What would make ID scientific.
Judge Jones was very clear.ID is not science. Where is the research, where are the testable hypotheses? My view is that claiming to be able to detect the effects of the supernatural is an inherently bogus approach, and supernatural science is an oxymoron.
Am I wrong? Is there ID research, planned or happening. Does anyone plan to test an ID hypothesis, if such a concept exists. Call it my challenge to Intelligent Design. Show me the Emperor is really wearing clothes.
13 comments:
It may be that I am not smart enough or creative enough to come up with an answer--something that is quite likely.
I will think on how to frame the questions correctly--but the answers I am interested in are certainly along the lines of the title of this thread.
At the moment, I can only think that it would take testing a miracle to provide evidence for ID. Plainly not something that can be done.
I would be very interested in hearing if anyone has done a convincing side-step of this problem. How can you test ID without testing miracles?
I just want a hypothesis about who or what the designer is and how they implemented it. Then someone can test the hypothesis by looking for evidence and examining its plausability.
Come on IDers.. where are you?
If this was a "flaws in darwins" thread it'd be like flies on shit.
chris hyland:
All I want is what kind of assumptions you can make based on the fact you cant say who the designer is, his/her motivations, his/her abilities and when he/she might have been doing the designing.
I think this would be a fabulous discussion. Here are a few specific questions. Speculations don't even have to be fully formed IMO. It would be informative if IDers could enlighten us as to what we should be looking for in light of their supposition that we can't make any suppositions.
1. Not knowing anything about the designer's purpose, do we know if we are a final product? How?
1b. If we are not a final product, how do we know? Does this imply that we are evolving? How do we know?
2. Not knowing anything about the designer's origins, where did he get the raw material to design us? Was it already here? How do we know?
2b. Did the designer also design the raw material we come from? How do we know?
2c. If he used extant material, how did he alter it so that we can tell?
2d. If he created the raw material, how did he leave his imprint so that we can investigate his workings?
There is no need for an extant designer and no evidence for one either. However it is quite impossible for a rational mind to observe the living world and deny as the Darwinians always have that one or more intelligences once existed. There is no place in the scientific community for such mentalites. This is fully supported when one examines their chief spokespersons, Gould, Mayr, Provine and Dawkins, not a scientist in the lot. They are all nothing but clever wordsmiths arrogantly imposing their congenital atheism on an unsuspecting naive and similarly predisposed audience. The Fundamentalists too have their arrogant leaders doing the same thing. Both factions are and always have been dead wrong. That is why I am so very popular with them both. Needless to say -
I love it so!
Or.. you could just redefine science...
*cough cough*
There is no hope for any of you homozygpus atheists. You are congenitally stone deaf to what Einstein called "the music of the spheres." I hear it loud and clear. Naturally -
I love it so!
jeannot
The designers are dead. Get it? Probably not!
I love it so!
Welcome Lord Timothy
Do you have a better way of studying the observable universe than the scientific method?
Science deals with observable, detectable, measurable phenomena. You can believe in the supernatural etc., you can have religious faith and believe in an afterlife, but science does not address these matters.
The problem arises when the claim is that the supernatural can impinge on the real world. A trivial example would be the spoon-bending charlatanry of Uri Geller, who was famously demonstrated a fraud on the Johnny Carson show. Dembski's version of ID is similarly fraudulent.
To outlaw something you must first define it. I find the "supernatural" to be very poorly defined.
Yes, I agree. Impossible to define, I would suggest, except in terms of not being observable, detectable or measurable.
Design detection is already thought of as scientific
To avoid straying into semantics, can I suggest the following convention. When talking of design, as in an artifact produced by some known agency, let us use the word design. When talking about "Design", as in some supernatural agency, unspecified but acting in some unspecified way at some unspecified time, let us use the word "Design".
I have no problem with design detection, we and all sentient beings, do it all the time. We live by matching patterns. I have no problem with SETI and the search for evidence of extra-terrestrials.
The problem is when IDers such as Dembski purport to claim to detect the supernatural (interventions by the "Intelligent Designer") and to represent this as science. There is no double standard when you avoid confusing design and "Design".
The example you gave though... as I understood it was supposed to relate to ID supposedly being a supernatural infringement on science...
No. ID claims that there are observable effects from supernatural agencies. This is fraudulent nonsense. ID cannot support this claim. There is nothing supernatural going on, just fraud.
"There is nothing supernatural going on, just fraud."
I don't think this is a claim that should be made by anyone who wants to keep science and religion seperate.
ID is either not science or scientifically vacuous. Whilst there may be many who are swayed by the arguments of Behe and Dembski, it is quite obvious that both were religiously motivated, and neither are inclined to develop or defend their ideas as scientific against the many reasonable critiques that have been produced.
Not being resident in the US, I have no interest in the religion/science Church/State issue, only an intellectual curiosity as to whether ID had any merit as an idea, and as time goes on, the likelihood of anything useful emerging from the ID camp approaches zero.
Or could this be an ad homenim meant to draw attention away from the actual arguments and discussion?
You are right, "because your motivation is religious, your scientific argument is bogus" is an ad hominem ( or would be if ID had a scientific argument). Pleas feel free to present ID's scientific argument, as the whole issue revolves around whether ID has any such argument. I promise I will not draw attention from it. I fact, if you like I will make it the subject of a new thread.
Behe(for example) has made numerous attempts to publish responses and has a lot of correspondence with science journals, and scientists, etc.
But in his anniversary edition of "Darwin's Black Box" he has changed neither a word of text, nor included an appendix dealing with the mountain of critiques that have been produced since 1996 (not to speak of the ongoing research over that same period). Charles Darwin, in contrast, took pains to respond to critics in later editions of "Origin of Species.
Now that the media spot light has been dimmed, more research is able to be done without huge public controversies and court hearings over every sneeze that IDists make.
Please, please, please tell us about this research. The evidence for any such research existing or in progress would be most welcome.
On the other hand, it seems many in the scientific community are still watching ID scientists very closely, but that is to be expected.
Of course. Fundamentalist religious apologetics fraudulently posing as scientific endeavour needs to be watched closely.
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