Joe claims ID is not anti-evolution

IC is an argument against blind and mindless processes such as natural selection and drift. ID is NOT anti-evolution.

You need to be able to test the claim that natural selection and drift can produce something like ATP synthase yet no one knows how to do such a thing.

@JoeG (& @Jonathan_Burke):

Okay, I’d like to review your list, Joe, and help clarify a few things:

A] “IC is an argument against blind and mindless processes such as natural selection and drift.”
Clarification: We can say similar things about BioLogos. Since God is part of the BioLogos model, it ALSO is not blind and mindlesas.

B] ID is NOT anti-evolution.
Clarification: I think you mean it is not necessarily anti-evolution.

C] You need to be able to test the claim that natural selection and drift can produce something like ATP synthase …
Clarification: If BioLogos shares your interest in God’s role, there is no entailed “need” to test that claim.

Claims about mutations and speciation vary - - and so for each variation, the claim that needs testing varies.

Hi George- Did you read what I linked to? Do you even know what ID says?

Clarification: We can say similar things about BioLogos. Since God is part of the BioLogos model, it ALSO is not blind and mindlesas.

Then what is your beef with ID?

Clarification: I think you mean it is not necessarily anti-evolution.

Did you read the article I linked to?

If BioLogos shares your interest in God’s role, there is no entailed “need” to test that claim.

Anyone who wants to refute IC needs to do so, George.

@JoeG

Is this the article you are talking about?

In the meantime:
My principle beef I have with ID is when someone says they aren’t saying God is the designer … BUT the earth is less than 6000 years old. . . .

oh … and when an ID supporter attacks BioLogos for teaching mindless or blind evolution. BioLogos supporters adhere to the principle of God’s guiding role in Evolution.

And then, finally, that one can use Science to prove that a miracle happened.

If you confirm that I have the right link, Joe, I will speak to that article.

My principle beef I have with ID is when someone says they aren’t saying God is the designer … BUT the earth is less than 6000 years old. . .

ID doesn’t say the earth is less than 6000 years old. And ID is about the design, not the designer. ID says Paley went too far in saying God was the designer. It is too big of a leap to make.

oh … and when an ID supporter attacks BioLogos for teaching mindless or blind evolution.

Who did that?

And then, finally, that one can use Science to prove that a miracle happened.

Who said that?

The article I linked to was “ID is NOT anti-evolution”- Intelligent Reasoning: Intelligent Design is NOT Anti-Evolution- The Debate Begins

This is typically disingenuous. ID denies that the theory of evolution actually explains adequately the very phenomena which the theory of evolution aims to explain.

That which is the product of design cannot be the product of natural selection, and visa versa. Thus, on the specific level, ID is not compatible with evolution.

For example, the idea that “irreducibly complex” structures could not be built by evolution.

2 Likes

Obviously you din’t understand it

There isn’t a scientific theory of evolution. And directed evolution and evolution by design are still evolution.

That is not the claim. IC cannot be built via natural selection and drift is the claim.

Thank you, @JoeG. I will look at the article you specify: “ID is NOT Anti-Evolution”.

As to the questions you raise above:

Firstly, it is extremely rare when a person cares only about I.D. as a theory, and has no other strong beliefs. And so what I have found is that Some I.D. supporters also think the earth is very young. Do you believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old? I am not saying I.D. states the age of the Earth; I am saying I.D. proponents rarely support the scientific evidence for a very very old Earth.

Secondly, because of the circumstances specified above, this constant reference to what ID does not say is not a very credible apologetic. BioLogos supporters ALSO talk about Divine actions which natural law cannot replicate. But BioLogos supporters don’t attempt to imply that they do not mean God. So in terms of credibility, BioLogos is ahead of I.D. as a movement.

Thirdly, while this is not universally the case, the usual presentation includes a statement like this:

“There is scientific evidence (or proof) that this [ABC, XYZ, whatever it is] could not have
[happened]/[been done]/[occur] through un-mindful natural processes alone.”

So, unless the ID supporter is going to actually suggest Aliens caused this “thing” to occur, he is talking about a miraculous event … an event that could not have happened without God.

Now… part of this is fine. BioLogos supporters ALSO think there are some things that can only be accounted for by Divine action or that only God could have done. But we don’t attempt to make it something that Science can prove.

