Why Does ID Criticize TE?

Argumentum ad hominem. That he was also an alchemist has nothing to do with his view about the wise contrivance of the solar system, which came from his work on astronomy and physics.

ID doesn’t resemble alchemy in the slightest.

You have one thing right here: Your personal view of the Bible will have no influence on the beliefs about origins of Bible-centered Christians. :slight_smile:

Merry Christmas, George, or, as Red Skelton used to say, may God bless.

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@Eddie

You obviously dont know much about Christian alchemy.

The Mt. Carmel demonstration of God’s presence is very much the kind of experiment that alchemists envisioned.

Alchemy died as a science when practitioners were not able to consistently invoke the presence of God or His angels.

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Hello, George. Merry Christmas again! Just got back from a wonderful carol service.

Oddly enough, I did a graduate course on it. Very interesting stuff. Nothing to do with modern ID, though.

Don’t eat your stocking candies all at once tomorrow, George. It’s bad for your health.

The part where Alchemy and I.D. converge is the earnest expectation that humans can “control for God as a variable.”

@Eddie, i guess im not surprised that you failed to make the connections.

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I look forward to a paragraph of expository prose on what “control for God as a variable” means, and another paragraph on how alchemy attempted to do this.

@gbrooks9 has a point on this one.

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@Eddie

The best Christian alchemists could do was invoke the aid and assistance of God. They did this through prayer… they did it through purifications… they did it through astrology.

And none of it worked … certainly not consistently enough to satisfy the serious-minded scientists who became the NEW chemists!

Eddie needs you to write a whole paragraph. :grinning:

Here’s a paragraph or two written by someone who knows better than @Eddie:

“The Oratorium Next to the serpent condenser, a large dark curtain hangs suspended from the ceiling. It is carefully draped completely around a small altar on the floor.”

“This tabernacle forms a private meditation space known as the oratorium, and as much work is done within this sacred space as is carried out in the laboratory.”

“One of the mottos of alchemy is Ora et Labora: Pray and Work. Alchemists spent many hours in solitary contemplation, attempting to purify and focus their minds, so they could connect with the divine powers. The following illustration, which is an engraving of an alchemical laboratory called the Amphitheater of Eternal Wisdom, shows the typical oratorium. The German spiritual alchemist Heinrich Khunrath designed it in 1609.”

"In it, we see the work of the alchemist divided into the oratorium on the left, where the spiritual work was done, and the laboratorium on the right, where he performed the practical work."

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Hardly. Hauck is an “author, consultant, and lecturer” (read: pop autodidact), whose degrees I can find nowhere listed (though a blurb claims he did graduate study in Vienna, without specifying subject or university); he writes gobs of popular books on alchemy, haunted houses, “consciousness studies”, and other New Age BS; he is a member of such illustrious “scientific” bodies as ATP (Association for Transpersonal Psychology), and ISSSEEM (International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine). I studied alchemy in a scholarly way, as part of the history of science and part of the history of religious thought, using the proper, standard sources, both primary and secondary. None of them were written by Hauck.

Yes, alchemy was as much about the purification of the soul as it was about making gold. I’m still waiting to hear the connection with ID, which isn’t about either.

In fact, one of the leading ID proponents, William Dembski, has several times used alchemy as an example of a science which failed – and he would hardly equate ID with a science that failed, would he? Once again, your adamant refusal to actually read any books by ID proponents, your determination to just make stuff up about what ID is and what ID proponents say, without having the slightest acquaintance with ID writings, betrays you. Nobody, but nobody, is going to take anything you say seriously about ID until you show that you have done your homework.

How can he have a point, Joshua, when he has used a phrase “control for God as a variable”, which he has not explained? Without a clear exposition of that notion, is utterly impossible to determine whether or not his comparison between ID and alchemy has any basis.

I never had a grad course in the history and philosophy of alchemy like Eddie did but his posts on this topic bring to mind a historian I met long ago at an AAR/SBL conference, William Newman. (PhD from Harvard, if I recall.) Sure enough, Newman’s research and at least one paper I remember have led to a UCP book which seeks to correct a lot of false notions about alchemy and alchemists.


