Posted on 07/09/2008 10:10:49 AM PDT by Soliton
Can you believe in God and evolution? Yes, if you keep the two separated in logic-tight compartments.
Belief in God depends on religious faith. Belief in evolution depends on empirical evidence. This is the fundamental difference between religion and science.
If you attempt to reconcile religion and science on questions about nature and the universe, and if you push the science to its logical conclusion, you will end up naturalizing the deity because for any question about nature - the origins of the universe, life, cells, humans, whatever - if your answer is "God did it," a scientist will ask, "How did God do it?, What forces did God use? What forms of matter and energy were employed in the process?" and so forth. The end result of this inquiry can only be natural explanations for all natural phenomena. What place, then, for God?
(Excerpt) Read more at canada.com ...
This conclusion simply doesn't follow from the premises. Two non-scientific responses are possible that do not naturalize God. First, if God used natural forces to accomplish His ends, God's will is the motive force that caused the desired and observed result. How does a watch get built? There are natural processes that create the metal and glass and give it its properties, but the watchmaker's will is what assembles the watch itself. Consider Joshua and the Hebrews crossing the Jordan into the promised land. At the moment they were to cross, an earthquake upstream dammed the river causing the flow to cease at the crossing point. God either caused the earthquake at the right moment or omnisciently knew of the coming earthquake and set things up so that the Hebrews would be crossing the Jordan at that point.
Second, God's omnipotence is a force beyond what science is capable of observing. For instance, science purports to observe back to the singularity at the instant of the big bang. Science cannot observe anything about what God did before the big bang because it is a system based solely on observation and experimentation with the existing universe, not with what lies outside of it.
What the author seems to be saying is that the scientist will attempt to confine and limit God within the scope of the creation and within the scope of the created human capacity for reason.
Although I can’t speak specifically for the ID perspective, the creationist view is that God works both in nature as well as supernaturally. This concept is so simple and so basic it is the substance of a child’s conversation.
Shermer is looking too hard for a way to criticize his opponents, producing his arguments too hastily. Why would Shermer be so willing to be associated with such mediocrity?
Hm. A rather silly article, actually — an extended exercise of the fallacy of assuming the consequent.
Here's an example of the fallacy at work.
Mr. Shermer makes several assumptions here, none of which survive scrutiny.
For example:
1. Intelligent design theory lacks, for instance, a hypothesis of the mechanics of the design
The problem here is obvious: one could, for example, hypothesize the same sort of mechanics as are currently used by human genetic engineers (who are, btw, "intelligent designers" in their own right).
Natural selection can and has been observed and tested, and Charles Darwin's theory has been refined.
Specific instances of ID can also be observed and tested. Referring again to genetic engineering, that field is based on application of specific processes to obtain a desired result. My favorite example is the genetic engineering of bacteria to produce the human insulin used by my diabetic son.
On the other hand, one might profitably ask whether it's possible to test "naturalistic evolution" to the same level of detail, starting at point A, and demonstrating that a hypothesized and specific end point B has been reached. Examples of selective breeding are not permitted, as the selection in that case is driven by an intelligent agent (the breeder).
But ID has no corresponding mechanism, other than "God did it," which is a religious statement, not a scientific hypothesis.
Mr. Shermer goes much too far here. Although some folks do it, there is no logical need to invoke God as the agent behind a hypothesized example of Intelligent Design.
The guy’s thesis is simply that the natural and the supernatural are subject to different laws by definition. You can’t prove the supernatural using natural methods. Faith isn’t science. It’s not hard to understand.
If God exists, He must not want us to prove it. If he did want to prove it, he could supply us with a concrete example of the miraculous. Say a man walks into a medical laboratory and says I am from God. They cut him open and has no organs, just 35 pouns of marshmallow cream. It NEVER happens, whenever we look, we see natural biological/chemical processes consistent with evolution.
You are an intelligent person. Of course there is a logical need to invoke God as the agent behind intelligent design. Was the designer designed himself or did he evolve? It always comes back to God or evolution.
If you want to see natural selection in action, watch this video. It's long but the part you want is called the "Rock Pocket Mouse Video about 60-80% of the way to the end. You can fast forward. The math is hard to argue against.with.http://www.hhmi.org/lectures/webcast/ondemand/05webcast1/interface_broadband.html
As noted above, his thesis fallaciously assumes the consequent; namely, the a priori assumption that an ID hypothesis automatically implies a supernatural agent whose techniques are undetectable and/or unrecognizeable.
