I'm wondering how the Sarkar-Nelson debate in Austin went down—any attendees want to let me know? I ask because I just now read the discussion paper by Nelson that supposedly represents his side of the argument, and rarely have I seen such a shallow and pointless position advanced with any seriousness, by anyone other than the most fatuous sort of creationist.
The paper goes on much too long for what is actually a trivial point—but then, that's what BS artists do when they don't have anything of substance: they go on and on. Here, though, is one key paragraph and figure that basically sums up his main point.
Take a look at Figure 2. Yes, that's your puny fund of physical knowledge, circa
March 2006, to which both the naturalist and the design theorist have equal access. But
notice that the design side has a distinct epistemological advantage. The ID theorist
possesses a richer possible ontology of causes. It doesn't matter if, at the end of time,
there never was anything corresponding to 'intelligence' as an ontologically distinct type
of cause. In that case, the design theorist would simply have carried around a useless
notion. Since the design theorist has free access to every physical cause for which there's
any good evidence, however, he's not losing anything by allowing for the possibility of
design.
This is just so silly, both misrepresenting the status of the argument and playing pointless hypothetical games. He's basically claiming that because ID includes an explanation that is not part of the scientific toolkit, it has a chance of encompassing some unidentified phenomena that will not be explained by science, and is therefore superior. To which I say, baloney.
- The argument that we should accept some random, unsupported idea because of the possibility it might be true is a familiar one: it's the root of the worst argument for theism ever, Pascal's Wager. It is not sufficient justification for an idea to merely claim it is possible that it is true, given sufficiently elaborate assumptions.
- His diagram falsely weights his preferred assumption. If we're cataloging all possible explanations, or even merely all known causes (the box on the left), we're talking about a huge volume of information, all of which is specified to varying degrees, from all the step-by-step minutiae of a series of gene sequences to fuzzy guesses and generalities…and it's the detailed and testable explanations that are the central part of science. On the design side, all Nelson is adding is an exceptionally poorly specified concept—"intelligent causation"—with absolutely no information provided about either the nature of the intelligent agent or its mechanisms of action. It's awfully presumptuous of Nelson to deign to call such half-assed, poorly codified blather an ontology.
- Science is a most pragmatic process. We pursue what is doable and that which we can infer from the current body of knowledge. Nelson is completely ignoring the practical aspects of science to advocate an idea which has no theoretical foundation and no applicable research program, all for a hugely hypothetical abstraction. If it's a "useless notion", why bother with it?
- At best, what ID therefore does is add the thinnest possible membrane, sheer to the point of invisibility and entirely untestable and untouchable, to the top of Nelson's huge box of "our knowledge of physical causes", and justifies its addition solely by claiming that it is possible that it might be true. What he then glosses over is that this miniscule and improbably remote possibility, which is lacking any empirical justification, is the sine qua non of the Intelligent Design movement. Yeah, sure, a designer of some sort might have intervened at some point in the history of life on earth, and I'll give that hypothesis the level of attention warranted by the evidence for it, i.e. none, yet what Nelson must explain is why he's part of a whole institute with dozens of fellows and a PR budget of millions arguing for this one insignificant, negligible idea.
Sahotra Sarkar is trained in philosophy as well as biology. I have to wonder how he responded to such inane and superficial pseudo-philosophical noise…it's the kind of thing that could make for an awfully boring debate.
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Why didn't Nelson just add "all possible explanations" and for good measure "all non-possible explanations" to his tool kit. This would include not only his one little idea, but an uncountable infinite set of others. That would be so much richer than mere pragmatic science. As a bonus, it is, by definition, beyond human understanding.
DW,
An infinite number possible and impossible explanations might be a little overboard. Why didn't Nelson just posit two bumbling green demons or a host of celestial unicorns that generate random mutations along with his intelligent causation? If the argument is that the extra baggage of intelligent causation, if useless, can do no harm, then any other set of ideas that might do no harm should be thrown in too.
Paul Nelson is so desperate.
Anyway, why stop at adding intelligent design?
http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/5139/nelsonmodel5hj.gif
Well Duane, I took his point to be more is better. So most is best, no?
