Good point. It would seem strange to fine-tune fundamental physics such that stellar nuclear fusion produces the elements necessary for organic life if these elements are not at all involved in the process of life’s origins, and most of them have close to zero bioavailability by being locked in insoluble mineral structures.
Most of the biosphere today, and for must of Earth history, has obtained the fundamental building blocks of which it is made, by recycling the decaying products of previous generations of living organisms.
God could have just instantiated the first generation of life with the correct elemental distribution and then ensured life had this ability to recycle their constituents ever since, partially facilitated by geological processes. There does not seem to be any reason to have stars produce the elements of life at all. Particularly when the vast, vast majority of stellar systems apparently end up without planets harboring life.
No, just bracketing that question, to point out that Mercer’s complaint was irrelevant to the discussion I was having with T. aquaticus, which concerned only the Denton books published by Discovery.
I don’t think so, but it depends what is meant by ‘ID’, If ‘ID’ is used to refer to the claims and arguments that make up the ID ‘theory’, then ID is a subset of creationism because the claims attributed to ID and the arguments used to support them are also claims and arguments found in creationism.
So far the only ‘core claim’ of ID that Eddie has identified that is not also a part of creationism is that (drum roll…) ID is not creationism. But many creationists agree with that. It doesn’t help that the DI ‘big tent’ approach prevents them from including in ID anything that would alienate the YECs.
There aren’t a lot of ID arguments that didn’t originate with creationism either. The only one I’m aware of is Ewart’s dependency graph idea.
YEC a la ICR, AIG and CMI. I agree nested hierarchy doesn’t fit, mainly because there aren’t enough layers.
I see. So you have no concern about Denton’s professional incompetence. You just want to win an argument over a very minor point. Thanks for clarifying.
For anyone who is interested in whether Denton is a serious and important thinker, or just a dishonest charlatan, I believe this is what @Mercer was referring to (from a review of Evolution: A Theory in Crisis):
Biochemists have elucidated detailed structures of a variety of proteins obtained from a diverse array of organisms. (Anyone unfamiliar with rudimentary molecular genetics can read, with confidence, Denton’s Chapter 11.) Some of the proteins studied are found only in certain kinds of organisms; others occur in virtually all organisms. In the latter case, the molecular structure of a specific protein-cytochrome C is a classic example and the one used by Denton-can be determined in each of many different organisms. It turns out that the structures of the same protein in two different organisms are rarely identical and in some cases quite dissimilar. The amount of difference can be quantified.
Denton provides representative data in Table 12.1. The data are extracted from the leading biochemical reference on the subject and are good; Denton’s analysis and conclusions are not. Denton builds his arguments upon a phenomenon that he calls “molecular equidistance.” He uses this phrase to refer to empirical results such as the observation that cytochrome C in bacteria, for example, differs by approximately the same amount (roughly 65-70 percent) from the cytochrome C’s found in each one of the other organisms listed in the table (vertebrates, insects, plants, and yeasts). Denton uses such observations to infer (erroneously) distinct typological classes. Discussing the data, he makes statements such as: “The bacterial kingdom has no neighbour in any of the fantastically diverse eucaryotic types. The ‘missing links’ are well and truely missing” (p. 281); and “There is not a trace at a molecular level of the traditional evolutionary series: cyclostome → fish → amphibian → reptile → mammal. Incredibly, man is as close to lamprey as are fish!” (p. 284).
These conclusions are erroneous: in his interpretation of 'molecular equidistance," Denton has confused ancestor-descendant relationships with cousin relationships. The telltale clues of molecular data are not, directly, concerned with parents and offspring, intermediate forms, and “missing links.” They are, instead, reflections of relative relatedness between contemporary cousins. Twentieth-century bacteria are not ancestors of twentieth-century turtles and dogs: they are very distant cousins, and, as the data in Denton’s presentation show, the bacteria are roughly equally distant cousins of both turtles and dogs (and all the other organisms that Denton included in Table 12.1).
Cousin relationships between contemporary individuals are governed by the number of generations since there last was an ancestor in common to the individuals. Different members of a group of close relatives always have the same relationship to a more distantly related individual who stands outside the group. Two sisters are equally related to a mutual first cousin. Members of a group of siblings and first cousins are all equally related to a mutual fifth cousin. Lampreys are equally distant cousins of both fish and humans because the last ancestor that lampreys had in common with humans was the same ancestor lampreys had in common with fish. The “molecular equidistance” argument that Denton invokes is invalid, resulting from making comparisons between a single distantly related organism and various members of a more closely related group.
