Will Intelligent design ever be accepted if no naturalistic explanations can ever be found?

[johnheininger]

"First, scientific disagreements are not resolved by debates.’

Actually, all scientific disagreements are resolved by debates. That is precisely what peer review is all about.

"Can you point me to a single case of an ID proponent rigorously testing an ID hypothesis?

Yes! As I have already pointed out, the ID hypothesis is tested out all the time by every person who has ever existed, and by everyone engaged in science. I would be very surprised if you yourself lived your life on any other basis. Namely, the hypothetical premise that you lived in a universe that was “irrational” and “non-intelligent” Nor do I know of scientists who operates on the hypothetical premise that they apply their vast rational and intellectual resources to an "irrational and “non-intelligent” universe - Do you? Everyone any of us functions on the self-evident hypothetical premise that we live in a universe that is both “rational” and “intelligible”, including you. It is impossible to do science or live life our lives on any other basis. Thus, you do not need “hard work” to “rigorously test” a hypothetical premise that is foundational to life and science. It’s a shame you missed it. And the fact that opponents of ID seem unable to grasp or discern this self-evident reality simply staggers me.

I need to remind you that the pioneers of modern science were theists who clearly saw evidence of an “intelligent” transcendent “self-existing” first cause at every level all around them. They knew this because everything they ever observed in the universe was dependent on a external cause beyond itself to explain its existence, including the running down dying universe itself. A universe that these scientist, and every scientist since, has noted could not explain or sustain itself, and was undergoing radiometric and biological decay.

All scientists know that nothing ever observed in the universe was self-explaining or self-existing" And thus these scientists logically saw that the only philosophical and scientific answer for cosmic existence was the necessary existence of a non-dependent “transcendent” self-existing first cause - God: Because the alternative was an infinite regress of dependent causes where no preceding cause had the capability to bring itself into existence. Not ever, forever! And thus there was never a philosophical or scientific basis for cosmic existence.

So, if you know of anything in existence in the universe that is self-existing and self-explaining with godlike creative capabilities tell us all what it is. As a juicy Nobel Prize awaits you, and we can all dismiss God.

Moreover, these scientists saw clear evidence of this “intelligent” first cause and “intelligent Design” around them, at every level. So compelling is this “teleological” evidence for God existence that the Apostle Paul declares that humanity is “without excuse” based on this reality alone. Indeed, the acknowledged initial minimum entropy state of the universe affirms that the universe “started out” in a state of maximum order, information and optimum usable energy: Affirmed by the initial necessary fine tuning of the cosmological constants and the initial precisely balanced state of subatomic particles. Had it been otherwise there would be no universe. As noted by Templeton award winning physicist, Paul Davies. Attempting to reconcile this initial tailor made cosmic state with a universe supposedly evolving to increasing order remains the unsolved paradox of origins science.

Evidence of Intelligent design surrounds us on every side: The unity and highly structured cosmic order; the unique water molecule; the inherent natural patterns; natural laws, mathematical relationships and predictability; multitude combined factor essential for a life supporting terrestrial plant; the origin of life and consciousness; the breathtaking complexity of DNA genetic coding; the superbly integrated and coordinated nature of eco-systems, and the vast environmental matrix of interdependent and co-dependent life forms are all clear evidence of an “intelligent” cause, and “intelligent Design”.

Meaning, theists who argue against “intelligent Design” thus operate on the alternate premise that they live in an undesigned “unintelligent” universe, created by an unintelligent god.

I frankly find it inconceivable that any theist would argue against “intelligent design” and absorb the anti-ID misotheism actively propagated by a largely atheistic scientific community fully committed to “metaphysical” naturalism and godless materialism. Another name for this godless philosophical worldview is “scientism”, not science.

Can you see your problem?

[Joao]

@johnheininger

Me: "First, scientific disagreements are not resolved by debates.’

Actually, all scientific disagreements are resolved by debates. That is precisely what peer review is all about.