Too much of a good thing is...wonderful. (Mae West)
DW,
My suggestion for his toolkit is the explanation "It was all just a big coincidence." Maybe there is no force of gravity, but just by coincidence, objects just happen to fall to the ground. Tomorrow, they may drift off into space. Maybe human beings didn't evolve and they also weren't "intelligently designed". Maybe just by coincidence, the right collection of molecules just happened to come together to make the first human. Maybe there is no common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees, and it's just a big coincidence that so much of their DNA is so similar.
Surely, it could do no harm to put "It's just a big coincidence" into our scientific toolkit.
steve s,
I love your diagram [was it yours?]... and I actually knew what your last addition was talking about!
steve s,
About Santa Claus, I overheard several young kids discussing the existence of Santa. Most were convinced that there was no Santa, that Christmas presents were actually from your parents. But one boy said: "Oh come on! How is that possible? Parents don't have enough money to buy all those presents. And they would have to stay up all night wrapping them and putting them under the Christmas tree. Why would they do that? It makes no sense."
To be true to the ID/creationist position one must say:
"At this point there is no need to study (insert favorite creationists assertion that "God did it" here) any further because our assumption that anything beyond this point in our knowledge of the universe is based on a natural phenomenon is wrong. God did it and that's the end."
Well great. At what point in history would you like to apply this silly notion? How about before the advent of germ theory? It was either Martin Luther or Justin Martyr (I forget which) claimed that medical research was in vain because sickness was caused by demons. Okay, apply ID/creationist philosophy at that point and what do you get?
I do not care if you believe in God or not (whatever flavor you choose). To say you "know" that a particular thing can not have a natural cause telegraphs a tremendous amount of arrogance. Those that do are claiming knowledge of the limits of their deity. Hubris, plain and simple.
Dunesong
I think the point of that figure is just to show that IDists have a taller column.
Nelson should try using his bastardized Pascal's Wager approach next time he has to write a proof (not that I expect he either needs to do this, nor that he would be capable of doing it if the need arose). Here's what happes:
I'm going to assume, without proving it, that this thing I've been handed is a bounded linear operator. If I get to use that during the course of this proof, that's fantastic. If not, the assumption is just kind of there.
And then you get your proof back....
...with a big red "F" on it, or a letter from the referees reminding you that you're an idiot.
Also, I don't know how anyone could hear this:
And not translate it to this:
I'd also imagine that we can expect a textbook in the near future titled something like "An Intelligent Design Approach to Medicine". An excerpt would probably go like this:
He ignores the fact that the existence of his extra box has a highly deleterious effect on the original one. If any physical phenomena also must admit a supernatural cause as well as a physical cause, our ability to deduce causality is paralyzed.
Then again, his presentation sounds like it's of the same level as a 3am infomercial.
Aargh!
I've never seen the parcimony principle THAT mistreated.
That hurts.
Since the design theorist has free access to every physical cause for which there's any good evidence, however, he's not losing anything by allowing for the possibility of design.
Except, maybe, predictive power?
Since the design theorist has free access to every physical cause for which there's any good evidence, however, he's not losing anything by allowing for the possibility of design.
Note that the design theorist has FREE ACCESS to evidence. This is telling. He doesn't have to supply any new evidence because he's cherry-picking evidence others supply for him.
If he would actually spend some time doing experiments and collecting data in favor of design, there's a big chance he would be wasting his time, and that would be losing something, wouldn't it?
The ID theorist possesses a richer possible ontology of causes.
I look forward to the day when this approach is applied to other fields:
"The archaeologist who believes that aliens built the pyramids possesses a richer possible ontology of causes."
"The historian who believes that the Civil War was orchestrated to further the shadowy ends of a Freemasonic cabal possesses a richer possible ontology of causes."
"The literary critic who believes Jane Austen and Ezra Pound were the same person possesses a richer possible ontology of causes."
"The linguistic anthropologist who accepts the Genesis account of the Tower of Babel possesses a richer possible ontology of causes."
And so on.
John said, "I think the point of that figure is just to show that IDists have a taller column.
