Why Does ID Criticize TE?

Nevertheless, this is my theological criticism of both ID and Creation Science. It should not be possible to describe God in any sciencific sense, and there is nothing in ID to exclude God as the designer. That God gets no mention in the sanitized prresentions of ID is irrelevant. If ID or CS produces evidence of a designer, and it is not evidence of God, then what is it evidence of? If ID or CS produces evidence of God, then God has been reduced to something quantifiable by science.

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I don’t see how the “then” clause follows from the “if” clause.

The “if” clause pertains to only part of God (the part involved in producing the effects which count as evidence for the existence of a designer); the “then” clause pertains to the totality of God.

If Abraham Lincoln sneaked into the home of a nephew or niece on Christmas Eve and left a Christmas stocking, the nephew or niece would be able to infer that someone had been in the house the night before, someone with good will toward them and enough wealth to purchase the items in the stocking, but wouldn’t, from the gifts in the stocking, be able to infer all the contents of the soul of Abraham Lincoln. They wouldn’t be able to say, “The kind of person who gave me this Silly Putty is the kind of person who would put America through a Civil War to free the slaves.” What makes Lincoln Lincoln is not reducible to any single thing that Lincoln does.

Similarly, grasping that there is a design behind the cosmos does not enable anyone to say, “The kind of designer who would employ Newton’s Laws must consist of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and must necessarily speak to Abraham, lead Israel out of Egypt, and become Incarnate as a Galilean carpenter.” The knowledge of God available from design inferences is just a drop in the ocean, compared with the total reality of God. Design inferences don’t “reduce” God to anything. They simply recognize the tiny portion of God’s infinite nature that God vouchsafes to us through the channels of human senses and human reason.

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Because science deals with material evidence, and points to material cause. To use you analogy, the niece and nephew find the stockings and think Santa brought them. But the old niece look out the door and sees tracks in the snow, entering and leaving, and inferes some mortal brought the presents, possibly their tall Uncle.

For a more extreme example, some future scientist discovers the formula for God, patents it, and gets rich selling miracles. Pardon my blasphemy, but 1) that should not be possible, and 2) if it is possible then God isn’t anything like what we conceive.

@ALL: To tie this back to the original topic, as a movement ID needs the YEC support. But the one thing YECs hate even more than atheists are TEs, whom they consider to be compromisers of God’s Word. If ID accepts TE then there is no sciencific criticism of evolution, no controversy to teach, and no more core support from the YECs.

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Your discussion blurs the distinction between “detecting design” and “identifying the means by which design was implemented.” ID only claims to be able to perform the first task. You are demanding it perform the second task as well, and then, when it refuses to do so, declaring it to have failed even regarding the first task.

Deciding whether or not it was Santa Claus or your uncle who filled the stocking and slipped it into the house falls under the second task. Determining that the stocking didn’t fill itself by accident, and wander into the house by accident, falls under the first task.

Note that you altered the focus of my Christmas example. I was trying to show you the difference between “being able to say something about God” and “reducing God to something quantifiable by science.” You made the claim that ID did the latter, but the example showed why it didn’t. Supposing that Lincoln filled the stocking, the contents of the stocking don’t come even close to reducing the mind, soul, character, or totality of the reality that is Lincoln to something measurable by mathematical/scientific analysis – or any other kind of analysis. There just isn’t enough information in the contents of the stocking for that grand a judgment. That is why your claim that design detection “reduces” God is fallacious.

That you should be suspicious of your own reasoning is a lesson that can be learned from the history of science. Newton, Boyle, and Kepler all to some degree allowed design inferences, but not one of them worried in the slightest that our ability to draw such inferences would “reduce” God or threaten our conception of his greatness, transcendence, etc. The worry you are expressing is entirely a modern worry. And it is most usually expressed, these days, only in contexts where ID is being debated. How very odd that so many self-described secular scientists, normally completely unconcerned about the danger of “reducing” God (in whom they don’t believe, anyway), are on the internet, trying to convince Christians (who do believe in God) that they should not go along with ID because that would lead to bad theology! This concern of secular humanist scientists for good Christian doctrine of God, coinciding with the rise of public influence of ID, is quite an interesting sociological phenomenon, to put my point as diplomatically as possible. :slight_smile:

I’ve spoken here only about ID theory and philosophy/theology. But you want to bring the discussion from ID theory to the ID movement, from what Joshua calls IDT to what he calls IDM. Fine. I agree that the ID movement receives both moral and financial support from creationists (not just YEC but also OEC). But it hasn’t allowed that support to touch its theoretical arguments. There are no Bible quotations in ID theoretical books, nothing that requires the reader to accept any orthodox Christian doctrine. So, while the IDM may “need” creationist support in a material sense, IDT has no need of such support at all.

