If I'm feeling charitable, I can forgive the gender activists for their excesses -- they are young and confused, after all.
However, I cannot forgive scientists, physicians, academic journals, and professional organizations for throwing science under the bus in favor of a trendy ideology.
It's simply inexcusable and real scientists should know better.
As Feynman said "The first principle of science is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool."
“Hexsel stated that the law “interferes with Texas families’ private decisions and strips Texas parents . . . of the right to seek, direct, and provide medical care for their children.”
Hmmm, isn’t that what all the trans activists and school districts are also doing when they try to remove parents from any participation in the process? Talk about having it both ways.
Good point. Transitioning kids in public school and hiding it from the parents literally includes the entire “public” in the process... the entire public EXCEPT the parents!
Science is often becoming indistinguishable from religion. Medical scientists and physicians in particular have started relying on dogma much like medieval theologians relied on church teaching. The gender delusion is just an example, along with the veneration of saints (like Fauci), and the unquestioning acceptance of church teaching (Covid came from nature, mRNA vaccines are safe). Scientists even attend their own theological seminaries(universities) where they are immersed in propaganda and are taught to condemn scientific heretics. The defenders of "gender affirming care" were naturally puzzled when you introduced actual science in this controversy.
“Traveling to Austin and appearing before a judge to explain these basic facts was a surreal experience. To my knowledge, this was the first time a biologist has been called to testify in court to defend the material existence of males and females as natural and distinct biological categories.”
It certainly must have been most bizarre to find yourself on the stand testifying to the immutable reality of the sexes, what has been universally known since the dawn of human consciousness.
Griffiths (PhilPapers): "Individual organisms pass in and out of these regions – sexes – one or more times during their lives. Importantly, sexes are life-history stages rather than applying to organisms over their entire lifespan. This fact has been obscured by concentrating on humans, and ignoring species which regularly change sex, as well as those with non-genetic or facultatively genetic sex determination systems."
Jeez, Jim, I know I'll regret this. Can you not accept the idea that sex is determined by by the kind of gamete an individual is equipped to make during their reproductive years? So a boy, a girl, a crone and an old man are sexed by the gametes they will make, can make, or once made?
🙂 Though I think you mean "defined" and not "determined" -- something that Colin had elaborated on in a previous post:
CW: "So this is an important point to make about some confusion on terminology. A lot of people, when they talk about how sex is determined, they conflate this with how sex is defined. As a biologist—so it's a—in developmental biology, for instance, when we talk about how sex is determined, we're talking about the mechanisms that cause an embryo to eventually develop into a male or a female, but that is very different from how sex is defined, which is based on the types of gamete that they can or would produce."
Though that closing "can or would produce" is the crux of your argument and of the more general problem. Which is, How are we going to DEFINE the sexes? How are we going to STIPULATE the necessary and sufficient conditions to qualify as male or female? Or as neither.
And it IS a matter of choice -- there are no intrinsic meanings to any of our words, to "male" and "female" in particular -- but some choices and reasons for them are better than others. Something that even Colin seems to be more willing to consider of late:
So I can at least sympathize with your own choice -- it has some currency, utility and value, at least in a rather circumscribed set of circumstances. Like your own practice of medicine.
But how will they work when applied to ALL anisogamous species? Largely Colin's point in that Note of his. And Griffiths in that PhilPapers article of his.
And the short answer is that they don't. They lead to a great many rather ridiculous or cumbersome constructions at best -- if not some real howlers and quite sticky wickets. For example, see this conversation I was having in another RLS thread on how Wikipedia, in their article on sequential hermaphrodites, have bastardized and corrupted the biology:
They're basically turning male and female into binaries -- the functional and non-functional halves -- which is basically what Colin and Emma Hilton are also doing. A repudiation and denial of the essential element of sex itself: reproduction. Rather moot how non-functional gonads have any use at all in that process ...
And all because some Wikipedian editors with a feminist bent have bastardized the more credible previous version, because they can't say "sexless", because it "offends" their precious "fee-fees", because it does not comport with their ideological dogma, vanity, and articles of faith.
If we're going to follow suit then how will you feel about saying that those "girls, boys, crones, and old men" of yours are "non-functional females and males"? That only those of us in the "prime of life" qualify as "functional females and males"? How about a definition of "woman" as "adult human female, functional or non-functional"? Not quite sure how one might defend that latter definition against transwomen who might claim to be the non-functional variety of "female" ...
The general problem is the fractious and enervating "debate" over the most reasonable and scientifically justified DEFINITIONS for the sexes. One which largely consists of us painting ourselves into some very tight corners because too many of us dogmatically insist on "definitions" predicated on "past, present, or future functionality", on "immutable", on "will make, can make, or once made".
Houston, we have a mission-critical problem. Trying to sweep the elephant in the living room, or the details and the devils therein under the carpet is not any sort of a solution.
Humans do not change sex. Sex is established at fertilization and endures until death, irrespective of the functional state, or even the absence, of gonads. Puberty and menopause are simply developmental stages but human sex is immutable and lifelong.