There is an irony in Denton’s presentation to anyone familiar with the data of molecular evolution. Reflections of genealogical relationships are so strong in molecular data that Denton, in spite of his arguments to the contrary, is unable to hide them. The missing “trace” of which he speaks is not a trace; it is a shout. Simple inspection of the data in Table 12.1 will reveal that cytochrome C found in horses, for example, is quite similar in its molecular structure to that found in turtles, slightly less similar to that in fish, still less similar to that in insects, and very much less similar to that in bacteria. The traditional evolutionary series is very much in evidence.
If that’s what you mean by “creationism”, then ID definitely is not a subset of creationism, nor are IDers a subset of creationists. Luskin, Meyer, Dembski, Snoke, Gauger and many other major ID players (not to mention thousands of lesser-known ID people) are NOT YECs.
It’s not just about “claims” (about nature or origins); it’s also about methods. The methods of ID are not creationist, because ID argumentation excludes, on principle, any reliance on Genesis as true history, or as the word of God, etc., whereas creationism demands, on principle, such reliance.
Creationists must, because of their assumptions, do one of two things: show, by creative reframing, that the discoveries of modern science conform with the Bible (concordism), or say that the conclusions of modern science are false whenever they conflict with the literal reading of the Bible.
ID is forbidden on principle to do the latter, and has no interest (qua ID) in doing the former, since whether or not the Bible agrees that there is design in nature is a matter of complete indifference to ID as a theoretical position.
ID “claims” (about complexity, fine-tuning, origin of life, etc.) can of course overlap with those of creationists, but the fundamental epistemological position is different. ID per se could keep on going even if Christianity were disproved tomorrow, but creationism could not.
My complaint is about the author, Denton, selling a book that he knows contains a gross misrepresentation of nested hierarchy and its empirical predictions. It’s a screaming example of Denton’s lack of intellectual depth.
Another example of the shallowness of those books is your inability to cite a single datum that is convincing.
^^^This is yet another example of you focusing on people and avoiding evidence, ideas, and arguments.
^^^This is yet another example of you focusing on people and avoiding evidence, ideas, and arguments.
You only need two layers for a nested hierarchy. Now, since ID lacks important features of YEC (notably, commitment to a recent origin of the universe/earth/life) it can’t be a subset of YEC. A subset of X must belong to X and must have all the defining features of X. In this sense, YEC is a subset of ID, not the other way around. The claims of ID are a subset of the claims of YEC, but that’s not at all the same thing, and in fact it’s what we would expect if YEC were a subset of ID. I think the mammal/vertebrate analogy demonstrates that pretty well.
True, but that’s for historical reasons. ID is a child of YEC (or possibly of OEC, yet another group), but it’s more as if they took off a cheap suit, shedding certain features, than that they added a cheap suit.
I’ve already said that creationists are a subset of IDers, not the other way around. Pay attention.
The methods of ID certainly are creationist. Both involve trying to find evidence to support their preconceptions - although the preconceptions those methods are applied to differ (‘the universe and life were designed by God as described in Genesis’ vs ‘the universe and life were designed by God a designer as described in Genesis’).
Most of the IDers’ other methods - quote-mining, misrepresenting sources, Gish galloping, making stuff up, ignoring data, faulty maths, arguing from authority and many other fallacies - were also all previously used by creationists. IDers can’t even claim that their attempts to pretend their ideas aren’t rooted in religion is new, because creationists tried that as ‘scientific creationism’.
Though I suppose IDers do use one method that creationists don’t. I can’t recall any of the YEC organisations setting up a website supposedly about evolution and filling it with anti-evolution garbage.
YEC has continued to exist (and in some cases was founded) long after many of their central beliefs have been disproved; there’s no reason to think a disproof of Christianity (if that’s even possible) would lead to anything different.
{3,8,21} lacks important features of the set of integers (notably infiniteness, negative integers and zero), but it’s still a subset of it.
A subset of X must contain things that belong to X. It needn’t have the defining features of X, although members of the subset, being members of X, will have the defining features of members of X.
If X is ‘core claims of ID’, and Y is ‘claims of creationism’, then Eddie’s list of ID’s core claims, all of which are directly or indirectly claims of creationism (design is at least in principle detectable; classical neo-Darwinism cannot explain the phenomena; the origin of life very likely needed design input; the universe appears to be fine-tuned for life), together with Eddie’s inability to come up with any core claims of ID that are not also claims of creationism[1] confirms that X is a subset of Y, and that in regards to the claims made by the two ‘theories’, ID is a subset of creationism[2]. This fits both with my view that ID is creationism with the references to God/Bible removed, and your comment that ID is creationism with certain features shed. Also, the DI’s ‘big tent’ strategy to allow inclusion of YECs means they’re unlikely to include in ID any claim that is inconsistent with YEC.
