To “Who’s Indoctrinating Who?”
Another blog that I am following, “Who’s Indoctrinating Who? The fight for fair and balanced science education in Texas” holds that ID is on the same scientific grounds that evolution theory is. Here is a response to a discussion:
It’s disingenuous to claim ID has not answered any of the anomalies in evolutionary theory. And it’s not true that ID has not accounted for the phenomena “already” explained “by” evolutionary theory; it’s actually accounted for a few things evolutionary theory can’t if it maintains a rigid materialist position.”
First off, if it doesn’t maintain its materialist position and positive realism, then it isn’t science. Second off, what anomalies does ID answer in evolutionary theory? What does it account for that has not been already explained? I’ll tell you what it doesn’t account for: vestiges, the diversity of species, adaptation, microevolution, genetics, mutations, anatominous structures, etc. How can ID account for anything? If an Intelligent Designer created everything, and we don’t/can’t know anything about the intelligent designer, what does that give us? Nothing. It means nothing in science. No explanation (and it has no evidence), no predictive power, and no testable hypotheses. Creation cannot account for, really, anything. It’s a default explanation that means, “hey, don’t worry about it. SOMETHING had something to do with something! That’s all you need!”
“This position leads exactly to what fuels the controversy today: “scientists” are not allowed to think outside its own narrowly defined box; materialist, “evolutionary” scientists are forced, instead of exploring other ideas and following the evidence to its ultimate conclusion, to desperately search for “evidence” to support its hypotheses, doing direct violence to the scientific method.”
That ‘narrowly defined box’ is science. It doesn’t help to include explanations that yield no advancement in knowledge (no predictive power, no explanatory power). No, science does not desperately search for evidence to support its hypotheses, many hypotheses have been disproven due to new evidence. It is ID that tries to take an archaic worldview and fit everything that science has given us into a predetermined hypothesis. Darwin didn’t just imagine natural selection and pick and choose evidence; his observations led to the conclusion of natural selection. Science is about justifying explanations for things; to justify an explanation you must try to prove it wrong. That’s what experiments are, attempts to test a theory where it has not been tested.
It is also disingenuous to try to fall back on micro evolution to attempt to support macro evolution. Macro evolution is simple genetic function, something already in place; it does not answer the question of beginnings or origins. Macro evolution cannot produce viable cross-species or cross-families or cross-phyla. It can only functionally survive within its own species/species type. I.e., there are no viable and reproducing crosses between cats and dogs, or chimps and humans, or carrots and rabbits, even with genetic manipulation. Though we’re working on it. Which begs the question of ID: without our human intelligence playing God, these genetic experiments would never happen in nature — there is no natural selection mechanism to produce these kinds of “species inventions.””
It is not disingenuous; microevolutoin provides insight into macroevolution. It shows how organisms can ‘evolve,’ speciate, and change over time. Microevolution is a little version of a big thing. If microevolution produces outcomes that are similar to what we claim are the products of macroevolution, that means something. It allows us to incorporate new ways of testing the theory of macroevolution, and it provides major evidence for the fundamental mechanisms of evolution.
Macroevolution does not need to produce cross-species; though it has in both artificial and natural environments. Cross-speciation is not the major mechanism of natural selection by any means. I really do not know where you are getting at with crossing eukaryotes with prokaryotes.
Again, as I have argued before, science is not an attempt to disprove God. Experiments to reproduce evolutionary phenomenon are orchestrated by attempts to replicate natural environments; the results only have an affect on the hyptheses. They do not say that it can only be done by means of intelligent intervention, the experiments do not test that. So, you can rationalize the experiments to support ID, but they don’t actually do ID any justice.
“A basic ignorance of the Judeo-Christian understanding of God is demonstrated. In this system, God did not “come from” anywhere; He just always was. That’s the reason He’s “God:” He has no beginning and no end; He has no creator (which would just redundantly beg the question of where did His creator come from); He is the First Cause, the Unmoved Mover. That’s why ID can refer to an ultimate Intelligent Designer. Even though ID has not “named” “God;” it merely has made public science’s dirty little secret: the universe didn’t simply “come into being” all on its own.”
Well, science doesn’t claim that all things came into being on its own (that is, if you mean coming from a state of nothing into something). How do you know God did not come from anywhere? How do you know he always was? If he had no beginning and no end, what is to say that fundamentals of physics have no beginning and no end; if God needs no origin, why not that which we observe have no beginning and no end? Nothing suggests that the mechanics of the universe has a beginning or that it will have an end, why do you think it must?