Sep 15, 2023·edited Sep 28, 2023Liked by Colin Wright
I've only recently become alert to how "argument from complexity" operates not only in gender ideology and, as you note, intelligent design, but in other issues in which a simpler truth is inconvenient to advancing a desired dogma. It's the loose converse of Occam's Razor, i.e. "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem," or "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" (credit to Wikapedia for translation) in arriving at reliable explanations. Conversely, "argument from complexity" brings to mind the old razzle-dazzle from "Chicago," Richard Gere tap dancing to legal legerdemain. I now see needlessly complicated arguments as red-flag indicators that I'm dealing with obstructions to truth, rather than truth itself. Thanks for this explication, Colin.
‘How can they see with sequins in their eyes?’ 🎼🎼😀😀. Yes - great comparison! The ‘three ring circus’ of gender ideology (and ID) arguments about fungi and clown fish mean arguing is sometimes like whack-a-mole.
It seems to me the most powerful argument against gender affirming hormonal and surgical treatment of children is (1) the absence of any evidence that it benefits them and (2) the clear evidence that it has harmful, irreversible effects.
Arguing about the definition of sex and whether it is binary is less important than this. It is also fragile because what matters is the legal definition, and that can be changed.
Supreme Court Justice Katanji Brown Jackson doesn’t know what a woman is, yet she was appointed for being a woman of color. Hope you can teach her and help turn the tide in our kangaroo courts!
I think it’s more accurate to say she didn’t have the courage to stand up to trans activism. “I’m not a biologist” reads as a canned response that deflects an easy, politically charged question.
Why is it that evolution and intelligent design are always discussed as mutually exclusive? It is not this or that. These two ideas can co-exist.
It's interesting that we live in a time where those who believe in the written word are more in touch with reality when it comes to sex than those who believe in this gender as a spectrum nonsense.
ID has famously made claims like the eye couldn’t have evolved by natural selection, but then evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins walks through a series of organisms through which the eye becomes increasingly sophisticated. It’s embarrassing case studies like that which illustrate why science and ID can’t co-exist.
"Intelligent Design" has its foundation in scientific illiteracy and just plain old garden-variety ignorance.
Our ancestors knew nothing of what we now call science and thought lightning reflected the anger of superbeings and shivered in fear. They invented supernatural omnipotent beings and made faith in them the centerpiece of life. Thousands of years later, we are still stuck with them. Religion is like a childhood toy. Put it back in the box, indulge in occasional nostalgia if you want, but never forget it's just a toy.
And can we please stop the pretense that ID is not creationism? Of course it is.
Throw in some millions of years and a whole ocean and stop pretending there is any mystery here. There isn't.
In fact, life appeared about fifteen minutes after the primordial oceans cooled enough to not destroy the molecules. Life is probably common in the cosmos.
I agree with Vee. I can easily hold both concepts in my mind - creation by design, adaptability by design. This typically makes me a pariah in both camps. The smartest people in the world are moving toward simulation theory.
Not really, they can intermingle over a ... spectrum ... of possibilities. We are already manipulating life at the most fundamental level, what might we be able to do in ten thousand years? We ain't gods, but we will surely be able to create life in the *foreseeable* future. Will we not seed any planets we find that are habitable but as yet sterile? There is nothing in ID thinking that mandates a supernatural intervention. I put it to you that we are guaranteed to do it ourselves.
I believe, as a general rule, that individuals or parents of minors or guardians of incapacitated individuals should be able to make their own medical decisions. However, doctors must follow laws and regulations in practicing medicine. What has happened with so-called "transgender care" is that, in the medical community, many (but by no means all!) doctors and medical associations such as the AAP are not complying with laws and regulations that require them to adhere to scientific principles in treating patients, including the "First Do No Harm" credo, to which all doctors agree when being licensed. While families remain free to choose the medical path for their children (with the glaring exception of many parents whose children are chemically and/or surgically poisoned and/or mutilated over the parents' objections!), what must be regulated are the doctors who are violating the law. If a parent wanted a doctor to shoot their child with a gun to make the child feel better, and the doctor was willing to do this despite the fact that he/she knew (or should have known) that there was no scientific basis for such a treatment, and the doctor was stopped by a statute or regulation from shooting the child, would we say the parent was being deprived of their right to treat their own child as they wish? It's not a perfect analogy, but the point is valid. We have to regulate medicine to prevent doctors from running amok with treatments that have absolutely no scientific basis and for which the harms are clear. This does not interfere with parental rights.
One characteristics of a dark age is the rejection of data in favor of narrative. It is notable that this author sees the danger and damage of the anti-scientific claptrap of the gender movement.
It isn't only the gender movement. What we are witnessing might be some feedback mechanism that we don't see because we are so enamored with being the Crown of Creation that we don't allow ourselves to see what is before our eyes. There are too many people and the ecosystem is allowing us the means to reduce our numbers, except instead we are destroying ourselves.
Pandemics and sterilization cult. Am I the only one who sees a pattern?
Yes, the tragic conundrum of history. From at least Roman types the cyclic rise and fall of civilizations has been noted. Romans developed their Republic with a Senate held in check by Tribunes to counter oligarchies and despotism, as well as to prevent mob action. It worked famously, until it didn't...the USA, being liquidated in all but name, was designed to prevent the perceived flaws of Rome from happening in America. It worked very well, for awhile...
