Intelligent Design vs the Methodological Naturalism standard for science

[siti]

So, maybe he had a bad hair-day to take it personal.

Its not personal - I made that clear already - I am criticizing your remarks not you personally...I have made no remarks about you personally, or about your hair, or mis-attributions of beliefs...anyway, perhaps you're right - we should just say good day and move on...but if you insist on making unsubstantiated and sweeping remarks in your attempts to discredit 'science' because it refuses to agree with your beliefs - don't expect a positive response.

 

[shunyadragon]

science has no answers on how Big Bang came about, what was before BB, how life originated , what is consciousness, so, ID has advantage.

Your making a vague incoherent argument from ignorance to justify ID which has no basis in science.

Yes, science has research and progressive knowledge on all the topics above, but yes, science does not have all the answers. The proposition of ID is a claim, and does not in and of itself offer answers.

Can you provide a scientific basis and an argument based on objective evidence for ID?

What explanatory power does the science of Intelligent Design as to how abiogenesis, evolution and the cosmology took place other than simply the assumption that an intelligence (God) is the Creator?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Ah Guy! There you are! My post was not an insult - it was taxonomic. An asinine remark does not make for intelligent conversation any more than calling "a rose by any other name" would make its aroma any less sweet. If you want a substantive argument see my reasoned comment and either agree or disagree with that. But please don't join @Grandliseur in attempting to discredit the whole of science on the basis of some odd marks on an old statue - which actually has nothing whatsoever to do with the topic anyway.

Happy New Year Siti!

As always we have to make the important distinction between the label and the method- - the institutionalized academic opinion, and the practical method we all know and love

The label itself is just that, and so far more often refers to the former, the 'club' it is an entirely social construct after all

While Edison, the Wright brothers, Bill Gates, were inventors, engineers, entrepreneurs, and total academic 'failures', so the label 'scientist' did not apply

Hawking, Dawkins, Sagan, De Grasse Tyson etc etc - the label applies certainly, awards, media exposure, book sales of course make them the world's most famous 'scientists'
but can you name the greatest scientific contribution between them all?


This is how the primeval atom and quantum mechanics were labeled 'pseudoscience' at the same time Piltdown Man and Phrenology were declared unquestionable science

So I agree with Grandiseur, I'm not too impressed with science, I'm far more interested in what is actually true

 

[Grandliseur]

don't expect a positive response

Though I may be dense, I am not that dense. I think I got that one. Have a nice day. And, as a scientist, please take a course on how to 'make friends' and 'how to avoid conflicts' -
I got an A+ in 'how to make enemies and **** people off.' You might have taken that course too.

 

[sayak83]

science has no answers on how Big Bang came about, what was before BB, how life originated , what is consciousness, so, ID has advantage.

ID just posits a designer without saying anything about how the design happened.
One can as well say that Nature made the Big Bang happen, Nature originated life, Nature makes consciousness happen. There. That is exactly equivalent to ID in content.

 

[shunyadragon]

I'm not sure I agree with the methodological naturalism/philosophical naturalism division - and I am certain that such a division is neither simple or clear cut enough to be useful in the context of separating science from ID.

The difference between Methodological Naturalism (MN)and Philosophical Naturalism (PN) is fairly clear. PN requires a philosophical assumption of Materialism not made by MN, and cannot be falsified by scientific methods. The problem is similar to ID where the theological assumptions of ID cannot be falsified by scientific methods.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I'm not sure I agree with the methodological naturalism/philosophical naturalism division - and I am certain that such a division is neither simple or clear cut enough to be useful in the context of separating science from ID. For instance, whilst I can quite see how a devout believer could 'do' science (i.e. experiments) without the need to take a creator into account, I don't see how such a believer could conscientiously present meaningful 'conclusions' - e.g. about a naturalistic evolutionary account of human origins - whilst simultaneously holding a theological concept of supernatural special creation in mind. In drawing conclusions, you're either a naturalist or you're not - I think. And if you're just doing experiments and not drawing conclusions then you're probably a technician rather than a scientist.

which conclusion led atheists to reject the primeval atom? Everyone has a world view, Dawkins makes no secret of the feeling of 'atheistic intellectual fulfillment' he gets from evolution. But that in itself does not discredit his beliefs, if true, they should be able to stand on their own merits, regardless, right?

Intelligent Design is a theological concept not a scientific one -

again switch 'ID' for 'Primeval atom' and you have a verbatim quote from Fred Hoyle.

If the Big Bang, or ID happens to have theistic implications, I have no problem with it, no bias against that implication, are you conceding that you do? then who is putting their prefered conclusion first?

it is a top-down deduction based on the assumption that the perceived 'order' of things (cosmos) could not have emerged except by the deliberate action of an intelligent and necessarily supernatural creator. This may or may not be true - but there is absolutely, certainly and without any shadow of doubt, no scientific experiment that could ever be done to establish this even as a reasonable scientific hypothesis. Science simply does not do top-down deduction, that is not its business - it does bottom-up induction based on the analysis of observed bits of the world. Its a different process altogether.

