Or an arachnid. We have had a garden spider build its web across a glider on our front porch, and I marvel at the engineering and design with the suspension strands and radial strands being placed just right. Puts a honeycomb to shame.
It seems mostly to be about intelligent agency.
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I think @Daniel_Fisher started this thread to discuss the legitimacy of methodological naturalism. I believe he suspects that it is an insincere gesture toward keeping an open mind toward the possibility of divine origins while in fact only allowing natural causes to be discussed or investigated.
I think you ask a good question though. Wouldn’t it be cleaner just to acknowledge that science is indeed about investigating the natural world to understand and predict causal relationships. It isn’t that scientists are looking to explain everything about people and culture in a way that ignores religion. Rather science just is about the natural world. Those who feel accepting the Bible commits one to certain empirical claims feel compelled to defend them against the determined efforts of godless scientists to exclude any place for God.
Okay - I grant you the apparent engineering superiority of your arachnid’s project. However if I’m not mistaken it was mostly (entirely?) a solo venture.
So to stick up for my “team Bee” for a moment, when it comes to social cooperation and apparently impressive communication skills, I think they are still in the running at least. I may be biased as the last thing I ate was something with a bit of honey that I had a hand in collecting.
But in either case, we don’t credit any of these creatures with the same sort of intelligence that we give ourselves credit for. But trying to define “intelligence” in some detached sense that we (or SETI) may hope has universal application seems a hopeless errand to me. Even allowing ourselves the arrogant privilege of thinking ourselves a standard model of what intelligence should generally look like, even with that, it still proves to be a nebulous and ill-defined concept at least in a general philosophical sense.
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My problem with this framing, and with ‘methodological naturalism’, is the lack of a clear, consistent definition of ‘natural’.
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This, to me, is the mic-drop, season-ending, walk-off, stake-through-the-heart problem with the entire conversation. Stripped of all the not-very-convincing verbiage about explanation and intelligence and knowledge, the root of the discussion is a presumed distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural,’ and a view of what this means for gods. As a Christian, I found this deeply problematic, and fought hard against the implication that natural explanation eroded god’s majesty or power or whatever. Such a god is a joke. I concluded that discussions of MN, like this one, were never about science or its underpinnings but about the curious need for so many believers to have a god that does magic. These therefore are not questions for scientists, or even for philosophers, but for sociologists.
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I had written: “Wouldn’t it be cleaner just to acknowledge that science is indeed about investigating the natural world to understand and predict causal relationships. It isn’t that scientists are looking to explain everything about people and culture in a way that ignores religion. Rather science just is about the natural world.”
As I’m using it here I’m thinking of the natural world as opposed to say history, music, literature and the arts generally. I understand that is still murky because one can certainly look at patterns in human culture under the microscope (so to speak) and examine similarities and differences in world religions. But while scientific rigor and peer review can be brought to many fields I think of science as primarily being focussed on the natural world - apart from designs of man. (But yes even that is vexed since there is almost nothing about life on this earth which shows no influence from our presence.)
He also can create a universe 6,000 years old that bears every impression to us of being much, much older. I doubt you would deny that he could do so… rather, I imagine you’d say you have reason to doubt that he did do so, no?
If You and I are at a poker game, and I notice that every time you dealt, you ended up with a royal straight, 12 times in a row…
I would of course acknowledge that God is not so limited that He couldn’t tweak the natural process of randomness that He created so as to produce exactly that result.
Simultaneously, I would maintain that I had reason to doubt that natural processes, however coaxed by God, could adequately explain what I was seeing.
I’m not trying to be obtuse, but I’m afraid I’m not really seeing the point you’re making. If I do understand you, perhaps this is another appropriate analogy…?
It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.
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He could just as easily create the entire universe last Thursday, but I know He didn’t because of what the Bible tells us about His nature. It isn’t a doubt about His ability. It is a certainty about His nature.
But what if you had a source, say the Bible for instance, that says God does coax natural processes, could that change your doubt? See “God sends the rain to the just and unjust.” I just don’t see how you could have any doubt at all about a process that God controls. Help me out here. To me it is God’s control that results in the design that you find so remarkable. And let me hasten to add, a control that leaves no trace detectable to humans.
We have a yellow garden spider next to our front door. She’s been so much fun to watch, especially when I caught her building her web again. So neat. Her geometrical web very much looks intelligently designed. We only know it wasn’t “intelligence” because we’ve seen spiders build webs, and we know spiders don’t have brains.
It’s also ridiculously fun to catch stink bugs in the house and flick them into her web. You should try it. 
Sure, good observation, and insightful question. God is in control of all things, of course.
But consider this…
I imagine that God could so control and even “coax” the molecules in the fertilized egg of an elephant, and do so in a way that no actual natural laws were in any way violated… just a very large number of very serendipitous mutations… not one of which, by itself, was all that extraordinary… and the elephant gave birth to a baby giraffe.
