmon line, and I assume that is what Gavin intends, is that either the principle of causality is in direct contradiction to the known physics or then the principle is irrelevant in some way or another because it makes no empirically falsifiable predictions. Yawn. But there is however one valuable point one can extract from your observation: there is difference from “there may be or may be not be a cause, if there is it does not show up in experimental setup X” to the categorical “there is no cause”. What argument could possibly establish the latter? Maybe we will hear that existential negatives cannot be proven (wink, wink)?

@Gavin:

First comment: no, the muon state is not determined by two parameters alone. What maybe you want to say is that for the specific experimental setup involved in muon decays, the only relevant parameters for the muon decay distribution are the spin and momentum. But if that is what you mean then it simply does not follow that the muon is not changing. The second comment is if you are going to change to the reference frame of the muon to say that the muon has zero momentum and therefore is not changing then your objection has nothing to do with radioactive decay or whatnot since the same effect can be achieved by a similarly spurious analogy and by much simpler means: start with a classical, point particle in R^3xR, describe its movement as a curve in this space, observe that the curve does not change, conclude that the particle is not in motion, congratulate yourself with the cleverness of the argument. A third comment is how the same type of spurious analogy is commonly touted as giving the *contrary* conclusion; while you go the route of the muon *not* being in motion, uniform motion and the law of inertia is commonly held as leading to the conclusion that the mobile *is* in motion, but nothing is changing it. How marvelously supple Physics is, that can be used to beat the Scholastics from opposite, contradictory directions! A fourth comment is that the relevance of all this is not obvious, since for 3., which is a (sloppy) formulation of the Scholastic principle of causality, and in the way you are interpreting it, it is irrelevant whether the muon is changing prior to the decay or not.

But all this, as compared to the larger metaphysical issue in dispute, is mere quibbling. The alleged incompatibilities being bandied around are not the sort of incompatibilities that can be established without a grasp of both the Scholastic ideas, the scientific accounts, and a series of thorny issues in the philosophy of physics. Since I do not have the time, nor, to be quite frank, the inclination, to disentangle your objections, I will direct you to this, which is at any rate, certainly much better than anything I could ever write, so nothing is really lost.

@GrahamH:

Aquinas’s First Way, for instance, argues that the change in the world implies the existence of per se causal series

The argument you quote Aquinas as making is logically independent of the First Way, so the juxtaposition of the two is puzzling.

and that per se causal series cannot be ungrounded, ie. one can’t have a series of movers in which all of the motion is dependent on the subsequent movers’ being moved.

The first sentence is correct, but since what you describe after the “i.e.” are, if I am understanding you correctly, accidental series, and quite obviously Aquinas does leave that option opened since he himself quite famously makes the distinction, it cannot be correct.

I suspect its attraction relies more on a form of personal incredulity that “there just has to be God to explain all this”.

You suspect?

You earlier asked me:

I am not interested in the references, I am interested in why someone finds these arguments convincing.

Because the arguments are valid and sound and thus I would be irrational in not accepting their conclusions. Seriously, what kind of a question is this? What type of answer are you after? An outpouring of my personal feelings? A peek into the quirks of my mind? What could possibly be the relevance of that?

Anyway, I am done here.

G. Rodrigues –

What argument could possibly establish the latter? Maybe we will hear that existential negatives cannot be proven (wink, wink)?

Well, experiment has established that no cause that is limited to the speed of light (“local”) can account for quantum behavior.

All the professor has to do to satisfy anyone’s scruples is append the words “But this is bad science. Because”, offer some explanatory words, maybe even one of your “arguments” and it is all good.

Andy’s hardly the first one to call ID failed science, though. Not even in this thread. (Prior examples. “>last paragraph here, or here.) True, it can be useful to talk about failed theories in science, and why they fail, though it usually doesn’t take long to cover the ground. I can’t see spending more than a day on ID, or phlogiston, or epicycles, etc. The other 179 days or so can cover actual science.

How marvelously supple Physics is, that can be used to beat the Scholastics from opposite, contradictory directions!

Or maybe it’s just that there’s two different ways to interpret physics that don’t align with/confirm Scholastic assumptions. There’s Elliptical as well as Hyperbolic geometry contra Euclidean, for example.

@Ray Ingles:

Andy’s hardly the first one to call ID failed science, though.

I am not exactly cheered by you likewise having a shallow grasp of science and philosophy.

Or maybe it’s just that there’s two different ways to interpret physics that don’t align with/confirm Scholastic assumptions. There’s Elliptical as well as Hyperbolic geometry contra Euclidean, for example.

