And functional information can be observed and indirectly measured. Irreducibly complex structures can be observed and knockout experiments can be performed on them.
How can counting off spring tell us anything about the major transitions required for universal common descent to be true?
Please look at discussion with Eric on ASC.
@Eddie, but thatâs what I wanted to explain⌠using your preferred terminology.
A thread is not a legal contract. So your complaint that I am sending the thread in a new vector is really beside the point. Live a little, @Eddie.
The question is whether you are going to argue over the explanation. I [as someone who accepts design while rejecting the idea Science can measure or detect design] think it is pretty obvious where ID loses traction among Christians!
@colewdâŚ
It canât. But if one is a Christian, he or she has the faith (or could) where life from non-living matter is in the hands of God.
I donât object to your raising a new topic, as long as you announce you are doing so, instead of giving a confusing non-sequitur as a reply. Something like, âA more interesting question, to me, is why Christians who believe in God directed evolution donât âŚâ That would help me â and others â follow your rapid switching movements.
But it doesnât lose traction among Christians! At least, not among Protestant evangelicals. Within the group of American Protestant evangelical Christians who go to church weekly and care anything about origins questions, ID is popular, more popular than TE/EC. Thatâs probably why so many evangelical Protestant TE/EC proponents are so riled about ID â it holds a larger share of support among evangelical Protestants than TE/EC does!
Check out the Protestant churches in America where TE/EC is the majority view on origins. You will find that almost without exception they are the churches that swing the most to the liberal side on theology and ethics â the Episcopalian and the UCC, for example. On the other hand, with few exceptions, those churches known for being conservative in theology and ethics house more people who are pro-ID.
You can also do some comparing of sales numbers of books on Amazon. You seem to enjoy doing quick internet lookups, so check that out. For example, under the category, âOrganic Evolutionâ, I find books by ID prominent on the list, with books by TE/EC leaders pretty hard to find: Axe is #10, Behe (a book over 20 years old!) is #12, Meyer is # 18, Axe in Kindle is #46, Axe in hardcover is #56, a Johnson book in paperback is #58, Spetner is #60, Dentonâs first book in hardcover is #63, Darwinâs Black Box in Kindle is #81, Johnsonâs Darwin on Trial in Kindle is #84. On the anti-ID side, there are several books by Dawkins and some by Coyne on the list, but I see none by Giberson, Falk, Applegate, the Haarsmas, etc. Under âFaith and Scienceâ, TE/EC authors do somewhat better, with Francis Collins at #9 and Jim Stumpâs Four Views book at #24, but even there, the Stump book, which is new, is behind the Kindle of the ancient first book of Meyer at #21 and the paperback of Axe at #23, and the latest edition of Millerâs Finding Darwinâs God is way down at #83, well below Hugh Rossâs Improbable Planet and Meyerâs Darwinâs Doubt. Oh, and one of the flagship attacks on ID by TE/EC, crammed with essays by the most prominent ASA and BioLogos TE/ECs, Perspectives on an Evolving Creation, is down in the abyss at #1645 in Science and Religion, and #6400 in Evolution. Overall, ID authors are doing comparatively very well, and I think itâs pretty clear that regular churchgoing Protestants are driving the high sales of the ID books.
You may find these facts lamentable, but they are the facts. Among Protestant evangelicals in America, ID, not TE/EC, is the favored camp.
Does that prove ID is correct? No. But it leaves your claim above â that ID is losing traction among Christians â in tatters.
Oyyy⌠let me fix the sentence that I didnât make clear enough for youâŚ
REVISED:
âI think it is pretty obvious where ID loses traction amongst pro-Evolution Christians!â
It seems you will do just about anything to move the topic off of the limitations of what Science can PROVE. âŚ
Well, are you talking about the handful of TE/EC leaders who write for BioLogos or write ASA journal articles, or the much larger number of quiet folks in the pews? I would bet that, in Protestant churches where a number of members say they accept evolution, the majority of those accepting evolution also believe â contra Venema, Falk, Kramer, Stump, etc. â that God actively steers evolution. And further, I would bet that among those church members, there isnât nearly the hostility to Behe that the leaders of TE/EC show, and that many of those pro-evolution Christians own a copy of one or both of Beheâs books, and like them. I wouldnât be surprised if many of them own Meyerâs books, as well.
This is interesting. Any time any ID or creationist poster on these websites speaks about science being unable to âproveâ evolution, he or she is met with a battery of replies that science doesnât âproveâ anything, but can only âconfirm or disconfirmâ or something like that. So what you are saying ID canât do â prove design â is what science itself canât do for any of its conclusions â for example, prove that evolution happened, or prove that neo-Darwinism is correct. If science canât âproveâ anything anyway, then why is IDâs inability to âproveâ design through science a scientific defect? If all science can do us make a strong case for something, based on evidence, then why couldnât a strong case for design in nature â at least in principle â be made?
Finally, to quote yourself:
âIt seems you will do just about anything to move the topic off ofâ â the fact that Newton thought that inferences about the existence and wisdom of a creator were possible based on the study of nature.
Ha⌠@Eddie.
Wow, you really really donât want to talk about this.
Whatever it is that we agree Science can do with, say, the theory if relativity⌠the factor that pro-evolution Christians reject (if and when they reject ID) is the idea that Science can do the same with ID.
I would not be surprised if we discovered that the average church-goer as a demographic differs from the percentages displayed by more educated Christians!
Youâre uncritically assuming the truth of an unanalyzed notion of âScienceâ â which you revealingly write with a capital S â traditionally a sign of religious reverence (as in God, Christ, Church, Holy Spirit, Trinity, etc.).