“This First Cause, Unmoved Mover, Intelligent Designer is no “human-like being.” Look to some of the Nobel Prize-winning evolutionary scientists for that little silliness — panspermia, whereby life on earth was seeded by alien visitors from outer space. Again, begs the question of where did they come from: who created them?”
Yeah, he is a ‘human-like’ being. He can create, that makes him like humans. He is intelligent, like humans. In the Bible, humans are made in his image, making humans like him and vice versa. Alien visitors are bounded by possibility and the laws of physics, making it somewhat reasonable. Plus, you assume ‘creation.’
“The God of the Judeo-Christians is; He always was, is, and always will be. He exists in Himself. The universe, as science has discovered and established through observation in the last century, originated “out of nothing” with a big bang; its CAUSE is the object of much paranoia and conflict among materialist scientists; they can’t account for it.”
The Big Bang is not a theory of something coming from nothing; it is a theory on how the universe, as it is now, came to be. It says that that which is the universe was once in another form, the big bang is a theory on how its previous form.
“Eloquent and brilliant as Stephen Hawking is, even he admits his theories are implausible shots in the dark with nothing but floating imagination to buoy them up. But at least they’re attempts to circumvent the realities science has established — and their true cause.”
He doesn’t say that it is implausible, but he rather inapplicable. String theory yields meaningless results. That doesn’t imply that they are wrong, simply that it is not useful in explanation, so we best find a better way at explaining the universe.
“The God of the Judeo-Christians created “because” He wanted to. He hasn’t revealed His reasoning to anyone. He does simply say that He loved his creation, mankind, so much He decided to actually take on the form of a human being (He’s God; He created everything, including human beings, WHY COULDN’T He do this?), walk among His creations as one of them, and allow them to “kill” Him so that He could rescue some of them from their hell-bent stupidity of rejecting Him out of simple ego.”
What justifies this claim? You attack the justifications of science, yet you default on unjustified qualities of ‘God.’ That’s the problem with theism; it omits itself from justification, which makes it an automatic strawman for non-theists.
“And that’s what all the fuss is about. That simple, overriding ego of some people makes them desperately search for reasons to reject Him because to accept Him means to give up most of that ego.”
No, the fuss is about lack of justication, reasoning, and a denial of understanding. If we can’t understand ‘God,’ or what ‘God’ is, what does that say about any claims of God anyone makes? It automatically destroys the validity, or rationality in believing God exists.
“Actually, through scientific advances in the last century, and continuing into this one, we are practically able to “observe” the origin of the universe, that big bang, and in biology, simple DNA and cellular structure and functioning has revealed, thanks to computer technology, the application of information theory to all of life, and the impossibility of such complicated structures ever arising from arbitrary, independent “inventions” of “evolution” to arrive at a complete and functioning, hence living, cell.
In fact, ID has arisen precisely out of testable scientific evidence. Take Kevin’s example of the eye, for instance.”
You must look into the evolution of the eye; the ‘eye’ is highy likely to develop by means of natural selection. And, the impossibility of life arising by means of natural phenomenon is quite selective; you cannot account for all the conditions from which life obviously developed. What’s the possibility of an intelligent being creating everything given the same probability formula; that, sir, is in fact 0.
“It is unscientific to rule out causes simply because they cannot be observed, and invent “causes” that, just as much, cannot ever be observed, such as macro evolution. The reason modern, materialistic science must rule out certain causes is precisely because of their implications to humankind, and finding that unacceptable, instead “science” plays the baby’s game of hiding its eyes, thinking then it cannot be seen, thinking it is protected and safe from everything it cannot see.”
No, it IS scientific to rule out causes because they cannot be observed. That IS the basis of science, hence positive realism. Science attempts to explain the world in a way that can be justified through experience; to incorporate non-observables means to take away meaning from explanations. I could say that the Boogieman is responsible for things, but that gives no predictive power or explanatory power to my observations.
“It’s interesting how today almost all fields in science are “converging” on a single piece of evidence: our universe was deliberately created, and our planet, with its life, appears with every advance in scientific observation, to have been specially positioned and conditioned anthrocentrically for us.
All this from scientific observation, not religious dogma.”
Science is not converging on that evidence. Science is only anthropocentric because it is limited to human observation. You viewing the universe being constructed for us is just, no offense, kind of egocentric. If you view the world in that way, you would think that the Sun would revolve around Earth..but it does not. Science is not advancing in that manner, and if you think that it is, please show me some peer-reviewed scientific studies that imply that it is.
