Nor on mine, sir. Thank you.
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Let’s be clear, I have just as many scientific objections to ID as do you. I just want my objections to be heard by the people who trust ID.
Do you think the people at the DI haven’t heard the many scientific objections to their ID position several hundred times by now? The scientific community has been correcting them for well over 20 years. Has it made one bit of difference with the DI’s approach?
Another ID proponent who regretfully seems to taken recent leave of this board, and myself, engaged in several exchanges where we differed bluntly, but I think with mutual respect. At the end of one such exchange, I concluded:
That said, I want to say that I actually appreciate the steadfast defense the ID proponents on this board present. It would be a shame if this blog became a mere echo-chamber.
It can be frustrating to hear anti-science nonsense from an abyss of ignorance, but in responding, while I sometimes let miswords slip by, or my better angels do not always prevail, I do make some attempt to filter most of my posts before hitting return. If I have said my piece, do I really need the last word? Do I expect some sort of capitulation? Is this getting personal? Is this just regurgitating? As the masthead for this forum states, There is value in free exchange of ideas, and that can only happen if a variety of ideas are represented. My takeaway from the header is that the objective of this board is engagement, not advancement or suppression of any particular position, for which is ill suited anyways.
That said, I have looked over my post prior to Joshua’s comment, and I would respectfully disagree that it constituted bashing, in that I believe it raised some substantial points which are germane to the OP, which I framed as non adversarial as within my abilities. It is also one that I am quite passionate about, in that I believe honesty compels consistency with an integrated worldview.
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I was not making a blanket claim about every post and person in this thread.
I think that is well understood. But if one refrains from telling the truth and pointing out the dishonesty of ID proponents, that enhances the credibility of those proponents to “the people who trust ID.”
It is true that one should make accusations of dishonesty very cautiously. But caution is not abstention from reason. While it is true that one cannot read minds and intentions directly (despite, apparently, the capacity of minds to act directly upon physical objects without any intervening causes being in any way involved), that isn’t how intent is inferred in any situation where intent matters.
In the law there are all manner of things which depend upon state of mind. Was something done in good faith, or bad? Was a horrible injury caused by an accident, or by intention? When a witness says one thing on one occasion and another on another, why did that happen? Many things are crimes if done knowingly, and not if not done knowingly – perjury, for example. Giving false testimony because you are confused or mistaken is not a crime.
We infer intent from circumstances. We infer it from self-interest; we infer it from what people can be shown to know by virtue of their actions, background and training. We infer it from associated behaviors. We infer it from reactions to the underlying matter being “found out.” You will never understand the intentions of ID proponents in and of themselves, in the purely subjective sense; but there is no purpose on earth for which such an understanding is essential.
Below knowingness and intent, we have other standards. Reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of a statement, especially when motivated by self-interest, is as culpable as knowing falsehood. Again, this kind of inquiry is driven by inference from circumstances. The liar rarely announces that he has lied, or that he has played fast and loose.
When Jonathan Wells misuses a paper in a blatant and obvious fashion, misrepresenting the application of its conclusions in a way which falsely indicates that the evolutionary history of whales requires mutations to be generated and fixed much faster than evolution can do (see his latest obscenity, “Zombie Science”), one has to ask: is it credible that a man with a Ph.D from Berkeley can be that dim? Is there any way to reasonably imagine that he has misunderstood the paper? If the answer is that there is not – and I am confident that if you do look into this one, read what he has to say in his book, and review the paper on which he relies, you will agree that indeed there is not – then is it not the case that your reaction to Wells must be something a bit hotter than “I respectfully disagree”?
ID is not a scientific program. It never has been, and it cannot become one. To become a scientific program, it would have to discard the vast majority of its existing literature, disavow the tenets advanced by all of its current proponents, and assume an entirely new form. But it does not do these things, and does not need to do them, because it is purely a culture-war phenomenon.
We are faced with people who wish to unweave the Enlightenment. They have said as much. The Wedge Strategy document is not merely some sort of product of a Phillip Johnson drinking binge. These people mean, to borrow a phrase from Churchill, to bring us to “the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”
Now, I have to say that if you think that answering people of this character with deference does the slightest good, you are mistaken. It is very important to understand that the leaders of such a cultural movement almost certainly are not going to change their minds, and decide that they are for human liberty and education after all. It is equally important to understand that those who are these con men’s “marks” are a different audience entirely. What will impress that audience? Well, the sight of the leaders of the ID enterprise being treated with deference and respect, and participating in debates waged in level tones in panel discussions will impress them. It will show them that ID has a place at the scientific table; it will tell them that all of these things are matters, perhaps, of dispute between scientists, and that those of us who are not scientists need to see that both sides of this dispute have meritorious points to put.
And that is all they need. That, itself, is all they need to have won. They know they cannot win the scientific community over; they no longer really even try. That’s not their objective. But where does funding for the sciences come from? Where does support for university science faculty come from? Where do the resources to teach children, and to decide WHAT to teach children, come from? ID does not need, and does not want, to win a scientific debate. It wants to win a public policy debate, which is why books of the character of Zombie Science, slandering the entire scientific community and unleashing a torrent of vicious lies, are the stock in trade of the ID movement.
