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From: MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: The status of ID and a personal reflection
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2025 08:52:21 +1100
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On 24/02/2025 6:10 am, Ernest Major wrote:
> On 23/02/2025 11:43, MarkE wrote:
>> ID is described as "a pseudoscientific argument" on Wikipedia [1], 
>> there's clearly no love for it here, and as far as I know ID has 
>> limited recognition within mainstream science. The general public's 
>> awareness and support of ID I believe is higher but still constrained.
>>
>> ID has been accused of being a creationism Trojan Horse, and at times 
>> it seems to have pursued a political agenda, especially with 
>> education.  From to time to time, the Discovery Institute and 
>> Evolution News promote a misplaced right-wing perspective.
> 
> In principle Intelligent Design could have been a legitimate scientific 
> research program, albeit one that I would not expect to be productive. 
> In practice it's a religiously motivated political movement.
> 
> ID's studied agnosticism (when not addressing a friendly audience) about 
> the identity and nature of the designer or designers is what makes it 
> clear that it's not a scientific research program. A scientific research 
> program would asking be who, what, why, when, where and how, or at the 
> least how to investigate who, what, why, when, where and how.
> 
> The aim of science is to explain (if you're a philosophical realist) or 
> model (if you're a philosophical anti-realist) the world. By eschewing 
> questions of who, what, when, why, where and how, what ID does is 
> explain away observations, not explain them.

Noooooooooooo. You're ignoring the asymmetry I describe below. With 
respect to a scientifically inferred designer, questions of who, what, 
when, why, where and how are the province of theology, philosophy, 
experience etc. In this context, science functions as a prompt and 
pointer to other epistemological domains.

>>
>> Personally, I have a degree of ambivalence toward ID. For example, I 
>> think the 'information problem' claimed by ID is real, but I'm a bit 
>> surprised that people like William Dembski have not been able to 
>> progress it further after several decades (I've briefly but fruitfully 
>> corresponded with him regarding this in the past). More recently, on 
>> the topic of junk DNA, I get the impression that Casey Luskin and the 
>> Long Story Short episode on this may have oversimplified and/or 
>> overstated arguments against junk DNA (I've made a corrective comment 
>> on LSS's YouTube channel in relation to this).
>>
>> ID itself is a broad-ish church, for example with a range of views on 
>> common descent and the extent of evolution (e.g. from micro to macro).
>>
>> So, given all this, why would I speak in support of ID and claim it 
>> has gained and sustained traction [2]? My comments here are somewhat 
>> subjective, but with supporting references where applicable. To be 
>> clear, this is intended as a more a personal reflection and not a 
>> rigorous treatise (in contrast to other TO posts where I believe I 
>> attempt to argue consistently and from evidence).
>>
>> First, the question of origins - either life on earth or the universe 
>> itself - is all-encompassing, multi-disciplinary, multi-faceted, 
>> complicated, etc. One would expect strengths and weakness with 
>> opposing arguments and interpretation of evidence, as fallible humans 
>> grapple with these ultimate questions. So the shortcomings of ID are 
>> not in and of themselves unexpected or disqualifying.
>>
>> At its best, I think that ID correctly and non-deceptively infers a 
>> non- specific intelligent agent from an interpretation of scientific 
>> evidence (while acknowledging many ID proponents are Christians). This 
>> aligns with my own position and I suspect a growing number of 
>> Christians who sit somewhere between YEC and theistic evolution.
>>
>> The traction that ID has I think partly flows from this genuinely 
>> "agnostic" stance when it comes to comes to inferring a designer. This 
>> enables it to focus on the science alone.
>>
>> Something that needs to be understood is the inherent asymmetry 
>> between the positions of naturalism and supernaturalism in terms of 
>> how each applies science. Naturalism is seeking to prove a positive, 
>> i.e. to identify at least one plausible naturalistic explanation of 
>> origins. Supernaturalism, in this context, is required to prove a 
>> negative, i.e. on the basis of science demonstrate that all possible 
>> naturalistic explanations are impossible or extremely doubtful.
