Yet another conversation about how to define the Intelligent Design perspective

[Joao]

[quote=“Eddie, post:199, topic:3358”]
It [ID] is broad, with only a few unifying commitments: design is in principle detectable,[/quote]
No science there. What about manufacture?

and sometimes in practice detectable;

An empty claim with no scientific or mechanistic content.

neo-Darwinism and other evolutionary explanations of a heavily stochastic kind are very improbable and “design” is a better explanation.

No science there either. I do appreciate that you put “design” in scare quotes, though, as it is a very Humpty Dumpty term.

[quote] Beyond that, there is no unity in ID.
[/quote]There’s a lot more unity than that.

[quote=“Eddie, post:199, topic:3358”]
Republicans come in five or six different varieties, and not all their views are compatible; but they all agree that Obama and the Democrats have to be tossed out, so they work together on that basis.
[/quote]Colin Powell and Jim Leach are both Republicans and both endorsed President Obama.

[quote=“Eddie, post:199, topic:3358”]
I’ve never seen a disagreement between two BioLogos columnists over God or God’s role in evolution or how to read Genesis, etc.
[/quote]I’ve never seen any disagreement from ID leaders over Dembski’s definition of ID:

“Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.”

Have you?

[Joao]

@gbrooks9

>>I<< am the Theistic Evolutionist who would be so bold as to make this claim!:

Ah, but you haven’t been anointed by Eddie (the ultimate authority on both ID and TE) to represent TEs.

You just don’t seem to be getting how Eddie’s World works, George.

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

So @Eddie… what I have been trying to say is if we can reduce the acrimony…then maybe MORE people can see the UNITY between ID and TE.

Give it a try … REDUCE the acrimony.

George

[AMWolfe (Andrew M. Wolfe)]

Outside BioLogos and ASA, things may be different. For instance, I’ve observed conversations among proponents on Scot McKnight’s JesusCreed blog, where “RJS” writes on science-faith issues and several EC proponents mingle in the comment section, in which EC proponents say things like (paraphrasing, mind you), “I don’t believe design is in principle undetectable, but [1] I’m not convinced it’s been demonstrated yet, [2] we must be careful to avoid god-of-the-gaps thinking, and [3] as a matter of day-to-day scientific work, it makes more sense to pursue natural explanations as a research programme.” I’m not proposing this as my own thinking so it doesn’t merit dismantling in your response, but my point is merely that this position is in principle not hostile to ID (and yes, as João would hasten to insert, we’re talking about ID as a philosophical position rather than a truly scientific one). Yet despite being conciliatory towards ID, this sort of view is put forth (and not anathematized) in a forum that is pretty pro-EC.

[Joao]

[quote=“Eddie, post:203, topic:3358”]
Why should any ID proponent “publicly denounce” Dembski’s statement, even if he disagrees with it?[/quote]
For the very same reason you keep demanding that people on Biologos air their differences, of course!

Here’s what you wrote:

…I’ve never seen a disagreement between two BioLogos columnists over God or God’s role in evolution or how to read Genesis, etc. … Those differences are kept under wraps, for the purpose of concentrating efforts on destroying the enemy – IDers and creationists…

Changing only the nouns, we get:
There are very sharp theological differences among ID proponents, but there seems to be a tacit agreement never to discuss or debate them in public. I’ve never seen a disagreement between two Discovery Institute fellows over God or God’s role in intelligent design or how to read Genesis, etc. … Those differences are kept under wraps, for the purpose of concentrating efforts on destroying the enemy – evolutionary biologists.

It doesn’t follow that because someone doesn’t “publicly denounce” a statement, that the person agrees with it.

But it does follow that if you demand that one group discuss or debate their differences in public, you should hold your own group to the same or higher standard.

Why don’t you, Eddie?

[quote]It might be that a person disagrees, but doesn’t think the disagreement is over anything central and therefore doesn’t need to be aired. And for all I know, all ID leaders agree with Dembski’s statement.
[/quote]Either way, there’s no reason for you to demand that BioLogos’s leaders air their disagreements using the identical standard.

[AMWolfe (Andrew M. Wolfe)]

A positive side-note: Your posts on this thread over the last 24 hours or so have been very helpful for me to understand what exactly is the nature of the mischaracterizations against ID and what exactly ID actually is. After a while of observing frustrating back-and-forths I feel like the cards are on the table and it makes sense to me. We may not agree, but I consider myself considerably better informed. Thanks!

