Welcome to Terrell Clemmons: Questions on Methodological Naturalism

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

Most of your objections to Behe have rested on the equivocation between evolution as “descent with modification” and evolution as “an unguided process of blind search for viable outcomes.” And I’ve had no success in getting you to see this.

How do those differ with respect to the science? How do you differentiate between guided and unguided processes in evolutionary science?

If we were watching bacteria evolve in the lab, what tests would you or Behe do to see if guidance was occurring? Behe seems to indicate that if we see mutations happening in the lab then those mutations are unguided. Can you cite any example where Behe claims that naturally occurring and observed mutations are guided by a designer? I can’t.

@Eddie

Maybe one could.

ID seems to be really vacuous because it really doesn’t explain anything.

@Eddie

It could, if that scientist uses his vote in hiring and tenure decisions, and his influence over granting decisions, and his vote at Ph.D. oral examinations, to ensure that any scientist who thinks there is something outside of nature doesn’t dare utter a peep about design inferences, on pain of losing his scientific career. And while you might be more open-minded about such things, I think you know that there are some of your atheist colleagues who aren’t.

It could also work in the opposite direction.

Also, there aren’t any ID grants, so that isn’t a problem.

@Eddie

But I haven’t seen Behe, etc. arguing that biologists shouldn’t be allowed to investigate Darwinian accounts of evolution, while I have seen biologists strongly suggest that people who think ID is credible should be drummed out of scientific careers.

I suppose there are the same reactions to flat earthers in geology departments.

@Eddie

If you are not interested enough in Denton’s thesis to read it for yourself, then in my view you lack a healthy intellectual curiosity. Genuinely curious people like to read the latest ideas of highly intelligent authors, especially ideas in their own academic field (biology) and relating to issues that are of obvious interest to them (origins). Denton’s book is one the most important ID books written, and so if you are going to debate in public about ID, you should want to get it straight rather than rely on the summary of someone else. And don’t say you’re a busy scientist who doesn’t have time to read 400-page books. You spend more time in one week reading posts here and replying to them than it would take you to read Denton’s book. You just can’t be bothered. And that fine; but then you can’t blame me when I say that I can’t be bothered investing my personal time to summarize works for you that you lack the initiative to read for yourself.

Do you agree with Denton that abiogenesis is the origin of life, and that it occurred as naturally as salt crystal formation?