Post by MarkEID 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.
You always seemed to agree that ID was basically a scam from the
beginning. You never seemed to buy into the scam even after it became
the main creationist topic on TO. I do not recall any overt claims of
adhering to the ID scam tactics.
Post by MarkEID 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.
Everyone should understand that ID is just warmed over scientific
creationism. The Scientific creationists used to use the same Top Six
best evidences for the ID scam. The Big Bang, fine tuning, origin of
life, the flagellum as a designed machine, the Cambrian explosion, gaps
in the fossil record, and human evolution were all scientific
creationist god-of-the-gaps denial arguments. Gish would routinely use
most of them in his Gish Gallop against his scientific opponents. He
would try to cram as much denial into his 10 minutes as he could squeeze in.
Post by MarkEPersonally, 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).
For political purposes the ID scam has tried to propagate a "Big Tent"
approach where they falsely claim that ID is open to all creationist
religious beliefs. If ID were more than the psuedoscience propagated by
the ID creationist scam artists they would have been more honest about
what real science is all about. Real science is just the study of
nature. There is only the one nature and cosmos that we have to study
at this time. This simple fact means that the ID perps have lied about
the Big Tent creationist effort from the start of the ID scam. ID died
on TO when the last supporters could no longer live with the lie. The
ID perps were stupid enough to give the rubes their best evidence for ID
in the order that those gaps must have occurred in this universe, and it
turned out that this universe is not Biblical. Pagano tried to go into
denial and claimed that the Top Six were not the best IDiotic evidence,
and that Dembski's scam arguments that had been rejected by even the
IDiots long ago (Dembski had already retired from the ID scam as an
abject failure before the Top Six were presented, and none Dembski's
junk made it into the Top Six). The denial was even too much for Pagano
and he quit posting. Bill claimed that he had never supported the ID
creationist scam. We all know that, that isn't true. What Bill likely
meant was that he had never supported what the ID scam had always
existed, and that he had never really supported the Top Six
god-of-the-gaps IDiotic denial obfuscation arguments. ID still had
supporters on TO when they were just feeding the rubes the Top Six as
independent bits of denial that were used by the scientific creationists
as fire and forget denial arguments. The Top Six were never supposed to
have been taken together and demonstrated to have existed in a non
Biblical universe.
Uncommon descent could never deal with the Top Six in an honest and
straight forward manner, and it is now defunct. The Reason To Believe
old earth creationists used to claim that they were IDiots who supported
ID science, but you can go to their web site now, and you would have a
difficult time trying to find any evidence for their past with the ID
scam. They had always claimed that they did not want to teach the junk
in the public schools, but that they wanted to use the ID science to
develop their Biblical creation model. It turned out that they could
not use the ID science to accomplish that. The creation as it exists is
not Biblical, and science has to deal with what exists.
Post by MarkESo, 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).
Tour claims to understand that ID has been a scam for decades (He admits
that he can't figure out how to do any ID science) but he still supports
the gap denial. Gap denial was never going to make the ID scam into any
science that the majority of IDiotic creationists (most are still YEC)
would want to support. Taken together, in their logical order in which
they must have occurred in this universe, the Top Six will never support
a Biblical creation. Even Tour's current denial about just one of the
Top Six (the origin of life) should tell anyone that the existing
creation is not Biblical.
Post by MarkEFirst, 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 denial will never get you to where you want to go. You still have
to accept that the creation is not Biblical in order to claim that some
god did it. It was not the god described in the Bible, and you are
still left with how that god did it. Denton claims that, that god did
it by creating a universe with the Big Bang and making sure that
everything needed to allow life in this universe was provided by this
creator at the beginning. Denton understands that it took over 8
billion years to produce the carbon and other elements that our solar
system is made of to make a planet like our earth with the materials
needed to have life exist on this planet. Denton doesn't care about any
of the fine tuning bull pucky because he understands that it isn't
needed, and would be difficult to demonstrate that some god would take 8
billion years to make our planet in the right place with the right
composition to harbor life.