Why do you think I disagree with this? Because, as far as I can understand you, it is exactly right. The scholastic principle of causality follows necessarily from Aristotle’s account of change as reduction of potency to act, so it stands or falls with the theory of potency and act. But as you quite rightly mention, Physics, whether classical, quantum or some variety to come, does not even *mention* these things, because it abstracts from the concrete reality and focus solely on those aspects amenable to mathematical treatment. But if it does not even mention act and potency, quite clearly it cannot say anything about the theory, much less refute it.

So the inference from the explicit *contradiction*, that you inanely describe as “there’s two different ways to interpret physics”, is that the objection does not even rise to the level of being well-formulated, and is predicated on the metaphysical assumptions one *brings* on how to interpret the results of Physics. But then it is not Physics that is doing the job, but rather those assumptions, and the former is just for window dressing.

About your mathematical analogies, the less said the better.

@SteveK:

As luck would have it, formal and final causes are not limited to the speed of light.

This does not quite work, at least not against all objections, because the principle of causality is explicitly concerned with efficient causation.

@Gavin:

Using that definition of “in motion,” a muon with no momentum is not “in motion.” Number 3 is false.

Motion is a technical term of art; it comes from the Latin “motus” and denotes change, any kind of change, not what you take it to be, change of place. And of course, if *that* is your objection, radioactive decay has absolutely *no* role in it.

So let me see if I get this: in #322 we have “I think 2-8 are all rubbish, but number 3 is most obviously in direct contradiction with known physics.” In #327 “No, the primary problem with number 3 is that it is false. We know it is false because it makes a clear claim about a necessary requirement for motion and there are carefully studied, well understood processes giving rise to motion that contradict the claim.” Now in #338 you ask “What does “in motion” mean in the argument?” in complete ignorance of what the term means, and ” I think that how most readers would interpret the argument and I think it is what the author intended.”, so that we are down to questions of interpretation and guesses about what the “author intended”. Newsflash: the intended argument is what Aristotle, Aquinas and their commentators intended.

Lovely, freakin’ lovely.

Buffoonery as predicted. I am just going to get the popcorns and enjoy the show.

@Gavin:

Muons only have momentum and spin. That’s it.

Really? So position is not an observable? And they are not leptons ruled by the electro-weak force, a gauge theory with gauge group SU(2)xU(1) (before symmetry breaking)? They are not excitations of *the* fundamental fields? Whose states are lines in the L^2-section space of a spinor bundle?

And another one bites the dust; done here as well.

Thanks for reminding me of how little I know about physics, Victoria. 🙂

That’s the physics in a nutshell – the metaphysics is another story

We have Gavin and Graham to help us with the metaphysics.

Gavin,

Having only taken Physics I and II, I would love an explanation if it’s not too much trouble.

Bill L, No problem. G. Rodrigues is listing a bunch of things about the muon with the suggestion that they are additional information needed to describe the state of the muon. However, everything he lists is already accounted for by the momentum, spin and the word “muon.”

First he mentions position, but that is related to momentum in such a way that if I describe the muon in terms of momentum, a description in terms of position is redundant. They are like different coordinate systems. Once you have given the components of a vector in one coordinate system, you don’t get any new information from the components in a new coordinate system. It’s just two different descriptions of the same thing.

Everything else he lists is just a description of what a muon is. If I want to tell someone about a specific muon I don’t walk them through every property. I tell them it’s a muon, give the spin and momentum and I’m done.

That wasn’t really an explanation of everything he said, but rather an explanation of why it is irrelevant. Hope it is somewhat helpful.

@SteveK:

We have Gavin and Graham to help us with the metaphysics.

Lucky us.

@ G. Rodrigues,

As noted in the previous post, virtual particles satisfy Aquinas.

The causal principle is traded away by the Critic willing to pay the intellectual price which stasis necessitates. Time is a funny thing. Such is also touched on in W.L. Craig’s, “Reflections on “Uncaused Beginnings”” at http://www.reasonablefaith.org/reflections-on-uncaused-beginnings

G. Rodrigues – Not that you’ve noticed, but I’ve only objected to ID as science to the extent that it’s actually tried to be science. But don’t worry, I don’t expect you to spend any effort trying to process that.

So the inference from the explicit *contradiction*, that you inanely describe as “there’s two different ways to interpret physics”,

Well, it’s only an “explicit *contradiction*” if the same person puts forth both interpretations. Even you in 333 don’t claim Gavin is doing this. I’m curious if you can point to anyone who does?

It’s possible to imagine multiple alternatives to Euclidean geometry – Hyperbolic and Elliptical are famous examples, as I noted. I was simply pointing out that it’s possible to imagine multiple alternatives to A-T metaphysics, too. If you can find someone who simultaneously advocates two contradictory ones, you go to town with my blessings. Noting that ‘some people say this, but other people say that’ is… well, it’s not wrong, I suppose, but it’s hardly an argument.