To inform myself, I googled the question: “tow the line vs toe the line?”. Idiom Tips: Tow the Line or Toe the Line? My preferred source agrees.
Then I’ll stick to pointing out that an individual’s laziness,[1] lack of attention,[2] willful ignorance,[3] misplaced arrogance[4], hypocrisy [5] or dishonesty[6] is the source.
Such as citing sources they haven’t read, or not bothering to Google something before claiming it doesn’t exist. ↩︎
Such as responding to a post without reading it. ↩︎
Such as refusing to check references provided to show them where they are wrong, or repeating the same claim after it’s been refuted multiple times. ↩︎
Such as claiming knowledge or expertise they clearly don’t possess. ↩︎
Such as demanding others research claims they have make without any research at all. ↩︎
Such as making things up, or posting things even though they know they might not be true. ↩︎
I suspect that this is one case where crossing the pond would change things.
There is also the precise definition of Creationism. ID appears to equate to Biblical creationism not Scientific creationism.
Both ID and Complexity are seen as in direct opposition to evolution rather than being able to be incorporated into it.
Richard
An example might have changed this, as might remembering which side of the pond I’m on.
I’m filing this under ‘Laziness’ and ‘Lack of attention’.
Biblical creationism invokes the Bible, especially Genesis.
Scientific creationism does not mention the Bible.
ID does not mention the Bible.
I’m filing this under ‘Lack of attention’ and ‘Wilful ignorance’.
To clarify.
ID is not considered a valid argument in science, and as such may not be included in the science curriculum within state Schools in the UK.
There is nothing to prevent the discussion of ID or irreducibility outside the scientific classroom.
Richard
Yes. “The correct phrase is “toe the line,” meaning to conform to rules,
originating from military/naval discipline where soldiers/sailors placed their toes on a line:
While “toe the mark” appeared earlier [than tow the line] (1812),
the first written instance of “toe the line” is in
a 1738 military memoir…”
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So I’ll give you this last time to expel this toxic stuff out of your system.
Everyone knows how some non-theists feel about these matters.
And most everyone knows that you share many of these feelings regarding
mainstream Christians who embrace God Guided Evolution. We’ll all let
you vent. But if you do it again, I’ll be compelled to take Christy’s most
extreme advice: ignore your posting.
Perhaps you should look in a mirror before making these judgements. Specifically
That you have the authority over and/or knowledge of, a person to make these judgments.
(Not to mention BioLogos guidelines)You realise that you are claiming not only superior knowledge and understanding, but “perfect” knowledge and understanding that cannot be challenged or disagreed with.
Richard
ID is a self-described “big tent”. It includes Raelians, who claim that the intelligent designing was advanced technology of space aliens. It includes relatively agnostic “I think there’s a designer but am not too sure who”. It includes various Christians and other religions. But it also markets itself as Christian apologetics, even when the author denies that Jesus is the Messiah. It includes people who accept an old earth, young earthers who are not too happy about the poor quality of standard commercial YEC, etc. But the popular ID is careful to preserve its market with YEC fans who don’t know the difference.
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ID doesn’t rely on YE or de-novo creation, it just suggests that it is not due to pure chance. There are those who suggest some sort of universal communal conscience instead of a deity but God is the more usual nominated intelligence.
Richard
It seems to me that you’re inferring something like: not pure chance ⟹ intelligence (usually God). But that inference isn’t logically necessary. I once knew a man who explicitly identified himself as an agnostic atheist and held that the universe is rational—by which he meant coherent, law-governed, intelligible, and structured in a way that “makes sense,” not conscious or purposive. In such a view, order and intelligibility do not entail a designer. So the move from “not pure chance” to “intelligently designed” reflects an additional metaphysical commitment, not a logical entailment.
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There is the notion that order or even design can be by necessity as in the only possible solution, The upshot being it will inevitably occur. I guess that is a philosophical standpoint that is hard, if not impossible to counter.
what is, is?
Richard
What would scientific evidence for guidance in evolution look like?
guidance by what?
Aliens?
This is not a too unusual scientific fiction premise? e.g. “Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy” and “Jupiter Ascending”. Still it would violate a fundamental scientific premise that nobody is arranging the evidence to deceive us.
God?
To me it would look like a scam, propaganda, and a failure to follow scientific methods.
The objective evidence of science exists because of the mathematical laws of nature describing events which are a part of its space-time structure. God is not a part of that structure. Thus any so-called evidence of guidance would necessarily point to aliens rather than to God. It is reasonable to suppose this is part of the alien deception. What is their end-game? Are they trying to convince us God does not really exist?
Not just by what, but for what, i.e. to what purpose? The motives of the guider would be critical. As Neil Tyson once noted, an intelligence just ten percent smarter than humans would be so much more brilliant we may as be kindergartners trying to grasp calculus (without instruction) – in which case it is not clear that we would either be able to grasp what evidence for design would even look like, and definitely come up lacking if it was done so as to keep it hidden from us.
Invalid conclusion; it assumes that God cannot alter the system from outside.
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I think we could detect guidance (in a broad sense) without needing to ask “by what”. The early pioneers in genetics were able to test for guidance using some ingenuous but simple experiments. They were asking a foundational question: Do beneficial mutations occur in response to an environmental challenge, or are beneficial mutations stumbled upon in a random fashion (i.e. a Poisson distribution). What they found is beneficial mutations occurred in the absence of the environmental challenge instead of as a response to those challenges, and did so in a random fashion.
The results of those experiments could have been different. It could be that bacteria have some sort of mechanism that allows them to mutate a specific base in a specific gene that results in antibiotic resistance, and this mechanism is triggered by the present of antibiotics. Initially, you would only see the strong departure from a random model, as well as the mutations appearing only when they are needed. What is causing this departure from randomness would be the focus of further study. As mentioned in an earlier post, it could be that bacteria just happened to have a naturally occurring system that allows them to specifically mutate genes in response to environmental challenges, but it doesn’t appear that these systems exist in bacteria or in other life.
note: One could make an argument for CRSPR/Cas9 producing guided mutations in a very narrow set of conditions, but I am talking about genetics in general.
There is simply no way to SCIENTIFICALLY DETECT divine guidance - - in a broad sense or narrow sense. This is where I.D. fails us.
G.Brooks
Does the intelligence of the posters here cover a greater range than than +/- 5%?
Obviously we all have above average IQs, but how much above average?
Guidance could be detected, however. In some sense, one could argue that natural selection is a type of guidance. There are obvious cases where the fluctuation in alleles within a population are not random. I would agree that divine guidance, a subset of guidance, is not scientifically detectable.
In SOME sense. But not in any scientific sense…. and in a poor philosophical sense.
Can you give examples where such “guidance” was NOT provided?
G.Brooks