No, John. They are not. If you disagree, kindly tell me how the following two disagreements were resolved by debates and not new data:

1. the prion hypothesis
2. the hypothesis that bacteria cause stomach ulcers

Again, you need to show me how people in the field were convinced by rhetoric and not new data.

Peer review is not debate.

[Mincaesar (Marlene Crowe)]

I’m really with you on this, in that on the grand scale, it is God’s science, that we are discovering. The scientists will continue to learn it, and share with us the many beautiful intricate secrets, but no matter how you slice it, the natural process is His. Without His ID, we would not be here. The complexities of the universe, and even the “simple” cell, just could not have self-assembled without an initial designer, who incorporated everything necessary to develop and create what we see today. I wonder if the differences between ID and Biologos are non-issue, but as James Stump wrote earlier here, does irreducible complexity theory mean scientists should stop trying to understand the natural process? No, I agree they should not, but does natural process really mean there is not a guiding hand behind it? IMO if you invoke creator in even one aspect of natural science, then you must invoke His hand entirely.

[Relates (Roger A. Sawtelle)]

@johnheininger

Meaning, theists who argue against “intelligent Design” thus operate on the alternate premise that they live in an undesigned “unintelligent” universe, created by an unintelligent god.

John,

The problem is not whether the universe is designed or not. The problem is not whether God designed the universe or not. The problem is, How does God design the universe, esp. the bio-world and human world? This where Intelligent Design the scientific theory fails, as opposed to the theology of God the Intelligent Designer.

First of all let us accept the scientific premise that evolution is based in part on “natural selection.” Does this mean, as atheists would claim, that God has no hand in natural selection because natural is defined as the opposite of divine? Of course not.

We know that God created and designed the forms and content of nature, so God is fully able to work through and with natural means to create life and human beings. However that knowledge is still theological/philosophical and not scientific. So the scientific question is still, How does God work through natural selection?

One way would be to create the universe in such a way that would predetermine its outcome. This of course is the old argument, which I would reject for various theological and other reasons.

Atheists claim basically that evolution is based on chance, however it is clear from all the evidence that natural selection is not based on chance, but is rational and determinate. Therefore natural selection is teleological by definition. Therefore it is natural selection that drives and gives shape to evolution.

The problem is that science and creationists have been stuck on understanding evolution as being driven by genetic variation, which is in large part random. Thus they have failed to comprehend the actual nature of natural selection, which is the fitness based on the ability of life forms to adapt to their environment, that is their ecological niche or create a new one. The old answer to this question, “survival of the fittest” is neither rational nor determinate.

We must stop the old arguments and look for new solutions for this debate. Ecology is a new understanding of how our world works, different from the old gene based view of Neo-Darwinism. It allows for a clear way out of the old stalemate. It means that all sides must give a little in order to gain a lot. However it also means people must be willing to change and to admit that their views are not completely correct, which is not easy for many.

[Joao]

[quote=“Eddie, post:25, topic:217”]
Your posts indicate a notion of science as pure empiricism.[/quote]

No, they don’t, as my pointing out the falsehood of the claim that “Actually, ALL scientific disagreements are resolved by debates,” cannot logically be equivalent to me claiming “science as pure empiricism.”

Moreover, falsely attributing a position to me is not a good way of starting a conversation.

But data are not self-interpreting.

I never said they were. What’s your point?

Data need to be assembled in the form of an argument for or against something.

No, they don’t. The data come from testing hypotheses, and the new data go into modifying or generating new hypotheses. Then they are tested empirically.

Often the data do not point clearly to a single answer, and different scientists, equally technically competent, conclude different things from the data.

And when that happens, scientists in the real world create and test hypotheses to resolve their differences. Pseudoscientists are the ones who do nothing and pretend that never happens, because they lack faith in their hypotheses.

[dcscccc]

hi joao, i think we can actually test id in the lab. show us that animal without eyes evolve an eyes step wise- and you will falsified id.

