Indeed, I’d add that the point is not so much whether or not there is divine intelligence, but rather, that assuming as much does not aid us in formulating a scientific understanding of any given phenomenon. It is an assumption that is unnecessary not just in general, but, specifically, as an aid in constructing predictive models of natural processes. ID proponents insist that it is either helpful or necessary for scientific purposes (over and above some personal spiritual needs, say), but have so far failed to substantiate that opinion.
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Oh come now… every time an I.D. poster says this or that mutation requires intelligence, the atheists (and theists too if they get sucked into passion of the moment) explain how the mutation could have arrived without intelligence.
These are time wasting dead ends.
The real argument is whether the Judeo-Christian deity does or doesnt use evolution in his master plan!
You’re making this up. You don’t read the forum. My theory is that you want it to be something else and you’re frustrated that we all don’t line up behind you. My advice is: start your own site.
Since the forum is named “Peaceful Science” expelling science in favour of Christian belief would hardly seem reasonable.
That can be the tagline for your new discussion forum site. The world is your oyster! The gods are on your side! Go forth!
The dispute as to whether ID is science or not is hardly an argument to someone who thinks the Earth is 6000 years old. And while wasting everyone’s time, such issues trigger dog fights with Christian evolutionists … because epistemology has never been on their radar, but evolution still makes the most sense.
I spent 2 years on this site…responding to most every provocation!!!
I was hoping the atheists would eventually get with the program. Too many hard eggs it seems
Face it. Every post about random evolution is a back-handed anti-theist smack in the face.
Only to the sort of theist who feels that they or their faith is insulted or threatened by undisputed facts about nature. It’s sad that this is how they ended up feeling about such things, but nothing either the facts or their presenters can do much to fix.
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It comes down to what is the most practical endpoint for I.D. creationists?
Is it practical to think we can turn ID creationists into atheist evolutionists? Or is it more reasonable to imagine I.D. folks modifying their views to include a supreme God - - who uses evolutionary forces to effect his mighty purposes???
If you say so. I don’t know what this ‘it’ is that comes down to anything. My mission here is to entertain myself, to learn something in the process if I can, and to offer what little of my own expertise I can provide, where appropriate. I consider it not my business what “the most practical endpoint for ID creationists” is. I’ll assist, if I please, when asked, but ultimately their path is for them to trek upon, and I neither have nor desire any say over it.
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You do realise that this is also consistent with the position of Theistic Evolution on this? Which is that, although their God could have been involved in the mutation (just as He could have been involved in every other aspect of reality, including those connected with every other Scientific Theory), there is no scientific evidence that he did so.
So it seems unlikely that the theists are merely “get[ting] sucked into passion of the moment”.
@Mercer, you’re a theist, a scientist, and a fairly active member of this forum: were you merely “get[ting] sucked into passion of the moment”?
Given that the majority of the world’s believers aren’t “Judeo-Christian”, I would question why this is “the real argument”.
Not only is that wrong because, as I pointed out above, it is the position of Theistic Evolution, so cannot be “anti-theist”.
It also runs into the fact that much of the world is “random” – be it traffic accidents, cancer, lotteries, etc, etc. This does not stop many believers from seeing Divine Providence at work, despite the lack of any scientific evidence of divine interference in all this randomness. Do you expect everybody to likewise reflexively point out that lottery results and cancer diagnoses could be “part of a divine design”?
“Face it”, you’re tilting at windmills. 
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There is such a vast gulf between “there is no divine intelligence” and “could have arrived without intelligence” that if apologetics was a sport you’d be an Olympic-class long-jumper.
Alternatively, you could try claiming that since bats reached New Zealand without human assistance, there are no humans, so you couldn’t have posted that message.
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I would just like to say that George is entering full Eddie territory here.
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@Tim,
I am told not to feed the trolls.
In this case, that would be you.
Anyone who can contrive the idea that Judeo-Christians should NOT be the primary focus of Peaceful Science is certainly not someone with whom I can have a serious discussion.
Take any week of data … tell me how many references there are from the New or Old Testament!
In comparison, how many references do we have from Hindu or Chinese sources…
You are quibbling here. My conclusion is not impaired if i choose to delete the label “complete opposite”.