âScienceâ originally meant systematic knowledge of any kind, however acquired, and ânatural scienceâ originally meant systematic knowledge of nature, however acquired. But in modern times, âscienceâ has come to be associated with certain narrow metaphysical and epistemological claims, i.e., that real knowledge of nature can be obtained only by objectifying nature, mechanizing it, explaining it in reductionist terms, and stripping it of final and formal causation. Given such ground rules, itâs an easy tautology that science cannot possibly, even in principle, detect design in nature (even if there were any to detect, which, say a good number of our modern scientists, there isnât).
On the other hand, if we return to the broader meaning of ânatural science,â then we canât automatically rule out either the existence or the detectability of formal and final causation in nature. We can only investigate nature with the best tools we have, and keep an open mind regarding what the investigation might reveal to us.
Whoever gets to define âscienceâ gets to say what science can and cannot deal with. But the definition of science isnât something established by scientific methods, but is something arrived at by social consensus; in fancy modern language, what passes for âscienceâ in any given society is a âsocial construct.â But why should a social construct be allowed to dictate what nature â which transcends the social realm â is really like?
These are the deeper questions which you seem never to ask. You rest content in mere conventional definitions and justifications, and itâs therefore not surprising that you are willing to rubber-stamp the judgment of âconsensus scienceâ that the entire venture of ID must forever lie outside of science. But some of us arenât built to rest content in that way. The philosopher is always doubting and questioning everything, even our most sacred social constructs. Thatâs why philosophers are so irritating â today as they were in Socratesâ time. Iâm sorry I keep irritating you. 
Pass the Hemlock, BuddyâŚ
It could be as you say.
OR
Your inclination could be quite similar to the inclinations who think Alchemy could still be a valid area of investigation.
I fear you are veiling your fixation on what is demonstrably a junk science with appeals to open-mindedness⌠or some other NOBLE aspect of mind or humanity.
All you have to do is produce the science. We still wait for the alchemists to make real gold.
In the meantime, alchemyâs successor - - chemistry - - emerged into its rightful place as late as after the American Revolution⌠only then making it possible to retire theories on âfluids & humorsâ and that wet/dry/cold/hot are somehow the source of all the matter of the Cosmos.
Sorry, friend, but Jailer George only gave me enough dosage for one; there isnât even enough extra for me to pour a libation to Asklepios.
What did they nail you for? They found me guilty of refusing to pay honor to the gods of the city, Apollo Cornell Materialismos, Ares Minnesota-Morris Antitheologikos, and Zeus Methodologikos Naturalismos.
It was just the usual âcorrupting the youth of the cityâ bit. They didnât specifiy. If the truthâs known, I think theyâve just got it in for progressive rock. Though they didnât like my taking a dig at old Epicurus either.
I have always found this ânotionâ to be really interesting, both from a theological and psychological standpoint. It is always interesting when humans project their own biases and notions onto their theology.
As you noted, the argument for âcommon designâ both implicitly and explicitly makes the assumption that God designs like humans do. I have heard many ID supporters say things like âwhy would the designer start from scratch and use a new design?â.
Well, why couldnât God start from scratch? That is certainly an interesting question. We humans donât start from scratch because we have limited time, limited resources, and limited knowledge. This is why we use already discovered solutions instead of starting from scratch and finding new and equally functional solutions. But why would God need to reuse designs? Is God like humans in having limited time, limited resources, and limited knowledge?
If God isnât like us, then the âcommon designâ argument makes no sense. If God is all powerful, all knowing, and has access to unlimited time and resources then it would be just as easy to start from scratch for each separately created kind. For an omnimax deity there doesnât seem to be any reason to reuse a single design.
The universe is constrained by matter and energy. He built this constrained for some reason. If you think about conservation of these resources we would expect re use just like the hierarchal structure is showing. All living matter require a common energy source or you have chaos.
If this is true, then you would need to show how the current adaptations are constrained by these things. For example, if vertebrate red blood cells are constrained to using iron in the protein that carries oxygen and carbon dioxide, then why do we see species that use copper ions in those same molecules?
On top of that, human designs donât fall into a nested hierarchy, and we are limited to those same constraints. Cars, paintings, buildings, computers . . . none of these designs fall into a hierarchial structure. Even in living organisms we freely move genes around in a fashion that easily and clearly violates a nested hierarchial structure, such as putting exact copies of jellyfish genes in mice. Is God not capable of doing what humans can?
T[quote=âT_aquaticus, post:76, topic:1453â]
If this is true, then you would need to show how the current adaptations are constrained by these things. For example, if vertebrate red blood cells are constrained to using iron in the protein that carries oxygen and carbon dioxide, then why do we see species that use copper ions in those same molecules?
[/quote]
The constraint is available atoms. Copper and Iron are certainly both ok.
Depending on the constraints and re use human designs can fall into a nested hierarchy especially compatible designs from the same company where there are legitimate design constraints like software compatibility and component compatibility. The apple Mac family can be organized in a nested hierarchy.
Why would the constraint of available atoms restrict God to the features found in living species and the species we see in the fossil record?
Show us these nested hierarchies for human designs. I am unaware of any. Show us how the Mac family falls into a nested hierarchy, citing the features you used to construct that nested hierarchy.
This is not true. Our Universe does not respect conservation of energy (and therefore matter). Therefore, it does not seem prudent to think that God restricts himself to energy conservation in biological designs if he designs the cosmos without it.
Tell me more.