[Joao]

@Eddie

The cosmic microwave background radiation that tipped the scientific world in favor of the Big Bang theory was just radio noise until the discoverers of the noise reasoned out what it meant. The “data” was in before they realized the significance of it. When they later heard about the prediction of residual radiation from the Big Bang, they used their reasoning and made an inference.[/quote]

So the debate was resolved by data. We agree that John’s claim, “Actually, all scientific disagreements are resolved by debates,” is false.

[/quote]But they didn’t generate that data in reference to any hypothesis about the origin of the universe. The data emerged as a by-product of something else they were doing.[/quote]

Your point? My point is that John’s claim that all disagreements are resolved by debates is false.

Someone could have all the “data” in the world and not have a clue what to do with it. What’s important in science is the rational connection of data – to other data, and to hypotheses and theories.

Do the data just fall down like manna, or are the data almost always coming from rational testing of hypotheses and theories?

Many zoologist, botanist and geologist contemporaries of Darwin had vast stores of “data” about living things; Darwin’s contribution was to see connections between the data and offer an explanation of the data in terms of a general theory.

Are you claiming that Darwin didn’t contribute any data?

What I was primarily responding to was your oft-repeated criticism of the notion of “debate” in science.

And the example you gave demonstrated that my criticism of John’s claim was valid!

You have many times before here scorned the idea that scientists “debate” anything.

That is utterly false, Eddie. I am scorning the specific idea that “Actually, all scientific disagreements are resolved by debates.” That’s very different from the position you are falsely attributing to me. I doubt that you could find anything written by any scientist anywhere that scorns the idea that scientists debate anything.

But scientists debate things all the time.

But they don’t think that the debates DECIDE anything. That’s what data are for! Generally, debates help the debaters agree on what experiments will distinguish between the competing hypotheses. Some of us can even entertain two or more competing hypotheses within our own minds!!!

In the course of their debate, they naturally must refer to data. But they do debate.

I have never denied that they do, and it is malicious of you to attribute that to me.

I don’t know why the word “debate” bothers you so much.

That’s the third time you’ve made a false attribution.

[quote]I’ve known dozens of scientists, and I’ve read countless things written by scientists, and I’ve heard countless scientists interviewed in the media, and I’ve frequently hear them refer to scientific debates over this or that.

Indeed. But John is claiming that the debates decide things, not that new data do. Can you grasp the difference, Eddie?

[Joao]

@Eddie

…But many of his intellectual peers contributed just as much data, yet did not arrive at his conclusions.[/quote]
Virtually all of them eventually did on the basis of data.

My point was that neither the collection of data by observation, nor even the generation of data by experiment, necessarily produces any great new insight. The scientists who make the great leaps ahead are generally those who see significance in the data that other scientists don’t see.

Generally, not at all. There are some cases of that, but generally the scientists who make the great leaps ahead are those who produce the data.

I agree that “resolved by debates” was too strong a statement.

That’s good that you can agree with me and disagree with John. But you are not addressing your false portrayal of my position as “scorning the idea that scientists debate anything.”

However, quite often a period of debate precedes the “resolving” of anything, and that period of debate is not a waste of scientific time, but helps to prime the mind to accept the relevant data when it comes along.

My point is that the data resolve the debates, not rhetoric. You’re arguing against a straw man.

In other places on this site, under other names, you have used the term “debate” derisively, as if mocking those who think of science as involving the activity of debate.

It appears that you are changing to a slightly different, but still false representation of my position.

I had in mind those other places, and was reading your current remark in that broader context. So there was no malicious intention on my part, but merely an accurate memory of what was said on other occasions.

Your representation was simply false.

[quote]However, if you will now confirm… then I won’t return to this point again.

You’re in Monty Python Black Knight territory now. False statements like “Actually, all scientific disagreements are resolved by debates,” should always be challenged.

[Joao]

@Eddie

I said that the scientists who made the great leaps ahead were those who best grasped the significance of the data.[/quote]
And I say that you are utterly mistaken in presenting this as retrospective.