Every civilization rises and falls. Many of us apparently, despite allegedly knowing better, saw this unfolding nightmare becoming a woke reality.
I was once asked, very first question, by a doctor about to treat me for a medical problem, what gender pronouns I preferred. This ideology-driven question translates for me to "Are you by any chance delusional (so I can coddle you if you are)?" I found that offensive and refused to engage, so the doctor kept asking repeatedly. Apparently, it was the policy of the medical practice. This was a week or so after I'd read about a woman who had presented herself as a(n obese) man, and was accepted without question as such by her doctor against any evidence of their own eyes. She then unexpectedly started giving birth after denying/ignoring 9 months of pregnancy and died in childbirth along with the child due to lack of prenatal care. Doctors need to accept biological reality before they can competently help their patients.
Gender ideology is indeed a religion, a modern manifestation of gnostic religion which separates the mind/soul from the body, with the mind being more superior than the body. Historic Christianity, in the other hand, believes that the mind/soul cannot be detached from the body-- the body, both mental, physical, and spiritual is all connected, and the body, both male and female (in the biological sense) is made in the image of God and therefore valuable.
However, I think it’s unfair to lump in believers of Intelligent Design with gender ideologies. Gender theory is a social science and has no bearing in material reality. ID adherents don’t deny reality or science as gender theorists do, they simply believe that the scientific evidence points to a divine, intelligent Creator as the ultimate cause for processes seen in the material reality of our world. Gender theory argues some complexities that be fairly easily explained biologically and it argues some complexities that simply don’t exist biologically, but only as social constructions (for example, they conflate the social constructions of things like boys should like blue and girls should like pink to then mean something about biological reality). (And not to mention that all these ‘complexities’ in gender theory ultimate contradiction each other, leaving the theory on no solid ground logically.)
But the complexities that ID point out DO exist. The gender theorists and evolutionary biologists like you actually disagree on the nature of those complexities, but ID adherents don’t disagree with you about the nature of evolutionary complexities— they only differ on the cause of them.
ID looks at and analyzes the real science of the material world and follows the evidence where it leads them— and sometimes the simplest explanation for complex systems is indeed the idea of Intelligent Design. You may disagree that the evidence leads to their conclusion, but you can’t accuse them of ignoring scientific evidence the way gender theory does.
No doubt you will protest that ID is simply a “god of the gaps” theory, and that given enough time, science will explain everything that ID leaves to supernatural explanation. But (1), saying that the gaps in knowledge that can’t be explained by evolution will simply one day be explained by science isn’t an evidence-based claim. It’s simply a “science-of-the-gaps” approach. (Just because science has filled in many knowledge gaps of the past doesn’t mean that it will continue to fill in all knowledge gaps about our world in the future, that’s only possible if we assume that science can indeed reveal to us all about our world) Which leads to (2) Science presupposes that anything supernatural is out-of-bounds, it presupposes that only the material physical world exists. How do you know that the supernatural doesn’t exist? This presupposition is like limiting a crime scene to the room the victim was found in, even though you have bloody footprints leading out the door. If you presuppose that the murderer didn’t leave the room, that nothing outside of the room entered in and caused action within the room, then you are left explaining certain evidences in a very limiting way. ID follows the scientific evidence where it leads, not presupposing, but simply finding that an intelligent designer seems the simplest and best explanation for the evidence at hand— even if we don’t fully understand how biological processes can be both material reality and caused by a supernatural divine being.
(3)Also the lack of a naturalistic material cause is not the only basis for inferring design. ID theory has positive experience-based knowledge of an alternative cause that explain such effects. And ID is testable.
ID theory first identifies four ways in which designers act:
* Intelligent agents think with an “end goal” in mind, allowing them to solve complex problems by taking many parts and arranging them in intricate patterns that perform a specific function...
* Intelligent agents can rapidly infuse large amounts of information into systems...
* Intelligent agents re-use functional components that work over and over in different systems (e.g., wheels for cars and airplanes)...
* Intelligent agents typically create functional things (although we may sometimes think something is functionless, not realizing its true function)...
Then, we can make four predictions that can be made from these observations of designers:
* Natural structures will be found that contain many parts arranged in intricate patterns that perform a specific function (e.g. complex and specified information).
* Forms containing large amounts of novel information will appear in the fossil record suddenly and without similar precursors.
* Convergence will occur routinely. That is, genes and other functional parts will be re-used in different and unrelated organisms.
* Much so-called “junk DNA” will turn out to perform valuable functions.
What do we find when we put these ideas to the test?
(1) “Language-based codes can be revealed by seeking to understand the workings of genetics and inheritance. High levels of specified complexity and irreducibly complexity are detected in biological systems through theoretical analysis, computer simulations and calculations (Behe & Snoke, 2004; Dembski 1998b; Axe et al. 2008; Axe, 2010a; Axe, 2010b; Dembski and Marks 2009a; Dembski and Marks 2009b; Ewert et al. 2009; Ewert et al. 2010; Chiu et al. 2002; Durston et al. 2007; Abel and Trevors, 2006; Voie 2006), “reverse engineering” (e.g. knockout experiments) (Minnich and Meyer, 2004; McIntosh 2009a; McIntosh 2009b) or mutational sensitivity tests (Axe, 2000; Axe, 2004; Gauger et al. 2010).”