None of that is necessary.
Of course there's not. Genetic engineering is an example of Intelligent Design, and those folks aren't God (except, perhaps, to the organisms they modify).
The idea is as follows: God is all-encompassing. To claim God’s actions must take place outside of nature is logically inconsistent with God’s identity, and as such is an irrational proposition.
You’re right. I don’t think God would want “concrete example” (except infrequently, as with the Resurrection of Jesus) proving his existence. As I’ve mentioned before, such scientific proof would eliminate the need for faith. Is it not common sense to think God prefers a world in which faith is necessary rather than unnecessary?
God already proved His existence and His love for us by sending his Son--incidentally one of the best reported figures of ancient history--to live a perfect sinless life, die on the cross, and be resurrected. Given this extraordinary proof of God's existence and his love for us, it is amazing that people still choose to reject God on the basis that He hasn't shown up on their doorsteps this morning with new miracles that they believe would demonstrate God's existence.
Great post. Concrete examples on a regular basis would cause human beings to do two things. First, they would be cowed into submission to God rather than exercising free will (with apologies to the Calvinists) and receiving the faith of God through the grace of God. Second, as Eve demonstrated, they would resent God all the more because of that fear.
EXACTLY!. So why do so many try to prove His existence? Faith is faith and science is science.
You are now being dishonest. It is the most dispicable aspect of the IDist's methods. Lying for God. Did the genetic engineers evolve from lower orders or were they in turn created by an intelligent designer? It's a ruse, not a debate.
I think you may be confusing faith in the existence of God with the existence of God. God exists and has done His works in this world whether we believe in Him or not. The point of ID with which I am most sympathetic is to suggest that the scientific explanation of cosmogony is incapable of identifying the truth of cosmogony.
All that we can do is assess the appearance of the world scientifically, but science itself can never assess the objective truth of the world. This appears to be your point, but it needs to go one step further. Merely that God is outside of the capacity of science to observe, define, and examine does not give science a license to assert that the truth of the world is limited by the scope of scientific investigation.
Oh, bullshit. You're trying really hard to obfuscate ... but the fact is, you're piling on unnecessary assumptions in order to steer the conversation toward your own, predetermined, result.
If you cannot admit the very simple and obvious fact that genetic engineering is an example of intelligent design, then you're a hopeless case. I had thought better of you... guess I was wrong.
Of course all engineers are intelligent and they design. But that is just smoke and mirrors. The origin of life in the universe comes down to evolution or God.
How can you know if something is true without evidence? Science is simply the best method we have for establishing truth. Things may be true that can't be proven, but we then have no method for telling them from lies. Science works. Faith often makes us fools. There was a time when you were as sure of Santa Claus as you now are about God.
LOL!
The only "life in the universe" we know about is right here on Earth. You can have nothing to say about the origin of life elsewhere.
That being the case, there is no logical requirement for life on Earth to have come as a result of either evolution or God. The "space alien" theory is just as valid ... and it has the advantage of being consistent with a reasonable extrapolation of the current state of the art in human genetic engineering.
And, moreover, even if we do break things down between "evolution" and "God," there is no logical reason to make it an either/or proposition.
Pursue Darwinism to it’s logical end and you end up a religion.
The space aliens will of course have to be designed or have evolved and so on back to the first designer. That of course is God. ID is a proven ruse to make Biblical creation look like science. It is a deliberate lie for God.
I'm a religion?
LOL! Perhaps -- but that is irrelevant to the idea of how life on Earth began. You're extrapolating a universal rule from a single point.
That of course is God. ID is a proven ruse to make Biblical creation look like science. It is a deliberate lie for God.
My son's insulin is not a "proven ruse," it is a proven treatment for his diabetes. It is, of course, manufactured by genetically engineered bacteria, which are the products of intelligent design.
It is therefore clearly not necessary to go all the way back to the beginnings of time to show that ID is a valid hypothesis. That you demand to do so, suggests that YOU have an agenda, and are not above dishonesty in trying to ram it through.
Do I understand from this statement of yours that the origin of life is evolution's responsibility, if it is not God's?!
Unless I'm severely misunderstanding about a jillion threads on this subject, Darwinists exclaim ferociously that evolution has NOTHING to do with the origin of life. Now you say it's responsible...Or are you suggesting God did it?
