Oh BTW, I was considering doing a video to respond to your question about what would cause me to believe ID as the explanation is kind of hard to put into a comment. Would you watch that?
"I was considering doing a video to respond to your question about what would cause me to believe ID"
Don't you think you should straighten out your own arguments first? You are easily able to dismiss the unfathomably complex cellular apparatus as something that could (and did) come about by purely natural processes. No amount of design impresses you. Where is this blinkered confidence coming from? What metaphysical assumptions are guiding you to this "certainty"?
I merely don't make the assumptions you do. As I said I am not dismissing (dont know how many times I have to repeat this) I am trying to entertain your idea, but with all the insults and accusations that the only reason I could POSSIBLY disagree with your assumptions must be that Im some sort of dogmatist (which is itself very dogmatic) it becomes difficult.
"I am trying to entertain your idea, but with all the insults and accusations"
LOL. Spare the drama. I am happy that you are willing to entertain the possibility that natural causes my be insufficient to account for the unfathomable complexity of life. By all means, dissagree with me at the same time, but do so on the basis of credible naturalistic alternatives.
@IDtaksovr "Where is this blinkered confidence coming from?"
What are you talking about? Seriously are you joking? All I have done is said I have yet to be convinced. And instead of trying to convince me you freak out at me and make all these accusations. I say Im unconvinced and you call it "certainty"?
Because I have already explained this numerous times yet you keep erecting the same strawman. How can I consider that anything less than dishonest?
bleck I was trying to respond to all the misc comments I haven't yet but my browser is being a dick. Its not posting the first time I try and its making me reload the page everytime to post a comment. Will try again tomorrow.
I know that you're having trouble with your browser, but you have left a trail of unanswered question, failed to provide any reason why I should take any purely naturalistic theory of life's diversity seriously, and failed to provide any reason why I shouldn'tt entertain the possibility that certain features of the natural world look designed, because they really are designed? The best naturalistic explanation i.e.Darwinism, has failed miserably, while evidence for ID grows relentlessly
As have you. I dont think either of us should be expected to answer every single question given this format.
I didn't propose that any idea shouldnt be entertained, as you accuse me of (im attempting to entertain yours but your making it difficult).
And you should take everything seriously in an exchange like this. If I am taking your claims seriously and considering them, then its silly for you not to do the same. As for the "purely naturalistic" theory notion, EVERY theory...
"I dont think either of us should be expected to answer every single question given this format."
The question of what would convince you that seeking purely naturalistic explanations for the origin and development of life is a dead end, is a reasonable one. You should provide a straightforward answer to this question if you really are open to your position being refutable / not an apriori dogma.
"And you should take everything seriously in an exchange like this."
I take every possibility seriously, especially claims that purely natural processes can account for lifes diversity. I took Darwinism very seriously for many years. Currently, I find it to be utterly untenable, although I am open to the possibility that you have arguments that will resolve my doubts.
@IDtaksovr ...is purely naturalistic in the modern era. Science is a study of the natural world, not the supernatural. Science doesn't make claims about the supernatural because if such a thing exists its by its very nature an unknown.
2.hmmm which reality is that in then? Because in this reality evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology and is its only unifying theory. Its also one of the strongest theories in modern science, while ID is assumed by what, 1% of scientists?
"Science doesn't make claims about the supernatural"
ID doesn't require knowledge of the supernatural - merely knowledge of the abilities of intellegent agency / natural casuation. If I find a moble phone on a country path, do I need to appeal to the supernatural in order to conclude that it was designed? You are repeating a strawman.
"in this reality evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology and is its only unifying theory."
ID does not exclude the possibility of "evolution". ID disputes the powers attributed to the Darwinian evo mechanism. Darwinism is irrelevant to the vast majority of real time experimental biology, which is basically reverse engineering on the assumption of good design. Darwinism merely provides a rhetorical gloss ,once the problems have been worked assuming design.
Whenever a biologist studies a living system, he uses good design as a working hypothesis. i.e. he/she acts as if they are reverse engineering an intelligent design, just as rival companies reverse engineer their competitors design, or as humans would reverse engineer some alien technology. When they write up their papers, the pepper them with irrelevant homages to Darwinism, in order to demonstrate their commitment to Darwinism.
Does the above argument from authority mean that ID is wrong? Only 1% of scientists believed in heliocentricity at one point. While Darwinism is certainly the current orthodoxy, evidence for a consensus cannot be used as evidence for the truth of any theory.
@IDtaksovr Ouch. One comment in and already implicit assumptions are being made about me. Not good. I'm not a "darwinian mind" first. Second, no its not a 'good' thing based on evolution. In many social species rape causes social disfunction and is therefore punished by other social animals either by attack or 'exile'. Some it provides reproductive advantage. But scientific theories dont decide whats "good". Evolution no more says its good to rape, then gravity says its good to jump off cliffs.
"Evolution no more says its good to rape, then gravity says its good to jump off cliffs."
Of course Darwinism doesn't say that, because Darwinism invents it's fact free "just so" stories to sound plausible AND in keeping with currently acceptable norms. Should rape ever become acceptable practice in some society, the Darwinists will have no problem legitimising it as a positive force for evolution within their infinitely flexible interpretative scheme.
N..No.....It doesn't say that because as I said before science does not speak to what we should or should not do. That branch of inquiry is called "Moral Philosophy". But again what you call "darwinism" I dont think exists by the def. you provided.
"facts free just so"
While I agree with S Gould that attempting to establish things about protohumans and such ideas are "just so" I dont think they are fact free because they are based ON facts.
"science does not speak to what we should or should not do."
In practice, if Darwinism ever survives the science of the 21st century, humans wiil need to be governed from a position of "higher authority". Practically speaking, it is only a matter of time before an "is"becomes an "ought":
Evolution teaches that “we are animals so that “sex across the species barrier ceases to be an offence to our status and dignity as human beings.
Check out the website "Darwin says "just so" " . Darwinian accounts of how this or that adaption might have evolved are works of pure fiction, with no parallel in the serious sciences.
@IDtaksovr In addition I think if anything is about keeping with in social norms, its definitely ID, because the concept that there is purpose our existence, outside the purpose we have for ourselves, is perhaps the most deeply held concept people have. And thats part of what ID seems to propose. Though again such is purely philosophical not scientific. So u seem to have it completely backward here.
"In addition I think if anything is about keeping with in social norms, its definitely ID"
When The British empire was trampling over the world, Darwinism provided the much needed legitimacy - for killing lots of black people, and generally treating them like animals:
"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world…etc " (Charles Darwin)
@IDtaksovr You're appealing to a fallacy here. Asserting what will happen is not the same as saying what you wish to happen. He is not justifying such behavior, and infact spoke out many times on the injustice of invading europeans taking over/enslaving natives. There are several quotes I can find, on request, that demonstrate this
They certainly did NOT get that legitimacy from darwin as it was going on long before him and he even spoke out against it.
"He is not justifying such behavior, and infact spoke out many times on the injustice of invading europeans "
True. But he also stated that the extermination of the black races was perfectly natural. He may have personally disliked the practice, but it would, according to him lead to "the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." Darwin believed that the extermination of the weak by the strong is natural and leds to the development of higher forms.
" Darwin believed that the extermination of the weak by the strong is natural and leds to the development of higher forms."
Quite incorrect. To Quote perhaps his most famous line:
"“It is NOT the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”" And please keep in mind that 'higher' in this sense is euphemistic. One of natures greatest survivors is the lowly bacteria. Higher=/=Superior.
Your moving the goalposts. I recently planted two plants in the same pot. After a couple of weeks, one plant had starved the other to death after developing a superior root system. The weaker plant did not survive to reproduce. "the extermination of the weak by the strong is natural". bestiality is natural. Slavery is natural (ants enslave other ants) and rape is natural, so why should Darwinists not rape if this could help to spread their "superior" seed?
"They certainly did NOT get that legitimacy from darwin as it was going on long before him and he even spoke out against it"
A creature that allegedly evolved by a blind and purposeless process has no business questioning the wrongs of the very process of extermination that lead to the human mind. Darwin made plane that this process was natural, just as Singer believes that bestiality is natural. If something is natural, and has lead to the evolution of higher forms, then why not?
"the concept that there is purpose our existence, outside the purpose we have for ourselves, is perhaps the most deeply held concept people have."
No doubt this near universal sense of "purpose" can be explained as a vestigial evolutionary "quirk", that may have provided some limited reproductive advantage to our caveman ancestors (LOL). Nowadays we are force-fed the new dominant norm of meaninglessness, by the high priests of Darwinism.
@IDtaksovr Uh okay again, before you continue using that phrase you'll need to show me that people consider themselves 'darwinists' by the definition you laid out. Where are these people, because I continue to doubt they exist.
" sense of "purpose" "
Well I don't think sensing purpose is a genetic thing, its a psychological thing, so no, it wasn't due to evolution but how our psyche acts in response to the world around us. Genes only set up the ballgame, they dont play it for us.
Google "Richard Dawkins" and the phrase "a darwinian". You will find the worlds most famous Darwinist boasting about his pride in being called "a Darwinian" all over the net. Try his article "What Use is Religion?" to see how evangelical atheism meets evangelical Darwinism.
@IDtaksovr I am very well award of Dr D.s use of the term darwinian. And I oppose it. My favorite biologist of the last century used it as well. I think its misleading as so much has been learned about evolution and how it works in the last 150 years that it would trump anything Darwin could have imagined. His contribution to biology was certainly immense but evolution did not start with him, and certainly did not end with him.
"so much has been learned about evolution and how it works in the last 150 years that it would trump anything Darwin.."
This is irrelevant at present. You asked me to show:
"..that people consider themselves 'darwinists' by the definition you laid out."
I provided you with the worlds most famous popularizer of Darwinism as an example. Darwinism is the belief that life evolved by purposeless natural processes, with RM and NS the principle "creative" mechanism. Do you accept this?
@IDtaksovr "Nowadays we are force-fed the new dominant"
By whom? Scientists? No scientists don't force feed and generally aren't all that interested in even so much as public awareness. Teachers? No they generally just read out stuff and students regurgitate it. Parents? No if anything parents shove religion down our throats (mine every time I speak to them). I have never seen someone force any form of science on any one. Can you show me an example of this?
@IDtaksovr I wasn't thinking of him when I said that. I was speaking generally of scientists. It seems very strange for you to bring him up randomly. Or it would seem strange if not for the fact that every single ID advocate I have ever spoken to always brings up Dawkins.
I respect some of his work and have criticized him on many occasions, and I don't really see him as anything too special as a scientist to be honest. So I dont really know what you think it will accomplish to bring him up..
"every single ID advocate I have ever spoken to always brings up Dawkins"
I wonder why this is? Could it be that Dawkins is the worlds most famous and widely read populizer of Darwinism, by far. He has done more than any person on the planet to shape the publics view of biological evolution. True, he's a crummy scientist, despite holding a post at Oxford for years .... as Professor for Public Understanding of Science, LOL. It seems like Dawkins is a bit of a liability now, though
@IDtaksovr Nah. I think its because he is the worlds most famous atheist. Nothing is more easily demonized and I think the IDers I have spoken to cease on that fact.
"I think its because he is the worlds most famous atheist."