You are missing all of the creativity that goes into devising tests of one’s hypothesis, for what are to me obvious reasons. You are desperately trying to pretend that scientists don’t look forward, they only look backward and sift through piles of data that are supplied by scientists of lower castes, then have debates with each other.

The reality is that the key to great leaps involves BOTH analysis and new data, and the brilliance tends to precede the data, not follow it. Acknowledging that reality, however, would also mean acknowledging that the ID movement only pretends to be serious about science.

The point is that piling up data, by itself, is no mark of great science.

Of course. The point is that creatively producing new data is the mark of great science. Sometimes a single, brilliantly-designed experiment is enough to make a career. The number of such cases dwarfs the number of cases you are trying to pretend are the norm.

The vast majority of living scientists have helped to increase the amount of data available;

There’s that silly caste thing you’re trying to promote.

[quote] only a very small fraction of those scientists are great scientists (as opposed to mediocre scientists, competent scientists, or good scientists). The great scientists are great not because they have produced twice as much data as other scientists, but because they see twice as far into what the data mean.

Nope. They are great because the data they produce have twice the impact.

You’re ignoring the thinking that goes into testing hypotheses. Why, Eddie?

[Joao]

[quote=“Eddie, post:34, topic:217”]
…I said nothing about castes,[/quote]

You expressed your contempt for producing data. You wrote, “What’s important in science is the rational connection of data – to other data, and to hypotheses and theories," and “The scientists who make the great leaps ahead are generally those who see significance in the data that other scientists don’t see.”

Nothing in either of those about the scientific process underlying the vast majority of great leaps–generating and devising tests of hypotheses, which generate the most significant data that resolve debates.

and nothing against the process of devising tests for hypotheses,

See the quotes above. I am pointing out that you consistently omit it. How is my characterization of your contempt for empirical science inaccurate?

…and I certainly did not represent science as sifting through piles of data and then having debates.

That’s precisely the way you put it, completely omitting creatively generating and devising tests of hypotheses, You keep omitting the creativity and labour involved in getting all that data because no one in the ID movement does it in any significant way.

[quote]That is the Baconian conception of science, and it’s that very conception I was writing against.
Great scientists usually have gifts both in proposing hypotheses and tests, and in interpreting new data; I never said or implied otherwise.[/quote]

Sure you did! You wrote, “The scientists who make the great leaps ahead are generally those who see significance in the data that other scientists don’t see."

What I said was that there was no automatic relationship between having lots of data under your fingertips and drawing insightful conclusions from the data. I do not see why anyone would contest that statement.

I’m contesting what I quoted directly for its strategic omissions. It’s only slightly more sophisticated than JohnZ’s.

I believe that you once intimated to BioLogos readers (indirectly, through a remark made by the then-President of the organization which you did not challenge) that you had worked at the Wistar Institute.

That is utterly, totally false, Eddie. I never told anyone in any organisation anything of the sort, nor did Darrel Falk nor anyone else from Biologos ever write that I had anything to do with the Wistar. It’s impossible to have a dialogue with someone who throws out new false claims with every round. Kindly support your claim with evidence or apologise and retract it.

[Professor_Tertius]

@dcscccc

i think we can actually test id in the lab.

Why do you assume that it needs to be tested in the lab? Lots of things get tested in science that could never be tested in a lab.

Also, your example tests evolution of a complex structure and thereby falsifies ID? That seems to assume that evolution and ID are exact antonyms. In any case, lots of complex structures which Dr. Behe thought couldn’t evolve step-by-step actually do. The Dover Trial transcript even includes many of the specific scientific papers which Behe admitted knowing nothing about.

Of course, that is why the entire Discovery Institute ran to the airport and left town just before they were scheduled to testify in the Dover Trial–despite the fact that they had asked to be allowed to testify. Clearly, they realized that their arguments had already been shredded in Behe’s cross-ex and they disappeared before a P.R. nightmare was on their hands and future donations to the Institute were imperiled. If they had had a solid case for ID, they would have stayed on the trial schedule.