In my view, it’s what Science cannot prove that matters the most in Intelligent Design topics.

Thanks again for the reference to the article; I’ll get back to soon on that!

OK George- I am not a christian although I was raised as one and went to catholic schools. Even then it was said that the days of creation were eras and not actually 24 hour days. And now to me Genesis rings of terraforming for a colonization event. Maybe too much Star Trek and sci-fi.

As for the age of the earth it is my understanding it assumes that all debris, including crystals, to have been melted down and then all elements recaptured in the newly formed crystals of earth. The point being is the earth could just be made up of old materials, meaning the age of the earth is directly related to how the earth was formed. If you read the evidence in “The Privileged Planet” it seems clear that t6he earth was designed, intelligently designed. That said I am OK with a very old earth.

As for the designer all ID is saying is that it is incorrect to jump to that conclusion based on the science alone. And science is not about ultimate causes- or so I have been told. ID is just taking it one step at a time. ID is OK with the possibility of alien colonization of earth to explain life here. That is just a step in the process. And ID, being a big tent, incorporates God into its subsets. All forms of God creating are allowed as subsets. Even YEC is a subset of ID. They all include a form of intelligent agency that did something with/ within nature to produce a specific result.

Advanced technology and what it could produce would seem like miracles. However what we can do through our knowledge of cause and effect relationships is to give an idea as to how something came to be the way it is, And that is where ID comes in as it matters to all investigations whether or not what is being investigated came to be via intent or it just emerged via various natural (as opposed to artificial) processes.

If there is a purpose to our existence then it is imperative of scientists to flesh that out. And science is the tool they have to do so.

Thanks for reading my article- the book is next.

Just because someone doesn’t subscribe to ID doesn’t entail that they don’t believe the world is intelligently designed.

4 Likes

@JoeG

This is a phantom conclusion…

As it has been said by wiser people than I … there are virtually no subscribers to the “Aliens did it” scenario… and the men and women who are most ardent about Intelligent Design do have a strong inclination that it was God.

As for your sentence: “Advanced technology … could produce [what] would seem like miracles…” … why would you include this statement in this conversation?

I’m not talking about that issue. I’m talking about the specific assertion that there are things on Earth that could NOT have appeared unless a super-intelligent being created it.

If it isn’t Aliens… then it is God. Which means … unintentional natural processes could not have created it. In other words, and this is where ID people are remiss in realizing… it means it was miraculous in its occurrence!

If natural processes couldn’t do it … by definition it is miraculous.

NOTE: If there is a purpose to our existence (which I would agree there is), it is irrelevant whether Science can flesh it out or not. God’s Word fills in the gaps.

Science is NOT the tool that can flesh out the miraculous events.

@JoeG

Okay! I just got done with the blog article you wrote:

http://intelligentreasoning.blogspot.com/2011/04/intelligent-design-is-not-anti_29.html

Intelligent Design is NOT Anti-Evolution- The Debate Begins (April 2011)

I do congratulate you on designing an essay outline that steers clear of the maximum number of problems! But, frankly, it seems that in the process of writing the article, you came to learn almost nothing about BioLogos, while you teach your opposition very little about Intelligent Design.

I am not surprised that you chose the topic of whether or not ID is anti-Evolution.

  1. Why isn’t BioLogos mentioned even once in your writing?

  2. You do know that many BioLogos supporters, like me for example, believe God guided the course of Evolution, right?

  3. So what is the difference between the ID camp and many BioLogos supporters? BioLogos supporters are virtually unanimous on the position favoring “Common Descent”. Where are the bulk of ID supporters on this issue?

  4. In my experience, ID supporters can acknowledge that Evolution is possible, if there is enough time for it - - and that’s where they stop. Most ID supporters I’ve talked to, unlike Behe, continue to oppose an Old Earth scenario!

And this is where I.D. loses me! How can you champion the value of science, and insist that science can prove the existence of an Intelligent Designer - - all at the same time rejecting all the proofs by Science (using multiple methodologies congruently reaching the same conclusion!) that the Earth is five billion years old?!

It’s very difficult to consider ID science to rest on solid foundations when the theorists behind I.D. don’t even think geology, physics and cosmology is convincing on the age of the Earth !!!

