To Capitalize or Not to Capitalize? ID Theory vs. BioLogos

Faith & Science Conversation
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“What I’m missing is why this is so important to you.”

This isn’t about me. It’s important for people to hear the story straight, rather than necessarily crooked without being explained why.

The OP simply contains evidence from a small amount of research done in response to a claim by one of the most active “editors” of the DI’s “ID theory” materials, who works for the Discovery Institute, and who claimed that she had seen upcase usage “Intelligent Design”. I hadn’t seen it, and still haven’t from DI leaders or CSC fellows.

Do you dispute the evidence provided above? Welcome if you do. Please add something of value by producing new evidence, rather than just saying it can’t be so.

I can understand why Collins did this.

Why not say then why Collins wrote “BioLogos” and Rana capitalized “Designer”? I have my “understanding”. Please be welcome to state yours openly, to see if that understanding is shared or not. (Chapter 10 of Collins’ TLoG should help as primary source.)

It actually does help to selectively capitalize though. And that’s why people, not unqualified or silly ones, including the President of BioLogos, have distinguished it as quoted above. I stand behind those reasons as well. Your doubting that it helps is duly noted, but unconvincing so far. Personal experience adds that I’ve seen it make a significant difference, and also witnessed a general trend over the last decade, noticing now more people doing it; all of them non-IDists.

It’s 100% a writing, not a speaking issue, to be clear, Marty. The context makes it much easier for “ID theorists” to double-talk in one than the other. Why don’t you think it helps to communicate as clearly as possible in writing, instead of needlessly double talking?

“I don’t see a connection between capitalization and whether or not people are scoundrels.”

Almost all of the people I met at the Discovery Institute’s summer program were nice, kind people. I wouldn’t call the DI staff or DI fellows I met “scoundrels” at all!

Instead, they simply deviate from the “norm” when trying to force new vocabulary on natural science the way they have been doing and by “double talking” (it’s not a flattering expression, granted, but best suits what’s actually going on with their “style sheet”, and “movement”-oriented ideology; they have a significant legal advisory group, unlike what is required at RTB - I’m open to a more accurate term for what they are doing linguistically).

The DI’s “scoundrel-ness”, as you indicate it to be called, comes from their refusal to discuss “design theory,” “design thinking”, “design history” and “design studies” by professionals across several fields since the 1960s, all the while trumpeting “design theorists” as somehow persecuted in the academy, some kind of a sign of an impending “design revolution!” (different than at the Stanford D-School, apparently) as if they’re collectively the next “Isaac Newton of information theory” & leading “design theorists” of a “new era” of natural science. NB: they get away with this, only by double-talking “Divine Design” (“Intelligent Design”) with “human design” (intelligent design). Mt. Rushmore, mousetraps, etc.

The DI leaders and “ID/creation scientists” during this “corona moment” have demonstrated theoretical upheaval, fissure, and self-contradiction. It’s a rough time to support “ID theory”, unless one confuses “intelligent design” as a “strictly natural scientific” theory with “Intelligent Design” as an apologetics strategy and political-educational movement. Did Intelligent Design Just Miss Its Corona Moment? | American Scientist

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“Maybe it’s to differentiate…”

Maybe what’s to differentiate? You’re suggesting Collins coined “BioLogos” when thinking about other languages than English?

Collins wrote about why he did it. Chapter 10 TLoG. “Option 4: BioLogos.”

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Collins had to have been thinking in English if he was wanting to indicate both biology and “Logos” as in the Christian religious sense because to my “Greek eyes” (I’m Greek Australian) it reads “life word” with no indication of anything Christian or religious.

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I wasn’t serious. Just pointing out that capitalization or not, there will be misunderstandings.

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“I wasn’t serious”.

Yes, obviously, because Collins didn’t leave room for “maybe”. He stated it clearly. I was wondering why you were leaving room for doubt.

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Yes, Collins was thinking in English, drawing on Greek.

“My modest proposal is to rename theistic evolution as Bios through Logos, or simply BioLogos. Scholars will recognize bios as the Greek word for “life” (the root word for biology, biochemistry, and so forth), and logos as the Greek for “word.” To many believers, the Word is synonymous with God, as powerfully and poetically expressed in those majestic opening lines of the gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). “BioLogos” expresses the belief that God is the source of all life and that life expresses the will of God.” - Francis Collins (TLoG, Chp 10)

Notice this closely, as it speaks directly to the OP and Collins capitalizes “Intelligent Design” as now most non-IDists do:

“Unlike Intelligent Design, BioLogos is not intended as a scientific theory. Its truth can be tested only by the spiritual logic of the heart, the mind, and the soul.” - Collins (TLoG, Chp 10)

Contrast this with “ID theory”, which is explicitly intended as a scientific theory according to DI leadership, and it’s easy to see where the problems start arising.