(2) “The fossil record shows that species often appear abruptly without similar precursors. (Meyer, 2004; Lonnig, 2004; McIntosh 2009b).”
(3) Similar parts are commonly found in widely different organisms. Many genes and functional parts not distributed in a manner predicted by ancestry, and are often found in clearly unrelated organisms. (Davison, 2005; Nelson & Wells, 2003; Lönnig, 2004; Sherman 2007).
(4) There have been numerous discoveries of functionality for “junk-DNA.” Examples include recently discovered surprised functionality in some pseudogenes, microRNAs, introns, LINE and ALU elements. (Sternberg, 2002, Sternberg and Shapiro, 2005; McIntosh, 2009a).”
Lastly, the article mentioned above also highlights how ID theory has contributed to science and knowledge. Far from being a “science-stopper,” ID has furthered scientific inquiry in areas such as microbiology, engineering bacteria and antibiotic resistance research, understanding genetics and the origin of biological systems, etc.
Since ID is testable, some might consider it a science. The only reason it is disqualified from science depends on how you define science— is science using the scientific method, or is it any explanation that presupposes only material processes to be the cause? Perhaps ID isn’t “Science” with a capitol S, but it indeed uses the scientific method, so it’s a hell of a lot closer to evolutionary biology than gender theory. It’s fine if you don’t find the evidence and argument of ID compelling— but at least acknowledge your presupposition and do not make the mistake of lumping in a rigorous field of research that uses the scientific method with a pseudoscience repackaging of Gnosticism that denies reality in the first place.
... which only succeeds as an insult if we presuppose that science will fill those gaps. If the gaps are actually there -- if some phenomena are in fact created/designed --then that's the way it is. As I like to ask the materialist fundamentalists: Is it OK if I suggest that the Diesel engine did not arise due to random mistakes in the blueprints of Otto engines, but was, rather, intelligently designed by Rudolph Diesel? They usually say that it's OK. Well then, is Herr Diesel a 'Diesel-of-the-gaps'? Ridiculous, they say. I agree, because Herr Diesel did what he did. Likewise, if some intelligence was in fact involved in the development of life, then that's the fact of the matter and talk of 'gaps' is silly . It's a failed insult.
I've seen enough of the gaps filled in during my lifetime to know that there is nearly zero room left for a god. When I was young there was still talk of other cosmogenies like Hoyle's Steady State, and protons & neutrons were believed to be elementary particles.
Render unto Cæser that which is, etc. Well, sorry but Cæser runs the table and it's time to put God on a shelf with the other toys.
I still have the two Steiff tigers I've had all my life. I love them, but I know thery're just toys.
If no God (very broadly defined) then we won the lottery 30 times in a row and the laws of chemistry are wrong. Not impossible, but, being as I am a fundamentalist Old Believer in experimental science, I *observe* that the universe does not create information systems and that chemistry is always entropic. I observe that the DNA replication system is irreducibly complex and is based on a 'language' that is arbitrary, but that all components of the machinery must 'agree on' ab ovo. I await experimental evidence that this system could have arisen spontaneously. In the mean time, it looks designed and I observe that things that look designed almost always are.
If I came up to you with a lump of stuff and handed it to you and said: "Look Chris, a lump of nylon, produced by nature!" I suspect that what you'd say is:
"Ah, no Ray, nylon is not produced in nature." And that's as far as I'd get. Because nylon is not produced in nature. If I told some fantastic tale about how it might be, I'd still be laughed at because it doesn't happen. Proteins are not produced in nature either.
Demonstrably false? Outside a cell? Let's not beg the question here. If DNA arose spontaneously I await experimental results demonstrating that. Meanwhile, as discussed, bad design might still be design. We design things badly all the time. So far there isn't even a hypothetical pathway for spontaneous life, just completely vague just-so stories.
I agree. But I mention it for others who think it’s a valid argument against ID. I’ve seen quite intelligent people including Quillete’s own Lawrence Krauss make this silly argument.
"is science using the scientific method, or is it any explanation that presupposes only material processes to be the cause?"
Probably the latter, but the problem here is that 'science' is presumed to be equivalent to 'legitimate'. ID is not science, because science studies nature and what intelligent agents do is not natural by definition. It is not a claim of science that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling -- but it is a true statement nevertheless. The design of the Diesel engine is not subject to scientific explanation either because that engine did not evolve, it was created. (Tho exactly how it works is of course a scientific question.) So when materialist fundamentalists object that 'ID is not science' they are quite correct -- but that is no argument that ID might not be true.
