I think of empirical facts as the kind you must and can verify by checking or measuring how things in the world actually stand. Scientific truths are of this kind.
Things that are self evident don’t require any kind of external checking or verifying. Merely considering what you know about it is enough provided you know enough about it. Mathematical truths are mostly of this kind.
Both ways are rational, meaning viable or reasonable - where they apply. But if there is an empirical approach for determining whether the universe is teleological I can’t imagine what it would be. Many philosophical questions fail to find empirical grounds for resolution. ID seems to be operating under the assumption that there will be empirical evidence to indicate whether the universe was shaped with intention intelligently. I don’t think that is so. Ideas like irreducible complexity are fine as hypotheses, but how will they test them? Declarations that it is unimaginable that such things come about without an intelligent designer have no persuasive value.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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Thanks Mark. I’m a mere amateur as you know. I would argue, on a dead horse but Woe there! It quivers:
at every level of rational knowing, including science, we know.
Only a global miracle would determine that the universe is teleological. The resurrection of the recently departed. An inarguable supernatural event. Not mere signs in the sky. Like the fraudulent Wow! signal or more visual. Not something only those with a certain magical, apophenic mindset can see but nobody rational can.
Yes but with truly empirical matters we may make deductions about what we think follows from what we already know, but that isn’t sufficient for drawing conclusions. Empirical matters can always surprise us when previously unconsidered factors come into play (and perhaps where emergent properties appear). So applying deductive reasoning to settled empirical findings is good enough for hypothesis formation but, unlike purely mathematical matters, not entirely sufficient. A road test is always required for empirical claims and new findings can always overturn what we think are settled empirical facts.
I’m probably even more skeptical than you where signs are concerned since I don’t have a theological construct ready into which I could assign any miraculous events, no matter how blatantly miraculous. Some things just are mysterious and I don’t assume I will be able to understand it all.
There is mathematics to do this, i.e. explanatory filter, so anyone who is interested in understanding evolution and biology better can apply the methodology.
The premise of ID is not an apologetic argument, i.e. convince everyone God exists and mission accomplished.
IDists really think we have a new methodology for doing scientific investigation, which will uncover new facts and useful insights that currently elude scientific methodologies that ignore design in nature.
For example, take Ewert’s dependency graph work. If it turns out to be correct, it is a revolutionary structure underpinning the genetic data that has many uses, and has thus far eluded the best biologists b/c up till now everyone presupposes the data follows a tree structure, i.e. everything is perfectly nested clades. I’ve recently read through a massive functional genomics textbook, and two bioinformatics textbooks, along with Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker, and everything is trees, trees, trees. There is not even an attempt to take a more objective standpoint and ask the question, what model in general fits the data best?
Conversely, with Ewert’s model, we can create more effective bioinformatics algorithms, or perhaps these ‘modules’ his algorithm uncovers will provide deeper insight into what drive biological functionality. Who knows! But it is clearly new science. Not an apologetics argument that just wishes to stamp ‘God exists’ on everything. It is really a Copernican revolution going on.
Welcome and thank you for the question, however the answer is neither.
When most people think about the extinction of the dinosaurs, excluding the bird dinosaurs who survived because they adapted to the environmental changes, they think about the asteroid impact which usher in a sold climate. However, it seems that the climate change was caused by much more then this. Tgerefore according to our best information the dinosaurs went extinct because of a long term trend, not a simplre accident.
Therefore there is no evidence that the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by direct intervention by God or by chance, but by a long term process called evolution which is guided by environmental changes. Since God created the environment, I think God guides evolution and this is confirmed by the fact that humans are created in the Image of God. On the other hand if you believe that all things natural are the result of chance, then you would say that the extinction of the dinosaurs was the result of pure chance, regardless of the evidence.
Ecological natural selection is not an apological argument either. It demonstrates the close relationship between two important scientific fields, evolution and ecology. However it has the extra benefit of showing hoe to reconcile those who oppose and support evolution for the right reasons and building a bridge between faith and science.