Did I miss something?
“Evolution by natural selection in the classical sense—unguided, with no transcendent agent to direct mutations along “certain beneficial lines,” as Asa Gray put it, hasn’t a clue about how to explain religion—or mathematics, or philosophy, or our ability to do science, for that matter.
Evolution might or might not be able to account for the complexity of our brains, per se, but it’s mute and powerless to “explain” the higher products of our brains, which are of course by far the most complex objects yet known to us anywhere in the universe. Many agnostic and atheist philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists have stated this much in frank terms.
Our ability to do higher mathematics, for example, was utterly irrelevant to our survival in evolutionary terms—our ancestors needed to know absolutely nothing about topology or fractals, manifolds or tensors, even differential calculus, in order to outwit mammoths and saber-tooth tigers. Nor did they need to know the profoundly shocking fact (from the point of view of naturalism) that mathematics of the kinds just mentioned is incredibly powerful for understanding the external world—a fact that just cries out for a deeper explanation. Pinker, Dawkins, Dennett and company are flying into the face of the facts on this one.
We can not only do mathematics, but our mathematics actually matches the subtlest details of the external world.
How does this make any sense at all, if we aren’t in a very real sense created in the image of God, the divine mathematician (as Kepler, Galileo, and Copernicus regarded God) who also created the external world?” ~ Ted Davis 3/24/08 Professor of the History of Science
Web page: http://home.messiah.edu/~tdavis/
Lots and lots of words with no evidence to support it. Just because somebody you like says something doesn’t make it true. He doesn’t support any of his claims.
Nicely stated. That was Einsterin’s argument too.
No, Darwinists claim Darwinism has nothing to do with the origins of life. Darwin was concerned with the evolution of one species into another. I claim that either life originated naturally and evolved naturally, or it arose through supernatural causes ie. "God". ID has no place in the discussion because a designer has to be designed or have evolved. It always comes back to God or Evolution
The flaw in your logic is that in each case you cite as proof, a designer can be proven to exist. We are discussing the case of the origin of life on Earth. There is no evidence to support the existance of a designer. Prove your designer exists using empirical evidence.
What method did you use to prove the existence of the designers in his cases?
This is the deceitful part of IDist claptrap. The whole ID "hypothesis" falls apart under its own logical fallacy. ID leads directly and absolutely to a supernatural origin for life. It is a religious concept. ID was proven in court to be a Creationist dodge to violate the constitution. Lying and cheating for God. You should be ashamed of yourselves
He claims that because genetic engineers can create new forms of life, ALL life was created by Intelligent Designers. In other words, the existence of genetic engineers proves that ID is a valid theory
Nope. And not necessary, in any case. You're moving the goalposts from evidence of intelligent agents, to evidence of a designer. Surely you see the difference?
We are discussing the case of the origin of life on Earth.
You're trying to make it that -- although you will recall that you first started out with "the universe" and are now narrowing your scope.
But it is not a necessary condition -- there is no logical need to tie this debate to the origins of life on Earth -- as many folks on these threads love to point out, it's really a debate about what happened after life began.
From a logical perspective, there are several possibilities for the progression of life on Earth once it began. It could have been initially created, and then left to evolve; or it could have initially spontaneously evolved, and been operated on (continuously or occasionally) by intelligent agents, whose exact origins are not relevant to the question of life on Earth. You're unnecessarily conflating two very different topics.
There is no evidence to support the existance of a designer. Prove your designer exists using empirical evidence.
As expected, you've tried to make this a religious debate. I'm not playing that game.
The question is whether or not ID is a valid hypothesis -- of course it is, because (as genetic engineering shows) it is demonstrably the case that an ID hypothesis can explain certain biological phenomena.
Whether or not ID occurred in a particular case is, of course, a different issue -- it's one of verification, as opposed to validation of a specific hypothesis.
Yes, because we can detect the actions of an intelligent designer (humans)in gene modified organisms against a backdrop of the not intelligently designed bacterial genome it somehow indicates that the bacterial genome was designed.............. or something.
He claims that because genetic engineers can create new forms of life, ALL life was created by Intelligent Designers. In other words, the existence of genetic engineers proves that ID is a valid theory
Oh, please. Your argument is idiotic.