Finally, one of your statements cuts both ways:

Maybe so; but during Darrel Falk’s tenure at BioLogos, it was the case that TEs seemed to hate YEC and ID people far more than they hated the atheists. The columns bashing the New Atheists were outnumbered by columns bashing YEC and especially ID, by about 20 to 1. In fact, the TE/creationist tension (which is fueled in large part by the fact that so many TE leaders are the product of a personal pendulum swing out of creationism), actually clouds the public debate. From the point of view of a historian of ideas such as myself, the YEC/TE tension is a petty local American evangelical quarrel, whereas the great issues remain what they have always been, i.e., the question of design/teleology vs. chance/antiteleology. The ancient Greeks understood the issue, because their minds were not clouded by emotional arguments based on Biblical texts. The Platonists and Stoics knew exactly what the issue was between them and the Epicureans, and vice versa. And it’s obvious that modern ID is on the Platonic and Stoic side, and that Dawkins etc. are on the Epicurean side. The main function of ASA TEs and BioLogos TEs and Ken Miller etc. has been to fuzz the issues.

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Okay, fair enough. But then why use the term “design”. Maybe we should instead call it “figglywog”. So the idea is to divide the world into things we can label with “figglywog” and things that we cannot so label.

I’m okay with that. A lot of science begins with making distinctions. But, in order for it to be good science, it needs to have a reliable way of making such distinctions.

My main problem with ID, is that it has not yet established the reliability of the distinctions that it is claiming to make.

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And fails, but we all know the reason for limiting itself to the first task is purely political.

Do you even realize that when you use the term “ID” as an agent that makes claims, you are tacitly admitting that ID is a political construct?

I don’t see any demand there. What’s the reason for ID (which you present as an agent again) refusing to do so?

No one AFAIK uses the term “evolution” in this way. A Google search for “evolution refuses to do so” only returns a single hit relating to a program called Evolution.

How do you explain this fundamental difference? Why do you repeatedly present ID as some sort of official agent? How can there be ID theorists when there is no ID theory?

I Hate that rhetorical line. Yes ID is different from creation science. But they also use many of the same arguments. Nothing wrong with mentioning them in the same sentence. Goodness. ID is incorporated into many People’s theology. He has problems with how that is done. ID has clear metaphysical implications. Many of its leaders have said this. And everyone knows what those implications are. So just stop. Nothing wrong with talking about how they are theological problems with ID. Your line and everyone who uses it is just a deflection and immunity device.

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Because that’s what ID people claim to detect. They claim to detect a blueprint in nature, so to speak. They don’t claim to have identified the construction company that made nature, or the specific machinery that the construction company employed. But people keep demanding that they supply the latter.

I agree that ID has a long way to go, in articulating the sort of “information science” that it hopes to produce. I think such criticism is fair. But there is a certain kind of biologist out there, some of them appearing here, who “have it in” for ID, and have had it in for ID from the beginning, and who will never grant a single point to any ID proponent about anything. If the ID proponent says the sky is blue, they will probably find a fault with that. They despise even the very idea of design detection (regarding non-human nature), and they despise the idea of a designer (because they despise the idea of God, and a designer might be God, so that result has to be nipped in the bud).

I think this is all very, very obvious to anyone who has debated for a few years about these issues on the internet. 90% of the ultra-active debaters have already made up their minds – indeed, made them up when they first heard the word “ID” or first heard a summary of the ideas of Behe or Meyer. They either loved it or hated it – and then planted their feet, and argued for the next 5 or 10 years until their face turned blue. The % of active debaters on the internet who are genuinely interested in ID as a potentially valid program, while still retaining a critical distance toward it, is almost 0. (I believe the case is quite different for the silent majority who never post on these sites, but only lurk – I think there are many intelligent “undecideds” out there.)

There is, where a newer reader, just becoming familiar with all the positions, is likely to understand the dual mention as not mere juxtaposition of two different things that happen to have a point or two in common, but as talking about two things that are essentially the same, or so close to the same that it’s not important to note any distinctions. Many readers have already had the well poisoned for them by Eugenie Scott’s willfully dishonest label “intelligent design creationism,” so it’s up to people like me, who know better, to make sure the “undecided” readers here are alerted to verbal sleights of hand.