Undoubtedly there is a need for a public-facing discussion about what science is, and why it is what it is, and why creationism is no part of it. But that is not a discussion one invites creationists to. It is not a discussion that can be had while breaking bread with creationists and expressing mere polite disagreement with nonsense of the most astonishing and ridiculous character. One does need to get the message to those who trust ID. But, understand: most of them have very little intellectual commitment to ID as such; they are happy to know that REAL science is now all about the Bible, and that’s about where they stop. If one elevates ID by inviting it to the table, one can do immense damage.
Those people who are inclined to believe ID’s claims need to be addressed. But no attempt to address them by making soothing words toward ID will ever do anything other than harm. It is important, when ID proponents lie, to say so, and to say so frankly and honestly. If, in some cases, they are merely people who place extravagant and unwarranted trust in the products of their own intuitions – Behe may be such a person – THEN one may politely disagree. But that is not the ordinary case.
We cannot persuade ID advocates to be honest. But we can be honest, and not mince words when we have no basis for attributing outright falsehood to honest misunderstanding.
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so a spinning motor and gears arent evidence for design?. ok. lets agree to disagree.
actually many biologists think like behe so its not entirely true.
yes i read many of them and all they have is again a theory for how this motor might evolved. they cant prove it. for instance: they are claiming that the flagellum share some proteins with other system (ttss) and thus they might evolved from each other or from a common structure. but there are several problems with that:
- they are still different proteins with diffierent sequence. so we probably cant just take some proteins and mix them without more mutations to change them first to fit with each other
- the flagellum still has several unique proteins
- even if a combination is possible there is no calculation for such event to happen. so its possible that the chance to get a combination of say 10 proteins to form the flagellum can be as low as zero. without any real calculation its again just so stories.
first: we only need a single such system to make it impossible to move from creature A to creature B. second: basically any tipical gene can be consider as such a system. we know that many creatures have many unique genes so it not so rare as you think.
This is extremely important. Evolution isn’t really the issue, what you’ve written here is the issue. Treating these people with grovelling courtesy isn’t going to change their attitude towards evolution, and it isn’t going to make them less dangerous, because the real issue isn’t evolution; it’s their entire worldview.
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Then perhaps we should do something about the people who keep trying to defend the indefensible aspects of ID with fallacious arguments that have been refuted many times. I don’t think it is appropriate or productive to let these arguments stand unchallenged.
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Hi Ron
ID from a scientific stand point for guys like Behe is what it is. It is a limited argument that offers a mechanistic explanation for the organized complexity we see in biology. The argument is limited by the current available evidence. Discussion of the designer is beyond the scope of the evidence.
A human mind is not a Devine mind which you state eloquently. It does however have the capability to create similar artifacts to what we are observing in the cell. The other interesting aspect of the human mind is its capability to learn and improve. We currently probably understand less than 10% of how a eukaryotic cell works but that understanding is improving constantly.
About 6 years ago I became an evolutionary skeptic but was also skeptical about ID for the reasons of its limitations. IE it’s designed now what do I do. After a couple of years and a conversation with Mike Behe I found some usefulness with the theory while doing cancer research. Thinking about the cell as a designed entity was helpful. One of my friends who is a computer scientist and physicist mentioned that he felt ID was a good comparative hypothesis for biology and potentially physics. I think his idea has merit.
I have appreciated the discussion.
Best
Bill
I think the mechanisms of ID and creation are outside science. I describe some of my reasoning here:
IOW, ID Creationism is a useless idea that does not increase our understanding one iota, even if one convinces oneself that it is true because one does not understand the theory of evolution.
So why bother with it?
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ID-Creationism from a scientific standpoint is a non-starter.
IDC offers no mechanistic explanations for biological life at all.
There is no IDC argument because IDC has no positive evidence.
Trying to hide the fact IDC posits the Christian God as the Designer won’t work Bill.
No Bill, humans do not have the ability to create what we see in a cell. Even if we do develop that technology it still won’t be evidence original biological life was designed.
Analogies may be helpful in getting laymen to understand ideas but analogies aren’t reality. Some day the IDC community will realize that.
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Yes, quite so – except for one important point. It doesn’t actually offer a mechanistic explanation for anything. It only offers vacuous claims of mechanistic explanation.
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Here you are talking about a design stance. Many physicists take a design stance. Nobody finds that particularly objectionable.
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And that need is well serviced, is it not? I would scarcely characterize Aron Ra as deferential, and Tony Reed is polite enough but does not mince words, just to name two of many outright atheistic internet presences. There are science affirming sites from a theistic perspective. The new atheists such as Dawkins and Krauss are vocal and well platformed. Pretty every relevant professional association openly subscribes to NM. Scientific publishing houses do not mess around. BBC and PBS mostly toe the line. There is a saturation of science affirming representation out there, and I am glad of that and support that.
But is this one small corner of the digital multiverse, this is a discussion one invites creationists to. From the site header:
Everyone is welcome here, even if we disagree strongly with your point of view. What ever your view on origins, the questions themselves can be our place of common ground. The community we hope to build here is not contingent on agreement or adherence to regulated consensus.