The harmful side effects of the Creationists' viagra have already been noted. To extend the metaphor, it's not the meat, it's the motion--what, practically, does ID actually deliver?
steve (March 11, 2006 11:00 PM): Your diagram is a great start, but you left out a key column. The tallest column has to be topped by "A Pony". All right thinking people in the blogosphere know that ponies are the urim and thummim, the alpha and omega, the keystone and capstone, the fons et origo of everything worthwhile, of all our hopes and fears, our successes and failures, of all things good and bad. At the very least, its a costless assumption.
Along the lines of what Idlemind said, failing to discard stupid ideas is injurious to scientific progress. The strength of science is that some ideas can be proven to be worse than other ideas. The purpose of science is to discard unnecessary speculations. ID got discarded nearly 300 years ago.
I think we've made a small mistake, where the creationists take advantage. Science does NOT require any prior ontological commitment. It requires only that theories are empirically testable. The reason scientific theories lack gods and angels and demiurges is not because these beings are excluded by some "rule of the game," but because, if they exist, they have been careful to hide themselves from empirical study. There's simply no way for science to conclude that they are there from a complete lack of evidence for them.
This argument reminds me a little of "Everybody gets a pony": http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/10/ponyherd.html
In short, Nelson's theory is better because it has everything our theory has--and it doesn't rule out the possibility that everyone could get a pony.
By this argument, the best theory of all would not rule out any possible explanation: "things happen for all kinds of reasons." In fact, this, would be less useful than any limited scientific theory, because it would not provide any guide for which experiments seem most promising.
Even a theory that accepts evolution but merely allows for occasional design events is problematic because it removes the motivation for seeking evidence for counterintuitive consequences of the theory. In effect, if you have trouble believing that evolution might be sufficient to explain something, you have an easy punt into the supernatural. If, on the other hand, you require evolution to explain everything about species diversity and adaptation, then you're forced to work harder and accumulate more evidence and more understanding, and sometimes refine the theory as well.
Every time I read this sort of ??? thing? I get the feeling that there is a puchline somewhere. Which means I read it twice in hopes that I missed it and if I read a bit more carefully I'll find it and get the joke.
Isn't it just another con game being played on unsuspecting people. Isn't it our duty to point that out to our friends and collegues. It's a swindle and con game when they ask for and receive money based on false claims. Does the Discovery Institute meet the conditions of research as do other scientific facilities. All of which compete for funding. If the Discovery Institute meets those conditions then how do I get in line to receive funding? I have the superstring knotology theory of all things and would love to be fully funded to get the news out. I am currently tied up with other issues at this time and would be unable to respond to any questions. However you could just slip your questions under the door and I'll respond as soon as I untangle myself.
There's another problem with his diagram, too. He assumes that the "phenomena to be explained" remain exactly the same whether we add "intelligent causation" or not. But of course, that extra ontology creates a demand for explanation--at least if we're doing science. The "Intelligent Causation" theorist needs a theory of thereof. As part of this theory, he'd have to provide an account of the intentions of the intelligent cause. Now I know (some) theists think they can do this; but (i) such accounts are so woefully underdeveloped (usually ending in "God must have a reason") that they don't rise to the level of explanation, and (ii) the methods employed in generating such accounts have very little to do with *evidence*, showing that they have *nothing* to do with science.
The ID theorist possesses a richer possible ontology of causes. It doesn't matter if, at the end of time, there never was anything corresponding to 'intelligence' as an ontologically distinct type of cause. In that case, the design theorist would simply have carried around a useless notion. Since the design theorist has free access to every physical cause for which there's any good evidence, however, he's not losing anything by allowing for the possibility of design.
English translation: "May as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb"
Or: "If, in the end, my idea proves to be wrong, I was still right to think it, so neener-neener!".
And, you know, if they changed it to "CBID" (Clinically Batshit Intelligent Design), they might actually be able to make a case. Sorta...
---
Not only is Nelson's diagram STUPID, which folks here have pointed out nicely, it is DISINGENUOUS. It makes it seem that ID theorists hold both the body of scientific evidence of March 2006 and the possibility of a Designer as possibilities. But that is untrue: ID theorists explicitly reject the mountains of evidence that corroborates evolution. Just remember the Dover trial and Behe dismissing a 2 foot pile of scientific articles on evolution. Though he says the design theorist has equal access to the "puny" fund of evolution knowledge, they don't wish to examine that evidence!