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Because I have a sense of humor (albeit a mostly unappreciated one on this little website), and the fact that we are on post number 27 of a conversation about the capitalization choices surrounding three words is amusing to me. So I felt like bringing up bug pictures. That’s all. Carry on.

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Yes, humour is sometimes hard to see online. I didn’t notice that you were joking about why Collins coined “BioLogos”. Since he wrote what he did, I just thought you’d point to that instead of joking that he had “other reasons”. Now that it’s revealed you were “only joking”, we can carry on with the truth in front of us. Thanks.

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We do have some pretty good people here for bugs and spider questions, so don’t dismiss those questions

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BioLogos cannot be a scientific theory as it is well outside the reaches of science. God created and sustains the universe and everything in it, all of life, but the means are spiritual and cannot be studied as science.
Intelligent Design however can be a scientific theory. There is plenty of evidence that life has an intelligent basis, both in its creation and in its modes of operation and change. I don’t see where the problems are that you are suggesting “start arising”. Maybe you can explain it to me.

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… off-topic …

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Capitalized “Intelligent Design” translates directly as “God did it.” Since the DI refuses to study the who, when, where, and what questions regarding the supposed “design process”, this makes its “theory” incredibly weak, speculative, and presumptive.

In short, if Christians put “ID theory” together it makes Christianity look terribly myopic.

There is no evidence of “Design instantiation” in ANY ID theory work. That crushes the “power” of ID theory to being almost meaningless scientifically. The only reason anyone would embrace “ID theory” after the Dover trial is because they wish to use it for “theistic science” apologetics purposes. This makes it a highly offensive “theory” posing as “strictly scientific”.

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Well I am not a Christian. I am a Shiite Muslim and I believe Intelligent Design is definitely a genuine scientific theory. I agree though that the DI is not interested in looking into the who, when, where and what questions. What they are putting forth e.g., irreducible complexity is too weak.
We can see evidence of Design. I am not going to discuss my work here but I will say that in cancer for instance, there is a clear tangible example. The research shows that the body creates cancer stem cells and they are not stem cells gone awry. Every cancer is a novel creation. That can’t be possible if there is no Intelligent Design. I would describe cancer as stem cell mediated immunity, erroneously ignited owing to false belief that the individual has reacted to. The reaction is somatic.
This shows:-

  1. That God did it. God created the DNA as a formula of sorts. And created it in such a way as to be able to be used in novel ways by the organism, if there is a requirement to do so.
  2. The organism can make changes and create new structures. So the organism is a co-creator.
    I don’t know anything about any Dover trials. I’m Australian. However, I don’t see this as any attempt to make for a theistic science. The problem that does exist is that only the somatic changes can be studied. The thoughts /ideas that the individual reacted to are not within the realm of science because they are not physical. And scientists have the notion that “if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist”. The evidence though is right before our eyes, if we study the science.
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Thanks for sharing your background. It helps for communication between us.

“I believe Intelligent Design is definitely a genuine scientific theory.”

QANON is also a “theory”. Do you believe it too?

As for me and the people I know, we don’t “submit” God to scientific theories to put God to the test. Why do you?

“This shows:- That God did it.”

Sorry, but no scientific theory shows that. It’s wishful thinking at best, and turns to blasphemous when speaking on behalf of “what God did” using scientific language. That’s not what natural science studies; instead you should turn to theology, working together with science and philosophy in collaboration. Elevating ID theory as “strictly scientific” unwisely imbalances the triad and turns theology into a handmaiden of Science.

“I don’t know anything about any Dover trials. I’m Australian. However, I don’t see this as any attempt to make for a theistic science.”

There’s a lot of reading material available to show how the DI is promoting “theistic science”. Are you aware of “cdesign proponentsists” yet? The USAmerican bastardization of “the design argument” into “ID theory” (qua revolution!) really is a site to behold for people who would never have imagined how far fanatics would push the idea. In English language, the term “design” has been stained for decades by the DI’s public relations approach to “science”, while they totally avoid “real design thinking” that has been done by competent and active scholars around the world.

The DI & people who claim “God did it” should be called and counted as “science” are outliers, indeed.

The Muslim philosophical school that embraced “occasionalism” (e.g. al-Ashari, al-Ghazali) has some similarities to the IDM. Unfortunately, it appears that occasionalism led to the decline of Muslim science, rather than to its flourishing. Or at least that’s a standard “western” view, while I haven’t yet seen or heard a Muslim view that addresses occasionalism today. Please recommend some reading in this regard if it’s familiar to you.

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@Gregory @Marty @Dale @Laura @SkovandOfMitaze
I am a scientist first and then a Christian.