[Paul_Lucas]

Cornucopian: “One of the main arguments against ID is the accusation that it is an argument from ignorance or that is a science stopper. Personally, I think such claims are false and silly but people are entitled to believe in what they want. ID is falsifiable but not evolution.”

Yes, ID is not only falsifiABLE, but has been falsified. And yes, the statement about the flagellum could not evolve is one place where ID is falsified.

In general, we do consider manufacture by an intelligent entity when there is no process in the environment that can produce the item. Behe actually states this idea, but without realizing what he has done:
“For a simple artificial object such as a steel rod, the context is often important in concluding design. If you saw the rod outside a steel plant, you would infer design. Suppose however, that you traveled in a rocket ship to a barren alien planet that had never been explored. If you saw dozens of cylindrical steel rods lying on the side of a volcano, you would need more information before you could be sure that alien geological processes – natural for the planet – had not produced the rods.” Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, pp 195-196

See? “alien geological processes”. Process in the environment.

So your claim and Behe’s is that the processes in the environment – natural selection + chemistry + biology – cannot produce a flagellum. There have been several refutations to that claim. One of the major problems of Behe is that he has a strawman conception of natural selection. You also have one. In a later post you say " Natural selection is a pure random process". It is not. The selection part of natural selection is pure determinism. You also say “We see again and again that natural selection struggles to fix advantageous traits unless they provide a strong benefit”. That too is wrong. The equations are very clear: fixation will occur, it just takes more time with weaker selection coefficients. Also, fixation is NOT required for evolution to happen. New complex traits can evolve in the large part of the population with the individual trait.

One general objection to your claim is that more primitive forms of the “flagellum” did provide benefit to the bacteria – but not as a flagellum. This is called “exaptation”. What you should read is read this paper:
A Classification of Possible Routes of Darwinian Evolution
Richard H. Thornhill and David W. Uussery J. theor. Biol. (2000) 203, 111-116
available online at http://www.idealibrary.com or http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/staff/dave/articles/jtb.pdf

The paper demonstrates that ANY complex structure can be reached by 1 or more of the 4 routes of natural selection.

There are many refutations out there for the claim that evolution cannot produce a flagellum. Kenneth Miller does a good job showing the flaws in the argument (starting with the fact that many flagella do not have the full complement of parts) in Chapter 5 of his book Finding Darwin’s God. He also looks that the religious problems of ID. For instance, if God directly manufactured the complex flagellum, why didn’t He manufacture a repair system for intervertebral discs? Does God enjoy watching people live in excruciating pain because of His failure to manufacture the appropriate system? Or does God enjoy watching rabbits eat their own feces because He, although He did manufacture the enzyme to degrade cellulose, He put it in bacteria living in the rabbit’s large intestine instead of the rabbit’s pancreas? ID is supposed to “prove” the existence of God. But “proving” the existence of a a sadistic god is not helpful for your salvataion, is it?

For a more detailed discussion of the evolution of the flagellum, see
5. Evolution of bacterial flagellum: http://rnaworld.bio.ku.edu/ribozone/resource/transport/Ian%20Musgrave_flagella.htm
http://saier-144-51.ucsd.edu/~saier/bimm130/reading130/week4/paper4c.pdf

[Paul_Lucas]

Eddie: " As for your claim, “lots of complex structures which Dr. Behe thought couldn’t evolve step-by-step actually do”, it’s a gross overclaim. You can’t provide a single example of such a complex structure. "

Based on a symposium held at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, 26-28 March, 1992. Published 1994. The review is in the Quarterly Rev. of Biology, 70:499-500, 1995 by N.E. Wells. The relevant quote is “Perhaps the most egregious error [by anti-evolutionists] is chemist Behe’s stress on the rarity, complexity, and improbability of any particular workable protein (meanwhile mangling Richard Dawkins’s metaphor of monkeys typing sentences), with no conception of the positive role of cumulative selection. Behe also makes a horrendous hash of whale evolution and, suitably, demands exactly the fossils that Gingerich and Thewissen have since produced.”