So if he is being honest, he should correct his diagram to have the physical evidence box removed from the design side. (Then again the diagram is so off-base better to scrap it).
I attended the debate, but had to leave early, so missed a lot of discussion.
Interesting feature is that both Nelson and Sarkar had been students of Dr W Wimsatt at U of Chicago, and he provided a 15 minute 'commentary' part way through the proceedings. One point he made was that neither debater thought ID should be taught in high school at this stage. This got a generous round of applause.
Nelson's presentation was nothing like the discussion paper.
Main point was that each member of the audience is already very good at detecting intelligent design.
He was working up to his final point, about the minimal complexity of even the simplest bacterial cell. Referred to Jan 10, 2006 paper in PNAS by Venter et al stating that 382 genes were essential for Mycoplasma and about 110 of these had unknown function. He was calling these 'orphan genes' and stated that other organisms had a similar proportion of orphan genes, but each different than the 110 from mycoplasma. Unfortunately, time ran out at this point, so I am not clear where he was trying to go with 'orphan genes'.
Nelson's screensaver presented "Nature is the Art of God" scrolling across the screen. Again to applause.
Most of the first questions were directed to Nelson. One interesting one was, "Science can not explain all the details of the Rings of Saturn. Why not attribute the details to an intelligent designer?"
Keith
Main point was
What's most amusing about this argument is that it's equivalent to the atheist's Occam's Razor argument. Adding God to the things we know about the universe and about biological development simply makes the theories more complicated, while leaving God out entirely does not entail giving up any explanatory power to our collection of theories.
Worse, we know for sure that in the past attempts to find God in the gaps has been wrong and deeply misleading. The belief in the 6000 year old earth set back the cause of figuring out evolution. It wasn't until absolutely certain evidence was presented by 19th century geologists for a very old earth that even made natural selection a possibility.
Just watched "Cool Hand Luke"
http://www.charliewagner.com/plastic.mp3
Well, I don't care if it rains or freezes
Long as I've got my plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
I could go a hundred miles an hour
Long as I got the almighty power
Glued up there with my pair of fuzzy dice
I don't care if I'm broke or starvin'
As long as I've got a fish named Darwin
Glued to the trunk lid of my car
God, I'm feeling so evolved
Drivin' with my problems solved
Proclaiming what I think of what we are.
www dot guntheranderson.com/v/data/plastic0.htm
Yeah, Nelson's got a thing about orfans -- he doesn't seem to understand them, but he's sure they're evidence against evolution, somehow.
That screensaver thing came on when he presented here at UMM, too. I suspect it's a conscious conceit.
It also doesn't surprise me that he seeds everyone with a "discussion paper" and then talks about something completely different. I don't think it's with malicious intent, but just that he lacks any kind of coherent substance to his ideas, so tossing out random noise is part of the plan.
"(i) such accounts are so woefully underdeveloped (usually ending in "God must have a reason") that they don't rise to the level of explanation, and (ii) the methods employed in generating such accounts have very little to do with *evidence*"
This is exactly right-- and an explicit part of a popular contemporary response to the problem of evil called 'sceptical theism'. The sceptical theist's response to obvious examples of unnecessary evil in the world is to say, 'well, maybe somehow the supreme being has had to accept this local evil in order to achieve some greater good that would be logically impossible without it'. So it explicitly robs the theistic assumption of even its most straightforward & simple empirical contents. After that, the words 'God exists' are just empty hot air with dubious rhetorical applications...
Paul wrote:
"Yeah, Nelson's got a thing about orfans -- he doesn't seem to understand them, but he's sure they're evidence against evolution, somehow."