I understand what you are saying, and if that’s how we choose to define “science” then I mostly agree with one small counterpoint: scientists don’t go out and “do ID research” in the sense that they specifically try to find intelligent design in nature, at least not the majority of the time. They simply do regularly science, stumble upon a mystery and after further exhausting all other explanations are let with the fact that the ID theory may be the right answer to explain how something works. In this sense, they “do science” in the colloquial sense of the term— they are studying by scientific method, natural processes that can only be explained by an intelligent designer. They are studying and analyzing how the Diesel engine works. The one flaw in your metaphor here is that a Diesel engine in created by unnatural pierces. But ID says that God created the very natural processes and natural elements that we are in fact studying! So it begs the question “what do we mean by natural?” I believe it is certainly within the realm of possibility that something can be seen, studied, and understand in the materialistic realm of reality, in a natural process, AND still be caused by a supernatural divine being at the same time (with power that I can’t see, study, or understand.) In other words, we can’t study the intelligent designer himself, because he is beyond our reality or outside of it, but his creation (our reality) has imprints of him all over the place that we can study as we study the material world around us. Because we can study these imprints with scientific inquiry, I don’t think it unreasonable to argue that ID is “science” if the define science as a mode of inquiry about the world. And that’s my point, that ID being science really depends on one’s definition of the term “science.”
But ID says that God created the very natural processes and natural elements that we are in fact studying! So it begs the question “what do we mean by natural?”
Yeah that's a good point. But for ease of communication I think we tend to agree that 'natural' means 'no intelligence involved' even if, technically, there's *nothing* that isn't natural if you zoom out that far.
"AND still be caused by a supernatural divine being at the same time"
The same argument used above could have us saying, rather pedantically, that 'anything that exists is 'natural' therefore God is 'natural' therefore there is nothing 'supernatural' by definition -- but again I prefer the more common usage.
And recall that ID says nothing about whether the designer is a deity or simply a more advanced species. Tho most IDers are at least open to the deity if not actively in favor of that hypothesis.
"but his creation (our reality) has imprints of him all over the place that we can study as we study the material world around us."
Sure. If you know your Bible, St. Paul says exactly that in Romans -- we know God via his creation. Mind, with a deity we ascribe the entire universe to him, whereas some species advanced enough to go seeding life around the universe -- so many science fiction stories revolve around that -- might not have done much more than just drop off some custom cut DNA.
"And that’s my point, that ID being science really depends on one’s definition of the term “science.”
Which is hard to avoid. Newton surely was a scientist tho he was also a creationist. I'd say if you are studying nature then you are a scientist, even if that nature was itself designed.
Ok, I see your point about using the word “natural.” I tend to define it as anything “created,” which would then exclude God or a deity, but perhaps not advanced alien species. Which leads us to our agreement about your last point— if you study nature, you are a scientist, even if nature itself was designed.
You are correct that ID doesn’t specifically mean you believe in God, just simply a deity. An advanced alien species dropping off DNA could be possible, never actually considered that from an ID perspective. I showed my hand a bit there, I suppose. It is definitely a next step to the connect a possible Designer to the God of the Bible. No everyone who confirms ID does this, but after looking at all evidences we have, I find this to be a reasonable and likely conclusion. Given that we have no other evidence of an advanced alien species being our “creators”, whereas we do have evidence of a God, (I.e. there is plenty of archeological evidence that corroborates the Bible, as well as evidence that the Gospels were reliable witness testimonies, etc.) I would tend to favor the idea of Designer God as being much more likely than Designer Advanced Alien Species.
From a simplistic perspective, a deity makes the most sense to solve the ID ‘problem,’ but I find it fascinating that scientists who can’t accept that idea are now reaching to every more complicated theories about the multiverse and such. They don’t realize though that it simply pushes the beginning of the universe creation back further. If our universe sprung from a multiverse, then who created the multiverse? We have no way of knowing if the multiverse was always there or created, and since we have no way to test it, then why is that theory any more credible than the theory that God created our universe? They really make such pains to avoid suggesting any plausibility to the idea that there is a God— it’s because they don’t want to believe. I don’t remember which interview it was, but Richard Dawkins was asked “What evidence would you need in order to believe in God,” and once he finally admitted that the answer was “Nothing.” God himself could come down in a fiery bush or perhaps Jesus in the flesh could touch Richard Dawkins, and he still would say “Nope! I don’t believe!” Which is honest of him— he doesn’t want to believe. But man, talk about blind faith.
"It is definitely a next step to the connect a possible Designer to the God of the Bible."
There's a lot of false flagging out there. Lots of people now claiming to be 'just' IDers are really recycled creationists trying to sneak in the back door. I think these are the sort of people that Colin is really thinking about above, and I share his annoyance at them. But Colin should understand that many if not most IDers are *not* creationists and should not be tarred with that brush.
"I would tend to favor the idea of Designer God as being much more likely than Designer Advanced Alien Species."
You are an excellent example of a rational person -- you can discuss the issue from a non-dogmatic and open minded, truth seeking perspective. In contrast we have the fundamentalist atheist/materialist (and the fundamentalist theist) who are both True Believers in their respective faiths.
"They really make such pains to avoid suggesting any plausibility to the idea that there is a God— it’s because they don’t want to believe."