In the case of Dan here, I know there is no malice intended, so my resistance to his choice of words is purely for the benefit of readers, and not to put him down in any way. He’s a reasonable guy, but I’m worried about how others will read his words. I’m thinking at least as much about the 90% of lurkers here who read but never or rarely post, as I am about the frequent contributors.

If you don’t like my posts, either ignore them, or refute them with reason and evidence. But if you tell me to stop, you will have no effect on my behavior at all.

If you think there are theological problems with ID, you are welcome to state what they are. I think that Michael Behe, however, would be surprised to hear that his belief that the bacterial flagellum could not have arisen without design means that his personal Christian theology is flawed. I think he would wonder why the critic was talking about theology at all, instead of getting down to work and providing a full stepwise pathway to the flagellum.

And as I said above, it’s absolutely amazing how so many atheistic/agnostic scientists, who had not made a single documented public statement about good or bad theology in their lives before ID appeared on the scene, suddenly became very concerned about the damage that ID was doing to Christian theology. Their zeal to preserve the true doctrine about Christ is perhaps commendable, though a little odd, coming from people who don’t believe in God.

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Cool, just ignore what I say :+1:t2:

If that was directed at newer readers, maybe add it as a side note? That way we can avoid this confusion that you have caused.

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The most unreasonable of requests.

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I didn’t ignore it. I asked you to specify the alleged theological errors of ID. And just to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest, it would help if you indicated your own personal religious allegiance, so that all readers here would know the standard by which you are judging “theological error.” Do you have the courage to stick your neck out that far, as most other people here have done?

My posts are generally addressed to a particular person, but written in the full knowledge that perhaps a hundred or more other people, most of them silent on this site, may end up reading them. So they always serve a dual puprose.

It would be a waste of time, on these sites, to write only to persuade one’s opponent, since 90% of the people one debates with on these sides have already made up their minds, and have held worked-out positions for a number of years. In the end, whether or not the culture accepts ID will have almost nothing to do with anything any of the anti-ID folks here write. The folks who spend hours upon hours debating on these sites represent an extremely small and specialized subsection of the general population. That’s why I’m as concerned about readers who only have, say, two to six hours per week to invest in reading posts on sites like this, as I am about people who seem to have twenty to forty hours per week to do so. If 90% of the frequent posters here angrily reject ID, but 60% of infrequent and silent posters accept or at least remain open to ID, as a result of what they read here, the pro-ID numbers generated by discussion on this site will dwarf the anti-ID numbers. I play the long game here; I’m reaching out to the undecideds, who, when they shift their weight on an issue, can decide its outcome (at least from the point of view of cultural acceptance).

I haven’t caused confusion. Confusion is from Latin, and means literally making things flow together, blurring things that are properly separate. The distinction between ID and Creation Science is significant and must never be forgotten. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t any overlap between the positions, but it does mean that all statements which seem to equate the positions should be properly qualified.

Not at all, if someone claims certainty that a particular set of evolutionary mechanisms could have created the flagellum from scratch. No one could possibly be certain of that without being able to provide at least a hypothetical series of steps, consistent with the mechanism, that could produce the outcome. But as I already said – and not one of the hotshot Ph.D.s in biology here could disprove it, with all their free access to the technical journals – that there are no peer-reviewed articles or standard scientific reference books which contain such a full hypothetical sequence. If there were such a sequence in the peer-reviewed literature, you can be absolutely sure that John Mercer, John Harshman, Arthur Hunt, Tim Horton, and others here would be ramming it down my throat with great gusto. But they haven’t pointed out any such literature, because they know it doesn’t exist. I think it’s important for the silent majority of readers here to see that every one of these hotshot scientists is bluffing and blustering on this point. But it’s nothing new for Darwinians (even Darwinians slightly modified by adding “drift” to RM + NS) to bluff and bluster when they don’t know something. In fact, it is standard Darwinian operating procedure, which has been in place since Darwin offered his pathetically weak arguments about the origin of the camera eye.