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

If everyone would resolve never to mischaracterize the position of others, due either to willfulness or to sloth in learning those positions, that would go a long way to reducing acrimony. Collins and Giberson have ratcheted up the heat by repeating the falsehood that ID insists on miracles; other TEs have promoted the falsehood that ID tries to prove Christianity true through science and thus makes faith unnecessary; while some ID or creationist folks have created bad feeling by accusing anyone who accepts evolution of being a Godless materialist who rejects the truth of the Bible.

@Eddie

Good … less acrimony. Let’s review your conclusions… or shall we say accusations ?

ONE:
You write: “Collins and Giberson have ratcheted up the heat by repeating the falsehood that ID insists on miracles…”

How is this an incorrect conclusion? I would propose that not only ID, but Theistic Evolution, insists on Miracles. That’s what God is in the loop for!

TWO:
You write: “other TEs have promoted the falsehood that ID tries to prove Christianity true through science and thus makes faith unnecessary…”

Who are these “other TEs” ?

THREE:
You write: “some ID or creationist folks have created bad feeling by accusing anyone who accepts evolution of being a Godless materialist who rejects the truth of the Bible.”

While technically speaking, they belong to ID … it is because all YEC’s technically belong to the category of Intelligent Design. But I find it helpful to use Discovery’s view that “Intelligent Design” is more about ALLOWING Evolution, than fretting over how much “design” is God-guided.

In other words. once someone in the Intelligent Design camp rejects evolution, they have essentially transformed into YEC’s.

@Eddie you are the only one I know who seems to insist on using the ID label to include Young Earth Creationists. Maybe you are perfectly correct to do so. But …

If this observation is correct, then you might as well stop using the term ID - - and start using
a term that makes it EASIER to distinguish between PRO-evolution camps and ANTI-evolution camps…

… rather than constantly conflate the two camps together under the increasingly confusing label of “ID”.

George

[Jon_Garvey]

AMWOlfe - can I just comment on your [3]?

Sidestepping the question of whether “natural causes” v “supernatural causes” is held by ID or EC people or both, it’s still a false dichotomy. If one has a theology that says natural causes are God’s secondary causes (ie that he creates through them), then “God’s work” will be seen in the product, regardless of the causation change.

Otherwise, it makes about as much sense as saying “We must keep looking for physical reasons for this blog post existing” as if one weren’t already thoroughly convinced that a person wrote it through physical means.

That means the practical way of doing science would not be to hammer away at “natural causes” until you can’t think of any more, but to get good at learning the delimitations of your job, in this case science.

After all, when I was doing medicine one of the tasks was do discover when something was, in fact, normal, and not to try to treat it.

If methodological naturalism becomes the principle that all is included within a boundariless science, then it’s actually functioning as metaphysical naturalism. For example, that happens if a biologist says “science can’t study final purpose”, and then concludes that for that reason “there are no final purposes in life”: he’s made a metaphysical statement, and indeed opted for metaphysical naturalism.

That may relate to [2] as well, in that the belief that there are no God-shaped gaps in reality is a metaphysical statement, which needs to be justified (especially if one believes in the Resurrection!)

I note that you didn’t propose this as your own thinking…

[Joao]

[quote=“Eddie, post:209, topic:3358”]
The two cases aren’t parallel. Theological differences don’t affect ID theory (i.e., design detection theory),[/quote]
There’s no such thing. If it was a real scientific theory, there’d be real empirical predictions, but there aren’t so it isn’t. And I’m pretty sure that theology has a huge effect on Dembski, since he says, “Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.” Note that “is just” clearly makes it a definition.

and therefore, where ID proponents are discussing ID theory in public,

What is this weird public/private obsession you have? What difference would it make?

[quote] there is no reason they need to talk about their theological differences. But they should talk in public about their differences on scientific matters – and sometimes they do. For example, ID proponent Sal Cordova has criticized ID proponent Granville Sewell’s thermodynamic arguments against evolution, on scientific grounds.[/quote]Sal? Really?

Why don’t ID proponents discuss publicly when the Intelligent Designer designed, who the Intelligent Designer is, and who/when/where the Intelligent Design was manufactured?

On the other hand, TE is not a scientific theory but a theological position: the position that God works through evolution.

Yes, it is, just as theological as Dembski’s.

And one can’t usefully say that God works through evolution without proposing some rough idea of how he works through evolution, and there theology comes into play.

And one can’t usefully say that an Intelligent Designer designed without proposing the identity, how he designed, when he designed, and how said design was manufactured.

Looks like you hold the TE side to a very different standard than the ID side, given the parallels.