POSTSCRIPT: Here’s Newman’s faculty bio. http://www.indiana.edu/~hpscdept/people/newman.shtml

@Eddie

So much writing, and so little productive thought. Since you are the
expert in all things, can you demonstrate how ID is a science at
all? Go ahead, construct an experiment that produces an ID
conclusion.

So, Eddie, how do you design a two-phased experiment where God’s
presence or operations are included in one phase, and excluded in the
second phase?

Alchemy is an excellent parallel to this problem because the
scientists of yore struggled to set up demonstrations that complied
with solid scientific methodologies. For much of their existence, all
alchemists knew to do was:

A) Purify,
B) Pray, and
C) Perform Ritualistic Procedures…

all in order to produce the unproduce-able (say, Gold from Lead, or
the Philosopher’s Stone which could be stone or liquid, etc., etc.).

When Alchemists actually did produce something novel or significant,
the new breed of chemists soon discovered that these things could be
produced WITHOUT PURIFICATION and PRAYER: phosphorus, perfume oils,
pigments, zinc, metallic arsenic, even a Western substitute for
Chinese porcelains.

So, Eddie, please show me the difference between a laboratory result
with God versus without God. Thanks. Felice Navidad!

Ignoring your typical personal flak, George, and concentrating only on your contents:

The subject was not whether or not ID was a science. The subject was how ID and alchemy both try to “control for God as a variable” (your words). You have not explained how either one does this. How does praying before doing an alchemical experiment involve “controlling for God as a variable”? When soldiers to go war, and pray before a battle, are they “controlling for God as a variable”? You need to explain your terms, and how they apply.

Why would I ever want to do such a foolish thing?

When did I ever speak of such a thing?

And you have not responded to any of my previous points, including the point that Dembski rejects alchemy as disproved science, and does not agree with you that ID proceeds in the same way as alchemy. Of course, to show that Dembski is wrong, you would actually have to read some books by ID writers – something you have not done since I first encountered you at BioLogos about 3 or 4 years ago – and I don’t expect you will change your longstanding habit of arguing about books you haven’t read and condemning writers you have never met, never talked to, and aren’t familiar with.

@Eddie

I am not one of your students, nor a pet to perform for you. I have no intention of letting you tie me up in a tournament of words while you opine excessively on what you know about Alchemy. If your position is correct, then you should be able to demonstrate why your view of ID science is NOT anything at all like Alchemy.

If you can do so, then you have immediately falsified my position. But if I fail to demonstrate similarities between alchemy and ID, we still have the question of whether ID is actually a scientific discipline or not.

The question I put to you is much more direct and immediately relevant than the question with which you are attempting to immobilize me. Answer it, or give up the fiction you are attempting to foist upon us.

Typo: the term science was unintentionally unqualified. I have corrected it to be “your view of ID science”!

The question you put to me is not relevant at all – to what I posted. I objected to your comparison between ID and alchemy on the vague grounds of “controlling for God as a variable.” That’s all I undertook to discuss, not whether or why ID counted as science.

You are the one trying to change the topic, not me. The topic is the claim you made, which you are unable to substantiate. In fact, you haven’t even defined the terms you used in the claim. I still have no idea what you mean by “control for God as a variable” or how ID supposedly does this. But it’s evident you don’t want to defend that original claim, but to shift the discussion to another topic, i.e., whether ID is science, and why. You are welcome to have that discussion with someone else here if you want. It’s not the subject I was addressing. So I’ll leave off here, having established that you can’t defend your original assertion. Happy New Year!

@eddie

You are simply postponing the inevitable. We will have more threads like this… and i will avoid the trap you hoped to catch me in.

You, nor anyone else, can design an experiment in which you have a process (without God’s participation) being compared to a process WITH God’s participation.

And without controlling for God as an independent variable, you will never be able to demonstrate the central tenet of I.D. Science as credible.

@swamidass,

Can we put all of the silly threads on “ID as Science” in a special room now?

AND a selection of musical instruments and other items in the middle. It must have been an interesting job!

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@Dan_Eastwood,

I have puzzled over the musical instruments as well. It seems connected to Greek number theory - - Pythagoras was ever interested in the “geometry” of sound… and i believe he coined the phrase “music of the spheres”.

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