It was the exact opposite for me, problems with Darwinian evolution were one thing that ultimately led me to question the atheist beliefs I was brought up with

the same applied to the outspoken atheist philosopher Anthony Flew, it was the advancement of life science that made him reconsider

"Flew stated that "the most impressive arguments for God’s existence are those that are supported by recent scientific discoveries" and that "the argument to Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it"

The methodological naturalism of science is not an option - it is forced on us because we cannot observe anything but the natural. ID does not fail to be science because it has abandoned methodological naturalism - it hasn't and never will be able to do that because it will never be able to actually observe anything other than the natural. Rather, ID fails to be science because it deduces a conclusion that cannot possibly - even in theory - be induced from observation and analysis.

By which rationale the Rosetta stone was created by purely natural unguided processes, no intelligent agency involved?

 

[shunyadragon]

The Waterloo of 'Intelligent Design' in science and the courts took place in the Kitzmiller v. Dover, tried in 2005 in a Harrisburg, PA, Federal District Court, "intelligent design" was found to be a form of creationism, and therefore, unconstitutional to teach in American public schools.

The argument up till this point the proponents of 'Intelligent Design' (ID) argued that ID was a scientific hypothesis, and not Creationism.

It was determined by the testimony that ID was a theistic proposition, and there was no scientific evidence for ID

 

[Grandliseur]

ID just posits a designer without saying anything about how the design happened.
One can as well say that Nature made the Big Bang happen, Nature originated life, Nature makes consciousness happen. There. That is exactly equivalent to ID in content.

You are quite right. But, is there anywhere in e.g. the Bible that tells us not to try to study the issues so as to find out how things were done?!

Let me ask you a stupid question, I may be good at that.
I love SciFi books and at my age and the way my life is now, I don't study seriously any longer.

But, let's imagine that you go to a neighbor planet and find remains of cities, even flying machines, such as the UFOs we have heard about here on this planet. You find that this machine doesn't have rocket propulsion, but instead has a propulsion system that you do not understand how works, though you can test fly it.

Answer me in all seriousness, please. Is your gut reaction, 1. that this machine evolved on its own, 2. that some now dead alien scientists and engineers made it?
What is your response to its unknown systems: 1. it evolved so I must study how it works, 2. it was ID'ed - thus, a. I must not study how it works, or, b. I must still study how it works so as to be able to design my own better flying machines?

What I see is that rejecting ID because we don't know how things were made is nothing but an excuse. From my perspective, either evolved or ID'ed, leaves me in the same position, I have to find out how things work.

 

[siti]

Piltdown Man

Hell's teeth Guy - you're slipping - it took you two posts to get it in!

OK - all join in the chorus...Piltdown Man, Piltdown Man, Piltdown Man....Piltdown Man, Piltdown Man, Piltdown Maa-an...Piltdown Man...(repeat and fade)

There - see ID is true after all and Piltdown Man proves it! It must surely be true now after we've repeated it so often!

PS - on your question regarding the scientific contributions of Hawking etc...

Hawking - massively important contributions to our understanding of black holes, singularities and gravity - if you don't know about this stuff you really need to read up before discrediting him as a scientist

Dawkins - popularized the gene-centered view of natural selection and introduced the idea of the extended phenotype that explains how the gene-centered effects are not limited to the bodies of individual organisms but extend into their environment (again - you need to read it before you can discredit either the idea or its scientific importance, but he developed and published these ideas in scientific journals long before writing popular books on it)

Sagan - made pioneering (and at the time unpopular) predictions about the atmospheric conditions of Venus, Mars, Jupiter, the moons of Saturn and Jupiter etc. that were later confirmed by direct or indirect observations of the Mariner and Gallileo missions.

DeGrasse Tyson - dunno - maybe you can look that up for yourself, but generally, your contention that these people have not helped us considerably in gaining a better scientific understanding of the world is clearly incorrect.

 

[siti]

I got an A+ in 'how to make enemies and **** people off.' You might have taken that course too.

If there was a Nobel Prize for pissing people off I'd win it. I'm not sure whether its a God-given talent or an evolutionary trait.

 

[socharlie]

Your making a vague incoherent argument from ignorance to justify ID which has no basis in science.

Yes, science has research and progressive knowledge on all the topics above, but yes, science does not have all the answers. The proposition of ID is a claim, and does not in and of itself offer answers.

Can you provide a scientific basis and an argument based on objective evidence for ID?

What explanatory power does the science of Intelligent Design as to how abiogenesis, evolution and the cosmology took place other than simply the assumption that an intelligence (God) is the Creator?

science is immature, it knows not much, but it growth, I did not claim that ID is science , it based on intuition and it something that an average atheist can experience and it why an average atheist can not have evidence.
"The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." Matt 6:22

Proof of God in Five Minutes | Gerald Schroeder

 

[sayak83]

You are quite right. But, is there anywhere in e.g. the Bible that tells us not to try to study the issues so as to find out how things were done?!

Let me ask you a stupid question, I may be good at that.
I love SciFi books and at my age and the way my life is now, I don't study seriously any longer.