Are you denying that Dawkins is the worlds most famous populariser of evolutionary theory? Are we to believe that he has mislead countless millions of people on evolutionary theory, as expounded by him in numerous best-sellers.
Dawkins is a crummy scientist because he has contributed nothing lasting to biology, or even evolutionary biology. He has contributed nothing original that has not been rejected by fellow evolutionists. He is unable to separate his religious beliefs from his science.
"No scientists don't force feed and generally aren't all that interested in even so much as public awareness."
You mean the NCSE hasn't been set up with the purpose to sniff out and destroy deviant dogma's such as ID, and to force the orthodox Darwinian line on defenceless school children?
@IDtaksovr No, I don't honestly think that is an accurate description of the reality of the situation. The NCSE is an example of an organization of scientists dedicated to public awareness, but I never said that such did not exist, I only said that in a general sense (i e generally) scientists are not interested in public awareness. Neil Degrass Tyson and Carl Sagan among others who have been, often recount the less than enthusiastic response of their peers.
"No scientists don't force feed and generally aren't all that interested in even so much as public awareness."
So scientists don't lobby for public finance? they just creep back and forth from their bench to their lab in the hope thast some kind benefactor will give them the next $100 million installment of their research grant?
@IDtaksovr Again I fail to see how attempting to gain funds for research is "force feeding" anyone. Science relies on funds and society relies on science. Its a mutually beneficial endeavor. Of course ID proponents do this too. So if this particular example of yours is an example of science being force fed then ID is also force fed. I don't think either is the case. If I want to pick up a copy of their lit, I am free, if I prefer not, I wont.
"No they generally just read out stuff and students regurgitate it."
Are teachers free to point out problems with Darwinism? Are they free to discuss the philosophical foundations of Darwinism. Can they discuss the theological arguments used by Darwin in "The Origin" to advance his theory? Can they even mention alteratives such as ID?
@IDtaksovr No. The classroom is not a democracy. They are free to teach the material. A history teacher is not free to teach the alt view to whether the holocaust happened or not. If ID manages to go through the hurdles of peer review and become an actual theory, then and only then, will it be reasonable to teach. It is not sensible or fair for it to be taught until it has done what every other theory has to do. It has not and is therefore not fit to teach it.
Are you aware of the desparate efforts of darwinists in America, e.g. the NCSE and other secular groups, to prevent teaching the weaknesses of Darwinian theory to school children. I am not talking about teaching ID, but merely the weaknesses of the modern theory of evolution, as appearing in the peer revieved literature. These groups are simply terrified when it is suggested that students be encouraged to "think critically" about darwinism. Why?
@IDtaksovr You mean to prevent ID advocates from using the legal system to circumvent the scientific method in order to get their ideas into the classroom instead of going the route of the sci method which EVERY other theory has to do? How their campaign is a reaction to the antiscience meddlings of the ID movement? Yes I am aware. Problems of the theory ARE already taught, and the S&W strategy is meant to cast evo in a different light than other theories, to single it out.
"You mean to prevent ID advocates from using the legal system to circumvent the scientific method"
LOL. You've got it backwards. Devoid of any scientific response to ID, the Darwinists are using legal loopholes based on the American separation of church and state to keep out threats to their crumbling dogma. Forget ID for the moment, I specifically stated that Darwinists are even terrified to have there own theory taught critically.
"I have never seen someone force any form of science on any one. Can you show me an example of this?"
I don't mean force with guns and knives etc. I am talking about having the naturalistic / Darwinian worldview rammed down our throats. e.g. the New Scientist magazine truly evangelizes for the kind of naturalistic, materialistic, purposeless Darwinian worldview. I get immediately censored for trying to put the ID side to them.
@IDtaksovr You'll have to provide me an example of what you are refering to.
As for New Science that is to my view in no way shoving it down your throat. If you choose to read it thats your decision. Just like if I choose to read The Watchtower. On the other hand we have people who force their religion on their children using threats of torture and using guilt, as was the case with me.
@IDtaksovr In any event, I do think you know that "darwinians" w/e that means, do not find rape to be a good thing. I think you know that this question is a strawman. And I am not a 'darwinian' any way. I accept, of course his contributions to evolutionary theory, but I also accept those of watson, crick, gould, Mendell, etc... So If Im a darwinist you must also label me a watsononian crickite gouldian mendellist. All of which would be kind of silly. So lets not lump me into a catagory shall we
"So If Im a darwinist you must also label me a watsononian"
If you believe that the "creative" engine of evolution is the blind, undirected Darwinian mechanism, and that we must deny apriori the possibility of purposeful end-directed processes in nature, then you are a Darwinian, whatever good science you may believe in (Mendle, Crick, etc...)
@IDtaksovr Oh well by that def. I am DEFINITELY not a 'darwinian', But I don't really think any one else would be either. Can you show me an example of a person who claims such a position? Because I don't honestly think they exist.
As for darwins mechanisms being "undirected" they don't need to be because they are processes which themselves direct. Asking for a directing processs to be directed is redundant..
But of course evolution doesn't say that "we must deny the possibility of". NO scientific theory says that anywhere, because science is unable to speak to purpose. The concept of purpose has nothing to do with science. We could talk all day about the 'purpose' of rocks but that would CERTAINLY not be a scientific conversation about geology but a philisophical one.
"The concept of purpose has nothing to do with science."
You are confusing "science", in terms of a no holds barred search for the truth wiith "naturalism", which is a restricted veiw of science that assumes apriori, the complete absence of intelligent causation. Clearly we cannot know for sure that only natural causes have acted. What if intelligent causation did play a part in the origin and development of life. Then a dogmatic commitment to naturalism becomes science stopping.
And Darwin was NEVER about 'keeping within social norms' which is why he likened his idea to confessing a murder. Because society was so vehemently hostile to it. They still are. So that accusation seems to me to completely contradict our reality.
Also I think your implicit accusation that Darwin wasn't a "good" scientist is completely wrong too. Just because one disagrees with one or two of his ideas, one cannot reasonably deny that he made great contributions to science.
This is a seperate point. My point is that Darwinian theory has the infinite flexibility to accomodate any outcome - even those that are diametrically opposed. Whatever the socially accepted norm, it is always possible to present it ( retrospectively ) as a "finding" of Darwinian theory. When society changes, Darwinian theory changes to suit, accomodating to the evidence, like a fog accomodates to the landscape
@IDtaksovr Not true at all. Though life does prove to be immensely fluid in capacity to adapt to almost any available nieche Darwins theory necessarily leave behind a pattern like a branching bush or tree, from which genetically isolated organisms can not deviate. There is an almost infinite way organisms could contradict this principle, not the least of which is to find a transitional form intermediate between the wrong groups, a chimera species etc... Yet such has never been found.
"Darwins theory necessarily leave behind a pattern like a branching bush or tree"
I said this earlier. Naturalism effectively mandates some form of descent, and that leads scientists to interpret the data through the spectacles of descent. The "necessarily" part comes from a commitment to providing fully naturalistic explanations. Similarities are assumed to be due to common descent. Common descent is a methodology that governs interpretation of the data, not an undeniable fact.
@IDtaksovr No it does not. Naturalism is merely a rejection of the unjustified assertions of the supernaturalists. Saying something did not happen by magic is not the same as saying how something did happen. The rest is pointless conspiracy chatter, so ahem: "NUH UH"
Or I could launch into a conspiracy tirade of my own. The Intelligent Design advocates are the minions of satan marching on the street to eat our children! See how useful that was?
"Naturalism is merely a rejection of the unjustified assertions of the supernaturalists"
Yes, but it is a faith-based rejection. Where is your evidence that ID has never played a part in the universe? Where is your evidence that all of biology arose through (exclisively) natural causes. Can you prove naturalism is true, or do you accept it , on faith, like a kind of religious commitment?
@IDtaksovr No its not. I'm going to quote aronra because no one has better described how we classify organisms today. "The only way to objectively categorize all sorts of life is by their common characters, those features shared by every member of that collective and only by them. This is how their traits become diagnostic and directly indicative of unique groups."
Also Linnaeus' system of classification predated Darwin so it cannot be dependant on or defined by his theory.
"Linnaeus' system of classification predated Darwin so it cannot be dependant on or defined by his theory."
Exactly. Classification can be carried out without any reference to a theory of common descent. e.g. Cars may be classified, despite being designed. The belief that our ability to classify animals into groups within groups is due to some deeper relationship, such as common descent, is an assumption. We assume common descent, and then use it to interpret / filter the data.
@IDtaksovr No its not. Cars can be classified into a branching tree pattern but eventually and inevitably you will run into a closed loop in the tree, and if not, someone could eventually make it. This is because its a manmade heirarchy, not a natural one. Designers can swap ideas parts, whatever, making such heirarchies artificial. Common descent isn't an assumption its a prediction, one that has passed inumerable tests.
"Cars can be classified into a branching tree pattern.....This is because its a manmade heirarchy, not a natural one."
Darwinists use the fallacious argument that car evolution is analagous to biological evolution. Search under "berra's blunder". Common descent is an apriori assumption, which survives in the face of negative evidence by the creation of several adhoc mecanisms, such as convergent evolution. If common descent is a "prediction", how can it be falsified?
"There is an almost infinite way organisms could contradict this principle"
Every time the assumption of common descent is refuted, e.g. by finding nearly identical genes or adaptions or species evolving through entirely seperate routes (which is astronomically improbable), the mystical hypothesis of "convergent evolution" is invoked to save common descent. As I said earlier, Darwinian theory is infinitely flexible, and can accomodate just about any data.
@IDtaksovr Really? Then there must necisarily be a closed loop in phylogeny . Where is this mysterious gene? Link me to it on pubmed if you would be so kind. That was an excellently testable assertion you made. I look forward to seeing this evolution destroying gene.
"find a transitional form intermediate between the wrong groups, a chimera species etc... Yet such has never been found."
Massive anomalies in the fossil record are routinely ignored or written off, because some form of naturalistic evolution simply has to be true (apriori). With naturalism imposed, a mountain of contradictory evidence would not falsify Darwinism. Only a superiour naturalistic explanation could do this. ID is simply ruled out, no mater how compelling the evidence
@IDtaksovr Again, you aren't saying anything. Merely asserting such is pointless. Which fossils are these? Where are they? How are they directly against evolutionary theory? And how is this massive global conspiracy structured? Who enforces it?
e.g. the Cambrian explosion. Known about by Darwin and his contemporaries and hidden from view for several decades, it came to prominence once again when Gould came clean. Were Darwinian theory not protected by an apriori comittment to naturalism, and were it not currently the only naturalistic explanation for the origin of species, the Cambrian explosion alone would heve been suffiecient to consign Darwinism to the scrap heap of history.
@IDtaksovr That doesnt even come close to meeting your own criteria.
1. youre reffering to a LACK of fossils not fossils
2.The cambrian explosion is one of the most popular topics of evolutionary history, yet you claim its"ignored"? Sorry, no.
so first we find single celled organisms, then we find precambrian precursors to cambrian fauna, then we find cambrian fauna (all aquatic) Sorry whats the problem exactly?
The precambrian strata is replete with well preserved microorganisms, but none of the multitude of transitional forms that would be required to explain the dramatic appearance of representatives of around thirty phyla in 5 to ten million years. Its not a few fossils that are missing, but the whole trunk. A clearer falsification of Darwinism is hard to imaging - but the theory survives. Could this be due to its naturalistic underpinning?