I make a distinction between creation and design. Creation can include both living things and non living things, but only non-living things are a product of design. Living things are a product of growth, learning, and evolution – all processes of self organization. This does not occur in a vacuum but in an environment that can include helpers like shepherds, teachers, and parents, and for this reason “creation” is still applicable.

This is not a completely sharp line however. It is possible for things to be both. This is why there is something called genetic design or genetic engineering, and generally these produce things which are really a product of both evolution and design where we have mixed and matched evolved features of organisms by genetic recombination. After all there is continuous spectrum between living and non-living for I certainly think that abiogenesis is on the right track to discovering the origin of life. But when we do design our own genetic thing from scratch then I do not believe there will be anything alive about it. A machine is a machine regardless of whether it is made of metal or biocarbons.

Life is highly quantitative, not only in the numbers of self-organizing processes, but in a hierarchical organization, as well as the speed and scope of the key aspects of living organisms such as awareness, responsiveness, making choices, and learning. Viruses for example, generally have almost none of these on an individual level. Any awareness, responsiveness, choices, and learning is pretty much only at the species level, where it is still pretty effective at learning ways around our defenses. Of course I don’t attribute anything like the human mind to a virus. I just don’t buy into our restriction of such things as awareness, choices, learning, consciousness, and even intelligence to the human mind alone. With computer programs defeating us at our hardest strategy games in ways we never anticipated, the restriction of intelligence to the human mind alone doesn’t seem all that reasonable to me.

So… I certainly believe in the intelligent design of the universe. Some aspects of natural law may have in some sense evolved and been a result of spontaneous symmetry breaking processes but by in large I do think it was designed for the purpose of life. But I absolutely do not believe in the intelligent design of living things – that is a contradiction in terms and a reduction of living organisms and human beings to machines and clockwork mechanisms. This is a notion which is downright evil – degrading all living things and making them tools made for an end rather than as an end in themselves.

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So what do these things mean to me?

Awareness: the gathering of information about something. All living organisms gather information about both the environment and themselves. It is a necessity for life so that they can respond to environmental challenges and to maintain their own structure and operation. Thus I consider this to be awareness and self-awareness.

Choices: This is when events can go more than one direction and which direction is taken is not determined by pre-existing conditions. We find this described in chaotic dynamics as “bifurcation.”

Learning: This is the gathering of information about what works and what does not work. By “works” we mean what successfully handles challenges to survival or to the fulfillment of some desire. Thus evolution is a learning process where the information is stored in DNA.

Consciousness: Combines all three of these above and connects them so that self is given ownership over some of the choices which are made so that these and other learning expands and develops the sense of self.

Intelligence: By following a set of rules, an algorithm can be employed which is theoretically capable of immense feats of engineering and strategy. This has been demonstrated by computer software.

Notice that nowhere in these definitions is there any mention of a mind, language, or human beings and thus I see no reason not to attribute these to all living things which do all of these things to various degrees. And some of these, like awareness, choices, learning and intelligence, doesn’t even require life. Why not consciousness? It is difficult to see how the self can really be responsible when everything is a product of design rather than self-organization.

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I absolutely do not believe in the intelligent design of living things – that is a contradiction in terms and a reduction of living organisms and human beings to machines and clockwork mechanisms. This is a notion which is downright evil – degrading all living things and making them tools made for an end rather than as an end in themselves.

Yes, I agree this is one of the many problems with “ID theory.” They don’t wish ID theory to be “reductionistic”. Yet at the same time, the DI’s leading IDists all fall quite easily into “design universalism”, where they cannot limit “design” and believe “everything is designed”. This is irresponsible of the DI, yet they have been more than willing to speak irresponsibly as long as it serves their ID Movement, with it’s educational-political mission.

Sadly, the DI’s IDists simply cannot see the underbelly of the beast of burden they’re now riding, enamored as they are chanting “revolution!” with a newly minted theistic quasi-science ID theory that they use as apologetics.

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Perhaps you may need to include intent, act/outcomes and resulting judgement, all within the term ‘intelligence’.

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I considered making a response but doubted I could do a good job without a better explanation of your terms. Some things I suspect have more to do with consciousness which all living things have to some degree by the nature of the process of life. Others might be abilities people like to include in intelligence which are just a part of the peculiar mix of many abilities which they identify with human intelligence, but which I find too anthropocentric to require for that word because what computers do just looks too much like intelligence to me to ignore. Computers obviously don’t have many abilities we have since they are not even alive. And then there are the things we have by virtue of language and human communication, some of which computers might be said to have as well.

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You’re sounding like the political media, where creative negative spinning of meaningless flowery language passes as content. C’mon! Point out something specific, or stop this empty ranting.