Post by MarkEAt 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.
You are likely wrong. All the ID scam artists came at the problem from
the point of view that some god existed. As pointed out the need for
that god is difficult to demonstrate, and even explain. IDiots need to
answer the question of why it would take 8 billion years to fine tune
our planet so that life could exist here? Why does it look like it just
happened naturally without any intervention.
Post by MarkEThe 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.
The traction that they have is stockholm syndrome believers, that can't
give up no matter how badly treated they have been by the ID creationist
scam artists. The bait and switch has been run on 100% of the
creationist IDiots that believed the scam artists when they claim to
have the ID science to teach in the public schools. Everyone should
know by now that the ID science never existed, and that the bait and
switch will continue to go down, but we still had West Virginia last
year. Not a single creationist rube has ever gotten any ID science to
teach in the public schools from the ID perps, zero. Zero is how many
supporters the ID scam should have at this time. The ID perps continue
to claim that the Kitzmiller decision was wrong, and that it is still
legal to teach IDiocy outside of Dover, but what happened to the West
Virginia creationist rubes that believed them? The ID perps got them to
remove mention of ID from the Bill that they had previously sent to the
Governor (they were able to run the bait and switch because the Governor
did not sign the bill that had ID in it, and the one that was signed did
not mention ID nor creationism, but the stupid author of the act kept
claiming that it would allow teaching ID in West Virginia public schools
after the Governor has signed the scam legislation. Luskin had to keep
claiming that the West Virginia rubes should not teach the ID science
(what could they teach?) and try to run the bait and switch on the
stupid legislator again.
Post by MarkESomething 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.
Science does not include supernaturalism because of the 100% failure
rate for the propositions. They cannot be scientifically tested and
they are only falsified when we have done the hard work to demonstrate
that such actions are not needed. There is no god that opens up the
firmament every once in a while to let the rain fall through. No matter
what the Bible claims, what we found out were things like the water
cycle, cloud formation and precipitation. Where do babies come from?
Who makes the seasons change? Is some god responsible for sunrise and
sunset? Was any god responsible for the spontaneous generation of life?
What did Pasteur demonstrate? The Reason to Believe creationists are
still claiming that some god is recreating life on earth on a regular
basis, and the recreations make it look like life evolved on this planet
for billions of years.
The simple fact is that supernaturalism has a 100% failure rate in terms
of the explanation of nature. Unfortunately, the ID perps have never
demonstrated that all possible naturalistic explanations are impossible.
Extremely doubtful is still a losing proposition when weighted against
the 100% failure rate for the alternative. All that you would need is
to have one god did it success to make god did it part of science, but
that has never happened. The 100% failure rate is what supernaturalists
have to deal with.
Post by MarkEOne 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.
It is only "logical" if you ignore the 100% failure rate. Not a single
success in the history of human kind that can be verified. You don't
have to worry about "Who made god?" when there isn't any evidence that
such an entity is involved in doing anything in this universe.
Was the universe created in 6 days or periods of time as described in
the Bible? It turns out that those things did not happen in that order.
What good does it do for you to try to figure out if some other god
was involved in doing things that the Biblical god obviously did not do.
It turns out that Christianity never relied on what is described in the
Bible about the creation. Saint Augustine was likely battling flat
earth Biblical creationists when he admonished Christians that were
trying to use to Bible to deny things about nature that we could figure
out for ourselves. Eratosthenes had estimated the circumference of the
earth using physical measurements a couple centuries before Christ was
born. Later Saint Augustine's admonishment was used to reconcile things
like Heliocentrism and even biological evolution.
Post by MarkEIn 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).
The peer reviewed science papers do not support ID. In spite of the ID
perp claims both Behe and Minnich admitted that there were no peer
reviewed publications supporting the ID creationist scam. Can you find
a single peer-reviewed paper published in main stream science journals
that supported the ID scam in those 250+ papers? Religious and
sociology journals that include religious cultural aspects should not
count as scientific journals, nor as any scientific support for the ID
creationist scam. Phillip Johnson apparently got the movement funding
and the ID scam unit started around 1995 at the Discovery Institute.