Science 19 November 2004:
Vol. 306. no. 5700, pp. 1344 - 1350
The 1.2-Megabase Genome Sequence of Mimivirus
Didier Raoult, St�phane Audic, Catherine Robert, Chantal Abergel, Patricia Renesto, Hiroyuki Ogata, Bernard La Scola, Marie Suzan, Jean-Michel Claverie
We recently reported the discovery and preliminary characterization of Mimivirus, the largest known virus, with a 400-nanometer particle size comparable to mycoplasma. Mimivirus is a double-stranded DNA virus growing in amoebae. We now present its 1,181,404 base pair genome sequence, consisting of 1262 putative open reading frames, 10% of which exhibit a similarity to proteins of known functions. In addition to exceptional genome size, Mimivirus exhibits many features that distinguish it from other nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses. The most unexpected is the presence of numerous genes encoding central protein-translation components, including four amino-acyl transfer RNA synthetases, peptide release factor 1, translation elongation factor EF-TU, and translation initiation factor 1.
The genome also exhibits six tRNAs. Other notable features include the presence of both type I and type II topoisomerases, components of all DNA repair pathways, many polysaccharide synthesis enzymes, and one intein-containing gene. The size and complexity of the Mimivirus genome challenge the established frontier between viruses and parasitic cellular organisms. This new sequence data might help shed a new light on the origin of DNA viruses and their role in the early evolution of eukaryotes."
Indeed.
Does the term "front-loaded" mean anything to you?
Even if it's random noise, it sure feels good to put it down. :-)
Let's see. The discussion in part 1 really hangs on the question raised in part 2 - "Does natural science at this moment possess causally sufficient explanations" which we in a very loose sense in fact do. There is nothing that says that the general echanism of variation and selection doesn't takes us from a prebiotic environment to a biotic one.
Of course, questions of replication et cetera still needs to be better explained, but it's enough to show his part 1 and 2 as BS IMO. Furthermore, as Russell says, the addition of untestable hypotheses that ID theory hang on can't be done. And as Jay implies, it is contrary to what Nelson assumes really a drawback due to Ockhams Razor instead of an advantage to apriori or aposteriori add unnecessary theoretical assumptions.
Looking further at part 3 Nelson gets pathetic. He constructs and bases his argument on an object, "ACEP", that we _know_ doesn't exist. "ACEP" is assumed to catalog all possible physical laws. That is not possible in a comprehensive way.
Goedel's first incompleteness theorem shows that we for even such simple and formal systems such as algebra, we can never even form a complete and consistent set of all axioms, disregarding for the moment the even more complex theorem set that will follow.
SO "ACEP" is a faulty concept, and furthermore we know from this that physical theory will be rich enough to explain all possible natural events, which totally pulls down the pants around Nelson's argumentation.
The only possible conclusion is that Nelson is indeed making random noise. I guess it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone, since he supports ID, that he doesn't know too much about science. Maybe we should add that to the ontological set.
"EVERYBODY expects the Wagnerian Inquistion!
[The sketch continues where we left off, with the torturing of a dear old blog.]
Now, old blog -- you are accused of heresy on three counts -- heresy by thought, heresy by word, heresy by deed, and heresy by action -- *four* counts. Do you confess?"
I am sitting in a comfy chair as I type this, you know...
Mycoplasma proves ID? I suggest modifying his screensaver a bit:
"Genital infections and Pneumonia are the Art of God"
Does the term "front-loaded" mean anything to you?
Isn't it what you do with your main weapon?
Front-loading your main weapon is why you get those genital infections that spread to your brain. Cut it out.
Charlie... First thing you need to do is **prove** that this is a precursor of some sort, so all that junk in it gave rise to something else. You are simply assuming it did. The other explaination is far more reasonable, given all evidence to date, it has all that stuff because the raw cost of them evolving wasn't so high as to make it impossible, unlike other viruses, which might be effected by added size, rendering them unable to survive in their environments (a sort of, "Why don't elephants live in holes?", situation) or suffer limited resources and other factors that might make having all that extra genetic information a detriment (a sort of, "Why can't elephants swim across oceans and subsist on necter like a hummingbird?", type question). To assume that your 1.2MB virus didn't "evolve", you have to discount all the reasons that might have "let" it do so, while others failed to, ignore the costs of keeping it alive, given its size and complexity *and* explain why any other virus would possibly have less than this one, if this one had any advantage from having all those things (which it would seem reasonable that it does).