"The cambrian explosion is one of the most popular topics of evolutionary history"
It was the least topic popular for several decades, as several generations of Darwinists decided to file the Cambrian explosion in the negative evidence drawer. Gould was vilified for ressurrecting the problem, but Darwinism, like any paradigm on it's last legs, has no where left to go now, exept to confront it's most serious anomalies.
"so first we find single celled organisms, then we find precambrian precursors to cambrian fauna, then we find cambrian fauna (all aquatic) Sorry whats the problem exactly?"
The problem is the enormous and pervasive gaps in this pleasant "just-so" story. After 150 years of desperately looking for the precambrian fossils that had to exist if something like Darwinism were true, we now have a fairly complete and reliable picture of precambrian life - the gaps are real.
@IDtaksovr Wait wait wait, so you are complaining that evolution isn't falsifiable enough for you....and then to replace it you demanded I believe in ID which isn't in ANY way falsifiable? But anyway I answered you on this and you seem to have changed the subject, I provided several falsification measures proving your allegation false. I don't suppose that you can do the honest thing and admit to being wrong?
"I provided several falsification measures proving your allegation false."
Perhaps I missed them among what are really a lot of irrelevant side issues that you are raising. Provide these examples again, and I will look over them very carefully. BTW. I have never met a Darwinist who has managed to provide credible falsifying instances of his theory. You will be the first
@IDtaksovr But I don't see how you can think darwin was a bad scientist but Mendel wasn't? It was exactly Mendel who used Darwins theory along with his own to create Modern Evolutionary Synthesis.
If I am reading too much into what you're saying let me know. I'm arguing against what I think you are saying because the use of the term 'darwinist' as you describe it doesn't seem to exist.
"I don't see how you can think darwin was a bad scientist"
I don't. Darwin did a masterful job of articulating the naturalistic evolutionary position by selectively assembling empirical observations around a preconceived materialistic framework. But Darwin would have rejected his own theory in the light of the unfathomable complexity we have discovered in even the simplest lifeforms. Darwinism survives today, due to a dogmatic commitment to providing fully naturalistic explanations
@IDtaksovr I am always perplexed when ID advocates assert that somehow billions of years of development would not predict or yield complex results. On the side of evolution it MUST be that organisms are absurdly complex given the amount of time even the simplest modern animal has had to develop. Extreme complexity directly points to a long process. There is no instance in reality where such massive complexity arises suddenly. And it doesnt point to design because design can be very simple too.
"I am always perplexed when ID advocates assert that somehow billions of years of development would not predict or yield complex results"
I am not at all perplexed when Darwinists assert that a few billions years of naturalistic evolution is sufficient to evolve the human brain ... without any evidence. Given that they rule out ID apriori, the reasoning goes that the brain must have evolved by some purposeless naturalistic process, and the Darwinian mechanism is the best they have.
@IDtaksovr What other mechanism do you propose. You seem to be very dismissive of the reasons WHY ID is not considered legitimate. It has no mechanism, its not falsifiable, it makes no positive predictions, and apparently has no application either. Therefore it is utterly useless to explain anything. Yet we can see the progression of the brain both in modern cousin forms and by tracing it back in the fossil record.
@IDtaksovr No, they dont rule it out a priori, they merely have no reason to believe it, and you've similarly provided me with none either. You don't have to rule out a priori that which has not made a cse worthy of consideration. Its really not some massive millions strong global conspiracy of science. Its much more simple than that: The failing of ID to explain or be useful. Simple.
"they dont rule it out a priori, they merely have no reason to believe it"
They do rule ID out apriori. Arguments that invoke ID are branded "non-science". You need to learn what those in your camp actually believe, so as not to waste my time.
@IDtaksovr "Arguments that invoke ID are branded "non-science"."
True. And why? well because science requires a few things. A theory has to be falsifiable (ID isnt) it needs to make positive predictions (id doesnt) needs a mechanism (nopers) to produce results (ha!) and, here's the big thing, for it to be a theory it actually has to be a framework. An unfalsifiable hypothesis ISNT a hypothesis.
""Arguments that invoke ID are branded "non-science"."
True. And why? well because science requires a few things. A theory has to be falsifiable (ID isnt)"
ID is falsifyable. simply provide detailed testable models for the evolution of biological complexity and ID will be refuted. Darwinism, however, is not falsifiable, because it rests on an apriori commitment to naturalism and a rejection of the possibility that ID is true.
@IDtaksovr There is no need for your massive conspiracy of millions of scientists. Even if such a thing were possible, its still not needed because ID meets none of the requirements of a theory. But evolution does, it has mechanism, it is falsifiable, it makes, and meets, predictions, it increases our knowledge and actually IS a framework. If ID could meet these criteria then it wouldn't be considered to not be science.
"There is no need for your massive conspiracy of millions of scientists. "
There is no need for a conspiracy, full stop. Just read your history and philosophy of science, and you will see numerous examples of the entire scientific community being deeply commited to theories that were seen with hindsight to be outrageously misguided / ideologically driven. Read: "the structure of scientific revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn.
@IDtaksovr If you want my position on evolutionary theory, its that evolution, of course, is a reality, but of course darwins ideas were incomplete. Anyone who thinks they were enough to explain all biodiversity is wrong on two counts. One is that as I have said we have added many new mechanisms and explained more about evolution than darwin could have ever known, and two because If history shows us anything its that...(cont)
"evolution, of course, is a reality, but of course darwins ideas were incomplete."
Of course it is, because you have ruled out any possibility of intelligent causation apriori, so effectively, some kind of naturalistic evolution becomes a philosophical necessity. Once ID is rulled out using extra-scientific philosophical / religious arguments, then you can safely say that Darwinism is a "fact".
@IDtaksovr I'm gonna ask you again to please not make assumptions about me. If you want to know my position feel free to ask but please do not assume then assert.
No. I havent ruled out the possibility of any intelligent cause, I merely haven't found justification to accept the claim of intelligent cause. And even if I did it was certainly not a priori because I my a priori position was that there was an intelligent cause, until my indoctrination wore off that is.
If the discovery of an advanced information processing system complete with an error correction mechanisms, quality control systems, a distribution system, tens of thousands of nano-scale machines, such as trucks, production lines, recycling plants, power plants, turbines, rotary motors, etc populating a fully automated self replicating factory complex isn't evidence of ID that exceeds the capacity of natural causes, then what on earth would suffice to convince you?
"my a priori position was that there was an intelligent cause, until my indoctrination wore off that is"
And now you are steeped in a new and exiting dogma called "naturalism", right? Slavish commitment to denying the possibility that intelligent causation may have played a part is a restriction of science. Did you consider the possibility that this new dogma may have blinded you to the truth?
@IDtaksovr No. Naturalism is not a dogma for one thing. And I certainly don't commit to any ideologue. I merely have yet to see any evidence that compels a belief in the supernatural. As I said before EVERY time we have in history ever assumed super natural conclusions they invariably turn out to be false. And there is no instance to my knowledge of such a belief ever advancing human knowledge. If you can provide any evidence that I am wrong I would apreciate it immensely.
"Naturalism is not a dogma for one thing. And I certainly don't commit to any ideologue."
Under what condition would you be willing to accept that certain features of the natural world are too sophisticated and improbable to be explained by naturalistic processes alone? Can you prove that naturalism is true?
@IDtaksovr When you can explain something with it.For example. Evolution explains why birds have the genes for making teeth, why we find birds with sarupod features and dinosaurs with feathers, but no frogs with feathers, why birds share DNA with dinosaurs, etc and ties all of these facts together into an explanitory framework. So do that with ID. Use it to make sense of all these facts in a superior way to evolution.
"Evolution explains why birds have the genes for making teeth"
This is nothing to do with "evolution". This is the hard science of genetics, which can be studied without any appeal to "evolution". Once the genetic code and development of teeth have been understood by the hard science, the Darwinists leap in with their speculative "just-so" stories about how teeth came to be in the first place. Darwinian evolutionary theory is parasitic on the hard biological sciences.
"Evolution explains why birds have the genes for making teeth, why we find birds with sarupod features and dinosaurs with feathers, but no frogs with feathers"
The problem is that depending on which genes you follow, it is possible to arrive at several contradictory "trees of life". Darwinists are starting to realise that the holy grail of zeroing in on a unique / tree has been a mirage. Massive anomalies have been found, that need to be explained away by convergent evolution etc
"I have yet to see any evidence that compels a belief in the supernatural."
ID does not aim to provide compelling evidence of the supernatural. This is a strawman. ID can provide compelling evidence to suggest that designs found in living organisms far exceeds the probabilistic resources of the universe. ID is offered as an "inference to the best explanation". Can you provide compelling evidence that everything that has ever happened in the universe is the result of natural laws?
@IDtaksovr Not really a strawman if Im not mistaken. I think it was you who brought up naturalism and the supernatural. I didn't say, or mean to imply, that ID requires supernatural causation.
"ID can provide compelling evidence to suggest that designs found in living organisms far exceeds the probabilistic resources of the universe"
"I think it was you who brought up naturalism and the supernatural "
I certainly brought up "naturalism", and you brought up "the supernatural". Whatever the means by which intelligent agency acts, ID may be reliably inferred in many cases. An inference to design is merely the first step, and this inference can be made without any knowledge of the ID'er. We infer that the Egyptian pyramids were designed, without requiring any knowledge of the precise mode of construction
"you were calling nonbelief in the supernatural "dogma""
I said that a dogmatic refusal to entertain the possibility of ID, and a dogmatic insistence that any amount of design, no matter how sophisticated and improbable, must be assumed to have arisen by exclusively natural processes, takes one into the realm of faith / religion etc. The dogmatic assumption of naturalism is effectively equivalent to the belief in a creator God that sets up the system, but does not intervene in it
@IDtaksovr All I have been doing is entertaining. The fact that I do not immediately jump to your preffered conclusion the second you say something does not make me a dogmatist, as you accused.
2.Of course its not because as I have already explained whenever we have ever in the history of mankind found an answer that actually works, it has always only ever been a naturalistic one, and has never been supernatural. It doesn't take dogma to choose the 100% success rate over the 100% failure rate
"I do not immediately jump to your preffered conclusion"
Excellent! It took me many years to see the error of my ways. I hope you question everything I say. Don't take the "dogmatist" title personally. Many people assume naturalism because the cannot imagine any alternative worldview. ID proponents believe that naturalism must be tentatively applied, rather than dogmatically assumed as the basis for solving every problem. It's application should be decided, on a case by case basis
"whenever we have ever in the history of mankind found an answer that actually works, it has always only ever been a naturalistic"
Thats clearly false....and a little dogmatic. When a detective solves a crime, he applies an ID methodology. How did the knife appear in the corpses back? Was it a natrurally occuring event? If we look hard enough for a naturally occuring explanation, might we eventually find one? Will it be the truth?
"It doesn't take dogma to choose the 100% success rate over the 100% failure rate"
Please don't try to play both sides. Don't act offended why I accuse you of dogmatism, only to make comments like the above. Perhaps it is because science is only now reaching the limitations of naturalism, that ID is coming to the fore. As for you "100% failure" of ID, you are simply unaware that ID is already being applied in many sciences: forensics, archaeology, cryptography, the SETI program etc.
