Would you mind answering the question? There’s no trap here, I’m just asking for your view. It has nothing to do with confirmation bias or not understanding ID.
No one has a detailed account of how intelligent design occurred.
…or that any gods exist.
That wasn’t actually the question. The reason I am asking the question is that you previously asserted “Behe’s first contribution to ID thinking was the concept of irreducible complexity, which is wholly validated by semiotics”. Do you think that Behe believes irreducible complexity has been “wholly validated by semiotics”? How many people actually believe that irreducible complexity has been “wholly validated by semiotics”?
And back to the question, do you agree with Behe’s statement or not?
That is incoherent. The fact that IC is validated by semiotics has nothing to do with whether or not anyone can provide a detailed accounting of how intelligent design occurred.
You are still dodging the question. I am asking you if you agree with the statement I quoted from Behe. There is nothing incoherent about this. It’s this kind of question dodging and inability to give straight answers which contributed to me being totally turned off ID, despite me originally following it with great interest and hope for its promise to contribute solid answers to the issue of creation.
And again, do you think that Behe believes irreducible complexity has been “wholly validated by semiotics”? How many people actually believe that irreducible complexity has been “wholly validated by semiotics”?.
I answered your question Jon, unambiguously → “No one has a detailed account of how intelligent design occurred.”
Your stated reason for asking the question (i.e. my claim that IC is validated by semiosis) has nothing to do with whether or not anyone can provide a detailed accounting of how intelligent design occurred. Whether or not anyone can provide a detailed accounting of how intelligent occurred does not alter the fact that IC is validated by semiosos. It is an incoherent line of reasoning.
a) Your question is one that you already knew the answer to. b) Your stated reason for asking the question is logically incoherent. d) I unambiguously answered your question. e) The exchange supports your decision to deny ID.
Notice a pattern?
Again, you keep espousing lines of reasoning that you must then evacuate in order to maintain your position. In your previous line of reasoning you asked a question in which you already knew the answer was negative. You asked this question in order to imply that a negative answer should carry some force in properly assessing the merit of ID. Yet when the same question is applied to your own position, you will immediately argue against arriving at the same conclusion.
You are now doing it again. Michael Behe believes that IC is validated by the flagellum and blood-clotting system. If what Michael Behe believes is a critical point in your reasoning, then you must abandon Darwinian evolution as the source of those systems. Is that your position? If that is not your position, then your question again loses any force in your reasoning, and becomes merely rhetorical, as did your previous question.
If you’d like to alleviate your reasoning from being incoherent and rhetorical, then you can do so by pursuing questions that actually assess whether or not particular arguments are valid and supported – not whether a particular person or group of persons believes in them. If you do not yet grasp the distinction, then here is an example: It does not matter if Michael Behe believes IC is validated by semiosis, it only matters if IC is validated by semiosis.
To answer your question directly, I do not know if Michael Behe has ever studied the issue of semiosis, and therefore do not know what his thoughts on the subject are. Even so, his thoughts on the subject do not alter the fact that IC is validated by semiosis. His thoughts on the matter can only become relevant if he provides reasoning that IC is indeed not validated by semiosis, and the reasoning he provides is valid and supported.
I won’t be holding my breath for that.
Can you elaborate on this? What does it mean? In what ways?
I think I’ve heard a similar line of thinking from John Lennox, but I’m not sure if you’re saying what he was saying…
I asked if you agreed with Behe’s statement.
My stated reason for asking the question (your claim that IC is validated by semiosis), has everything to do with the aim of my actual question (as opposed to the question you keep trying to answer instead), which is to determine whether or not you agree with the statement I quoted from Behe. I want to determine the extent to which you agree with Behe.
I agree. That is not my line of reasoning.
No I did not, or I would not have asked the question. Are you saying you disagree with Behe’s statement?
That’s not pertinent to my aim of my question, which is to assess the extent to which you agree with Behe. The fact that it’s very difficult to get IDers to explain the extent to which they agree with each other, does no service to their cause.
I agree. But this has nothing to do with my question. I am not trying to make the case that the validation of semiosis is affected by whether or not Behe believes it has been validated. Again you seem to be simply trying to second guess what I am aiming at, instead of simply answering a question after I have explained exactly why I asked it.