Its hard to come up with a decent example to show the flaw in this logic, since any examples we have do involve design, but I am going to try anyway. The architect vs. just anyone argument:
If a building has elevators, stairs, walls, multiple stories, etc., etc. then an architect ***must*** have built it, because everyone knows no random person could build it themselves. Please ignore the fact that many people have been observed doing so, or that its possible to borrow the expertise of experts to achieve it. However, if every obviously not achitected house was nothing more than a poorly made lean to, then it might be reasonable to assume no architect was involved. Again, please ignore the shelves of books on house construction, the publically available specifications for houses or the thousands of years of people building them, including just kids hammering boards together in a tree.
In other words, this big virus had to be designed, as long as you ignore the prior existence of everything found in it, the known tendency in some conditions of gene transfer between species, or even stuff like mitocondria taking up residence "inside" other living cells, everything in the environment that could drive or influence the changes and the complete lack of evidence that a designer showed up and went, "Hmm. Lets see what happens if I make a big virus with lots of crap in it..."
Not that you will likely ever "get" why your logic is at best simply irrelevant, given the evidence, never mind severely flawed, given the same evidence.
Kagehi wrote:
""Why can't elephants swim across oceans..."
They can. It is the most amazing thing to watch. On the Indian subcontinent, elephants are used as heavy machinery and they and their owners are hired out for work, much of which is on the offshore islands. They just walk down to the shore and wade into the water and swim across to their desination.
In fact they are tireless swimmers and can swim quite far at fast speeds. They swim with their face and mouth below water and use their trunk as a snorkel. Some people think that elephants once swam from southern India to Sri Lanka, where they settled.
Cows, bears and moose are also quite good swimmers. I once saw a moose swimming across Jackson Lake in Grand Teton N.P.
"richer ontology" suggests a monetary metaphor. If the "science" block corresponds to, say, a million dollars, then the ID block might be 1 German Mark -- in 1923. (Yes I'm feeling generous)
The Grand Inquisitor wrote
Especially the part where they drown. Except for the part where they subsist on nectar, it's really the most amazing thing to watch.
OK, he's got a box for "Our knowledge of physical causes, circa March 2006", but where is the bigger box of "Our knowledge of physical causes, yet to be discovered (presuming the theocrats do not succeed in dragging us into a new Dark Age)", and the even bigger box "All physical causes, which may or may not ever be discovered"?
I also notice that his box of "intelligent causation" does not have an arrow pointing anywhere. Telling.
Heh, you know... running through Science and randomly highlighting this:
Is as coherent and effective as this:
PZ Myers (March 12, 2006 11:08 AM) wrote: It also doesn't surprise me that he seeds everyone with a "discussion paper" and then talks about something completely different. I don't think it's with malicious intent, but just that he lacks any kind of coherent substance to his ideas, so tossing out random noise is part of the plan.
Are you suggesting that his plan is not intelligently designed?
I went to the debate. It was a farce--Nelson did a precanned presentation that probably was good enough to sell ID to a school board full of wingnuts but actually was causing giggles in the audience. He spent the first 10 minutes just arguing that because you can see design in man-made objects like photoshopped pictures and Stonehenge that means other things that are more complex must be designed.
I should have included a link to our students' encounter with Paul Nelson. That all sounds familiar -- he's glib and friendly, but a smart college student has no problem detecting the lack of depth in what he's saying.
*EVERYBODY* expects the Wagnerian Inquisition!
- Ha! Then we'll make you understand! Biggles! Fetch...THE SWIMMING ELEPHANTS!
[Biggles fetches the leash to two elephants.]
Biggles: Here they are, lord.
- Now, old blog -- you have one last chance. Confess the heinous sin of heresy, reject the works of the ungodly -- *two* last chances. And you shall be free -- *three* last chances. You have three last chances, the nature of which I have divulged in my previous utterance.
I have no idea what swimming elephants have to do with anything, but a quick Google search yields this from a Swiss web page (and some pictures of swimming elephants):
http://www.upali.ch/swim_en.html
Can Elephants Swim Long Distances?
These strong animals can swim long distances without a problem. Experts suppose that elephants once swam from Southern India to Sri Lanka where they settled.
The Loch Ness Monster may be a swimming elephant.
Elephants can swim just fine, like most mammals. They may indeed have swum the tens of miles from India to Sri Lanka. (Nowadays, they'd have to dodge the ferries.)
