Right, I was a bit sloppy. How can life originate in a universe that can’t sustain it? Unless you can envisage a scenario where technology comes before life.
Perhaps I am missing something but what is there to discuss outside of the fact that Townes believes that “the best explanation for the cosmos is intelligent design?” Did Townes formulate an hypothesis whose merits could discussed? Conceivably we could have a discussion how beliefs influence and/or limit understanding.
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In what way is his view like Denton’s? I don’t think you have established that.
Is there any substance? Is there anything to discuss?
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I meant the field of people whose specific area of research is evolutionary mechanisms. People like Gunter Wagner, Andreas Wagner, Jerry Coyne, Douglas Futuyma, Ernst Mayr, etc. Such people often teach in departments with titles like “Evolution and Ecology,” but that need not be the case. Whatever department or sub-area of a department) they may teach in (Physiology, Genetics, Paleontology, etc.), they are interested in “big picture” questions about the ensemble of causes of evolutionary change.
But back to Townes, please…
Well, the entire interview with Townes can be read through the link above, which may give a bit more insight into his reasoning. And Townes may well have given other interviews, or written some things that are more detailed on the subject. I was not presenting an argument, but just starting a ball rolling. If others here can find some other statements of Townes that put more meat on the bones of his position, that would be great, because then we could have a less general and more specific discussion. I’m neither an expert on Townes nor prepared to defend his position in detail; I just thought the passage was interesting and could provide the start of a discussion. If no one is inclined to dig deeper into Townes’s position, we can just leave it there.
He affirms that design and evolution are both true. And as far as I can tell from the interview, he sees evolution as working through natural causes. So those would be two points of similarity.
That all depends on precisely what you mean by “a view like Denton’s”. If you mean the idea that the existence of a god is somehow revealed in or the best explanation for some of the things that are studied by the natural sciences, I don’t think anyone has expressed the slightest doubt that it is possible for “world-class scientists” who hold to this view.
For myself, the aspect of Denton’s writing that I criticize are where he says that things like the pentadactyl vertebrate limb cannot be accounted for by evolutionary mechanisms and, are instead, the result of some deep Platonic structuralism that he believes point to some sort of “designer” and render evolution a “theory in crisis.”
It is typical of your sloppy thinking and dishonest rhetoric to conflate these views with the very different ones expressed by Townes.
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And none of your heroes are in it, or even started out in it. After all, if evolution doesn’t work, shouldn’t someone literally in the field be figuring that out instead of mediocre biochemists? It’s not like there are a lot of sinecures in evolutionary biology, as it and ecology, with which it is often paired, are enormously popular.
Shouldn’t there be scores of people with training in the field who didn’t get jobs and are bitter about it?
He’s not in the field.
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It can’t. That’s why life in a universe that can’t sustain it (without technology) would be evidence for intelligent design - and life in this universe isn’t.
Bit of an odd list. Over half the people on it are retired and/or dead. Of course Doug Futuyma works harder in in retirement than most people I know, so maybe he shouldn’t count.
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That’s so vague a description as to be useless. Try again.
Well, perhaps you can dig up some more statements by Townes on the subject, where he provides more detail. I did my part by letting people know about him; someone else can carry the ball now.
Since I was asked only what I meant by the field of evolutionary theory, whether the examples are living or dead people shouldn’t matter.
Some humanities scholars and natural scientists are like that – they keep working furiously long after official retirement age, because their motivation all along was sheer love of their subjects. Others effectively stop working 10 or 20 years before official retirement age, recycling the same old lecture notes, producing no new research or re-presenting essentially the same research year after year, etc. It doesn’t surprise me that a guy like Futuyma, who reads books on evolutionary theory with a hungry appetite, is still working furiously, whereas some of the other people I’ve encountered on the internet, who recoil at the idea of reading an entire book, even in their own field, coasted their way to retirement, spending many hours per week of their final salaried years attacking ID proponents and creationists on blog sites. Indeed, in some university departments it’s a close call whether the laziest person is a slacking late-middle-aged prof, or a departmental secretary whose nominal duties require her to be there until 4:30 every day but who leaves by 4:00, and on Fridays by 3:30, and seems to take at least one whole day off per week in order to go to a one-hour doctor or dentist appointment. Academics show this strange duality of being either the hardest-working or the laziest people on the planet.