Looking at the arguments (and forms of arguments) used to support ID and YEC, there are almost no arguments used in support of ID that don’t have their roots in YEC. The only exception I’m aware of is Ewart’s dependency graph idea. There are a lot of arguments used to support YEC that aren’t used to support ID (flood geology for instance) though. So while ID arguments aren’t strictly speaking a subset of ID arguments, they almost are.
I’m not sure what sense you mean. What is ID a set of here such that YEC is a subset?
That is/was my point. ID (the ‘theory’, not the movement) is a subset of YEC (the ‘theory’, not the movement)
Yes. ID claims are a subset of creationist claims. Creationists are a subset of IDers. Just like vertebrate features are a subset of mammalian features and mammals are a subset of vertebrates.
Eddie’s proposed core claim of ID of ‘ID is not creationism’ is not only begging the question, but may actually be a claim of creationism because many creationists say the same thing. ↩︎
You seem to be confusing a number of separate things here. In this case, you confuse characteristics of the set of all integers with the defining characteristics of integers. “Is infinite”, “contains 0” and “contains negative numbers” are all the former, and so irrelevant to any analogy.
Same thing: you confuse the defining features of X with a list of the elements of X. The defining features of X are the defining features required to be an element of X. An element belongs to set X if it has all the defining features. A further confusion is over what, in the present case, set X is or what sort of thing its elements are. We seem to be talking about a series of “isms”, each defined by particular tenets. ID is the set of all “isms” that contain the various ID tenets, and this set includes the various creationisms. On the other hand, creationism has various additional tenets, and many ID-isms lack some of those tenets and therefore can’t be elements in the set of all creationisms, especially if you define creationism, as you do, as YEC.
This changes the subject from sets of “isms” to “sets of claims”. And those are two different things. ID claims are a subset of creationist claims, but creationism is a subset of ID-ism. Remember the analogy: the characteristics of vertebrates are a subset of the characteristics of mammals, but mammals are a subset of vertebrates. And it’s the latter that we’re supposedly talking about here. In other words,
…the second doesn’t follow from the first.
That’s just a difference between historical origin and set formation. Those are two quite different concepts that should not be conflated.
You mean they’re unlikely to include as a core tenet of ID, right? There are plenty of prominent IDers who reject YEC; they just don’t make a big deal out of it, to preserve the big tent. But that makes YEC a subset of ID, not the other way around.
??
A set of “isms”, which can themselves be considered as collections of defining features. What do you think are the elements of the sets we’re talking about?
I still disagree. First off, there is no such thing as the theory of ID. There’s only a small collection of notions. The notions and the collections, the “isms”, are not the same thing.
I’ve been talking about ID as a core set of tenets/claims/defining features[1], not ID as a set of ‘isms’ which are themselves sets of tenets/claims/defining features.
I think you are taking ‘ID’ to be the set of belief-sets of its proponents, whereas I’m taking ‘ID’ to be the single belief-set that is shared by all its proponents.
That’s why I keep putting it in ‘quotes’.
Yes. I’ve been talking about the notions, not the collections of notions.
I wouldn’t use the words that way, and I suspect other people wouldn’t either, so that’s what’s causing the disagreement. We can all agree that the tenets of ID are a subset of the tenets of creationism, but nobody except you would agree that this means that ID is a subset of creationism. The big tent metaphor doesn’t work unless it’s referring to people or beliefs, not tenets.
I remind you of the definition of creationism that I have repeatedly referenced, i.e., “as the term has been understood since about the 1920s in popular American debates about origins”. The popular American debate has always been couched in reference to Genesis specifically and Christianity more generally. My statement is entirely correct within that frame of reference.
Could “creationism” be defined more broadly than the way I have defined it? Yes, it could; but then the onus is on you to provide a new definition which allows us to discern what would be included in non-Christian creationism. If you give a coherent definition that has a useful application to non-Christian religions, I would be quite willing to admit that under that definition creationism could survive even if Christianity died.
And of course, my main point, i.e. that ID does not require any form of creationism (Christian or other), because it explicitly renounces the use of revealed religion as a basis for its arguments, will remain untouched by any alternate definition you provide.