At this point, to me, this goes beyond God “coaxing” a natural process in a way indistinguishable from the regular flow of natural processes… and results in us recognizing a very obvious and intentional (and detectable) intelligent and purposeful agency at work.
I have (using little grasshoppers) It is so cool to see the spider tension the radial spokes of the web with her legs, and detect the insects by the vibrations sent down the spokes. It is also interesting to see how the insects often struggle a few seconds then freeze to hopefully not attract the spider by their movement. Then… it’s a wrap!
It is also fun to watch my printer at work. I earlier printed a few pages from Henry V. Those words very much look intelligently designed, but I know it wasn’t “intelligence” because I’ve seen my printer print those pages, and I know my printer doesn’t have a brain.
Seriously, though, not a good illustration for those of us that suspect that an intelligence was necessary to design a spider specifically with the innate ability to accomplish such feats. Otherwise this sounds like saying that anything a 3D printer creates can’t be intelligently designed, since 3D printers don’t possess intelligence…
Thanks for getting us back on topic. Still, while methodological naturalism is fine, philosophical naturalism is the problem with most Christians. Interesting that around here, philosophical intelligent design is a given among the theists, but methodological intelligent design runs into problems.
I think this still gets to part of the issue I’m finding… adding additional requirements or credentials for the nature of the intelligence detected comes across to me as special pleading. Why can we just not recognize something as intelligently designed, regardless of what we know or don’t know about the nature of said intelligence?
Do we hold SETI to these same standards? Are they allowed to examine a radio signal and suspect intelligent agency, even if “there is no independent evidence” of said intelligent being(s)?
What if the radio signal was determined to have originated from a galaxy 500 million light-years away? Do we tell the SETI team that their argument for intelligent agency will be rejected because they are invoking an intelligent agent within the Cambrian timeframe?
No, we don’t hold them to those standards. Why are these standards invoked to discredit or undermine ID, but quietly put away if we move the discussion to SETI?
No, they are allowed to simply recognize intelligent agency, even while having absolutely no further information, or harboring no assumptions whatsoever about the nature of that intelligence, nor the process used to create said transmission, no?
In short, this strikes me as special pleading, I’m afraid. Standards arbitrarily used to discredit the ID method that are not equally applied to other “legitimate” methods for seeking intelligence… though I’m of course open to being corrected. If I am misunderstanding.
I would have to disagree. The natural process is incapable of allowing an elephant to give birth to a giraffe. This would be a miracle and a clear indication of supernatural activity.
Let’s assume the development of the first eye spot required 30 gene changes. If you saw a single transition with all 30 gene changes that would be a miracle. But what if God coaxed each one of those changes over a long period of time with each change easily explained by mutation or other mechanism? Designed by God but leaving no fingerprint to say He did it.
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Aha! Now the argument I have so often been ridiculed for making is being used! When I say something relatively similar to this I am accused of arguing from “incredulity”… At least it seems you agree in principle with the basic underlying logic! Certain phenomena, if inexplicable by natural processes, and more consistent with intelligent purpose, would be clear indication of something else going on, indeed! Thus far it seems we agree.
Now, when I have made a similar sounding argument … that I do not believe the natural processes available are capable of achieving a certain result, I am challenged to the effect… “name one specific mutation that could not have happened over that period.”
So, out of curiosity, let me turn around and ask you the same… what specific mutation that would be required to turn an elephant’s dna into that of a giraffe in one generation is God incapable of achieving through “natural processes”? Is there any one specific deletion, addition, or change to the animal’s genes that God couldn’t have accomplished through natural means? If not, then you have to admit that such an outcome is “possible” according to the laws of nature, no? As I am told to do when I express my doubts?
Even so, I’m general, I think we are reaching a general agreement. It sounds like we agree there are some things in biology that are clearly within the basic boundaries of what is fully explicable within what we can “natural” phenomena. Then on the other side, there are things (even if just hypothetically) that simply could not be explained by natural processes.
We differ on where we draw the line between the two, of course. I assume that as you look at biology, you see nothing inexplicable from natural laws. I on the other hand see some feats in biology that are in the same “category” you described above, where, to borrow your language, I would say about them, “The natural process is incapable of allowing [them].” It sounds our disagreement is simply over where we would draw that line, but not whether there is such a line.
But I am delighted that it seems we agree thus far, at least.
As for this, it would depend. In principle, I could see the process you note happening, guided by God through what would be means undetectable and indistinguishable from what we recognize as the regular flow and processes of nature.
But i would personally have to think through the processes involved:
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What was the precursor to that eye spot gene? Was it already coding a critical gene unrelated to sight? Or was it simply a part of the gene that was unexpressed and unusable. Presumably the latter, as If these 30 mutations ended up destroying a gene critical to organisms survival before it achieved light-sensitivity. Let’s assume they were working on a duplicated section as their raw material, something that would have produced a relatively functional protein, one that serendipitously was similar to those needed to detect light, but which needed yet those 30 mutations.