@IDtaksovr Also, no. I said I was unconvinced of your positive assertion when you just rattled off a bunch of super neat and complex elements of the cell and then asserted "the intelligent designer done did it!" And then for not immediately jumping on your conclusion without looking at any other facts, you immediately slam me with the knee jerk reaction of calling me a dogmatist. THATS what I am refering to.
"I was unconvinced of your positive assertion when you just rattled off a bunch of super neat and complex elements....THATS what I am refering to."
I am not demanding that you accept ID, in the light of what we have learned about the unfathomable complexity of life. I merely ask you to admit the hopless failure of the current orthodox naturalistic explanation for that complexity i.e. Darwinism, and the fact that ID is known to be causally adequate to explain said evidence.
How do you know that? What if you come across some structure on an alien planet with absolutely no direct evidence that it was designed, but loads of indirect evidence that it was. Do you really need to know how an artefact came into existence, and by whom it was made, in order to make a design inference?
@IDtaksovr Why do you assume complexity and nonnatural design are intertwined? The most complex processes that mankind are aware of by far are all completely natural, vastly more complicated than any computer or machine. So we know that the highest complexity comes from the natural world. So obviously complexity doesn't require nonhuman design. So I don't know why you keep conflating the two.
"Why do you assume complexity and nonnatural design are intertwined?"
If you investigate any human intelligent design, you will find that it is both highly improbable and specified, in the sence that it matches some kind of pattern. Cells are both vastly improbable, AND, they are packed with the kind of machines that humans ID'ers manufacture and build.
"The most complex processes that mankind are aware of by far are all completely natural, vastly more complicated than any computer or machine"
You are begging the question. How can you possibly know that the origin of living systems occurred by purely natural processes? If you were to study an electic motor, you would not hesitate to assume that such a device would never occur without input from intelligent agency. Motors are the product of intelligence. The flagellum is a motor.
Yes. But perhaps cellular complexity still requires intelligent design i.e. intelligent design that is vastly superior to our own......or perhaps no design is whats needed, which is the naturalistic position.
Even the origin of the (hypothetical) first simple self replicating RNA strand is so vastly improbable that materialistic scientists feel they need to invoke the multiverse to acount for it's existence. Invoking the unobservable multiverse, in order to multiply the available probability resources, is an act of desparation. See: "The cosmological model of eternal inflation and the transition from chance to biological evolution in the history of life"
@IDtaksovr Not....really. The RNA world hypothesis has been confirmed fairly well in the lab. Scientists, mimmicking conditions of the early earth have managed to cause RNA to spontaneously generate (and self replicate). And that was researched figured out and carried out with in a centuries time. The actual doing was much quicker. And with the entire earth as its lab and trillions of tons of organic matter and millions of years, yeah its pretty statistically likely.
"The RNA world hypothesis has been confirmed fairly well "
Then why do ardent materialists need to appeal to the existence of the multiverse, in order to marshall the probabilistic resources necessary to account for the first self replicating DNA strand. The entire OOL field is in paradigm crisis at present. That's why Darwinists are desperate to dissociate themselves from its failures. Nothing is "fairly well confirmed" about any of it.
"Scientists, mimmicking conditions of the early earth have managed to cause RNA to spontaneously generate (and self replicate)."
I am not happy to accept an assertion here. Where is your evidence for this? Look into the details behind the claims, and you will find that nothing of the sort happened.
"And there is no instance to my knowledge of such a belief ever advancing human knowledge."
The founders of modern science were nearly all theists or deists. Isaac Newton laid the foundation for the modern scientific approach, guided by the belief that he was decoding God's blueprint for the universe. The dogma of naturalism began life as the theological doctrine of "secondary causes". Nowadays, biologists need expertise in design engineering in order to reverse engineer the cell
" guided by the belief that he was decoding God's blueprint for the universe"
show me exactly where that had a positive impact on his research. What content did he derive from the "gods blueprint" idea and how did he apply that to his work?
"Nowadays, biologists need"
Which wouldnt be needed at all whatsoever if organisms didnt evolve from precursor systems.
"show me exactly where that had a positive impact on his research."
Simple. Newton approached the universe as something that really did have a "blueprint", and more importantly, one that humans had the mental capacity to uncover. This gave him, and the entire scientific comminity, the basis on which to go looking for it, and to overcome setbacks and difficulties. The same ID perspective continues to underwrite and drive science today.
"there is no instance to my knowledge of such a belief ever advancing human knowledge"
When Darwinists prematurely conceived of the "junk" DNA paradigm, they suggested that it was reasonable to expect vast swathes of the genome to have no purpose. This science stopping dogma greatly hindered the progress of decoding the more sophisticated genetic processes. An ID perspective invites and encourages science to look for hidden function and is better suited to the biology of the 21st C
Sadly, it did for many decades. I lost count of the number of times that Darwinists raved about "junk" DNA as evidence against ID. They delighted in asking if an intelligent designer would fill our genomes with useless junk. Now, they are desperately rowing back from that foolish position. They were bady misguided by the Darwinian dogma, and too ready to see "junk", where the reality was that sophisticated reverse engineering was needed.
"my a priori position was that there was an intelligent cause, until my indoctrination wore off that is."
Having formerly been an atheist, I later realised that the main explanation for the origin of lifes complexity was a childs fairy tale, utterly unlike anything we find in the serious sciences. There is tons of evidence for some kind of connection between living organisms, but no evidence whatsoever that the blundering Darwinian mechanism can do much beyond trivial tinkering.
@IDtaksovr That was a completely empty rhetorical response. You haven't pointed to anything and provided no evidence so there isn't really much of a response one could give outside merely saying "NUH-UH!"
which would be silly. Though if your purported atheism (which I have to admit I am highly skeptical of) was based in any way on evolution then your atheism (at least if it were a positive position) was not founded on anything, because evolution does not have to do with whether god exists.
"That was a completely empty rhetorical response."
When you make an assertion without referring to anything, then it suggests to me that you are trying to duck my argument. What " empty rhetorical response." are you refferring to? We will see how empty it is.
@IDtaksovr "the main explanation for the origin of lifes complexity was a childs fairy tale, utterly unlike anything we find in the serious sciences. There is[...no evidence whatsoever that the blundering Darwinian mechanism can do much beyond trivial tinkering."
That means exactly nothing as far as I can gather.
"That means exactly nothing as far as I can gather."
A "childs fairy tale" is something that children may find believable and amusing, but that adults smile knowingly at. Darwinism really does fall vastly short with respect to the serious sciences, such as physics, chemistry and experimental biology, and the Darwinian mechanism is seen experimentally to be hoplessly unable to achieve any of the "miracles" credited to it. All of this will be evidenced in more detail as we proceed
@IDtaksovr Hmmm...Okay, so I am not getting it then. The fairy tales I know usually contain animals being poofed into being out of nothing, talking snakes, talking donkeys, witches, magic, spells, demons, angels, sayders, and people being wisked away in a tornado to magical lands.
And evolution has the practical entirety of the scientific community on its side, and ID is a laughing stock to the vast vast majority of the smartest most well educated people...
"And evolution has the practical entirety of the scientific community on its side, and ID is a laughing stock to the vast vast majority of the smartest most well educated people..."
Tut, tut. More appeals to authority. Did "well educated people" not que up to support geocentricity at one point. That should have made geocentricity true I suppose. Darwinism has wide spread support do to a dogmatic commitment to naturalism in science at present ..... but that is changing.
"And evolution has the practical entirety of the scientific community on its side"
The word "evolution" has a multitude of meanings, and everybody is on it's side in some sense. The minute you start to ask what exactly is meant by "evolution" and what credible naturalistic mecanism might plausibly explain evolution, the trouble begins. Tell me what you mean by evolution, and provide your mechanism.
@IDtaksovr No no no. I didn't call you a liar. I am merely skeptical that you were an atheist. I explain in another comment what I mean, but I will just regurgitate it here just in case. When I talk to theists (which I assume you are based on ur profile) I always have a different definition of what "atheist" means than they do. So when I use the word it might be so different from when you do that we aren't thinking the same thing.
"No no no. I didn't call you a liar. I am merely skeptical that you were an atheist."
I was an atheist in the sense of disbelieving in a transcendend God ( or any God ). I naturally complemented this belief by believing that the universe was a self creating, self enclosed system of cause and effect, which would have made me a philosophical naturalist. I now find both positions utterly untenable.
"evolution does not have to do with whether god exists."
Tell that to Richard Dawkins. Did he not write some book called "The God Delusion" or something, and was his alleged refutation of the argument to design by Darwinian evolution not one of his favourites? While Darwinism may not refute the God of deism, even in the massively unlikely event that it were shown to have the creative power to generate life's diversity, it would certainly refute any meaningful theism.
"was his alleged refutation of the argument to design by Darwinian evolution not one of his favourites?"
Nah. I read the book, as I recall it mostly had to do with refuting theistic arguments, and refering to religious fanatics. He did use evolution in his Ultimate Boeing 747 argument, which I have criticized numerous times, as it assumes the conditions of this universe apply to whatever else might exist.
@IDtaksovr Yeah wells is a genius. Burst a complex cell in a test tube, give it some food, and if abiogenesis is right it should spontaneously reassemble it self despite having lost its structure. In the same way our modern theories on embryology explain that if you explode a baby, then feed it a hamburger it will reassemble itself.
Oh BTW, I was considering doing a video to respond to your question about what would cause me to believe ID as the explanation is kind of hard to put into a comment. Would you watch that?
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"I was considering doing a video to respond to your question about what would cause me to believe ID"
Don't you think you should straighten out your own arguments first? You are easily able to dismiss the unfathomably complex cellular apparatus as something that could (and did) come about by purely natural processes. No amount of design impresses you. Where is this blinkered confidence coming from? What metaphysical assumptions are guiding you to this "certainty"?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Wow what happened to polite discourse?
I merely don't make the assumptions you do. As I said I am not dismissing (dont know how many times I have to repeat this) I am trying to entertain your idea, but with all the insults and accusations that the only reason I could POSSIBLY disagree with your assumptions must be that Im some sort of dogmatist (which is itself very dogmatic) it becomes difficult.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"I am trying to entertain your idea, but with all the insults and accusations"
LOL. Spare the drama. I am happy that you are willing to entertain the possibility that natural causes my be insufficient to account for the unfathomable complexity of life. By all means, dissagree with me at the same time, but do so on the basis of credible naturalistic alternatives.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr "Where is this blinkered confidence coming from?"
What are you talking about? Seriously are you joking? All I have done is said I have yet to be convinced. And instead of trying to convince me you freak out at me and make all these accusations. I say Im unconvinced and you call it "certainty"?
Because I have already explained this numerous times yet you keep erecting the same strawman. How can I consider that anything less than dishonest?
GallusSapien 9 months ago
bleck I was trying to respond to all the misc comments I haven't yet but my browser is being a dick. Its not posting the first time I try and its making me reload the page everytime to post a comment. Will try again tomorrow.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@Gallus
I know that you're having trouble with your browser, but you have left a trail of unanswered question, failed to provide any reason why I should take any purely naturalistic theory of life's diversity seriously, and failed to provide any reason why I shouldn'tt entertain the possibility that certain features of the natural world look designed, because they really are designed? The best naturalistic explanation i.e.Darwinism, has failed miserably, while evidence for ID grows relentlessly
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr
As have you. I dont think either of us should be expected to answer every single question given this format.