To see why: It is a plain fact that Intelligent Design practiced by humans has resulted in numerous types of genetically modified organisms. Does the origin of the humans -- evolved or ID'd -- change the fact that ID took place in those cases?
Heck, no, it doesn't! Your complaint is quite obviously baseless.
And your mendacity is truly amazing -- but I tire of it.
It's generally good manners to ping the person whose views you are purporting to represent. It is especially important for you to ping them when you are lying about what they actually said. I never claimed that ALL life was created by intelligent designers -- only a dimwit or a liar could have traded so many posts with me and come away with that impression. You're not a dimwit ... which leaves us with the other alternative.
In other words, the existence of genetic engineers proves that ID is a valid theory
That is a correct statement. Hint: look up the word "valid."
There's no point in wasting any more time on you.
I didn’t mention your name in my post. ID is a scam created by the Discovery Institute for the express, legally proven, purpose of teaching Creationism in public school. It is lying for God. Period!.
The quote you were discussing was mine. Your characterization of it was a lie.
Your antipathy toward the Discovery Institute is duly noted. Your irrationality on the topic, likewise.
He said no such thing.
However, you assert his logic is flawed because you can "prove" the examples he cites have designers. The flaw in YOUR logic is you're not using anything like the scientific method to do so.
His point is simple, and you are arguing in bad faith by refusing to acknowledge it; if you can demonstrate design in man-made insulin using the scientific method, why can't you demonstrate it with life? If you can't demonstrate the insulin had a designer using the scientific method, then you can't demonstrate life didn't have one, either.
You are in a Catch-22.
“Lots and lots of words with no evidence to support it. Just because somebody you like says something doesn’t make it true. He doesn’t support any of his claims.” ~ Soliton
He does at his web site. I linked you to it.
More:
“..I do have an idea for their [the Intelligent Design Movement] research program. Show how the evolutionary process is not random, not how it cannot happen. We can give them help here. This could be like the ‘95 Behe/Miller debate in reverse where Behe showed that Miller’s textbook claimed purposeless evolution and Miller knowing that evolution is not random in the popular sense fixed the error. It came back to bite him in the Dover trial where the old version was being used and Miller pointed to the new version. If the heart of the problem ID has is a random, purposeless, evolution, then we are here to help show how current, mainstream, evolutionary theory shows otherwise. It would require them to risk getting “expelled” by their YEC allies, though.
Rich Blinne Member ASA 04/24/2008 http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200804/0583.html
Other interesting conversation may be found here: http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200804/
My point is that natural intelligent design (small "i" small "d") is irrelevent to the origins of life. If you allow that life occurred through natural designers then necessarilly you have to account for how those natural designers came to be. You ALWAYS end up with a choice of random natural origins or supernatural origins.
Intelligent Design (capital "I", capital "D") was invented by a group called "the Discovery Institute". A court found that ID was a direct replacement for Creationism and was substituted to get around the Constitution of the United States.
In the future, "evolutionist" will take it's place beside words like "luddite," "pharisee," and "apparatchik." It will be used with the same contempt we now hold for those nineteenth century surgeons who wouldn't wash their hands, or those who still maintained the speed of light was infinite for fifty years after Roehmer proved it wasn't.
The genetic mutation providing variability in a species is random due to genetic copying errors. The existence of a selection event in proximity to the species affected is random. The change in the species due to the selection event does not appear random. In fact it appears “designed” because a solution is arrived at for a problem. It looks engineered. This example shows how black mice appear to be designed to live on black rocks.
Perfect example of random processes appearing designed.
No, you don't. That's just a forced dodge used by materialists with no weight other than their strong desire.
I don't have to show who murdered someone to demonstrate they were, in fact, murdered. And that categorically refutes your "we have to account for how the designers came to be."
You ALWAYS end up with a choice of random natural origins or supernatural origins.
And if origins are indeed outside of nature, you are defining the problem in such a way that you can never solve it...only propose hypotheticals that are existentially WRONG.
A court found that ID was a direct replacement for Creationism and was substituted to get around the Constitution of the United States.
Hanging your hat on "Dover" is as fatuous as citing "Roe v. Wade." Anyone who knows anything about the case knows you're using it like the ACLU uses "separation of church and state."
The fact that you know about Dover means you are part of the "Lying for God Movement" (LGM). You can't be trusted to tell the truth
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