Exactly. It is almost comical. Is an infinite number of universes really the simpler explanation than the very clear observation that the universe is designed? It would seem that life on earth won the lottery about 30 times in a row. Accident? Well, if you insist on believing that, I can't stopya, but if you can't believe it, I confess that I can't believe it either. Nature simply does not produce information systems spontaneously. Nature is many magnificent things, but the fact is that she is not very clever. When we see things that look designed they are almost without exception designed. (The exceptions are very interesting!) The DNA replication system looks designed. In fact, it looks like the designer was intelligent beyond our comprehension. But some say it was just an accident.
Agreed on all accounts. And there are certainly the die-hard creationists who are as dogmatic as Darwinian acolytes, but I know many reasonable Christians and ID’ers who can think critically, logically, and with reason, so I dislike when atheists paint the brush that all Christians or all ID’ers are somehow dogmatic and unthinking.
"many if not most IDers are *not* creationists and should not be tarred with that brush."
Nonsense. Who else could they be talking about? More advanced aliens? OK, then where did they come from? It's a null hypothesis.
Intelligent Design is a pretext to teach religion in science class without violating the First Amendment. And it is nothing more.
Because if life was designed then the designers were as incompetent as most of the programmers it's been my unfortunate lot to work with. Our spines, the appendix, tonsils.
The metabolic pathway common to all aerobic life is a masterpiece of inefficiency.
"the concept of "natural" is not a scientific one."
From the 50's? Can you support that? Anyway I take your point regardless. It's one of those rather nebulous words but when it comes to science I think we know what we mean when we say that lightning is 'natural' and LED lights are not natural.
Common sense an insult? Surely not. Seems to me that everybody relies on it at every moment of their lives, and education should refine and improve on common sense, not replace it.
I need to get to work, I've been writing here for hours, but I hold TV advertising responsible for a lot That's why people walk around smiling (which I can't STAND) when a smile used to be a reaction.
I could be about Sky Daddy or not, the identity of the designer is secondary. If one of our rovers on Mars comes across a pane of tempered glass (not associated with any human landing) we will instantly and accurately know that there was technologically advanced life on Mars -- maybe native or maybe some aliens visited there. We may not know anything else whatsoever about this intelligence, but we will know that it exists (or did). There is no valid apriori reason why design cannot be suspected when design is evident.
"Because that Design is not very Intelligent."
Finally a strong argument! Yes, there are aspects of life that seem poorly designed. This is a problem for IDers to be sure. OTOH there are aspects that scream 'design'. As an agnostic I have the luxury of being able to admit that, so far, all hypotheses seem abysmally bad. I'd piss on all of them except for the fact that it seems inevitable that one of them must be correct because we are here after all. I keep hoping for some new idea that simply hasn't been thought of previously and that might actually be plausible.
In oxidative metabolism a molecule of glucose goes through a process called oxidative phosphorylation to promote 38 molecules of adenosine diphosphate to adenosine TRIphosphate. The energy difference between the two is the basis of all life on Earth. If glucose is the dollar, ATP - ADP is the penny. OK.
The sugar in fruit is not glucose, it's fructose. Both are 6-carbon monosaccharides. When you eat fructose, it has to be converted to glucose in the blood to enter this cycle. This is a slow process, which is why you don't get sugar headaches from apples.
When oxidative phosphorylation begins, the first step in the process is converting the glucose to an isomer of fructose. So the entire expensive process of converting fructose to glucose could be bypassed. The fructose could enter the cycle without that conversion. This is wantonly inefficient!
Of course it is. But that’s not what we were debating. Colin compared the arguments of gender fluidity to the arguments for an intelligent design, and some of us took issue with that comparison. Because there is no physical evidence for transgenderism or gender in a spectrum, but there is physical evidence that leads to a logical conclusion that the universe was designed and created.
I whole heartedly disagree. There is no evidence for intelligent design. In fact, all evidence points to God being a product of man’s imagination, ignorance of natural phenomena, and fear of the knowledge of their own mortality.
The process of Male to Female transgenderism is actually easy to understand with a moderate understanding of fetal-sex-differentiation. Every cell in the human body starts out the same and without the presence of testosterone will continue along the female tract, as evidenced by Swyer’s syndrome; XY individual with either underdeveloped testicular or ovarian tissue, whom all have labia and a vagina, some even have fallopian tubes and a uterus. And they typically have a female gender identity.
Every cell in the body goes through this differentiation, including the neurons of the brain. Many diseases, conditions, and disorders are caused by a dysfunction in the receptors on the cells that trigger a process (eg type 2 diabetes). Ergo, should something interfere with the brain’s differentiation into male despite there being functional testes and sufficient testosterone then the brain will continue along the female tract. Additionally, testosterone doesn’t directly act on the brain in this process it is converted, so if there is a dysfunction in the conversion process rather than the receptors again the brain would continue along the female tract resulting in male to female transgenderism.
Note: there is evidence for female to male too, but the mechanism is difficult to explain.
Rotten of Colin to compare we ID proponents with the gender idiots. Of course there are all sorts of folks who might come under the ID umbrella, and surely some of them are religious, but as to that group, I think we'd find that they'd be the strongest opponents of trans. Ask your average fundamentalist Christian how many genders there are and the answer will be 'two'. As for me, I subscribe to ID because I don't think that random chemical accidents have been demonstrated to be capable of producing information systems. I'm an Old Believer -- science relies on demonstration of hypotheses and the chemical origin of life is not only not demonstrated, it violates every known law of chemistry, physics and information theory. But once we have a demonstration, ID is out the window AFAIAC. Meanwhile, evolution most certainly happens, but does it explain *everything*? I'm not so sure, *as it stands* however there are ideas floating around in the evolutionary world that might change that. I await developments. For now, the intelligent designer postulate remains viable -- we are ourselves intelligent designers and I have no reason to suppose that we are the only ones.