Only you have the ability to respond to a small and simple point by writing a novel. As has been stated numerous times on this forum, i am a Christian Theist. And if you have read what I wrote you would know I was talking about Dan’s own personal theological objections to ID, not my own. So I have no idea why you are asking me to provide my theological issues. And you most certainly caused confusion. I thought you were addressing Dan and not general readers. And as far as a full sequence, that will NEVER be found. Much of the important evidence has been forever lost. That’s what happens when you are dealing with events that happened millions of years ago. But if a full, complete sequence is your standard of proof, then hey more power to you. But I guarantee you your standard of evidence is only that high for evolutionary theory. Just like every other ID proponent. Think I’m done here.

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If you are an anthropology student, you ought to be used to reading books much longer than any of my posts – and often, books written in social science jargon that is much less clear than the plain English I use in my posts. In any case, if you find my posts too long, you don’t have to read them.

I responded to Dan’s theological objections to ID (though whether they should be called “personal” is questionable if Dan himself does not believe in either Christ or God). I responded to them in great detail above, trying to show great respect for his objections by answering them in detail. In fact, I have discussed theological questions with Dan many other times here as well. Yet so far, I have not heard anything in your remarks that deals with the substance of what I have said to Dan here. You have carped about a distinction I made between ID and Creation Science (and your main point about that was a pure culture-war point), but you haven’t said a word about the larger issues I raised regarding Dan’s claim that ID “reduces God”.

I would, however, be glad to hear your theological objections to ID, if you have any. Have you got any? I’m not talking about objections you have to the ID movement, ID stands on school curriculum, etc. I’m talking about theological objections you have to ID theory. The theological liberals at BioLogos (e.g., Jim Stump) have plenty of objections to what they conceive to be the implied theology of ID. Maybe you could set forth your own objections, so I could see where they are the same as, or different from, those of the others I’ve mentioned.

I several times said that I would be satisfied, at least for the sake of examination, with a hypothetical full sequence, published in the peer-reviewed literature.

No, not true. My standard of evidence is that high for everything. I have the same skepticism about “dark energy” and a score of the other ad hoc patches added to the Big Bang theory to rescue it from its various conflicts with empirical data; I have the same skepticism about multiverse and string theory; I have the same skepticism about the “hockey stick graph”; I have the same skepticism about aliens at Roswell, alternate theories of the JFK assassination, astrology, the alleged golden tablets of Joseph Smith, the view that Bacon wrote Shakespeare, and the latest theories on what people are not supposed to eat (for a while, they were all telling us to eat only margarine, not butter, then later they were saying that margarine is actually worse than butter, and examples of such flip-flops are legion). What I really like is good, solid, empirical, experimental science, such as has resulted in the marvelous inventions of the modern era: plastics, electronics, dams, hydroelectric plants, automobiles, helicopters, etc. This sort of science is easily testable not only by other scientists but by lay people. The mile-long bridge I drive over to get to work has been up for over 60 years now, allowing millions of people to safely get to and from work. That’s because the engineers who built it understood physics. Arthur Hunt’s understanding of how the bacterial flagellum might have been built is several orders of magnitude less precise than the science that goes into allowing me to safely get across that bridge. I wouldn’t risk a nickel, let alone my life, on any evolutionary speculation about the flagellum offered by anyone posting here.

Yep. Which is why I have no desire to keep reading your long ones when they have been consistently 95% unrelated to my very simple point I was trying to make. Which was based on a misunderstanding of something you wrote because it was unclear. Have a good one.

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True, but that’s not even what I’m saying.

@Eddie: MY theological criticism of ID and YEC have the same basis: bad theology. ID and YEC make very similar claims, and I think my criticism applies to both.

CLARIFICATION: I have other criticisms of ID; my political criticism of ID, is that ID is YEC rebranded to circumvent Edwards vs. Aquillard [sp] and allow Creationism to be taught in public schools. Other than this clarification, I will not follow this line of criticism here.

“Design” implies causation, and these tasks cannot be DAVID BRIN: Star Wars on Trial simply by say-so. Causation implies correlation, and the cause “this was caused” invoke as causal factor. The line the DI would like to draw between detecting Design and quantifying the Designer is a weak sort of misdirection (“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”).

It is sometimes possible to separate these tasks, but all the examples that come to mind are matters of discovery (a new species, a new element, etc.). How is it possible to make a claim of causation without stating something about the cause?

And yes, I changed your example to demonstrate the non-existent distinction inherent of ID claims of design. I would write more to tie this back to bad theology but it’s getting late. The key issue is that scientific quantification of God is self-contradictory.

Also, I have every right to make theological criticisms. What justification is there for belief being a requirement for valid criticism?