I am very skeptical that math can provide an meaningful explanatory filter in this area. Can you provide an example of where this has worked?
I am truly baffled as to why you would pass up obvious and clear evidence for your position for an esoteric one at best in my opinion. It does not make sense and undermines whatever confidence I had in your judgement.
I generally agree with you that the amount of information necessary to make a working ecosystem is mind boggling, even more than for a single organism, and cannot be accounted for through chance amd necessity. The mathematical take is the enormous combinatorial explosion of number of possible arrangements to make an ecosystem, and there is only an infinitesimal portion that will work.
The ideas behind intervention is that it is something extraordinary. Asteroid hits are unusual, bit not extraordinary. Climate change is not extraordinary, nor are extinctions.
The evidence shows that it is part of God’s plan, so it was not by chance, but did not require God’s extraordinary intervention. Ecology is part of the web of nature, cr4eated by God to carry our God’s plan for God’s universe. .
But where is the line between ordinary and extraordinary? I suppose you mean miracles, the multiplying of bread and fish as Jesus did, and the resurrection? But when He just hears our prayer, and give us what we ask Him, is that not a miracle and as such an intervention? And so, even guiding ecological and environmental circumstances, whether is is slow or fast, does that not require God’s action and thus intervention? If God doesn’t act, there is no intervention and no guidance. So in my opinion God can not guide ecology or whatever without action from his side, so by intervention.
We could also go over a primer for the rules of cricket since that game seems to have as much explanatory power in biology as the explanatory filter does.
First of all we need to understand that olive exists on three levels, the physical, mental/rational, and the spiritual. Most of what we sask God in prayer for is spiritual , for forgiveness, peace, and joy. God does not have to intervene in the laws of nature to provides these gifts, but we have to be ready to accept them. We also ask for wisdom and guidance, which follows the same rules. We also ask for healing, which God does not always grant as God told Paul and Job.
God does things for God’s own reasons and in God’s own way. We know that God answers prayers, but we cannot prove that God intervenes in our physical sorld to do so. If you have different evidence pleased let me know. God is not our servant. If anything we need to serve God. On the other hand God loves us and wants us to be fulfille3de in God’s way, not is our selfish way. Generally God helps us do what needs to be done, God does not intervene to do for us what we need to do for ourselves and each other. Jesus used the ecology as our model for how to live.
Matthew 6:25-34 (NIV2011)
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?
26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.
29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.
30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?
31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.
33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
O would basically agree with you and Weinberg. Philosophy is supposed to make sense, or provide basic order, to life the basic philosophy of our time, Western Dualism, does not do a good job of this. Some reduce Western Dualism to Western Monism which does an even poorer job of providing order to life. This should not be surprising since our philosophy is at least 2000 years old.
If our philosophy does not work, then we need to fix it. If dualism does not work and monism fails, then it would seem that we should at least try a triune theory, but that is not the case.
Just because philosophy is broken, does not mean we don’t need it at every level. Just because philosophy does not prove that like has meaning and purpose, does not mean that this is true. and should be the basis of our science.
Mr. Trump is showing us what is the result of conflict and division in the life of society. We need to do all that we can to fix philosophy and bring people together, and not assume that division and conflict are normal and natural in our world.
No, we cannot prove, I agree. But we can understand it, I think. If we pray to be filled with his Holy Spirit and He does it, there is something changing within is and we are influenced in our body, mind and soul, so even in a material, physical way there is an impact.
But ofcourse these are things above our understanding, I admit.
But this makes me think that God’s way in guiding evolution also cannot be understood fully enough that we can know how it works and the way God is involved.
Not the specific sequence that forms the query. That we do not know if it is a gmo or not. It is only the GMO BLAST database that we know contains human engineered sequences ahead of time. Maybe I miscommunicated somewhere.