>>
>> One misunderstanding of this logical asymmetry is demonstrated by the 
>> supposed counter-argument, which says that positing God merely shifts 
>> the question to 'Who made God?', which is declared to have no 
>> explanatory power, and therefore can be discounted. Dawkins is fond of 
>> this approach. Sorry Richard, but you can't make God vanish in a puff 
>> of pseudo-logic and disingenuous wishful-thinking.
> 
> If you have the choice between an uncaused universe or an uncaused god, 
> or between an eternal universe and an eternal god, plumping for the god 
> doesn't in itself add any explanatory power, and would be provisionally 
> shaved using Occam's Razor.
>>
>> In any case, ID has endured now its modern form for about three 
>> decades, and of the various creationism streams is, as far as I'm 
>> aware, by far the most credibly and substantially engaged with current 
>> science. The DI claims a research program and over 250+ peer-reviewed 
>> papers published in mainstream journals [3]. Of course, the validity 
>> of these may be disputed - as are most perspectives and papers in 
>> contentious areas (e.g. string theory).
>>
>> While ID has not delivered a knock-out punch (obviously), it does seem 
>> to continue to track progress in science and develop its arguments 
>> accordingly. Examples include:
>>
>> 1. OOL. Although I've mentioned some specific criticisms of the Long 
>> Story Short video series, overall the fact that they can be made today 
>> is revealing. The series critiquing naturalistic abiogenesis [4] 
>> (claimed to made by five "PhD scientists") directly challenges OOL on 
>> the basis of current science, and exaggerated claims of progress 
>> (IMO). Along with this are books like The Stairway to Life [5], and 
>> many others. And James Tour has waded in to this issue, as an ID 
>> sympathiser at least, and despite his shouty and sometimes dismissive 
>> manner, I think his work very much reinforces what ID is saying [6]. 
>> YMMV.
>>
>> 2. Stephen Meyer on most things. He is now the public face of ID, and 
>> its most prominent intellectual spokesperson, debater, and book 
>> author. His guest appearance on Joe Rogan confirm his popular 
>> positioning. His genteel conversations with skeptic Michael Shermer I 
>> think point to the substantive arguments ID presents. And Meyer's 
>> books have deserved infleunce and impact across topics like first- 
>> case, fine-tuning, OOL, complexity, information, Cambrian explosion, 
>> macroevolution, etc.
>>
>> 4. The whole complexity thing. Yes, I understand (for example) PZ 
>> Myers' frustration with ID veering toward "complexity therefore 
>> design". However, the complexity problem is real and growing. Science 
>> is discovering more and more complexity in living cells and living 
>> things. This correspondingly increases the challenge to OOL and 
>> macroevolution, and ID knows this and is rightly pressing the point.
>>
>> 4. Behe's IC, and more recently his waiting time problem analysis. 
>> Your mileage well vary on this one.
>>
>> 5. The information issue. Biology is as much about information 
>> storage, processing and maintenance as it is about physics and 
>> chemistry. Naturalism has not come to grips with this IMO, and I think 
>> ID is on the right track with the focus it has on this.
>>
>> 6. ID taking on first-case, fine-tuning, OOL, complexity, information, 
>> Cambrian explosion, macroevolution, etc.
>>
>> That's an incomplete and uneven summary. As I hope I've made clear, 
>> YMMV; I acknowledge that. This post is not an opportunity to dive down 
>> the hundred rabbit holes that this overview touches on. That is 
>> something I've been demonstrably (laboriously) willing to do in many 
>> other threads. Rather, this is an invitation for conversation about 
>> your own journey, perspective, doubts, convictions etc. I'm happy to 
>> consider correction and criticism, within the framework described.
>>
>> If you are convinced that ID (or creation in general) is not something 
>> that can be meaningfully discussed with reference to science, this is 
>> probably not the thread for you.
>>
>> If I haven't been able to convince you in some of my previous posts 
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