We live in a fractured society. The divides in society are deep and unhealthy. Most of us do not engage with those with whom we disagree. We struggle to treat others fairly across the divides. We cannot heal these fractures in society at large, but we want to build something different here.
I agree that there comes a point where you have to call a spade a spade; sometimes if a person did not know the truth, he just would not be in a position to construct the falsehood around it. How is it possible to politely respond when the infraction is especially egregious? That need not generalize to set the temper of every conversation, however. I think most people on this site are earnest and well intentioned, even if they are pretty invested in their point of view.
Let’s say that every ID proponent and creationist, beaten and scorned, just gathered their marbles and left this site, leaving NM as the only perspective represented. Would it not then just be another me too anti-creation site? Personally, I think that would be a loss. If that is not to happen, I think a certain level of civility has to be aspired to.
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I’m sure that we have no other option. But that doesn’t help your argument, which just doesn’t work.
There’s not exactly a groundswell of ‘em, let me tell you. Behe has been flogging the bacterial flagellum on his travelin’ patent medicine show for twenty-three years now, and sales are down, not up.
One does not “prove” things in biology. One proves things in formal logic, but formal logic is useless in evaluating empirical claims.
Except, of course, that this is why creationists constantly misrepresent what they like to call the “combinatorial inflation” problem. I think that you need to start reading actual science. If you start by reading critiques of actual science by cranks, and you stop there, you will of course reach conclusions just like this.
No. That doesn’t make it impossible, and you will have considerable difficulty finding even one biologist who will make such a claim.
No. In fact, elsewhere people have been discussing the fact that de novo origin of genes from non-coding sequence, though not terribly common, is a very real thing. That’s not the only source of novel genes, but it is the one which creationists invariably assume to be impossible because of their bad assumptions about “combinatorial inflation,” et cetera. And a novel gene does NOT mean there is a “unique biological system” in any ordinary sense. There may be, or not.
The point your messages underscore is this: it is not possible to mount a critique of a well-developed field of scientific inquiry without first having a thorough understanding of the field itself. You should not even be reading creationist literature at this stage of understanding. You need to start by learning some basic biology; THEN you may progress to trying to evaluate critiques of it. When you understand how much biologists actually know about living systems, however, you will be amazed and flabbergasted. You will then see that most of these critiques are not just wrong, but also patently shallow and superficial.
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This. A million times this.
Why don’t people recognise their limits? Speaking for myself, I don’t wade into conversations about microbiology or Bible exegesis because I know that I have very little to zero expertise in those subjects. If I was interested enough in the subjects to want to participate in the conversations, I would task myself first to read up on the essentials, using at least some recognised academic text books and papers. After that I might want to come along and ask questions, and perhaps offer some tentative suggestions. Stating my opinions as facts would come much, much later.
At least, I would hope that I would have the discipline to go about things this way. If I don’t, and I shoot my mouth off, I would have little choice than to accept the inevitable rebuke.
Bottom line: what is the point of a discussion if the participants have not informed themselves about the topic they are discussing?
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I’m not suggesting that anyone needs to rough up everyone who advocates a creationist or ID stance. Far from it. I spend a great deal more time penning patient, helpful (well, MEANT to be helpful; that sort of thing often falls upon deaf ears) responses to people than I do in bashing anybody.
One has, however, got to figure out what is a reasonable objective in the case of a particular individual. Some people just need to clarify their epistemology: I, and the vast majority of non-theistic science-friendly people I know, have no problem with theism. But a theist who does not understand that his subjective sense of purpose in the universe or his own paranormal experiences are not part of science does need to understand that, and start to firewall his subjective experience or theological speculations from his understanding of what empiricism teaches us. He may, for all I or anyone else knows, be right about any number of things; but there is simply no way to know whether that is so, and if he has not started to draw an appropriate epistemological framework, there is no time like the present.
But once we get past that category, the whole thing does sort of sift into two principal categories: the deceivers and the deceived. There is no doubt in my mind that the one-on-one handling of the deceived requires the utmost care. People who have been the victims of a scam deserve our sympathy and understanding, and when the key to liberation from their burdens lies in education, we should help them find the resources they need to find. But people who are the perpetrators of scams are another matter; when they lie, their credibility should be assailed, without mercy or hesitation.
Now, it is true that with ID, there are some people who sit in a strange middle category. I don’t really think there are that many of these, but it is possible for confirmation bias and self-deception, combined with intellectual and literary tastes of the worst sort, to lead someone to a position where he has been so badly deceived that he takes up the cause. People like that are a puzzle, and whether they can escape from their own personal kaleidoscope view of reality is always a real mystery. One has got to decide, case by case, whether these people need the sort of roughing up that most DI fellows do, or whether they are persuadable.
But if the object is to engage and educate and help, one has got to be very cautious about making it look as though ID deserves to be treated seriously and deserves to be spoken of as though it has a place at the scientific table. That way lies madness.
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I have personally examined many such uses. All have been misuses of the published literature. You’re strategically ignoring how much of the literature he ignores, too.
Speaking of ignoring the literature, what’s your ID explanation for the polymorphism of MYH7 in humans?
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