I didn't propose that any idea shouldnt be entertained, as you accuse me of (im attempting to entertain yours but your making it difficult).
And you should take everything seriously in an exchange like this. If I am taking your claims seriously and considering them, then its silly for you not to do the same. As for the "purely naturalistic" theory notion, EVERY theory...
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"I dont think either of us should be expected to answer every single question given this format."
The question of what would convince you that seeking purely naturalistic explanations for the origin and development of life is a dead end, is a reasonable one. You should provide a straightforward answer to this question if you really are open to your position being refutable / not an apriori dogma.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"And you should take everything seriously in an exchange like this."
I take every possibility seriously, especially claims that purely natural processes can account for lifes diversity. I took Darwinism very seriously for many years. Currently, I find it to be utterly untenable, although I am open to the possibility that you have arguments that will resolve my doubts.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr ...is purely naturalistic in the modern era. Science is a study of the natural world, not the supernatural. Science doesn't make claims about the supernatural because if such a thing exists its by its very nature an unknown.
2.hmmm which reality is that in then? Because in this reality evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology and is its only unifying theory. Its also one of the strongest theories in modern science, while ID is assumed by what, 1% of scientists?
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Science doesn't make claims about the supernatural"
ID doesn't require knowledge of the supernatural - merely knowledge of the abilities of intellegent agency / natural casuation. If I find a moble phone on a country path, do I need to appeal to the supernatural in order to conclude that it was designed? You are repeating a strawman.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"in this reality evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology and is its only unifying theory."
ID does not exclude the possibility of "evolution". ID disputes the powers attributed to the Darwinian evo mechanism. Darwinism is irrelevant to the vast majority of real time experimental biology, which is basically reverse engineering on the assumption of good design. Darwinism merely provides a rhetorical gloss ,once the problems have been worked assuming design.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"ID is assumed by what, 1% of scientists?"
Whenever a biologist studies a living system, he uses good design as a working hypothesis. i.e. he/she acts as if they are reverse engineering an intelligent design, just as rival companies reverse engineer their competitors design, or as humans would reverse engineer some alien technology. When they write up their papers, the pepper them with irrelevant homages to Darwinism, in order to demonstrate their commitment to Darwinism.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"ID is assumed by what, 1% of scientists?"
Does the above argument from authority mean that ID is wrong? Only 1% of scientists believed in heliocentricity at one point. While Darwinism is certainly the current orthodoxy, evidence for a consensus cannot be used as evidence for the truth of any theory.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@ 1:00
Call the police! That DNA strand is raping that ribosome!!
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
To the Darwinian mind, that's a good thing, isn't it? Anything that favours DNA replication / survival....
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Ouch. One comment in and already implicit assumptions are being made about me. Not good. I'm not a "darwinian mind" first. Second, no its not a 'good' thing based on evolution. In many social species rape causes social disfunction and is therefore punished by other social animals either by attack or 'exile'. Some it provides reproductive advantage. But scientific theories dont decide whats "good". Evolution no more says its good to rape, then gravity says its good to jump off cliffs.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Evolution no more says its good to rape, then gravity says its good to jump off cliffs."
Of course Darwinism doesn't say that, because Darwinism invents it's fact free "just so" stories to sound plausible AND in keeping with currently acceptable norms. Should rape ever become acceptable practice in some society, the Darwinists will have no problem legitimising it as a positive force for evolution within their infinitely flexible interpretative scheme.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr
"darwinism doesnt say that because"
N..No.....It doesn't say that because as I said before science does not speak to what we should or should not do. That branch of inquiry is called "Moral Philosophy". But again what you call "darwinism" I dont think exists by the def. you provided.
"facts free just so"
While I agree with S Gould that attempting to establish things about protohumans and such ideas are "just so" I dont think they are fact free because they are based ON facts.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"science does not speak to what we should or should not do."
In practice, if Darwinism ever survives the science of the 21st century, humans wiil need to be governed from a position of "higher authority". Practically speaking, it is only a matter of time before an "is"becomes an "ought":
Evolution teaches that “we are animals so that “sex across the species barrier ceases to be an offence to our status and dignity as human beings.
– Peter Singer, “Heavy Petting, 2001
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
"I dont think they are fact free"
Check out the website "Darwin says "just so" " . Darwinian accounts of how this or that adaption might have evolved are works of pure fiction, with no parallel in the serious sciences.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr In addition I think if anything is about keeping with in social norms, its definitely ID, because the concept that there is purpose our existence, outside the purpose we have for ourselves, is perhaps the most deeply held concept people have. And thats part of what ID seems to propose. Though again such is purely philosophical not scientific. So u seem to have it completely backward here.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"In addition I think if anything is about keeping with in social norms, its definitely ID"
When The British empire was trampling over the world, Darwinism provided the much needed legitimacy - for killing lots of black people, and generally treating them like animals:
"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world…etc " (Charles Darwin)
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr You're appealing to a fallacy here. Asserting what will happen is not the same as saying what you wish to happen. He is not justifying such behavior, and infact spoke out many times on the injustice of invading europeans taking over/enslaving natives. There are several quotes I can find, on request, that demonstrate this
They certainly did NOT get that legitimacy from darwin as it was going on long before him and he even spoke out against it.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"He is not justifying such behavior, and infact spoke out many times on the injustice of invading europeans "
True. But he also stated that the extermination of the black races was perfectly natural. He may have personally disliked the practice, but it would, according to him lead to "the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." Darwin believed that the extermination of the weak by the strong is natural and leds to the development of higher forms.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr "
" Darwin believed that the extermination of the weak by the strong is natural and leds to the development of higher forms."
Quite incorrect. To Quote perhaps his most famous line:
"“It is NOT the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”" And please keep in mind that 'higher' in this sense is euphemistic. One of natures greatest survivors is the lowly bacteria. Higher=/=Superior.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Quite incorrect"
Your moving the goalposts. I recently planted two plants in the same pot. After a couple of weeks, one plant had starved the other to death after developing a superior root system. The weaker plant did not survive to reproduce. "the extermination of the weak by the strong is natural". bestiality is natural. Slavery is natural (ants enslave other ants) and rape is natural, so why should Darwinists not rape if this could help to spread their "superior" seed?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"They certainly did NOT get that legitimacy from darwin as it was going on long before him and he even spoke out against it"
A creature that allegedly evolved by a blind and purposeless process has no business questioning the wrongs of the very process of extermination that lead to the human mind. Darwin made plane that this process was natural, just as Singer believes that bestiality is natural. If something is natural, and has lead to the evolution of higher forms, then why not?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"the concept that there is purpose our existence, outside the purpose we have for ourselves, is perhaps the most deeply held concept people have."
No doubt this near universal sense of "purpose" can be explained as a vestigial evolutionary "quirk", that may have provided some limited reproductive advantage to our caveman ancestors (LOL). Nowadays we are force-fed the new dominant norm of meaninglessness, by the high priests of Darwinism.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Uh okay again, before you continue using that phrase you'll need to show me that people consider themselves 'darwinists' by the definition you laid out. Where are these people, because I continue to doubt they exist.
" sense of "purpose" "
Well I don't think sensing purpose is a genetic thing, its a psychological thing, so no, it wasn't due to evolution but how our psyche acts in response to the world around us. Genes only set up the ballgame, they dont play it for us.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
Google "Richard Dawkins" and the phrase "a darwinian". You will find the worlds most famous Darwinist boasting about his pride in being called "a Darwinian" all over the net. Try his article "What Use is Religion?" to see how evangelical atheism meets evangelical Darwinism.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr I am very well award of Dr D.s use of the term darwinian. And I oppose it. My favorite biologist of the last century used it as well. I think its misleading as so much has been learned about evolution and how it works in the last 150 years that it would trump anything Darwin could have imagined. His contribution to biology was certainly immense but evolution did not start with him, and certainly did not end with him.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"so much has been learned about evolution and how it works in the last 150 years that it would trump anything Darwin.."
This is irrelevant at present. You asked me to show:
"..that people consider themselves 'darwinists' by the definition you laid out."
I provided you with the worlds most famous popularizer of Darwinism as an example. Darwinism is the belief that life evolved by purposeless natural processes, with RM and NS the principle "creative" mechanism. Do you accept this?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr "Nowadays we are force-fed the new dominant"
By whom? Scientists? No scientists don't force feed and generally aren't all that interested in even so much as public awareness. Teachers? No they generally just read out stuff and students regurgitate it. Parents? No if anything parents shove religion down our throats (mine every time I speak to them). I have never seen someone force any form of science on any one. Can you show me an example of this?
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"No scientists don't force feed and generally aren't all that interested in even so much as public awareness."
You mean "scientists" like Richard Dawkins, of course?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr I wasn't thinking of him when I said that. I was speaking generally of scientists. It seems very strange for you to bring him up randomly. Or it would seem strange if not for the fact that every single ID advocate I have ever spoken to always brings up Dawkins.
I respect some of his work and have criticized him on many occasions, and I don't really see him as anything too special as a scientist to be honest. So I dont really know what you think it will accomplish to bring him up..
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"every single ID advocate I have ever spoken to always brings up Dawkins"
I wonder why this is? Could it be that Dawkins is the worlds most famous and widely read populizer of Darwinism, by far. He has done more than any person on the planet to shape the publics view of biological evolution. True, he's a crummy scientist, despite holding a post at Oxford for years .... as Professor for Public Understanding of Science, LOL. It seems like Dawkins is a bit of a liability now, though
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Nah. I think its because he is the worlds most famous atheist. Nothing is more easily demonized and I think the IDers I have spoken to cease on that fact.
"True, he's a crummy scientist"
Why?
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"I think its because he is the worlds most famous atheist."
Are you denying that Dawkins is the worlds most famous populariser of evolutionary theory? Are we to believe that he has mislead countless millions of people on evolutionary theory, as expounded by him in numerous best-sellers.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
Dawkins is a crummy scientist because he has contributed nothing lasting to biology, or even evolutionary biology. He has contributed nothing original that has not been rejected by fellow evolutionists. He is unable to separate his religious beliefs from his science.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"No scientists don't force feed and generally aren't all that interested in even so much as public awareness."
You mean the NCSE hasn't been set up with the purpose to sniff out and destroy deviant dogma's such as ID, and to force the orthodox Darwinian line on defenceless school children?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr No, I don't honestly think that is an accurate description of the reality of the situation. The NCSE is an example of an organization of scientists dedicated to public awareness, but I never said that such did not exist, I only said that in a general sense (i e generally) scientists are not interested in public awareness. Neil Degrass Tyson and Carl Sagan among others who have been, often recount the less than enthusiastic response of their peers.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"The NCSE is an example of an organization of scientists dedicated to public awareness"
Awareness of what?
"NCSE, National Center for Science Education. Defending the Teaching of Evolution in Public Schools."
"NCSE provides information and advice as the premier institution dedicated to keeping evolution in the science classroom and creationism out....."
NCSE is a publically funded institution specifically set up to force feed Darwinism and suppress ID. Need I say more?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"No scientists don't force feed and generally aren't all that interested in even so much as public awareness."