And what you consider a flaw I consider a benefit! The average American is already well acquainted with the stance that simultaneously holds onto the miraculous aspects of the resurrection and scientifically rational support of Evolutionary theory together as one.
Intelligent Design is not actually the problem. It is when ID is blended with young earth theories!
Pseudoscience doesn’t have to be coupled with cartoonish nonsense first before it becomes a problem. If anything, it becomes less dangerous at that point, because that’s when normies don’t get pulled along with it quite so easily anymore. One won’t be swayed into homoeopathy by someone who starts out with the benefits of urine drinking quite as effectively as by one who starts with herbal tea. Intelligent Design, like any other thin wrapper around creationism, is, before anything else, the rejection of the well-documented observable facts of evolution, along with any and all scientific methodology by which inferences permitting such, let alone predictively modeling, could be arrived at. It is a problem, and it is more of a problem precisely when it is not overtly served along with young earth claims. When it does come packaged with claims that are grossly irreconcilable with just about every basic fact about nature people learned before they turned fifteen or so, that’s when it becomes silly enough for casual listeners to not think there may be a valid point in it.
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My point was that you have been, fairly arbitrarily, narrowing down the focus – “Judeo-Christians” here, “English-speaking Christians” previously.
Are you unaware of the existence of Muslim Creationism (of the likes of Adnan Oktar) and Hindu creationism?
It is you who is confused – the statement that I was replying to did not contain “the label ‘complete opposite’”:
My point remains, and goes beyond a mere quibble: the viewpoint that you are complaining about is part of both Theistic Evolution and of Science more generally.
Addendum: I think this analogy from @Roy is illuminating on this point:
You may be under the impression that you are making a coherent argument here, but you would be wrong. You have failed to:
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Articulate exactly what “flaw” you are talking about.
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To provide evidence to support your contention that “the average American” (even if such a mythical beast existed) is “already well acquainted with the stance” of the anomalous juxtaposition of two completely unrelated issues – the Resurrection and Evolution.
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To demonstrate that this “stance” results in a “benefit”.
Now that’s just plain silly. You are claiming that Michael Behe’s nearly thirty-year career of publishing misrepresentations of science isn’t a problem? Likewise Dembski and Meyer? I beg to differ.
Your posts are long on assertion. Short on both evidence and reasoning to back up these assertions.
This is true of the ID movement, almost universally. And yet some will argue, accurately IMO, that the concept of “intelligent design” is independent of the truth of evolutionary theory. In fact, I would argue that this is obvious on any amount of reflection. Few detest the gods of our age more than I do, but it simply isn’t true that evolution has anything to say about whether a superintelligence oversees or meddles or guides it.
So, when we correctly identify something called “Intelligent Design” as a pathetic version of creationism, peddled by propagandists in Sunday Schools and championed by a clown car in the Pacific Northwest, without stipulating that we are referring to that corrupt “movement,” we run the risk of claiming or suggesting that beliefs or concepts of design, even “intelligent design,” are inherently anti-scientific or dishonest. I think that’s a mistake.
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This may be a controversial take on my part, depending on the field… In my opinion, science, as an approach to studying things, is not a quest for “truth”. It is, rather, as I explained, a quest for pictures of the world that can be used to predict it, a quest for “models” that “work”. In that sense, I would not agree that evolutionary theory has nothing to add on the topic of whether or how much divine intervention is involved in the diversification of life.
The fact that it can make accurate predictions about experimental data without assuming any is, in my opinion, an indication that intelligent design, if present at all, has an unspecified impact too subtle to detect given the current state of the art. There may still be unexplained phenomena in evolution, but until the intelligent design idea can predict any of their workings over and above being a mere plug for the gap that these are, it is not actually warranted by current data. This is something we are left with even after ignoring the history of intelligent design as a movement. And in my opinion, this is not a non-statement.
Intelligent design is a bad model. It is not a bad model because bad actors have proposed it, or because they try to defend it in dishonest ways. The merits of a model attempting to compete on the scientific playing field are ultimately separate from the character of its advocates, or, indeed, detractors. No, intelligent design is a bad model, because, irrespective of any of that drama, what few observational consequences one could try to logically derive from the assumption of an overseeing or meddling or guiding superintelligence seem to either not be born out by the data, or not be experimentally testable at all. It is a bad model, scientifically speaking.
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