ID, Bayesian inferences and the Priors of MN

Actually, Rumraket later conceded that the example was valid, that in such a case the design inference would be warranted. I guess you missed that part of his remarks.

So you only eat food you have personally grown? Only flown in airplanes you personally designed and built? How long did it take you to personally design and construct the computer you’re typing on now?

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if you cut your own hair, and did your own dentistry with string and a door knob. :rofl:

No, he didn’t. He said he could possibly agree with the materials part but the rest was your usual worthless garbage. But that’s OK, no one expects you to be honest about what was actually said.

BTW here is your idiotic claim which you made AFTER Rumraket made his statement.

You must really like the taste of your own foot.

Nothing will shut you up until you decide to open your mind.

You believe the ID guys have an agenda and it is contrary to your materialist worldview. To you ID is the enemy and you are bound and determined to end the idea.

I have to admit you are a pretty strong propaganda machine.

I told you what would do it but you just can’t deliver. All hat no cattle, all boat no paddle. :grin:

Since he referred to ā€œcircuit boardsā€ and ā€œchipsā€, he wasn’t talking only about the materials (copper, silicon) but also about their arrangement.

But at the time I hadn’t noticed the earlier statement by Rumraket. When he pointed it out to me, I drastically altered a long post I had written to him to take into account the fact that he had granted me a point.

(cough cough) Discovery Institute Wedge Document

ā€œGOALS:
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 Godā€"

Damn straight these clowns trying to undermine science education in my country are the enemy and will be fought at their every dishonest turn.

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LOL! You’re going to have to put a red safety flag on that Pinocchio nose before you poke someone’s eye out. :rofl:

So lets just say I don’t think I can convince someone as open minded as a fire hydrant :slight_smile: When something changes and you become open minded let me know.

My mind is open to your positive evidence. It’s not as open as yours where all your brains fell out. :slightly_smiling_face:

I agree you are open to fighting ID. Positive evidence you will simply misrepresent for your cause of fighting ID. I have never seen you represent the argument properly. I wonder if this is by design :slight_smile:

@Colewd:

Why are you discussing design with an Atheist? You must be bored.

We’ll never know since you can’t present any positive evidence for ID.

All booster no payload.

@colewd:

Even Behe’s lengthy discussion (kindly provided to us via @eddie), is skeptical about the ability of Science to distinguish between natural processes that are designed… and natural processes that are being left alone by God.

Until that particular conundrum is resolved… ID is probably not going to move an inch.

George:

The second part of Behe’s article is more difficult than the first, because in it Behe ventures somewhat into speculative matters of philosophy and theology. The first part, however, is clear regarding the point I made, i.e., Behe indicates no preference one way or the other between front-loaded and interventionist hypotheses, and certainly does not exclude or even minimize the interventionist possibility. Behe also confirms why there is no need to settle in favor of one or the other: the design inference is not affected either way. The questioner had Behe’s position on that ā€œexactly right.ā€

Thus, there is no basis, in his most explicit statement on the two options, for suggesting that he rejected or even downplayed ā€œintervention.ā€ He’s simply non-committal. Thus, to show that the scales have tipped for him, one would need later statements where he explicitly speaks against intervention or at least implies that it wouldn’t be necessary. And I’m unaware of such statements. Further, the last time I had personal communication with him on this question, he supported the neutral stance indicated in the article. So it would take some really positive evidence to convince me that he has rejected or abandoned intervention as a possibility.

@Eddie,

In other words … he is ā€œall over the mapā€. It has been my intention (and still is) to integrate what he is saying in the first part with what he is saying in the second part.

It is clear that there will be no ā€œgrand resolutionā€ by a third party like myself… only Behe can provide the grand resolution of his own views.

But, by integrating the positions from the whole paper, it is my hope to zero in on the key sentence upon which the ā€œshaking structureā€ of his system depends.

And I believe it will leave me again urging the Discovery Institute to hire a professional Epistemologist.

Not ā€œall over the mapā€, because he is only considering two positions, and even then, only in relation to design detection. His doctrine at that time can be summarized as:

  1. Design in nature may be everywhere, or only in some places. However, as times goes on, and we learn more about the intricacies of life, the number represented by ā€œsomeā€ seems to increase.

  2. Design in nature, where it is real, is sometimes (not always) detectable by scientific methods.

  3. God could have put design into nature via front-loading or by intervention. (Or perhaps by some combination of the two.)

  4. It makes no difference to design detection methods which of those methods God used, which is why debates between those positions aren’t of any concern to science (as opposed to theology).

  5. If you want my personal opinion which method God used, you’re going to be disappointed, because I’m not going to tell you.

We can speculate on why Behe is reticent to give his personal view. It’s of course possible that he simply hasn’t made up his mind. But the most obvious reason would be that, even if he has made up his mind, announcing it would invite dispute over his personal merits as a theologian, and he wants the public to focus the merits of ID as a scientific stance. I think he would say that if the world came around to the notion of design detection, he would have accomplished his primary goal, and that his own personal thoughts on how God does it are of much less importance.

Of course, I’d like it very much if Behe were explicit about how God is involved in evolution and design. But tactically speaking, his silence is probably wise.

@Eddie,

Behe touched on virtually every possible concatenation of all these options… but he at least offered which scenarios he thought were more likely.

@Eddie,

This whole vocabulary of ā€œGod intervening in Creationā€ makes me twitch something fierce.

I’ve made a few analogies like the one below a few times before… and I will continue to do so:

Imagine God painting a beautiful sunset on the side of a building… a really big building!
With both his right and left hand he is quickly dappling in beautiful splashes of color with 2 very fancy brushes … each brush represents a natural process.

Just as onlookers think God is done … he steps back a few meters … points a finger at an interesting angle of two colors… and there is a miraculous blooming of glitter and an intensity of color that is as bold and as striking compared to the background - - as the background itself seemed to appear, just before that final move of his divine digit!

The point of the analogy is to show that there is no ā€œinterveningā€ with a miracle… it is all part of the creation … sometimes God uses natural processes (like natural bristles on brushes)… and other times he uses his personal aura of energy to add glorious finishing touches.

The idea that God might let things go on without God paying attention to it - - like a pattern of leaves on Behe’s front yard - - is as bizarre a notion as BioLogos ever put together concern all the effort God put into not making an effort to do something!

Try to imagine God miraculously creating Adam from dust and mud right in front of your very eyes … and then a kibitzer walks up and says: ā€œHey, look at how God makes the liver and the kidneys without really paying any attention to themā€¦ā€

Oyyy…

Let me get this straight, George.

You are criticizing Behe for allowing that minor things like the patterns of leaves on lawns might not be dictated by God, and you think that’s as bad as or worse than the contention of some TEs that the outcome ā€œmanā€ might not have been dictated by God (i.e., that God, as per Ken Miller, was indifferent whether he got man or an intelligent mollusk)? Or that elephants might not have been dictated by God (as per beaglelady, who regarded the existence of elephants as a ā€œthing indifferentā€ to God, along with the other things indifferent to God, like whether man would have five or six fingers)? Or that the existence of mice might not have been dictated by God (as per Venema, when he refused to concede to Crude that mice, specifically, were an intended outcome of evolution)? You think that Behe’s position is farther from Christian orthodoxy than the position of many TEs, because his God doesn’t demand rigid predestination of leaf patterns?

Are you turning into an ultra-Calvinist, George? You’d better watch out – you will lose your Unitarian membership if you keep this up!

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