The original Wedge Document put out in 1998 had their religious and
political mission described along with their goals like having 10 states
teaching ID within 5 years. They came to national attention with the
Santorum "amendment", supposedly written by Johnson, to the No Child
Left Behind bill in 2000. Creationists started to take notice, but the
ID perps decided that they didn't have any ID science worth teaching, so
they started running the Bait and Switch on creationist rubes in Ohio in
2002. I recall that within a few months they had to run the bait and
switch on Minnesota, Wisconsin and Montana. My guess is that they might
have hit their 10 state 5 year goal, if they had not decided to make ID
into a creationist bait and switch scam. Since 2002 ID has only been
used as bait to sell the rubes the ID perp's obfuscation and denial
switch scam that does not mention ID, nor creationism ever existed.
Post by MarkEWhile ID has not delivered a knock-out punch (obviously), it does seem
to continue to track progress in science and develop its arguments
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.
This is just denial and not support for the ID scam. Tour understands
that he isn't supporting the ID scam with his origin of life denial, so
this doesn't matter with respect to the ID scam in light of the 100%
failure rate for any IDiotic claims in the past.
Post by MarkE2. 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.
When the bait and switch started to go down Meyer was the biggest cheer
leader for teaching the junk in the public schools, but he personally
ran the first bait and switch on the Ohio creationist rubes. At that
time he was director of the ID scam unit, but still held a teaching
position at a religious college. It was likely difficult to walk down
the academic halls after running the bait and switch on Ohio, so Meyer
quit his teaching job and started running the bait and switch scam full
time. For a period of time after Ohio Meyer dropped out of the public
view, and West had to step forward to publicly push the ID bait and
switch scam forward. During that time the Bait and switch went down on
every single school board and legislator that wanted to teach ID in
their public schools. The bait and switch has continued to go down 100%
of the time, and Meyer became what he is now, the face of the Bait and
Switch effort.
Post by MarkE4. 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.
IC died at the turn of the century. Behe admitted to his critics that
IC systems could evolve (I recall his example was a lever and fulcrum
could occur by chance) but his IC systems had something more. He first
claimed that "well matched" parts were important, but he could never
measure well matched to any degree so that he could claim that his
systems had enough to be IC. Later he gave up on multiple interacting
parts and started his 3 neutral mutations as making a system IC. These
would have to happen in a single protein within a certain amount of
time, but he could never find any examples.
Post by MarkE4. Behe's IC, and more recently his waiting time problem analysis. Your
mileage well vary on this one.
His edge of evolution argument where he admitted that he could not find
the 3 neutral mutations that he needed, but he could find examples that
were on the "edge" of evolution that required 2 neutral mutations. It
was a stupid argument, but he kept claiming that all evolution could do
was what he could demonstrate had been done, but it could not do the
evolution requiring 3 neutral mutations that his IC systems would need.
He could not find the 3 neutral mutation examples that he needed, but
biological evolution still could not explain nature because all he could
find were examples that could be accounted for without designer
interference.
Post by MarkE5. 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.
Biology is not about information storage. If anything, life exists
because of the propagation of previously existing life. The ID perps
have never been able to define the information that they claim that some
designer is needed to propagate. The ID perps make claims about DNA and
some code, but the DNA isn't the information that life depends on. The
DNA only does things like make RNAs that do things, and that can produce
proteins. DNA sequences that are used to regulate genes, and make
functional RNA products are not part of the DNA code that produces
proteins. The information that life depends on to propagate is not the
code for amino acid sequence, but the information in the protein
sequence produced. This information isn't in the amino acid sequence,
but in the 3 dimensional structures that that sequence can form.
Proteins have evolved that help other proteins take their functional 3D
shape.
As life exists today, it requires the structural information involved in
producing a life form capable of reproduction. We still have to put
synthetic genomes into a living cell to get those genomes propagated.