So scientists don't lobby for public finance? they just creep back and forth from their bench to their lab in the hope thast some kind benefactor will give them the next $100 million installment of their research grant?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Again I fail to see how attempting to gain funds for research is "force feeding" anyone. Science relies on funds and society relies on science. Its a mutually beneficial endeavor. Of course ID proponents do this too. So if this particular example of yours is an example of science being force fed then ID is also force fed. I don't think either is the case. If I want to pick up a copy of their lit, I am free, if I prefer not, I wont.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"I fail to see how attempting to gain funds for research is "force feeding" anyone."
It isn't. I was refuting your claim that:
"scientists ...... generally aren't all that interested in even so much as public awareness."
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"No they generally just read out stuff and students regurgitate it."
Are teachers free to point out problems with Darwinism? Are they free to discuss the philosophical foundations of Darwinism. Can they discuss the theological arguments used by Darwin in "The Origin" to advance his theory? Can they even mention alteratives such as ID?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr No. The classroom is not a democracy. They are free to teach the material. A history teacher is not free to teach the alt view to whether the holocaust happened or not. If ID manages to go through the hurdles of peer review and become an actual theory, then and only then, will it be reasonable to teach. It is not sensible or fair for it to be taught until it has done what every other theory has to do. It has not and is therefore not fit to teach it.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSap
"No. The classroom is not a democrac"
Are you aware of the desparate efforts of darwinists in America, e.g. the NCSE and other secular groups, to prevent teaching the weaknesses of Darwinian theory to school children. I am not talking about teaching ID, but merely the weaknesses of the modern theory of evolution, as appearing in the peer revieved literature. These groups are simply terrified when it is suggested that students be encouraged to "think critically" about darwinism. Why?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr You mean to prevent ID advocates from using the legal system to circumvent the scientific method in order to get their ideas into the classroom instead of going the route of the sci method which EVERY other theory has to do? How their campaign is a reaction to the antiscience meddlings of the ID movement? Yes I am aware. Problems of the theory ARE already taught, and the S&W strategy is meant to cast evo in a different light than other theories, to single it out.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"You mean to prevent ID advocates from using the legal system to circumvent the scientific method"
LOL. You've got it backwards. Devoid of any scientific response to ID, the Darwinists are using legal loopholes based on the American separation of church and state to keep out threats to their crumbling dogma. Forget ID for the moment, I specifically stated that Darwinists are even terrified to have there own theory taught critically.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"I have never seen someone force any form of science on any one. Can you show me an example of this?"
I don't mean force with guns and knives etc. I am talking about having the naturalistic / Darwinian worldview rammed down our throats. e.g. the New Scientist magazine truly evangelizes for the kind of naturalistic, materialistic, purposeless Darwinian worldview. I get immediately censored for trying to put the ID side to them.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr You'll have to provide me an example of what you are refering to.
As for New Science that is to my view in no way shoving it down your throat. If you choose to read it thats your decision. Just like if I choose to read The Watchtower. On the other hand we have people who force their religion on their children using threats of torture and using guilt, as was the case with me.
How did they censor you though? what do you mean?
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr In any event, I do think you know that "darwinians" w/e that means, do not find rape to be a good thing. I think you know that this question is a strawman. And I am not a 'darwinian' any way. I accept, of course his contributions to evolutionary theory, but I also accept those of watson, crick, gould, Mendell, etc... So If Im a darwinist you must also label me a watsononian crickite gouldian mendellist. All of which would be kind of silly. So lets not lump me into a catagory shall we
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"So If Im a darwinist you must also label me a watsononian"
If you believe that the "creative" engine of evolution is the blind, undirected Darwinian mechanism, and that we must deny apriori the possibility of purposeful end-directed processes in nature, then you are a Darwinian, whatever good science you may believe in (Mendle, Crick, etc...)
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Oh well by that def. I am DEFINITELY not a 'darwinian', But I don't really think any one else would be either. Can you show me an example of a person who claims such a position? Because I don't honestly think they exist.
As for darwins mechanisms being "undirected" they don't need to be because they are processes which themselves direct. Asking for a directing processs to be directed is redundant..
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Can you show me an example of a person who claims such a position?"
Try 38 nobel laureates: "THE ELIE WIESEL FOUNDATION FOR HUMANITY
NOBEL LAUREATES INITIATIVE" ... "...Logically derived from confirmable evidence, evolution is understood to be the result of
an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection...."
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr cont...
But of course evolution doesn't say that "we must deny the possibility of". NO scientific theory says that anywhere, because science is unable to speak to purpose. The concept of purpose has nothing to do with science. We could talk all day about the 'purpose' of rocks but that would CERTAINLY not be a scientific conversation about geology but a philisophical one.
cont
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"The concept of purpose has nothing to do with science."
You are confusing "science", in terms of a no holds barred search for the truth wiith "naturalism", which is a restricted veiw of science that assumes apriori, the complete absence of intelligent causation. Clearly we cannot know for sure that only natural causes have acted. What if intelligent causation did play a part in the origin and development of life. Then a dogmatic commitment to naturalism becomes science stopping.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr cont...
And Darwin was NEVER about 'keeping within social norms' which is why he likened his idea to confessing a murder. Because society was so vehemently hostile to it. They still are. So that accusation seems to me to completely contradict our reality.
Also I think your implicit accusation that Darwin wasn't a "good" scientist is completely wrong too. Just because one disagrees with one or two of his ideas, one cannot reasonably deny that he made great contributions to science.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"he likened his idea to confessing a murder...."
This is a seperate point. My point is that Darwinian theory has the infinite flexibility to accomodate any outcome - even those that are diametrically opposed. Whatever the socially accepted norm, it is always possible to present it ( retrospectively ) as a "finding" of Darwinian theory. When society changes, Darwinian theory changes to suit, accomodating to the evidence, like a fog accomodates to the landscape
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Not true at all. Though life does prove to be immensely fluid in capacity to adapt to almost any available nieche Darwins theory necessarily leave behind a pattern like a branching bush or tree, from which genetically isolated organisms can not deviate. There is an almost infinite way organisms could contradict this principle, not the least of which is to find a transitional form intermediate between the wrong groups, a chimera species etc... Yet such has never been found.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Darwins theory necessarily leave behind a pattern like a branching bush or tree"
I said this earlier. Naturalism effectively mandates some form of descent, and that leads scientists to interpret the data through the spectacles of descent. The "necessarily" part comes from a commitment to providing fully naturalistic explanations. Similarities are assumed to be due to common descent. Common descent is a methodology that governs interpretation of the data, not an undeniable fact.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr No it does not. Naturalism is merely a rejection of the unjustified assertions of the supernaturalists. Saying something did not happen by magic is not the same as saying how something did happen. The rest is pointless conspiracy chatter, so ahem: "NUH UH"
Or I could launch into a conspiracy tirade of my own. The Intelligent Design advocates are the minions of satan marching on the street to eat our children! See how useful that was?
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Naturalism is merely a rejection of the unjustified assertions of the supernaturalists"
Yes, but it is a faith-based rejection. Where is your evidence that ID has never played a part in the universe? Where is your evidence that all of biology arose through (exclisively) natural causes. Can you prove naturalism is true, or do you accept it , on faith, like a kind of religious commitment?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr No its not. I'm going to quote aronra because no one has better described how we classify organisms today. "The only way to objectively categorize all sorts of life is by their common characters, those features shared by every member of that collective and only by them. This is how their traits become diagnostic and directly indicative of unique groups."
Also Linnaeus' system of classification predated Darwin so it cannot be dependant on or defined by his theory.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Linnaeus' system of classification predated Darwin so it cannot be dependant on or defined by his theory."
Exactly. Classification can be carried out without any reference to a theory of common descent. e.g. Cars may be classified, despite being designed. The belief that our ability to classify animals into groups within groups is due to some deeper relationship, such as common descent, is an assumption. We assume common descent, and then use it to interpret / filter the data.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr No its not. Cars can be classified into a branching tree pattern but eventually and inevitably you will run into a closed loop in the tree, and if not, someone could eventually make it. This is because its a manmade heirarchy, not a natural one. Designers can swap ideas parts, whatever, making such heirarchies artificial. Common descent isn't an assumption its a prediction, one that has passed inumerable tests.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Cars can be classified into a branching tree pattern.....This is because its a manmade heirarchy, not a natural one."
Darwinists use the fallacious argument that car evolution is analagous to biological evolution. Search under "berra's blunder". Common descent is an apriori assumption, which survives in the face of negative evidence by the creation of several adhoc mecanisms, such as convergent evolution. If common descent is a "prediction", how can it be falsified?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"There is an almost infinite way organisms could contradict this principle"
Every time the assumption of common descent is refuted, e.g. by finding nearly identical genes or adaptions or species evolving through entirely seperate routes (which is astronomically improbable), the mystical hypothesis of "convergent evolution" is invoked to save common descent. As I said earlier, Darwinian theory is infinitely flexible, and can accomodate just about any data.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Guh. Give me an example.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Guh. Give me an example."
Just to let you know, vague, unreferenced and information free comments like this get ignored from now on.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Really? Then there must necisarily be a closed loop in phylogeny . Where is this mysterious gene? Link me to it on pubmed if you would be so kind. That was an excellently testable assertion you made. I look forward to seeing this evolution destroying gene.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Then there must necisarily be a closed loop in phylogeny . "
Sorry. Your comment made no sense.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"find a transitional form intermediate between the wrong groups, a chimera species etc... Yet such has never been found."
Massive anomalies in the fossil record are routinely ignored or written off, because some form of naturalistic evolution simply has to be true (apriori). With naturalism imposed, a mountain of contradictory evidence would not falsify Darwinism. Only a superiour naturalistic explanation could do this. ID is simply ruled out, no mater how compelling the evidence
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Again, you aren't saying anything. Merely asserting such is pointless. Which fossils are these? Where are they? How are they directly against evolutionary theory? And how is this massive global conspiracy structured? Who enforces it?
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Which fossils are these?"
e.g. the Cambrian explosion. Known about by Darwin and his contemporaries and hidden from view for several decades, it came to prominence once again when Gould came clean. Were Darwinian theory not protected by an apriori comittment to naturalism, and were it not currently the only naturalistic explanation for the origin of species, the Cambrian explosion alone would heve been suffiecient to consign Darwinism to the scrap heap of history.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr That doesnt even come close to meeting your own criteria.
1. youre reffering to a LACK of fossils not fossils
2.The cambrian explosion is one of the most popular topics of evolutionary history, yet you claim its"ignored"? Sorry, no.
so first we find single celled organisms, then we find precambrian precursors to cambrian fauna, then we find cambrian fauna (all aquatic) Sorry whats the problem exactly?
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSa
"youre reffering to a LACK of fossils "
The precambrian strata is replete with well preserved microorganisms, but none of the multitude of transitional forms that would be required to explain the dramatic appearance of representatives of around thirty phyla in 5 to ten million years. Its not a few fossils that are missing, but the whole trunk. A clearer falsification of Darwinism is hard to imaging - but the theory survives. Could this be due to its naturalistic underpinning?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"The cambrian explosion is one of the most popular topics of evolutionary history"
It was the least topic popular for several decades, as several generations of Darwinists decided to file the Cambrian explosion in the negative evidence drawer. Gould was vilified for ressurrecting the problem, but Darwinism, like any paradigm on it's last legs, has no where left to go now, exept to confront it's most serious anomalies.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"so first we find single celled organisms, then we find precambrian precursors to cambrian fauna, then we find cambrian fauna (all aquatic) Sorry whats the problem exactly?"
