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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 09:23:12 +1100
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On 24/02/2025 1:24 am, jillery wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Feb 2025 22:43:05 +1100, MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com> 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.
> 
> 
> Thank you for making this point clear.
> 
> 
>> 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.
>>
>> 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).
> 
> 
> You recently stated in paraphrase that you reject the possibility of
> macro-evolution.  Here would be a good place for you to explain how
> you think micro-evolution would not inevitably lead to
> macro-evolution.
> 
> 
>> 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.
> 
> 
> The shortcomings of ID aren't a consequence of human fallibility, but
> of it's fundamental inability to make objective distinctions between
> biological features and functions which are the result of unguided
> natural processes and those which are the result of purposeful design.
> 
> 
>> 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.
> 
> 
> As long as ID fails to specify the abilities of its designer, it has
> no basis for claiming any scientific foundation for ID.
> 
> 
>> 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.
> 
> 
> You conflate two separate lines of reasoning here, between denying
> God's existence and rejecting ID's logic.  They are not the same.  I
> acknowledge Dawkins might sound as if he also conflates them, and
> IDists are more than happy to handwave away his arguments for that
> reason, just as you do above.
> 
> However, unless IDists specify the abilities of their presumptive
> designer, they have zero logical basis for assuming what it can
> do/could have done.  My experience is IDists credit their designer for
> whatever phenomena they don't understand, which ranges from creating
> the entire universe to creating living things to mutating DNA, all on
> a whim.  That is why ID has no explanatory power.  That is why it has
> no scientific basis.  The existence of ID's designer doesn't inform
> those issues.

Just to be sure we're on the same page, can you restate my 'asymmetry' 
claim, and explain if and why you agree or disagree with it?

> 
> 
>> 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.
> 
> 
> Complexity exists as a consequence of interacting natural processes.
> Its existence does not inform design; some functional designs are
> complex, others are remarkably simple.  And once again, until you're
> willing to specify the abilities of your designer, you have no basis
> for saying which functions are the result of intelligent purpose or
> unguided natural processes.
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