That's a far cry from swimming across oceans---e.g., from India or Africa to South America---and subsisting on nectar. Those are the amazing parts.
I think the point was that Charlie is being rather selective in what he chooses to respond to from Kagehi's post, and still managing to miss the one point that he does choose to respond to.
Of course, nobody expects that from Charlie.
*tee-hee*
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f118/deschmidt/spanish_inquisition.jpg
"http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f118/deschmidt/spanish_inquisition.jpg "
I'm honored! I feel like the proud father of a healthy and goodlooking meme - I'm naively and overconfidently going to assume I was starting this, otherwise it's convergent evolution, I'm sure.
And I see PZ is in there too. And some particularly funny comments like http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/01/elsberry_on_dkos.php that I googled successfully. *tee-hee* indeed!
Dustin wrote:
"*tee-hee*"
Now that is very funny :-)
You should have used my picture.
http://www.charliewagner.com/alfred.jpg
Has anyone else pointed out that Intelligent Design cannot be an explanatory model in addition to methodological naturalism, because Intelligent Design explicitly rejects methodological naturalism?
I notice someone already made the point that science doesn't reject supernatural models a priori...it rejects untestable models.
And we humans are very good at recognizing human design. So that means the designer must be human, right? Isn't that the only logical conclusion of this design argument, and we only reject it because we know it's absurd physically?
Just came across the following quote (while searching for info on Box's M statistic). It strikes me as apt.
Isn't sanity just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean, all you get is that one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, well, the sky's the limit!
"The Tick (comic book)"
Of course the real problem is that Nelson must deny the possibilities afforded by "physical causes" in order to make room for meaningless "ontological possibilities".
And no, we do not fully deny any possibility within science, from ID to Plato's Forms. We merely await some sort of evidence that makes these ideas both meaningful and somewhat likely. IDists are the ones who arbitrarily exclude nearly all "ontological possibilities" in order to set up a false dichotomy of their magic against science.
But it goes even further than this: not only do IDists need to deny both magical and real scientific possibilities to try to make it look like their ideas have merit, they also have to deny the clear implications of the evidence. Organelles like the bacterial flagellum do have genetic evidence of homologies which indicate that they evolved, and people like Nelson simply have to ignore reasonable causal inference to try to produce a gap into which they want their a priori beliefs to fit. I'm all for openness, but hardly in favor of producing stupidity and ignorance to create an opening for the IDists' God.
Science operates according to constraints. The limited explanations available to science up to this point are what make science successful, and capable of making statements at reasonable confidence levels. One of the most important limits came when humans learned not to invoke God whenever a real or manufactured gap was seen. Despite the constraints under which science is forced, yet fortunate, to operate, there remain a huge number of possibilities, more than the IDists wish exist. Thus they attempt to artificially constrain science in whatever way appears likely to work, most often through miseducation of public school students.
Science works by excluding non-explanations like "God". Since Nelson and the rest don't care about science, but do care about God, they are more than happy to claim science while denying its possibilities, while pretending that non-explanations are a sound supplement to careful epistemologically-sound investigations.
We've been through that already, though, at the Salem witch trials. 'Your honor, why be so picky as to insist on "physical causation", when the "ontological possibility" of witches provides us with alternative possibilities?' Judge Jones and others reply that 'justice is not served by allowing for the practical possibility of groundless causation as acceptable evidence.' It is a matter of honesty and of "everyday truth" that we insist on demonstrable causes as the arbiters of the fates of the accused, and as the only neutral sort of public education possible with a government required not to serve the partisan interests of religionists.
Nelson would like to pretend that this is close-minded. But it is only as close-minded as is any attempt to teach and to decide matters based upon methods as close to being unbiased as humans are capable of achieving.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm
Actually, this is incorrect. Science defines the category of 'natural' to be anything we can observe, directly or indirectly. It does not predefine the contents of that category. That's the only way science can remain open to new hypotheses.
Since everything we can observe is part of the 'natural' world, supernatural things can never be an explanation for anything. There can be all-powerful entities, and causes and laws that don't lie within our current experience, but reality is by definition ontologically closed. Nothing not part of nature is part of nature.