Just having the DNA isn't enough to propagate life.
Post by MarkE6. ID taking on first-case, fine-tuning, OOL, complexity, information,
Cambrian explosion, macroevolution, etc.
ID is just limited to the gaps. If ID were a useful scientific endeavor
it would be used to deal with what we already understand and be able to
better our understanding of our existing knowledge about nature. As
Behe admitted ID is useless for science as ID currently exists. His
only lame use for ID was that if his IC systems did infact require
designer interference to be created, that it would be a waste of time to
study the evolution of something like the flagellum. Critics have
always claimed that ID was just a science stopper, and Behe admitted
that, that is all that ID can be. Really, Behe's example was that if his
flagellum was really IC that no one should waste their time studying how
it evolved because god-did-it.
Post by MarkEThat'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.
You need to reevaluate what the ID scam has been and always was. It was
likely never an honest effort, and started off as just renaming
creationism so that they could have an excuse to keep trying to get the
creationism into public schools.
They initially wanted to continue the scientific creationist effort to
teach creationism in the public schools because they believed that, that
was the best means to recreate the theocracy that likely never existed
in the US. They believed that science was messing with their religious
beliefs, and needed to reverse the perceived negative impact that
science was having on those beliefs. When they came to understand that
what they had was never going to pass off as science they decided to
replace the ID scam with a stupid and senseless obfuscation and denial
switch scam that does not mention that ID nor creationism ever existed.
All ID has been since 2002 is bait. They keep putting out the bait in
order to force the creationist rubes to take their obfuscation and
denial switch scam. Nearly all the rubes have dropped the issue instead
of try to teach the switch scam because they do not want to teach the
kids enough science for them to understand what they need to deny if
they can't tell them why they are lying to the students.
Ron Okimoto
Post by MarkEIf 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.
You, should understand that the ID scam has always been creationism.
Why come out in support of the ID scam at this time, when you have
always been reserved and seemed to be suspect of ID from the start of
your posting on TO? Really, I do not recall you ever supporting the ID
scam like Nyikos, Glenn, Kalk, etc. You were obviously a creationist,
but you seemed to understand what a creationist scam ID was. The ID
perp creationists (all have admitted to be Biblical creationists) have
been running a bogus bait and switch scam on their own creationist
support base for over two decades. That is all that they have
accomplished. Look at their only successes. Louisiana, Texas, and now
West Virginia have switch scam legislation or state school board switch
scam stupidity. No one is claiming to be teaching ID, and Louisiana has
had the bait and switch run on it at least 3 times with Texas at least
twice. Even after bending over for the switch scam both states have
wanted to teach ID in their public schools and have had to have the bait
and switch run on them repeatedly. The ID perps are running the bait
and switch scam that is all that they have accomplished. They have had
zero scientific successes supporting ID. All that they have
successfully used ID for is as bait.
Ron Okimoto
Post by MarkEIf I haven't been able to convince you in some of my previous posts that
my own faith is definitively not dependent on ID being correct, so be
it, but that's not my interest here.
Thank you for reading this far if you've managed that. As always, I
welcome open-ended, open-minded civil dialogue.
_______
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design
"And what of the Origins debate? My contention is that progressive
discoveries with the complexity and precision of life are making Mt
Improbable higher and higher. ID has gained and sustained traction
because this trend is real. I would add to this arguments relating to
first-cause, fine-tuning, the Cambrian explosion, etc."
https://www.discovery.org/id/research/
https://www.discovery.org/f/10141
https://www.discovery.org/id/responses/
[4] Long Story Short - YouTube playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR8eQzfCOiS0AfFPsMAUYr_VVkpU13uv9
[5] The Stairway To Life: An Origin-Of-Life Reality Check
https://www.amazon.com.au/Stairway-Life-Origin-Life-Reality/dp/1734183705
[6] James Tour cf. William Bains
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/RwhAxtqls4A/m/eQFJbd-5AgAJ