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We shall assume that all 30 mutations were necessary before said organism gained any benefit. This seems reasonable, not adjust any protein will work, Granted, once you have some function, natural selection can engage to keep the good and allow increasing improvements. But until you have some initial function, and any benefit, natural selection would not distinguish between the fake code transcribing nonsense and nonfunctional DNA. If so, those 30 mutations just have to show up, in just the right places, with no assistance, no guidance, natural selection can’t help.
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During the process, given that natural selection can’t help at this stage, the right mutations to achieve this benefit, even if they do show up, won’t necessarily be fixed in the genes… by the time you get another one right, the first one may have mutated to something else.
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Even if you get the 30 mutations in the right place, and have a protein that works, have you wired it to the rest of the organism’s nervous system? If not, you have an organism that has cells that can detect light, but it doesn’t know it has cells that can detect light. You also have to simultaneously be properly modifying the nervous system, connecting the reaction of the light receiving proteins through some rudimentary nervous and/or hormonal communication to the animal’s nervous system, then the animal has to have also fortuitously and accidentally evolved some kind of instinct that responds in a beneficial way to said stimulus… how many coordinated and simultaneous other mutations have to take place across the organism, all of which unaided by natural selection, as until the organism experiences any benefit from light sensitivity, all these modifications are accomplishing exactly nothing.
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Now, given the way nature typically works, is it realistic that even 30 fortuitious mutations could show up in the realistic timeframes needed? Let’s even say it doesn’t need to be any very specific set of mutations, let’s give thousands upon thousands of options that would work in the 150+ length gene that would accomplish light sensitivity in the protein. Would it be that hard?
This could be a ridiculous comparison, but how hard would it be, over time, to randomly string together a mere 30 letters that corresponded to something im Shakespeare’s works? Again, wouldn’t have to be a specific phrase… any of the countless variety of strings of 30 letters in Shakespeare’s works. The simulator was run, and after 10^35 pages of output, the biggest match was a mere 23 letters.
Not that these are supposed to be analogous… but the question of, “only a mere 30 mutations” sounds simple, until I think about the real likelihood when we’re talking about mutating a 150+ length protein, the odds start getting ridiculous to get 30 gene changes in the just the right coordinated places in order to accomplish this relatively simple process, even over the many multiple generations were are talking about.
So yes, each of those independently examined doesn’t seem odd or extraordinary. But seeing them all together, and in conjunction, starts to get out of the realm of natural and into the obviously intended.
One last example. Let’s say we agreed to this experiment: You sent me a box just full of scrabble letters (I mean, a big box. Huge. Full of like the letters gathered from 100 games or something.) so we start this experiment:
Every day, I blindfold myself, randomly take one letter out of the box and mail it to you in an envelope And you examine what you get in the mail every day to see if you see anything suspicious.
And every day, you examine your letter, and nothing about it seems odd. Every letter you received is not extraordinary in any way. It is a genuine Scrabble letter. And no letter you receive seems improbable. The first day you get a “T” completely ordinary and within the real likelihood of any other letter. The next day you get an “O.” Again, nothing extraordinary about that letter, either,
But you start to notice something… as you start to get more and more letters as the weeks pass, you review what you received in what order. Day 1 was a “T”. Second day and “O.” Third day a “B.” Fourth an “E” (common letter, nothing extraordinary…) but then yoUkeep going… O… R… N… O… T… T… O… B… E… T… H… A… T… I… S… T… H… E… Q… U… E… S… T… I… O… N…
OK, so any particular letter you receive is completely explicable by the rules we set up, and consistent with the basic rules of random probability and distribution. But there comes a point where you will accuse me of cheating, and not selecting these letters “randomly,” and you will recognize intelligent purpose, even if the process was spread out over a long period, and even if every single step, examined independently, would show absolutely no evidence of any such intelligent agency. Would my intelligent agency be “detectable”? Every step along the way any intelligent agency is undetectable, no?
In other words The fact that God’s design may have been spread out across generations, each step undetectable as intentional design, would not mean, to me, that the final product must thereby for that reason be undetectable, as I hope that illustration demonstrates.
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This is not quite your argument. You start with “the process is impossible!” but have no proof that this is so. It would be easy to prove your elephant example would be impossible.
Nothing inexplicable when God is in control. Big difference there.
The 30 was just a random number for example’s sake. It might be 3,000 changes, but it doesn’t make any difference. The changes are all small steps, some in the right direction and some in the wrong direction, but all under the control of God. Again, why would it be any problem for God to direct the steps?
So you agree that God could have used evolution to create the design that we see? And since it is undetectable the theory of evolution can be taken as true if you wish to exclude God. So where does that leave ID?
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