A TE who won’t openly talk about his or her personal theology cannot give a coherent account of how God works through evolution,

An ID proponent who won’t openly talk about his or her personal hypothesis cannot give a coherent account of how the Intelligent Designer designed, when he designed, or how the design was manufactured.

since the “how” will be different when the theology is different.

The same goes for design.

So failure to say: “I don’t think God works that way, I think he works this way” renders TE impotent to accomplish its own self-appointed task of relating God to evolution.

So failure to say: “I don’t think the Intelligent Designer works that way, I think he works this way” renders ID impotent to accomplish its own self-appointed task of studying design in any scientific way.

[quote]It’s not my fault that TEs have chosen to defend a theological doctrine, whereas ID people haven’t.[/quote]“Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory,” sounds like a very theological doctrine to me.

That’s in the nature of the two beasties. They make different kinds of claim, and any comparative critique of the two will therefore have to focus on different things in each case.

Dembski’s claim is very theological, as is the Wedge document. And there’s this from Wells:

“Father’s words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.”
http://www.tparents.org/library/unification/talks/wells/DARWIN.htm

He was chosen by his religious leader to do battle with Darwinists. That’s not theological?

[quote]I promise that if TEs ever stop making theological claims, I will stop criticizing them for not debating their incompatible theological claims with each other. That seems fair to me.
[/quote]But you won’t criticize the ID movement for not even bothering to offer a truly scientific hypothesis, much less a theory, that covers the identity of the designer, when design happened, how it was implemented, etc.

And more importantly, none has publicly said anything AFAIK about Dembski’s or Wells’s theological positions, which is utterly parallel to your demand for a public theological debate among TEs.

[dcscccc]

do you believe that a minimal cell can evolve step wise from a soup of amino acid or nocleotides?

scientific experiment show for now that we need at least something like 200 proteins for a minimal cell:

How Many Genes Can Make a Cell: The Minimal-Gene-Set Concept

so why you believe against the scientific experiments?

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

Question 1 – By miracles I mean direct interventions into natural processes after nature exists, not the creation of nature in the first place. For example, some think that after God started the universe off with a Big Bang, galaxies and planets arose entirely by natural processes, without any direct input by God, but then life was created on earth by a special miraculous intervention. ID does not insist on such direct interventions, though it allows for them. Collins and Giberson say that ID insists on them. That confuses ID with creationism. Collins and Giberson have many times been corrected on this but will not budge, and will not even respond to arguments about it. This makes the ID people angry, and rightly so.

@Eddie

I think this one question alone deserves its own thread.

It would seem you go well out of your way to foment controversy. This is purely an issue of semantics… as you dance your jig fussing over terminology.

I think most everyone in this business would agree that whether in the act of creating the universe … or in the act of creating humans… there is a miracle.

So I would encourage readers to just ignore your pleas on this particular idea. Collins and Giberson are correct in insisting that ID requires at least ONE direct intervention somewhere.

How you think you are going to sell the idea that Intelligent Design could CREATE A SPECIFIC KIND OF HUMANITY without direct intervention at SOME point … I just can’t imagine.

George Brooks

[Tony]

@Eddie

@Eddie

ID does not insist on such direct interventions, though it allows for them. Collins and Giberson say that ID insists on them.

Collins and Giberson rightfully say that ID insists on them for the simple reason that ID insists on intervention outside of nature. Since ID insists on intervention outside of nature, ID insist on direct interventions. It does not only allow for them—it insists on them.

Your logic is faulty Eddie!

George is right—this is purely an issue of semantics.

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

@Tony

It’s clear that you don’t know the ID literature, but are relying entirely on hearsay for your view of ID.

And it’s clear, @Eddie, that you would rather ARGUE about it, than try to EXPLAIN it.

Perhaps it is because you do not have the disposition, patience or objectivity to offer explication.

George

[Tony]

@Eddie

@Eddie

It’s clear that you don’t know the ID literature, but are relying entirely on hearsay for your view of ID.

Well… you are supposed to be the ID expert here at BioLogos—aren’t you—therefore, shouldn’t that suggest that my hearsay carries weight? Put another way, although my knowledge of the ID literature is based on hearsay, if your knowledge of ID is correct, and your explanation of its theory is correct, if the ID theory is false, it still remains false.

So, thank you for putting your foot in your mouth and explaining to us why Collins and Giberson say that ID insists on direct interventions, thus providing us with evidence that ID is lying when it says that it doesn’t insist on direct interventions. The Intelligent Design that ID believes was necessary for the first life is necessarily a direct intervention outside of nature. Therefore, by the horse’s mouth, ID insists on direct interventions.