Science was created by philosophers. I see no reason why a science class can’t break free of scientific dogmas and allow philosophic inquiry to be practiced. ID allows space that to take place. Modern science itself was birthed out of a university system that placed theology as the “Queen of the sciences.” Now, I realize the standard response to this is that science allowed man to break free from superstitions. But a little humility might be in order. “Grandpa” (those who developed the idea of the university to study the works of God and God’s creation in order to better conduct our lives) might be more wise than we realize.
Yup, humility is the key thing. When I hear fundamentalist atheists pronounce on what they KNOW, I laugh. Me, I know that 2+2=4 and I know that there are only two sexes.
Disagree. Dawkins is a fundamentalist atheist. He cannot admit the tiniest possibility that he could be wrong. He is righteous in his doctrinal purity and considers unbelievers to be lost souls at best, and damnable heretics at worst. His mind contains different beliefs but very much the same 'structure' as the mind of a religious fundamentalist.
He's a militant atheist. Fundamentalism would require a doctrine and atheism is more the absence of one.
I find his directness and unapologetic candor to be enriching and cathartic. But I understand what you're saying.
He finds religion disgusting. I am aware that some people, probably way under half, are moved by faith to do good things. I admire people like that. I don't admire clinic bombers or Lauren Boebert.
I resent like hell when people say that atheists are incapable of morality. I will capture a venomous spider or snake and put it outside instead of killing it. Atheists were disproportionately represented in every social advance as far back as I know about.
No. Or not as the question is usually meant. I suspect that there's 'something' connected to reality that has consciousness and intention. The first Observer. In the beginning, God observed the universe and it came to be -- something like that. More deist than theist. The grumpy old man in the sky? Nope.
I love the Greek notion of god as stateless and transmundane; he didn't create the universe because then he would have changed state from "before creating" to "after creating." That has a compelling purity.
If I bercame a believer I would be a Valentian Gnostic.
Dolphin religion is pretty simple. We believe we are here to admire the goddess. But we admire her willingly because she is beautiful and because she made us in her own image -- the most beautiful creatures on the planet. What's not to like? Gnostics -- a bit too hard to remember all the details for my taste.
Intelligent Design is an Ignorance Cult. It's not an insult, it's scientific honesty.
Thinking about God gives people emotions they enjoy experiencing and don't want to give up. And don't kid yourself that ID isn't just rebranded religion. What else could it be?
Have you read Behe? Not one scrap of religion in it. No hopeful just-so stories either. Just data and deep dives into some biological systems that look designed. BTW nothing supports Behe more strongly than the efforts to refute him, which are so weak that it backfires.
If I ever have time. Recommend any particular titles? I will add them to my kindle wish list. Won't be in the next few moinths, I have software stuff to learn and I am way behind. I also do beta reading for an Aus SF writer and I have to finish his new book.
I haven't read Behe's latest, but his classic is "Darwin's Black Box". It's not very long and completely approachable. You'd find it a worthy challenge even if it doesn't change your thinking. Come to that, it's time I read another evolution book -- your recommendation?
I've already read Gould, I admired his heresy. I mean something on the cutting edge ... which might just be ... Gould! Let's give punctuated equilibrium another look.
But the real fun begins at that point. Furthermore, the fact that we are confident we know the laws of physics (from that point on) begs the question why those laws are so exquisitely fine tuned to permit life. According to the multiversialists, the laws are completely arbitrary, so we really did get extremely lucky.
Exactly. If I flip heads three times in a row, the odds of that happening are 1:8 and they remain 1:8 whether I got luck or not. If someone wins the lottery 30 times in a row he could shrug his shoulders and say the chances of it happening are 1.0 because it happened, but that's not quite how probability is computed. We'd all suspect that something fishy was going on, wouldn't we?
The probability for each win is separate from the others.
Suppose you flip a coin and get a thousand successive heads. The possibility of getting another head is 50%, it is not diminished by the thousand that preceded it.
OTOH the probability of getting a thousand heads is about one in 10^301.
Physicists don't talk about that fine-tuning question much anymore. It could be that there have been a vast number of universes before us, or that in the multiverse every possible tuning is represented in another eigencosmos.
What do you mean by "random"? If you are talking about "random mutation", that random I believe means in essence that the change may not be of benefit or detriment to the organism experiencing it.
Well, that would surely be powerful, would it not? I don't think we can ever have absolute proof about ancient history, but one can surely arrive, in theory, at a point where natural explanations really are quite satisfactory. And since science is supposed to be about demonstration, if one's theories about the origin of life are backed up by demonstration, one holds the high ground. I'm a huge fan of Miller and Urey -- they took the bull by the horns and tried to do some real science on the issue. Speculations are just fine, but I want lab results. Mind, one should not be unreasonable -- we're not going to have a bacterium from scratch any time soon, but let's see some real progress.