Thank you. Now the other question. How many people actually believe that irreducible complexity has been “wholly validated by semiotics”?
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Because I didn’t believe they were dodging the question and not giving straight answers. They were certainly not refusing to answer the question.
My experience with EC and ID is that EC answers questions I want answered, whereas ID typically ignores them or gives transparently inadequate answers. You look like you’re already moving towards a typical ID tactic of trying to tell me that the questions I want answered are questions I shouldn’t be asking in the first place.
I saw your questions answered.
How is this relevant to me objecting to you complaining recently about people not answering questions recently, when I see them answering your questions? Remember we’re talking about recently, not five years ago. You said this.
That was you talking about yourself expressing frustration yesterday, about what was happening yesterday. Not five years ago.
No, I’m talking about you becoming increasingly frustrated with what you characterized at the time as Biologos supporters not answering your questions at the time (not five years ago), about the extent of God’s involvement with creation. If you didn’t think they were doing that yesterday, why would you instead be expressing frustration about something which happened five years ago?
I agree. I am not making any judgments on what I haven’t seen.
Good grief Jon.
You quoted Behe and asked if I agreed with his statement.
My answer is the factual equivalent to Behe’s statement.
But “No, that’s evasive”. You want to know if I agree with it.
You want to know if I agree with the things I say
Doesn’t this kind of inanity get old? You want to know if I agree with my view if someone else says it?
I am thankful I do not have to substantiate my position with this kind of activity.
Why do you keep dancing around instead of just giving a direct answer? Previously you said “In your previous line of reasoning you asked a question in which you already knew the answer was negative”. that would mean you do not agree with what Behe said. Now you are (sort of), saying you do (without actually saying you do).
But let’s go with this for now. You are agreeing that “There are no peer-reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological systems occurred”. Can I ask why? How can you claim ID is vindicated if you can’t even provide a detailed rigorous account of how ID of any biological system occurred? How can you claim ID has been vindicated by semiotics if you can’t even explain how ID is supposed to have happened?
Meanwhile, how many people actually believe that irreducible complexity has been “wholly validated by semiotics”? Has any demonstration of this validation been published in any peer reviewed literature?
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This is a flat out misrepresentation. Here is the exchange again:
That is hardly ambiguous. You asked me if I agreed with the content of a statement. My stated view is the content of that statement.
This is another patently obvious misrepresentation. Here is what I said:
You must find this kind of incoherent all-over-the-place argumentation to be effective. I find it pointless.
Jon, there is no material observation I point to that is even controversial. Try to let that sink in. I have merely brought the data together from the literature so that it is accessible to interested readers – and I do not make observations that are not substantiated by that literature. That would be a colossal waste of time, as any unsupported observations I make would be pointed out to me in a matter of minutes by reductionists/atheists and their anti-design Christian bedfellows. However, given the spoon-feeding and misrepresentation on display in our exchange today (all of which you deny) it terrifies me to think of trying to get you to focus on critical data in the literature. There is also my personal experience of having meaningful exchanges with several highly-regarded scientists on these matters, and recognizing the vast distinction between that type of dialogue and what I suspect would be entailed with you (given this current exchange). The distinction between someone who is engaged in the evidence for the sake of reasoning (i.e. one who isn’t going to lower themselves by hiding behind rhetorical devices) versus someone who is merely dragging their feet, is profound. There is also the fact that I have already laid out many of the key observations regarding the argument to others on this thread, and you haven’t engaged in any of it. It reminds me to pick my battles and not waste my time. Your question about the literature doesn’t indicate any desire to actually understand the literature or the observations within it. Your question is just another rhetorical ploy, and it’s as transparent as the one you started with. (I have no doubt you’ll make this evident in your response).
Thus, there is a bibliography and a timeline on Biosemiosis.org that contains links to peer-reviewed papers of relevant concepts and discoveries. I have no intention of holding your hand. You can read for yourself. I suggest you pay particular attention to Pattee, Crick, Barbieri, and Koonin, for technical matters, and Polanyi and Pattee for scope. As I said, no material observation in the semiotic argument is even controversial, so grasping the issues is very doable.
If Dennis or someone else wants to explore my argument in earnest, I will be happy to return.