Fair enough.
It doesn’t surprise me that a guy like Futuyma, who reads books on evolutionary theory with a hungry appetite, is still working furiously…
Doug has a new book on bird evolution coming out in the somewhat near future. As he is the most avid birder I’ve ever known (and I know a lot of birders!), I’m really looking forward to reading it.
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No, you made a claim. Either back it up or abandon it.
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Your bullying tone, as evidenced by your use of the imperative mood, is hardly conducive to the goals of “Peaceful” Science. Is this your habitual manner in dealing with other human beings, or is it just a persona you adopt when posting on blog sites, the real you being more like Mr. Rogers? I hope it’s the latter.
I made no claim, beyond saying that Townes was a competent scientist and that he believed that evolution and design were both realities and consistent with each other, and that Denton had a similar view. I’m simply reporting what these two people are saying. Make of their opinions what you will, but don’t shoot the messenger.
Fair point, however if we did find a universe unsuitable for life that had life in it anway we would also have demonstrated the existence of the multiverse so finetuning would take another hit 
Your part in what, exactly? Do you really think you have helped clarify some misunderstanding? The misunderstanding that Nobel prize winners could not also entertain ideas about design?
You still don’t understand what this debate is all about. It is not juxtaposing evolution and design, it is juxtaposing science and pseudoscience. Of course the ID’ers will never admit that because it would undermine their entire raison d’être - so, wriggle away.
I beg your pardon. This is my posting, not yours. It was an informational posting, not a “debate” posting. I did not offer a thesis about the validity of ID. I did not offer at thesis even about Townes. I merely informed people that Townes, like Denton, accepts both evolution and design, and that Townes, unlike Denton, (a) won a Nobel Prize and (b) had no affiliation with the Discovery Institute. The take-home point, which was not an argument, but just information, is that it is possible to accept both design and evolution while being a top-notch scientist and having no affiliation with the ID movement.
If you wanted anything more out of my post, your expectations are not going to be fulfilled. If you thought I was trying to use Townes to vindicate ID, think again. Townes isn’t even an ID proponent! The point is that some very intelligent scientists think that design and evolution are not incompatible realities. In previous discussions on this site (which you don’t seem to have followed), Denton has been put forward as someone who combines design and evolution, but his position has been jeered at, either because he is affiliated with ID or because he is not deemed a good enough scientist. Townes does not fall under either of those categories.
If you accept that one can combine evolution and design, then you agree with Townes. If you think the two are mutually exclusive, then you disagree with Townes. But either way, you should be able to discuss that without talking about ID, pseudoscience, etc. Just characterize “design” in nature, and characterize “evolution”, and state whether or not you agree or disagree with Townes, and why.
No and @Eddie doesn’t want to participate anyway. He just “observes” the discussion.
He can start threads advertising people who hold pro-ID views, and advertise their books, but he refuses to discuss the merits of those views.
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Yes because design is an idea that can encompass all possible positions on the question of evolution. Where on one end of the spectrum we find people who argue that evolution can’t even maintain the fitness of any natural population so that evolution is impossible and life requires constant divine maintenance and independent creation, and on the other end of the spectrum we find people who argue evolution is an unavoidable and necessary consequence of the laws of physics, and was intentionally worked into the very fabric of reality. Ironically the people from the ID community never take each other to task for spouting flatly contradictory views.
