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From: RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: The status of ID and a personal reflection
Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2025 20:41:45 -0600
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On 2/23/2025 4:23 PM, MarkE wrote:
> 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?

Was your effort to start this thread a serious effort?  Shouldn't you 
try to explain why you refused to support the ID scam for decades, and 
just let IDiots like Kalk and Bill make fools of themselves without 
trying to help them out?

You seem to be claiming that you have supported the ID scam for a very 
long time, but that was not apparent in your posting to TO.  You were 
obviously a creationist, but you seemed to be skeptical of the original 
creationist claptrap, and the the ID creationist scam that took the 
place of scientific creationism.

It is apparent that Biblical creationist IDiots like Kalk and Bill were 
never interested in the science that never existed because they both 
quit supporting the ID scam when the ID perps rubbed their faces in the 
best evidence for the creationist scam.  The ID perps were honest enough 
to not claim that it was the best scientific evidence.  All they claimed 
was that it was the "best evidence" that they had to support the ID 
scam.  Neither Kalk nor Bill wanted to support the best evidence that 
the ID perps claimed to have for the simple reason that, that evidence 
is inconsistent with the Biblical creation mythology.

Why claim to support the unsupportable at this time?  Doesn't it seem 
sort of cowardly to have let the other IDiots dangle and be made fools 
of without trying to help them out for decades?  Really, if you had 
believed that there was a serious argument to be made for IDiocy, why 
didn't you try to make it?  Even when you posted on the ARN board, I do 
not recall that you were openly in support of the ID creationist scam 
that was being discussed there.  When the bait and switch went down most 
of the creationists at ARN just stopped talking about teaching the junk, 
but some of them kept claiming that the bait and switch had not gone 
down, and that ID was still going to be taught in Ohio.  That ended a 
year later with the publication of the Ohio model lesson plan that did 
not mention that ID had ever existed.  Mike Gene came out and admitted 
that he had given up on teaching the junk back in 1999 (he made that 
claim in 2003).  Most of ARN just went into denial.  You had never 
supported teaching the junk in the public schools either here on TO, or 
at ARN.  Before the bait and switch started to go down getting ID taught 
in the public schools was one of the main effort of the ID perps at the 
Discovery Institute.  It was one of the 5 year goals listed in the Wedge 
document published by the ID scam unit.  The ID perps are still claiming 
that it is legal to teach ID in the public schools outside of Dover, and 
that the Kitzmiller decision was wrong.  You are trying to support 
something that even the ID perps decided could not be supported because 
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