Given the widespread, I might go so far as to say ubiquitous, employment of quote-mining in creationist arguments, I find this complaint to be hilarious.
There is also the problem that Howell is not taking Behe out of context.
Yes Gilbert, but whether you like it or not, statements have implications.
Behe’s statement has the following implications:
Empirical evidence is intersubjective – its plausibility does not depend on whether you believe in God or not.
Behe admits that the plausibility of ID does depend on whether you believe in God or not.
This leads to the reasonable implication that ID has a weak, or no, basis in empirical evidence – i.e. “there was something fundamentally nonempirical at the heart of ID”.
Behe’s claims rest upon arguments (of very doubtful validity), not on a fair and accurate interpretation of all the relevant empirical evidence. This is why the plausibility of Behe’s (and other ID advocates’) argument rely on the recipients prior psychological/subjective susceptibilities to those arguments – particularly their belief in God and their discomfort with evolution.
Let’s see. Following your reasoning, one could say:
The plausibility of empirical evidence does not depend on whether you believe in God or not.
It can be seen that the plausibility of the Big Bang theory depends on whether you believe in God or not.
This leads to the reasonable implication that the Big Bang theory has a weak, or no, basis in empirical evidence – i.e. “there was something fundamentally nonempirical at the heart of the Big Bang.
Clearly, the conclusion is false and there is necessarily something wrong with your reasoning— it is that it conflates two distinct things, namely a) the intersubjective status of the empirical data, and b) the psychological plausibility of a theoretical inference drawn from that data.
Right there. Full stop. This was never about what Behe said/wrote/meant. This is the mis-attribution of what was written in the decision to Behe rather than to Judge Jones.
No Gil, one couldn’t – not without presenting evidence of this claim – e.g. wide-scale atheist rejection of the Big Bang.
The relationship between these two should be obvious. The degree to which a claim is supported by intersubjective empirical evidence (giving it objective plausibility) limits the degree to which (subjective) psychological factors affects the claim’s plausibility.
plausibility of the argument for ID depends upon the extent to which one believes in the existence of God.
Dan, the above is the ‘quote’ at the heart of the retraction that this thread is discussing. My post directly addressed this plausibility issue and therefore is not off-topic here. I therefore object to its removal. As you seem to find the ‘Big Bang’ aspect so disruptive, I have stripped that aspect out in restoring it here:
It does follow.
If a theory has a high level of empirical support, then it will have a high level of acceptance irrespective of ideological/psychological factors, and those factors will therefore have a diminished impact on its plausibility.
If a theory has 90% acceptance purely due to its empirical support, then it has a high floor of acceptance, and ideological/psychological factors therefore can only vary its overall acceptance to being in the range between 90-100% – a narrow range of plausibility.
The reason that ID’s plausibility depends so heavily on whether you believe in God is because it has zero empirical support, and therefore zero acceptance attributable to this, and its acceptance varies 0-100% due to ideological/psychological factors.
Although the big bang inference rests entirely on empirical evidence, it nonetheless has theological ramifications. The same is true with the design inference. What’s the problem?
It’s when ID proponents deny the religious underpinnings and motivations of the ID movement in order to get creationism taught in science class (ultimately for political and cultural reasons), and lie about it to schoolboards, the public, and the courts where it becomes a problem.
The parameters of nature observed in the emergent universe are necessary and sufficient for the developement of life. Design is an unjustified inference from insufficiency, which in turn is not empirical, but rather a God of the gaps argument from a current or purported lack of understanding.
No, by Bayesian logic, the two situations are similar, for if the big bang makes God more plausible, it is also the case that God makes the big bang more plausible. Similarly, if design makes God more plausible, it is indeed the case that God makes design more plausible. So what?
Quibble: I don’t think both can be Bayesian reasoning, at least not without a more careful setup and statement of the prior. One can be Bayesian and the other Post-Hoc, or both post-hoc, but not both Bayesian. This is NOT intended as criticism, just that it’s hard to make a Bayesian argument out of this.
One could argue that without a BB our universe would not exist for any sentient being to have a prior belief. We might have a prior belief without knowledge of the BB, which then updates with that knowledge to a posterior belief. But yeah, so what?
You’re right, I didn’t express my thought correctly. I should have said It can be seen that, historically wise, the plausibility of the Big Bang theory has initially depended on whether you believe in God or not.
That, assuming that you meant “had” (pluperfect tense – as in “in the past, but not any more”) not “has”, would be back before sufficient empirical evidence supporting it had built up? I don’t see how this contradicts my implication. (If you did in fact mean “has initially depended” – as in still depends, then I’m unsure as to what you are trying to say.)
I agree with that. But it doesn’t follow that if the acceptance of a theory is resisted due to some psychological factors, then there is something fundamentally non scientific/empirical at the heart of the theory, as illustrated by the Big Bang story.