So we can get people like Denton who argues in his papers that the de novo emergence of proteins at the origin of life is unavoidable, and we can get people like Stephen Meyer and Douglas Axe who insist this is impossible. ID is basically just “pick a spot to insert God”. Denton likes to stuff God into the origin of the laws of physics, and Meyer, Behe and Axe like to imagine God intervening to create life, new body plans, proteins, irreducibly complex structures, double-mutants, and so on.
I do want to add that at least to the extend that people like Denton are not arguing against evolution I have no problem with their views, it’s that they seem to hold them inconsistently and vaguely, and never do any work to point out the laws and contradictions they see in other ID people who hold contradictory views. Denton appears to be arguing that life’s origin and evolution was effectively unavoidable, all the way from the big bang to the evolution of Homo sapiens from non-human primate ancestors, and that the entire cosmos has created with that outcome in mind. Yet he also simultaneously endorses books by other ID proponents who argue this is impossible and that God have had to step in on many occasions to poof things into existence.
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I agree with Townes as long as he draws the distinction between the scientific nature of the ‘evolution’ hypothesis and the metaphysical nature of the ‘design’ inference. There is no in principle exclusivity between the two, except for certain kinds of metaphysics that exclude evolution a priori (YEC for instance). Note that this is not a symmetrical situation: there is nothing in evolutionary science that excludes design a priori.
My beef has always been with those who are unable or unwilling to make the distinction - a distinction that will remain to exist until the day that valid scientific evidence for design is presented. Obviously, I consider you one of those people and I don’t expect you to change.
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The distinction is of little practical importance, as far as the atheists here are concerned. The same atheists here who reject design inferences when they are presented as scientific ones also reject them when they are presented as metaphysical ones. For the atheist, it is simply false that nature is designed – and must be false, since there exists no being who could have designed it.
Have you ever heard Faizal Ali, Roy, Tim, T. aquaticus, etc. say: “I admit that the metaphysical arguments for design are reasonably good ones, and I think a rational, well-informed person could infer design, as long as he does not present the inference as a result of science”? I think you will find that they all think the metaphysical arguments for design are just as flawed, in their own way, as the scientific ones. I think you will find that they reject the arguments presented by Plato, Cicero, etc. just as resoundingly as they reject the arguments of Behe and Dembski.
Your point might apply to some of the Christians here – who might say that they are persuaded by metaphysical arguments rather than scientific arguments for design – but not to the atheists.
I’ve never myself said here that Denton offers a scientific argument for design. I have said that he bases his design inference on the results of modern science, i.e., uses those results as a springboard. But I haven’t said that he calls his inference a scientific one. In the end, I don’t much care whether a design inference that bases itself on our latest information from physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology and biology is a scientific inference, or only a metaphysical inference based on scientific understanding.
So if you want to call arguments by Hoyle, Townes, Denton, etc. metaphysical rather than scientific, be my guest. The most important question is whether or not the arguments have any force, not what university department they belong in.
You surely know, if you have read much of the history of Western culture since the time of Darwin (and starting even earlier than that), that there has been a pronounced push, coming from both popular and academic quarters, to convince the world that “science” has proved that there is no God or that there is no design. Thus, the objection that ID is not science, but metaphysics pretending to be science, even if it’s a good objection, covers up the very strong animus that a large portion of the intelligentsia has against the idea of design or a designer. This is the elephant in the room that you are ignoring. You’re making it out as if the whole debate is only over purity of method, as if there is no underlying personal agenda on the atheist side regarding contents.
The reason you haven’t is because I do not agree they are “reasonably good” arguments. However, they are arguments that can be reasonably made without making any blatantly false claims, even if I am not personally persuaded by them. That is not the case for the pseudoscientific arguments made by the likes of Behe, Denton and the rest of the ID gang, all of which rely on misrepresenting or misunderstanding objective aspects of the scientific data.
And I have already explained to you how his inference is, in fact, based on his misunderstanding or misrepresentation of modern science. Do you need me to explain it more simply? Happy to oblige if you do.
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