So, one claim of Behe’s about complex structures (surely a whale is complex) shown wrong.

In Darwin’s Black Box Behe names both the clotting system and the immune system as IC and cannot be produced by evolution.
Evolution of blood clotting:

1. Doolittle RF, The structure and evolution of vertebrate fibrinogen: a comparison of the
   lamprey and mammalian proteins. Adv Exp Med Biol 1990;281:25-37
2. Gray JE, Doolittle RF, Characterization, primary structure, and evolution of lamprey plasma albumin. Protein Sci 1992 Feb;1(2):289-302
3. Doolittle RF, Feng DF, Reconstructing the evolution of vertebrate blood coagulation from a consideration of the amino acid sequences of clotting proteins. Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol 1987;52:869-874
4. Patthy L, Evolutionary assembly of blood coagulation proteins. Semin Thromb Hemost 1990 Jul;16(3):245-259
5. Blake CC, Harlos K, Holland SK, Exon and domain evolution in the proenzymes of blood coagulation and fibrinolysis. Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol 1987;52:925-931
6. Doolittle RF, The evolution of vertebrate blood coagulation: a case of Yin and Yang. Thromb Haemost 1993 Jul 1;70(1):24-28

Evolution of the immune system:
2. G Beck and GS Habicht, Immunity and the invertbrates. Scientific American, 275: 60-66, Nov. 1996.
3. GW Littman, Sharks and the origin of vertebrate immunity. Scientific American, 275: 67-71, Nov. 1996.

Behe made some calculations about the impossibility of 2 mutations for choloroquinone resistance in a bacterium. He was wrong:
9. Durrett and Schmidt paper showing Behe’s calculations in regard to 2 mutations for chloroquinine resistance in P. falciparum are wrong. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=2581952&blobtype=pdf
http://www.genetics.org/cgi/reprint/181/2/821b

You should also look at these papers observing the evolution of molecular IC systems. Note the dates. Behe was falsified in one case 55 years before he wrote Darwin’s Black Box

1. BG Hall,Evolution on a petri dish. The evolved beta-galactosidase system as a model for studying evolution in the laboratory. Evolutionary Biology 15: 85-150,1982.
2. BG Hall, Evolution of new metabolic functions in laboratory organisms. in Evolution of Genes and Proteins ed. by M Nei and RK Koehn, Sinhouer Associates,Sunderland, MA, 1983. Also described at http://biocrs.biomed.brown.edu/Darwin/DI/AcidTest.html
3. H. J. Muller, “Reversibility in Evolution Considered from the Standpoint of Genetics,” Biological Reviews 14 (1939): 261-80. Muller does not, of course, use Behe’s term “irreducible complexity.” Rather he speaks in terms of irreversibility: you can add something extra because it’s merely advantageous. But, once it becomes essential, you can’t remove it. Irreducible complexity means that evolution is not reversible. Refutes Behe some 55 years before Behe published.

"Behe has made clear all along that his target was the particular conception of step-by-step evolution characteristic of neo-Darwinism. "

Oh NO! In Darwin’s Black Box, Behe starts off by saying: “This book is about an idea – Darwinian evolution – that is being pushed to its limits …”

Nothing there about neo-Darwinism. At the end of Chapter 1 Behe states:
“The scientific disciplines that were part of the evolutionary synthesis are all nonmolecular. Yet for the Darwinian theory of evolution to be true, it has to account for the molecular structure of life. It is the purpose of this book to show that it does not.”

Very plain. Behe is not after neo-Darwinism, but Darwinism itself.

And he is so modest at the end of the book. Chapter 11:
“The result of these cumulative effects to investigate the cell – to investigate life at the molecular level – is a loud, clear piercing cry of “design”! The result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be regarded as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. The discovery rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schrodinger, Pasteur, and Darwin.”