You conclude your article with:
"So the bottom line is Intelligent Design says “evolved, sure”.
**The questions are “evolved from what?” . . . .

Okay, Joe, I’ll bite… from WHAT did the first hominids evolve? What is your personal answer about that?

Evidence please.

Evidence please.

But ID doesn’t argue for “evolution by design”.

That is the claim. Look.

As Joshua has already observed, I really don’t think you understand the definitions of irreducible complexity.

1 Like

@JoeG and @Jonathan_Burke

I don’t want to be a buzz kill … but I don’t even see these four bullet points even being that important. With all the diversity in the community that supports BioLogos, I see plenty of “Intelligent Design” ideas in this or that pro-BioLogos scenario. They may not be mainstream scenarios, but they certainly include the idea that God steps in where mother nature does not, or can not.

I think the far more important issue is how an Intelligent Design supporter can insist on his “pro-science” credibility - - if he rejects the unified conclusions of at least three fields of science (including geology, physics and cosmology) that demonstrates that the Earth is 5 Billion Years Old?

@JoeG, do you believe the Earth is 5 Billion years old?

OK try to find this alleged scientific theory of evolution. The fact that you handed my essay a nonsensical one-liner is proof enough for me. And ID does argue for evolution by design. See Spetner 1997,2014.

And Dr Behe and Dembski said that IC is an argument against natural selection. I will go with what they say. IDEA Center just summarizes what IDists say.

And I don’t care what you say about me. You certainly don’t have any evidence to back it up.

You were talking about miracles. I was clarifying your point with the obvious.

How is it irrelevant when that is the whole idea?

We have to agree to disagree on that.

I probably didn’t know about it when I wrote the essay.

It is an untestable claim and out of science.

Perhaps they didn’t evolve from something else. We cannot test the claim they did.

The following defs are from “No Free Lunch”:

IC- A system performing a given basic function is irreducibly complex if it includes a set of well-matched, mutually interacting, non-arbitrarily individuated parts such that each part in the set is indispensable to maintaining the system’s basic, and therefore original, function. The set of these indispensable parts is known as the irreducible core of the system. Page 285 NFL

Numerous and Diverse Parts If the irreducible core of an IC system consists of one or only a few parts, there may be no insuperable obstacle to the Darwinian mechanism explaining how that system arose in one fell swoop. But as the number of indispensable well-fitted, mutually interacting, non-arbitrarily individuated parts increases in number & diversity, there is no possibility of the Darwinian mechanism achieving that system in one fell swoop. Page 287

Minimal Complexity and Function Given an IC system with numerous & diverse parts in its core, the Darwinian mechanism must produce it gradually. But if the system needs to operate at a certain minimal level of function before it can be of any use to the organism & if to achieve that level of function it requires a certain minimal level of complexity already possessed by the irreducible core, the Darwinian mechanism has no functional intermediates to exploit. Page 287

Dr Behe responds to IC criticisms:

[quote]One last charge must be met: Orr maintains that the theory of intelligent design is not falsifiable. He’s wrong. To falsify design theory a scientist need only experimentally demonstrate that a bacterial flagellum, or any other comparably complex system, could arise by natural selection. If that happened I would conclude that neither flagella nor any system of similar or lesser complexity had to have been designed. In short, biochemical design would be neatly disproved.- Dr Behe in 1997[/quote] Note- natural selection, not mere evolution.

Read also Behe’s testimony at the Dover trial. Then there is the book “The Design of Life” which I quoted in my essay. ID is an argument against BLIND WATCHMAKER evolution only. Not mere evolution in general.

Please reference the evidence from geology, physics and cosmology that says the earth is 5 billion years old. I say one has to know how the earth was formed before you can tell its age.

From what I have learned- and I sated this very clearly- is that the proto-earth had to have been molten- no crystals survived the accretion process. If crystals survived then that skews the result. Isotopes can start decaying when they are formed. And they are formed during stellar evolution and explosion, way before they were incorporated in the debris for earth.

Then you are wrong in your idea, @JoeG.

Science is not intended to discover the purpose of our existence. I know you would like it to. And many others too… but that is a wrong-headed expectation of science.