Comments on: Intelligent Hoodlum

By: Ken G

Ken G — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 06:23:44 +0000

Robert raises an issue, and I’ve been wondering when this would come up– when ID gives up on biology, they have an obvious retreat to cosmology. Sort of like pulling back from the foxholes into the bunker. Biology is all around us, with a wealth of data just waiting to be mined. Cosmology is very hard to observe directly, beyond the creation of the cosmic microwave background at about 300,000 years after the Beginning. The ultimate fortress is the Planck time, an unimaginably tiny fraction of a second after the postulated singularity. ID, or any other speculation for that matter, can never be dislodged from that citadel, for it is hard to conceive of any physical theory that will be testable from that era. And it is important to remember that all credible cosmological models at present require an initial condition that is completely ad hoc, something that originally bothered scientists as Robert points out. But the key issue that Robert may be missing is that ID will never be good cosmology, because it just isn’t good science. And not because it’s wrong, who knows, it might be right in some deeper and nonscientific sense, after all there is that pesky initial condition. The reason it is not good science is so obvious that it is often overlooked– it invokes a miracle. It has to– if the intelligent design occurred via normal natural processes, then you have a theory of how extraterrestrials created our universe, not God. You have a theory straight out of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, not a holy revelation. It *has* to be a miracle, or no IDer worth his/her salt will want anything to do with it. But miracles are to science what the bubbles are to Swiss cheese– if science were to encounter one, it would have to sidestep it, since a miracle *by definition* cannot be explained by the science of natural processes. As soon as it is explained in terms of natural processes, it is not a miracle any more! Could this be any more ironic when applied to calling ID science? Don’t the IDers realize they are not exalting their God, they are lowering Him/Her to the level of a natural process that is testable and explainable? He becomes the Wizard of Oz!Why on Earth would they want this, to mix their science with their religion? Many don’t, of course, they just use it as a ruse to sidestep the Constitution. Another irony– they call themselves Constitutional conservatives! But despite all this, the rational thinkers must also remember that if scientists would refrain from “believing in” their own theories as if that were an integral part of the scientific method, then the religious faithful would not feel so defensive.

By: MaDeR

MaDeR — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 19:47:51 +0000

Forgive my poor english grammary. :>

“Some of the old testament prophecies say that certain cities would never be inhabited, or that certain things would remain in a certain state till the end of time.”

Well, if prophecy says “this city will fall”, and given city was NOT felt for now, then you always can say that this city do not fall YET. And eventually all cities will fall, no doubt. Same with emerging cities.

Nice, long list of falied prophecies in Bible is here:
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/proph/long.html

By: M Duke

M Duke — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 19:37:06 +0000

Interestingly, Christianity is “testible.” If you would read
http://pathlights.com/onlinebooks/David%20Dare/David%20Dare%20TOC.htm
you may notice a section on how to disprove the Bible. It’s rather simple. Some of the old testament prophecies say that certain cities would never be inhabited, or that certain things would remain in a certain state till the end of time. Currently, I am unaware of a prophecy that can be disproven. But, if one were to simply fundraise some money, gather a group together and inhabit a an ancient city such as Babylon, hey, you have some argument with you. But, as the prophecies have so far shown true, this would be proof of the Bibles accuracy if the settlement of such a city failed, especially if it made no sense as to why it failed.

Also, in biology, I don’t believe how the first cells formed is well proved. The Miller experiment showed only that some of the monomers could have formed. We have failed to form the complex polymers. And I do suppose we have tried.

By: Robert I. Eachus

Robert I. Eachus — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 19:10:44 +0000

Grey Says:

“Iâ€™m VERY conservative (I make Hannity look like Colmes), and I know that ID/Creationism does not belong in a science class.”

I wouldn’t go quite that far. It certainly doesn’t belong in any elementary school or high-school science class. But I wouldn’t categorically rule ID out of a college Philosophy of Science or Cosmology class.

Why? Well the origin of Intelligent Design was as an answer to the problems created by the strong anthropic principle. Obviously doesn’t make it right…or wrong until we figure out how to observe other universes, or that this is the only universe that exists.

Is speculation about the existance or non-existance of other universes science? I would say that it certainly can be part of science. For example this paper http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0506053 by Karch and Randall is clearly physics, although it may not lead to testable hypotheses. In this sence, ID is potentially science. What is needed to (possibly) make it into real science is to find a way to test its predictions.

In the area of biology, of course, we know that evolution does occur, and Occam’s Razor implies that since evolution exists and is sufficient for the creation of intelligent life in this universe. So ID is at best irrelevant to biology. However, there is a lot of ferment in cosmology right now, and until there are testable theories about why the universe is the way it is, ID cannot be ruled out.

Will it ever be? Very probably. As recently as twenty years ago, most physicists would have agreed that it would not be possible to ever observe some quantum phenomena directly. Today, experiments that directly observe particles in multiple states or locations (or technically looking while not observing are commonplace, and great progress has been made toward building practical quantum computers. So if other universes do exist and can be observed (or possibly other 3-branes in this universe) then we will need to have theories to test.

Theories that can never be tested are not science. We need to allow/encourage scientists to work in areas that are currently believed to be non-testable because theoretiicians developing those areas into testable theories (and experimentalists devloping the experiments) is how science progresses.

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 05:40:03 +0000

I find it rather amusing that the IDers want to teach creationism as being scientific… while trying to discredit science at the same time!

By: Nobby

Nobby — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 08:48:32 +0000

Good to hear sense being used in government, at least on a local level.
As WW says, can you imagine Moses coming down the mountain and greeting his brother with the words, “Arran, we came from the slime, the miracle of evolution caused us to develop.” I think the responce from his family would have been a bit harsh. I was always taught that you can take the Bible seriously or literally. Besides, as the Tao Te Ching puts it, “The greatest form of leadership is when they say ‘we did this ourselves’”

By: Peter B

Peter B — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 03:46:54 +0000

Tomislav Bleiziffer Says: â€œI was quite puzzled when I read this quote of senator Buttars in the Salt Lake Tribune article: â€˜…If we only taught Shakespeare in English class, that wouldnâ€™t be fair.â€™ Where on earth would one teach Shakespeare but in English class?”

I think youâ€™ve got it slightly wrong here. The Senator was speculating if Shakespeare was all that was taught in English, *not* if Shakespeare was taught only in English classes (as opposed to other classes).

The Senator is right, but irrelevant. More appropriate question would be this: â€œShould school kids be taught all the controversies in all subjects? Who should determine which controversies should be taught? Where should they be taught?” For example, what would you say to teaching that the Holocaust didnâ€™t happen? After all, there are people who hold this up as a controversy in Modern Historyâ€¦

ID is the negation of science. It’s okay to question a theory in science, but you’d better have an alternate theory to put in its place. ID isn’t that.