The problem is the enormous and pervasive gaps in this pleasant "just-so" story. After 150 years of desperately looking for the precambrian fossils that had to exist if something like Darwinism were true, we now have a fairly complete and reliable picture of precambrian life - the gaps are real.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Wait wait wait, so you are complaining that evolution isn't falsifiable enough for you....and then to replace it you demanded I believe in ID which isn't in ANY way falsifiable? But anyway I answered you on this and you seem to have changed the subject, I provided several falsification measures proving your allegation false. I don't suppose that you can do the honest thing and admit to being wrong?
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Wait wait wait, so you are complaining that evolution isn't falsifiable enough for you."
Rather than reply with empty rhetoric / divert to attacking ID, why not show me how Darwinism might be plausibly falsified???????
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"I provided several falsification measures proving your allegation false."
Perhaps I missed them among what are really a lot of irrelevant side issues that you are raising. Provide these examples again, and I will look over them very carefully. BTW. I have never met a Darwinist who has managed to provide credible falsifying instances of his theory. You will be the first
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr But I don't see how you can think darwin was a bad scientist but Mendel wasn't? It was exactly Mendel who used Darwins theory along with his own to create Modern Evolutionary Synthesis.
If I am reading too much into what you're saying let me know. I'm arguing against what I think you are saying because the use of the term 'darwinist' as you describe it doesn't seem to exist.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapie
"I don't see how you can think darwin was a bad scientist"
I don't. Darwin did a masterful job of articulating the naturalistic evolutionary position by selectively assembling empirical observations around a preconceived materialistic framework. But Darwin would have rejected his own theory in the light of the unfathomable complexity we have discovered in even the simplest lifeforms. Darwinism survives today, due to a dogmatic commitment to providing fully naturalistic explanations
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr I am always perplexed when ID advocates assert that somehow billions of years of development would not predict or yield complex results. On the side of evolution it MUST be that organisms are absurdly complex given the amount of time even the simplest modern animal has had to develop. Extreme complexity directly points to a long process. There is no instance in reality where such massive complexity arises suddenly. And it doesnt point to design because design can be very simple too.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSap
"I am always perplexed when ID advocates assert that somehow billions of years of development would not predict or yield complex results"
I am not at all perplexed when Darwinists assert that a few billions years of naturalistic evolution is sufficient to evolve the human brain ... without any evidence. Given that they rule out ID apriori, the reasoning goes that the brain must have evolved by some purposeless naturalistic process, and the Darwinian mechanism is the best they have.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr What other mechanism do you propose. You seem to be very dismissive of the reasons WHY ID is not considered legitimate. It has no mechanism, its not falsifiable, it makes no positive predictions, and apparently has no application either. Therefore it is utterly useless to explain anything. Yet we can see the progression of the brain both in modern cousin forms and by tracing it back in the fossil record.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr No, they dont rule it out a priori, they merely have no reason to believe it, and you've similarly provided me with none either. You don't have to rule out a priori that which has not made a cse worthy of consideration. Its really not some massive millions strong global conspiracy of science. Its much more simple than that: The failing of ID to explain or be useful. Simple.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"they dont rule it out a priori, they merely have no reason to believe it"
They do rule ID out apriori. Arguments that invoke ID are branded "non-science". You need to learn what those in your camp actually believe, so as not to waste my time.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr "Arguments that invoke ID are branded "non-science"."
True. And why? well because science requires a few things. A theory has to be falsifiable (ID isnt) it needs to make positive predictions (id doesnt) needs a mechanism (nopers) to produce results (ha!) and, here's the big thing, for it to be a theory it actually has to be a framework. An unfalsifiable hypothesis ISNT a hypothesis.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
""Arguments that invoke ID are branded "non-science"."
True. And why? well because science requires a few things. A theory has to be falsifiable (ID isnt)"
ID is falsifyable. simply provide detailed testable models for the evolution of biological complexity and ID will be refuted. Darwinism, however, is not falsifiable, because it rests on an apriori commitment to naturalism and a rejection of the possibility that ID is true.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr There is no need for your massive conspiracy of millions of scientists. Even if such a thing were possible, its still not needed because ID meets none of the requirements of a theory. But evolution does, it has mechanism, it is falsifiable, it makes, and meets, predictions, it increases our knowledge and actually IS a framework. If ID could meet these criteria then it wouldn't be considered to not be science.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"There is no need for your massive conspiracy of millions of scientists. "
There is no need for a conspiracy, full stop. Just read your history and philosophy of science, and you will see numerous examples of the entire scientific community being deeply commited to theories that were seen with hindsight to be outrageously misguided / ideologically driven. Read: "the structure of scientific revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr If you want my position on evolutionary theory, its that evolution, of course, is a reality, but of course darwins ideas were incomplete. Anyone who thinks they were enough to explain all biodiversity is wrong on two counts. One is that as I have said we have added many new mechanisms and explained more about evolution than darwin could have ever known, and two because If history shows us anything its that...(cont)
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"evolution, of course, is a reality, but of course darwins ideas were incomplete."
Of course it is, because you have ruled out any possibility of intelligent causation apriori, so effectively, some kind of naturalistic evolution becomes a philosophical necessity. Once ID is rulled out using extra-scientific philosophical / religious arguments, then you can safely say that Darwinism is a "fact".
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr I'm gonna ask you again to please not make assumptions about me. If you want to know my position feel free to ask but please do not assume then assert.
No. I havent ruled out the possibility of any intelligent cause, I merely haven't found justification to accept the claim of intelligent cause. And even if I did it was certainly not a priori because I my a priori position was that there was an intelligent cause, until my indoctrination wore off that is.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
If the discovery of an advanced information processing system complete with an error correction mechanisms, quality control systems, a distribution system, tens of thousands of nano-scale machines, such as trucks, production lines, recycling plants, power plants, turbines, rotary motors, etc populating a fully automated self replicating factory complex isn't evidence of ID that exceeds the capacity of natural causes, then what on earth would suffice to convince you?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"my a priori position was that there was an intelligent cause, until my indoctrination wore off that is"
And now you are steeped in a new and exiting dogma called "naturalism", right? Slavish commitment to denying the possibility that intelligent causation may have played a part is a restriction of science. Did you consider the possibility that this new dogma may have blinded you to the truth?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr No. Naturalism is not a dogma for one thing. And I certainly don't commit to any ideologue. I merely have yet to see any evidence that compels a belief in the supernatural. As I said before EVERY time we have in history ever assumed super natural conclusions they invariably turn out to be false. And there is no instance to my knowledge of such a belief ever advancing human knowledge. If you can provide any evidence that I am wrong I would apreciate it immensely.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Naturalism is not a dogma for one thing. And I certainly don't commit to any ideologue."
Under what condition would you be willing to accept that certain features of the natural world are too sophisticated and improbable to be explained by naturalistic processes alone? Can you prove that naturalism is true?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr When you can explain something with it.For example. Evolution explains why birds have the genes for making teeth, why we find birds with sarupod features and dinosaurs with feathers, but no frogs with feathers, why birds share DNA with dinosaurs, etc and ties all of these facts together into an explanitory framework. So do that with ID. Use it to make sense of all these facts in a superior way to evolution.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Evolution explains why birds have the genes for making teeth"
This is nothing to do with "evolution". This is the hard science of genetics, which can be studied without any appeal to "evolution". Once the genetic code and development of teeth have been understood by the hard science, the Darwinists leap in with their speculative "just-so" stories about how teeth came to be in the first place. Darwinian evolutionary theory is parasitic on the hard biological sciences.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSa
"Evolution explains why birds have the genes for making teeth, why we find birds with sarupod features and dinosaurs with feathers, but no frogs with feathers"
The problem is that depending on which genes you follow, it is possible to arrive at several contradictory "trees of life". Darwinists are starting to realise that the holy grail of zeroing in on a unique / tree has been a mirage. Massive anomalies have been found, that need to be explained away by convergent evolution etc
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"I have yet to see any evidence that compels a belief in the supernatural."
ID does not aim to provide compelling evidence of the supernatural. This is a strawman. ID can provide compelling evidence to suggest that designs found in living organisms far exceeds the probabilistic resources of the universe. ID is offered as an "inference to the best explanation". Can you provide compelling evidence that everything that has ever happened in the universe is the result of natural laws?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Not really a strawman if Im not mistaken. I think it was you who brought up naturalism and the supernatural. I didn't say, or mean to imply, that ID requires supernatural causation.
"ID can provide compelling evidence to suggest that designs found in living organisms far exceeds the probabilistic resources of the universe"
Such as?
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapi
"I think it was you who brought up naturalism and the supernatural "
I certainly brought up "naturalism", and you brought up "the supernatural". Whatever the means by which intelligent agency acts, ID may be reliably inferred in many cases. An inference to design is merely the first step, and this inference can be made without any knowledge of the ID'er. We infer that the Egyptian pyramids were designed, without requiring any knowledge of the precise mode of construction
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Okay you were calling nonbelief in the supernatural "dogma" and such, obviously infering that you hold the opposing position.
"We infer that the Egyptian pyramids were designed, without requiring any knowledge of the precise mode of construction"
Because, again, its not a natural formation. Your position is that natural things ARE designed.
Also It doesn't reproduce, it doesn't die, it doesn't do any of the things that natural living organisms do.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"you were calling nonbelief in the supernatural "dogma""
I said that a dogmatic refusal to entertain the possibility of ID, and a dogmatic insistence that any amount of design, no matter how sophisticated and improbable, must be assumed to have arisen by exclusively natural processes, takes one into the realm of faith / religion etc. The dogmatic assumption of naturalism is effectively equivalent to the belief in a creator God that sets up the system, but does not intervene in it
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr All I have been doing is entertaining. The fact that I do not immediately jump to your preffered conclusion the second you say something does not make me a dogmatist, as you accused.
2.Of course its not because as I have already explained whenever we have ever in the history of mankind found an answer that actually works, it has always only ever been a naturalistic one, and has never been supernatural. It doesn't take dogma to choose the 100% success rate over the 100% failure rate
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusS
"I do not immediately jump to your preffered conclusion"
Excellent! It took me many years to see the error of my ways. I hope you question everything I say. Don't take the "dogmatist" title personally. Many people assume naturalism because the cannot imagine any alternative worldview. ID proponents believe that naturalism must be tentatively applied, rather than dogmatically assumed as the basis for solving every problem. It's application should be decided, on a case by case basis
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"whenever we have ever in the history of mankind found an answer that actually works, it has always only ever been a naturalistic"
Thats clearly false....and a little dogmatic. When a detective solves a crime, he applies an ID methodology. How did the knife appear in the corpses back? Was it a natrurally occuring event? If we look hard enough for a naturally occuring explanation, might we eventually find one? Will it be the truth?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSap
"It doesn't take dogma to choose the 100% success rate over the 100% failure rate"
Please don't try to play both sides. Don't act offended why I accuse you of dogmatism, only to make comments like the above. Perhaps it is because science is only now reaching the limitations of naturalism, that ID is coming to the fore. As for you "100% failure" of ID, you are simply unaware that ID is already being applied in many sciences: forensics, archaeology, cryptography, the SETI program etc.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Also, no. I said I was unconvinced of your positive assertion when you just rattled off a bunch of super neat and complex elements of the cell and then asserted "the intelligent designer done did it!" And then for not immediately jumping on your conclusion without looking at any other facts, you immediately slam me with the knee jerk reaction of calling me a dogmatist. THATS what I am refering to.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"I was unconvinced of your positive assertion when you just rattled off a bunch of super neat and complex elements....THATS what I am refering to."