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Well, I think that a number of YEC writings contain “bad theology” as well. But how would I show this to a YEC? I would show it by (a) pointing out the flaws in the Biblical interpretation; (b) pointing out the departures from mainstream orthodox theological tradition.

So if you think ID offers “bad theology,” I would ask you to do the same. Show me how its premises, procedures, individual arguments, or conclusions (a) fall afoul of Biblical statements, or of the sense of the Bible overall; (b) clash with historical Christian (or Jewish if you like) theological rulings.

The difficulty is that a reading of Darwin’s Black Box, _No Free Lunch, Signature in the Cell, Darwin’s Doubt, Nature’s Destiny, etc. doesn’t turn up any Biblical exegesis or any discussion of doctrines such as Creation, Fall, Trinity, Incarnation, Redemption, Last Days, etc. So it’s hard to know how a theological criticism of these writings could even begin.

In your recent remarks you came up with only one example of “bad theology” that you find in ID: you find that ID “reduces” God to something scientifically quantifiable. But I wrote some paragraphs specifically responsive to this charge, and I don’t yet see where you have dealt with the majority of the points I made in those paragraphs.

I don’t know that it’s always self-contradictory; I’m told (but haven’t verified) that the Mormons have a physical conception of God. However, I would agree with you that for mainstream Christianity or Judaism, it would be wrong-headed.

The problem is that I don’t see where ID does this. Using scientific methods to detect design in a flagellum or a camera eye, supposing for the sake of argument that such detection is possible, would not reduce God to an object of mathematical science. Theistic religion holds that God is distinct from his Creation, so nothing that scientific techniques allowed us to learn about the created world would provide a description of God himself.

I assume you accept Newton’s understanding of gravity, at least as an approximation regarding events taking place at speeds far below the speed of light. Well, science has determined the validity of the formula F = Gm1m2/d2 (fix up the superscripts and subscripts appropriately), and God created the universe in which that formula applies, so does accepting that formula about God’s creation “reduce God to something scientifically quantifiable”? I don’t think you are claiming that it does. I think you would say that a Christian could accept Newton’s law while retaining “good theology.”

So if science could show (for the sake of argument), that the fine-tuning of nature, or the cardiovascular system, or anything else, indicates intelligent design, why would accepting that feature of nature (design) reduce God to something scientifically quantifiable, while accepting Newton’s law wouldn’t do so?

When God allows us to discover something like Newton’s law, he gives us a glimpse of the working of his own mind, but he doesn’t give us a total snapshot of his reality. So why would allowing us to discover that the bacterial flagellum must have been the product of design rather than chance give us a total snapshot of God’s reality, and bring God down to the level of quantifiable science? You haven’t shown why this follows. That’s why I find your theological criticism inadequate. You might be right, but you argument so far is missing some crucial premises, crucial steps, or both.

On your other remark, I agree that design is a kind of cause, but it’s not the same kind of cause as the causes typically discussed by scientists today, just as the plan of a building drawn by an architect is a genuine cause of the building, but not the same sort of cause as the fastening together of boards by the workmen. The kind of evidence employed to conclude: “This building was assembled using power screwdrivers rather than manual screwdrivers” is different from the kind of evidence employed to conclude: “Whoever built this building was working to an architectural specification.” Biologists critical of ID generally complain about ID’s failure to identify the type of screwdriver used, as if that failure alone falsifies the hypothesis that there is an overarching plan. That’s like saying we must assume that the Great Pyramid had no architect, until we can account for how each block was cut and moved into place. The argumentative onus is put on the person who claims to detect design, whereas the default assumption of most working biologists (when speaking as biologists, whatever private pieties they may mutter when they check into Church for the weekly service) – the assumption that there is no need for design, that nature is quite capable of producing all the wonders of life without any design – gets a free pass and is never subjected to critical examination.

@eddie I suggest you look into that bridge at the State’s bridge safety website. I think you will be surprised what you find. It may not be as safe as your think it is. :rofl: Secular Engineers are very concerned about our deteriorating infrastructure. We certainly need to address this before building any border walls to keep the mostly Catholic Central Americans from crossing the border. :sunglasses:

The best description I’ve seen is that it constitutes idolatry. That would apply to both YEC and ID. I will attempt your challenge to fill in the details for ID, but not today (busy busy).

We are expecting a visiting guest who’s opinion I am echoing here.

Thank you for acknowledging the point. This could be a longer discussion, and maybe it should be. New Topic?

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