But, let's imagine that you go to a neighbor planet and find remains of cities, even flying machines, such as the UFOs we have heard about here on this planet. You find that this machine doesn't have rocket propulsion, but instead has a propulsion system that you do not understand how works, though you can test fly it.

Answer me in all seriousness, please. Is your gut reaction, 1. that this machine evolved on its own, 2. that some now dead alien scientists and engineers made it?
What is your response to its unknown systems: 1. it evolved so I must study how it works, 2. it was ID'ed - thus, a. I must not study how it works, or, b. I must still study how it works so as to be able to design my own better flying machines?

What I see is that rejecting ID because we don't know how things were made is nothing but an excuse. From my perspective, either evolved or ID'ed, leaves me in the same position, I have to find out how things work.

But we already know how machines and technology can be built by living things like ourselves. So if it's sufficiently similar in type, the inferential process works. We would also be able to predict that on further investigation we should see manufacturing plants, mining enterprises and recycling and power generation plants that made the manufacturing possible.
Of course none of this is true for life. We see life recreating itself autonomously, landforms creating and eroding autonomously and planets and stars forming and dying autonomously. So the inference there is that of a self-propelling system that exists by its own power. I don't see a universe or star or life manufacturing plant anywhere. If you can find me one, then the inference will change.
Further the designer is not dead. So if he exists, a demo on how he did his design would certainly convince us. Pray to him? It's not an unreasonable request surely?

 

[socharlie]

ID just posits a designer without saying anything about how the design happened.
One can as well say that Nature made the Big Bang happen, Nature originated life, Nature makes consciousness happen. There. That is exactly equivalent to ID in content.

no argument from me here.

 

[siti]

PN requires a philosophical assumption of Materialism not made by MN, and cannot be falsified by scientific methods.

Methodological naturalism assumes a materialist/physicalist sequence of cause and effect - science absolutely has to make that philosophical assumption in practice even if its practitioners feel free to abandon it again in their conclusions. I just can't see how this is a helpful distinction in an argument to discredit "Intelligent Design". You seem to be arguing that because intelligent design abandons naturalism at the outset it is somehow more 'reprehensible' (in a philosophical sense) than ideas that abandon naturalism only at the point of drawing ultimate conclusions about the origins of the cosmos. I just don't see how that argument can be sustained.

 

[George-ananda]

In reality no. Intelligent Design is a proposed proposition or hypothesis that our physical existence is Created by an Intelligent Source. The claim by those that believe in 'Intelligent Design' is that scientific methods can falsify, confirm or demonstrate ID.

Your goal is to demonstrate how scientific methodology can falsify ID. Simplistic assertion do NOT satisfy the standards to science.

I think the post by @james dixon was quite clever when read as his opinion.

Science is the study of intelligent design.

He, like I, believe there is design in the universe for reasons outside of science. So, for me, science becomes the study of the designed universe. It is just our opinion on the OP subject, not a scientific statement.

 

[siti]

which conclusion led atheists to reject the primeval atom? Everyone has a world view, Dawkins makes no secret of the feeling of 'atheistic intellectual fulfillment' he gets from evolution. But that in itself does not discredit his beliefs, if true, they should be able to stand on their own merits, regardless, right?

The primeval atom was a mistaken idea - it was ultimately rejected by scientists regardless of their theological or philosophical worldviews because it did not match the evidence in the end. My point was not that a theistic believer could not make rational scientific conclusions and still hold on to their beliefs, but that the distinction between methodological and philosophical naturalism does not help @shunyadragon 's argument against Intelligent Design - the only difference I can discern between his Baha'i version and a more explicitly theistic ans supernatural interventionist Creator version is the point at which naturalism is abandoned. Personally, I don't abandon naturalism at any point but I am happy to admit that leaves with no answer to some of the biggest questions. If I admit I don't know I can't be wrong can I? Not that not being wrong is terribly important - but being certain and mistaken is a problem - as Hoyle embarrassingly discovered but declined to admit.

 

[Skwim]

science has no answers on how Big Bang came about, what was before BB, how life originated , what is consciousness, so, ID has advantage.

So, just because X has an answer, it's necessarily right? That about it?

.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

I was specifically referring to how the study of ancient megalithic structures around the globe have been studied by professionals with degrees, even among them one or two professors. These have clearly demonstrated that high technology in their making was evident from the artifacts studies, and as mentioned water marks on the Spinx that clearly shows our present taught history to be wrong, that it is obvious we are dealing with an ancient high technological civilization now in ruins and long forgotten. Much more than this was seen to be suppressed by the powers that be.

@Grandliseur , you might enjoy this....

Fossil Suggests The Pyramids And The Sphinx Were Once Submerged Under Water


It supports your statement, scoffed at by siti. Heaven forbid, the Flood occurred! They've gotta come up with other explanations, they (science icons) just can't allow any metaphysical explanations!

BTW, thanks for the lead. It's more evidence for the Noachian Flood thread.

 

[David T]

I don't see how intelligent design has anything to do with science.

It doesn't have to do with anything