@gbrooks9 You know that science is neutral and is unable to test God’s presence or absences in any lab tests.
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I strongly disagree Bill. Like it or not, methodological naturalism is the cornerstone of scientific explanations. Methodologically natural explanations are not the only kind of explanation, nor are they the only good explanations. However, methodologically natural explanations are the one and only kind of scientific explanation.
Because the mental activity of a designer can take so many unpredictable directions, explanations based on mental activity of a designer cannot yield predictions that can be falsified by the scientific toolkit. Period. Full stop.
Just to be clear, I believe that arguments from design to designer are valid metaphysics. Moreover, the Designer of the universe has for some unfathomable reason had mercy on us and revealed Himself to us in history and in person. I am delighted to celebrate that revelation, and to renew my encounter with His divine presence, on this Resurrection Sunday.
Yours,
Chris
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It’s not so unfathomable in one respect – for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. That joy is us(!), we who have been irrevocably adopted into his family. What is unfathomable is that it should be such as us.
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Why shouldn’t we?
Yeah, I guess it was just luck that enabled us to have minds that can study the universe that we inhabit.
And I guess it was just luck…
I am not sure I agree with this so much. Can we not test a precise model of the designer’s mental activity? If the model fails, yes their could be another way the designer thinks, but we would have ruled out that model. If we found a model that fit the data parsimoniously, and could not be explained by any known mechanism, that would be suggestive. Right?
Now, I don’t think that we would conclude divine design. Nor do I think that such a model exists other than common descent. Is this not in principle at least possible?
I would agree. Thus we rule out the non-deceptive, fiat creator, for example.
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The sequence of nucleotides that builds an animal form a single cell.
How do neutral mutations harm that process? What is the definition of a neutral mutation?
A mutation that does not affect fitness. The does not mean that a collection of them cannot have a negative affect of fitness or function.
Great job Bill. You just contradicted yourself in the space of two sentences. 
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Not quite, I’d say. If we suppose a number of mutations, each of which would be neutral individually but whose combination is deleterious, that fits what Bill is talking about, more or less. But of course fitness is dependent on genetic environment as well as external environment. Whichever is the last of those mutations to happen would not be neutral. And when the last has appeared, the combination will be selected against, so that the final mutation would not be expected to reach a high frequency. So while Bill’s scenario is not completely ridiculous, he still has no idea what he’s talking about, as usual.
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Yep. That’s the point. Mutations 1, 2, 3 can be neutral but if mutation 4 makes 1+2+3+4 be deleterious then mutation 4 is not neutral.
Right… but I.D. supporters haven’t even visualized this problem… let alone how to respond to it!
No such theory exists in science, if I understand what you mean by unguided evolution which is different than what scientists mean by the same term. When scientists say that mutations are unguided they mean unguided by the needs of the organism. In other words, there is no widespread mechanism in biology that produces a specific mutation at a specific base in response to a specific stimulus. Science makes no claims about possible supernatural influences that have no statistical signal in the data.
I am always open to fair criticism.
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That sounds straight out of Elliott Sober’s work.
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It’s older than that, I’d say – Duhem-Quine, at least. But I don’t study philosophy of science. I just pick it up by osmosis along the way.
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Evolutionary science and the study of evolution has nothing to do with ID or any other creationist ideology or theology.
Good… and part of “fair” is that when I refer to “Unguided Evolution”, I’m using the theological definition… which should simplify our discussion considerably.
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Unguided Evolution = Godless Evolution = Atheistic Evolution