I am not demanding that you accept ID, in the light of what we have learned about the unfathomable complexity of life. I merely ask you to admit the hopless failure of the current orthodox naturalistic explanation for that complexity i.e. Darwinism, and the fact that ID is known to be causally adequate to explain said evidence.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Because, again, its not a natural formation. "
How do you know that? What if you come across some structure on an alien planet with absolutely no direct evidence that it was designed, but loads of indirect evidence that it was. Do you really need to know how an artefact came into existence, and by whom it was made, in order to make a design inference?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"It doesn't reproduce, it doesn't die, it doesn't do any of the things that natural living organisms do. "
So "natural living organisms" are vastly more sophisticated and high tech than pyramids, so they are were not designed, right?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Why do you assume complexity and nonnatural design are intertwined? The most complex processes that mankind are aware of by far are all completely natural, vastly more complicated than any computer or machine. So we know that the highest complexity comes from the natural world. So obviously complexity doesn't require nonhuman design. So I don't know why you keep conflating the two.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Why do you assume complexity and nonnatural design are intertwined?"
If you investigate any human intelligent design, you will find that it is both highly improbable and specified, in the sence that it matches some kind of pattern. Cells are both vastly improbable, AND, they are packed with the kind of machines that humans ID'ers manufacture and build.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSap
"The most complex processes that mankind are aware of by far are all completely natural, vastly more complicated than any computer or machine"
You are begging the question. How can you possibly know that the origin of living systems occurred by purely natural processes? If you were to study an electic motor, you would not hesitate to assume that such a device would never occur without input from intelligent agency. Motors are the product of intelligence. The flagellum is a motor.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"So obviously complexity doesn't require nonhuman design."
Yes. But perhaps cellular complexity still requires intelligent design i.e. intelligent design that is vastly superior to our own......or perhaps no design is whats needed, which is the naturalistic position.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSap
"Such as?"
Even the origin of the (hypothetical) first simple self replicating RNA strand is so vastly improbable that materialistic scientists feel they need to invoke the multiverse to acount for it's existence. Invoking the unobservable multiverse, in order to multiply the available probability resources, is an act of desparation. See: "The cosmological model of eternal inflation and the transition from chance to biological evolution in the history of life"
Eugene V Koonin
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Not....really. The RNA world hypothesis has been confirmed fairly well in the lab. Scientists, mimmicking conditions of the early earth have managed to cause RNA to spontaneously generate (and self replicate). And that was researched figured out and carried out with in a centuries time. The actual doing was much quicker. And with the entire earth as its lab and trillions of tons of organic matter and millions of years, yeah its pretty statistically likely.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"The RNA world hypothesis has been confirmed fairly well "
Then why do ardent materialists need to appeal to the existence of the multiverse, in order to marshall the probabilistic resources necessary to account for the first self replicating DNA strand. The entire OOL field is in paradigm crisis at present. That's why Darwinists are desperate to dissociate themselves from its failures. Nothing is "fairly well confirmed" about any of it.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Scientists, mimmicking conditions of the early earth have managed to cause RNA to spontaneously generate (and self replicate)."
I am not happy to accept an assertion here. Where is your evidence for this? Look into the details behind the claims, and you will find that nothing of the sort happened.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"And there is no instance to my knowledge of such a belief ever advancing human knowledge."
The founders of modern science were nearly all theists or deists. Isaac Newton laid the foundation for the modern scientific approach, guided by the belief that he was decoding God's blueprint for the universe. The dogma of naturalism began life as the theological doctrine of "secondary causes". Nowadays, biologists need expertise in design engineering in order to reverse engineer the cell
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr
" guided by the belief that he was decoding God's blueprint for the universe"
show me exactly where that had a positive impact on his research. What content did he derive from the "gods blueprint" idea and how did he apply that to his work?
"Nowadays, biologists need"
Which wouldnt be needed at all whatsoever if organisms didnt evolve from precursor systems.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"show me exactly where that had a positive impact on his research."
Simple. Newton approached the universe as something that really did have a "blueprint", and more importantly, one that humans had the mental capacity to uncover. This gave him, and the entire scientific comminity, the basis on which to go looking for it, and to overcome setbacks and difficulties. The same ID perspective continues to underwrite and drive science today.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapi
"there is no instance to my knowledge of such a belief ever advancing human knowledge"
When Darwinists prematurely conceived of the "junk" DNA paradigm, they suggested that it was reasonable to expect vast swathes of the genome to have no purpose. This science stopping dogma greatly hindered the progress of decoding the more sophisticated genetic processes. An ID perspective invites and encourages science to look for hidden function and is better suited to the biology of the 21st C
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr oi. I don't really want to go over the "junk dna" myth again.
Here watch this: watch?v=c9dK_7_aGCs
Junk does NOT mean 'trash' or 'useless'
But out of curiosity, how does ID explain the existence of noncoding DNA? And how can we test the validity of the explanation?
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Junk does NOT mean 'trash' or 'useless'"
Sadly, it did for many decades. I lost count of the number of times that Darwinists raved about "junk" DNA as evidence against ID. They delighted in asking if an intelligent designer would fill our genomes with useless junk. Now, they are desperately rowing back from that foolish position. They were bady misguided by the Darwinian dogma, and too ready to see "junk", where the reality was that sophisticated reverse engineering was needed.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
Respond to this video... BTW the first half is sort of a hatchet job on Wells, much deserved, but the meat of the video is from 3:5 on.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"Respond to this video..."
If you have something worthwile to say, then say it here. I could easily bombard you with videos, but I know you wouldn't like it.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr You cant watch one single video? I don't plan on posting others.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"my a priori position was that there was an intelligent cause, until my indoctrination wore off that is."
Having formerly been an atheist, I later realised that the main explanation for the origin of lifes complexity was a childs fairy tale, utterly unlike anything we find in the serious sciences. There is tons of evidence for some kind of connection between living organisms, but no evidence whatsoever that the blundering Darwinian mechanism can do much beyond trivial tinkering.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr That was a completely empty rhetorical response. You haven't pointed to anything and provided no evidence so there isn't really much of a response one could give outside merely saying "NUH-UH!"
which would be silly. Though if your purported atheism (which I have to admit I am highly skeptical of) was based in any way on evolution then your atheism (at least if it were a positive position) was not founded on anything, because evolution does not have to do with whether god exists.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"That was a completely empty rhetorical response."
When you make an assertion without referring to anything, then it suggests to me that you are trying to duck my argument. What " empty rhetorical response." are you refferring to? We will see how empty it is.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr "the main explanation for the origin of lifes complexity was a childs fairy tale, utterly unlike anything we find in the serious sciences. There is[...no evidence whatsoever that the blundering Darwinian mechanism can do much beyond trivial tinkering."
That means exactly nothing as far as I can gather.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"That means exactly nothing as far as I can gather."
A "childs fairy tale" is something that children may find believable and amusing, but that adults smile knowingly at. Darwinism really does fall vastly short with respect to the serious sciences, such as physics, chemistry and experimental biology, and the Darwinian mechanism is seen experimentally to be hoplessly unable to achieve any of the "miracles" credited to it. All of this will be evidenced in more detail as we proceed
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Hmmm...Okay, so I am not getting it then. The fairy tales I know usually contain animals being poofed into being out of nothing, talking snakes, talking donkeys, witches, magic, spells, demons, angels, sayders, and people being wisked away in a tornado to magical lands.
And evolution has the practical entirety of the scientific community on its side, and ID is a laughing stock to the vast vast majority of the smartest most well educated people...
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"The fairy tales I know usually contain animals being poofed into being out of nothing"
Sounds like the materialistic origin of the universe. They believe that nothing became everything, right?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"The fairy tales I know usually contain animals being poofed into being out of nothing, talking snakes,...."
Your list of "fairy tales comes styraight from the "skeptics handbook". I think you just let your ,mask slip again.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"And evolution has the practical entirety of the scientific community on its side, and ID is a laughing stock to the vast vast majority of the smartest most well educated people..."
Tut, tut. More appeals to authority. Did "well educated people" not que up to support geocentricity at one point. That should have made geocentricity true I suppose. Darwinism has wide spread support do to a dogmatic commitment to naturalism in science at present ..... but that is changing.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"And evolution has the practical entirety of the scientific community on its side"
The word "evolution" has a multitude of meanings, and everybody is on it's side in some sense. The minute you start to ask what exactly is meant by "evolution" and what credible naturalistic mecanism might plausibly explain evolution, the trouble begins. Tell me what you mean by evolution, and provide your mechanism.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"your purported atheism (which I have to admit I am highly skeptical of..."
Your argument has descended to calling me a liar. I'm dissappointed.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr No no no. I didn't call you a liar. I am merely skeptical that you were an atheist. I explain in another comment what I mean, but I will just regurgitate it here just in case. When I talk to theists (which I assume you are based on ur profile) I always have a different definition of what "atheist" means than they do. So when I use the word it might be so different from when you do that we aren't thinking the same thing.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"No no no. I didn't call you a liar. I am merely skeptical that you were an atheist."
I was an atheist in the sense of disbelieving in a transcendend God ( or any God ). I naturally complemented this belief by believing that the universe was a self creating, self enclosed system of cause and effect, which would have made me a philosophical naturalist. I now find both positions utterly untenable.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"evolution does not have to do with whether god exists."
Tell that to Richard Dawkins. Did he not write some book called "The God Delusion" or something, and was his alleged refutation of the argument to design by Darwinian evolution not one of his favourites? While Darwinism may not refute the God of deism, even in the massively unlikely event that it were shown to have the creative power to generate life's diversity, it would certainly refute any meaningful theism.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr
"Tell that to Richard Dawkins."
I would but I doubt he would listen.
"was his alleged refutation of the argument to design by Darwinian evolution not one of his favourites?"
Nah. I read the book, as I recall it mostly had to do with refuting theistic arguments, and refering to religious fanatics. He did use evolution in his Ultimate Boeing 747 argument, which I have criticized numerous times, as it assumes the conditions of this universe apply to whatever else might exist.
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"I would but I doubt he would listen."
I'm glad he's on your side, rather than ours.
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr You've got worse to deal with, what wit Wells, Behe, Myers, etc...
GallusSapien 9 months ago
@GallusSapien
"You've got worse to deal with, what wit Wells..."
You're joking, right?
IDtaksovr 9 months ago
@IDtaksovr Yeah wells is a genius. Burst a complex cell in a test tube, give it some food, and if abiogenesis is right it should spontaneously reassemble it self despite having lost its structure. In the same way our modern theories on embryology explain that if you explode a baby, then feed it a hamburger it will reassemble itself.
GallusSapien 9 months ago