Hard to say ahead of time. I'd know progress when I see it. Nothing could ever 'kill' ID -- it will always be a possibility that life on earth was seeded. However experimental validation of the idea that life could have arisen by itself would make the former idea simply unnecessary -- we do prefer a naturalistic explanation, do we not? But at the moment, as to chemical origin of life, we are exactly nowhere. We have vague speculations -- I myself am a fan of 'cold chemistry' -- but zero results. And reaction dynamics theory would seem to decisively prove that proteins will *never* form spontaneously. Proteins must be 'assembled'.
BTW I lost a bet on that -- I once bet that no one would ever synthesize a protein but it seems we now have machines sophisticated enough to make short chain proteins. Machines that can assemble them in a multi-step process; but that rather proves how absurd it is to suggest this can happen spontaneously. Nope, you need a family of enzymes to do it -- enzymes being themselves proteins and assembling the target proteins according to the instructions in a code -- DNA -- assembled by ... more enzymes. It is, to use the normal phrase: irreducibly complex.
"Hard to say ahead of time. I'd know progress when I see it. Nothing could ever 'kill' ID"
Ah, I get it now. To you, ID is an unfalsifiable notion, which means it isn't science. And it's fine for an idea to not be science--lots of notions people have are unscientific. We even protect many unscientific views in law; hence, the First Amendment. So long as those unscientific views stay out of science class, sure, have at them.
"To you, ID is an unfalsifiable notion, which means it isn't science."
As I said, it 'isn't science' because it claims life was engineered, not a spontaneous accident. The origin of the Diesel engine 'isn't science' either. It is unfalsifiable in exactly the same way that the spontaneous accident theory is -- until we get a time machine, there's simply no way of knowing what happened 3.5 billion years ago, is there? Or ... I suppose if some aliens land, explain to us that we're their children and yes, they seeded life on earth 3.5 billion years ago ... I suppose we'd probably take their word for it, no?
The word 'unscientific' doesn't apply to ID. It suggests 'anti-scientific'. Claiming that life arose by undirected chemical reactions without demonstrating that claim in the lab is unscientific because it ignores the fundamental law of science -- things must be demonstrated. Nope, ID is not unscientific, it claims that the origin of life is outside the domain of science, rather within the domain of engineering -- which is itself 'applied science' -- intelligence applied to some goal but using the laws of science to advantage.
As to 'science class' it seems to me that real science should be open to challenge from any angle. Tho ID is 'not science' I'd say that kids should be exposed to the challenge it presents and be invited to refute those challenges as best they can. IOW, the defense of science IS science and thus ID should be -- not 'taught' but 'presented'.
Economics isn't science, either. Supply-siders get tenure.
String theory has been largely falsified by the undetected neutralino, but string theorists cling to statistical straws because otherwise they'd need to insist they wasted their careers. Another cult.
It will be all about the detransitioner malpractice suits, the discrimination suits when those of us believing in biology are fired. I was in a restaurant for a late lunch yesterday, hoping to be the only one there. Nope, big loud woke table yacking it up about how terrible these places are where they won't have the "pride flag" in classrooms. Thank goodness they left before hearing The Heggen Lexicon. Here's my take on the latest malpractice suit, another woman operated on at age 16, during an obviou personal crisis:
If I'm feeling charitable, I can forgive the gender activists for their excesses -- they are young and confused, after all.
However, I cannot forgive scientists, physicians, academic journals, and professional organizations for throwing science under the bus in favor of a trendy ideology.
It's simply inexcusable and real scientists should know better.
As Feynman said "The first principle of science is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool."
“Hexsel stated that the law “interferes with Texas families’ private decisions and strips Texas parents . . . of the right to seek, direct, and provide medical care for their children.”
Hmmm, isn’t that what all the trans activists and school districts are also doing when they try to remove parents from any participation in the process? Talk about having it both ways.
Good point. Transitioning kids in public school and hiding it from the parents literally includes the entire “public” in the process... the entire public EXCEPT the parents!
Science is often becoming indistinguishable from religion. Medical scientists and physicians in particular have started relying on dogma much like medieval theologians relied on church teaching. The gender delusion is just an example, along with the veneration of saints (like Fauci), and the unquestioning acceptance of church teaching (Covid came from nature, mRNA vaccines are safe). Scientists even attend their own theological seminaries(universities) where they are immersed in propaganda and are taught to condemn scientific heretics. The defenders of "gender affirming care" were naturally puzzled when you introduced actual science in this controversy.
I am glad you are in the fray, Colin! Thank you for all of your efforts
“Traveling to Austin and appearing before a judge to explain these basic facts was a surreal experience. To my knowledge, this was the first time a biologist has been called to testify in court to defend the material existence of males and females as natural and distinct biological categories.”
It certainly must have been most bizarre to find yourself on the stand testifying to the immutable reality of the sexes, what has been universally known since the dawn of human consciousness.
"immutable" ... 🙄
Griffiths (PhilPapers): "Individual organisms pass in and out of these regions – sexes – one or more times during their lives. Importantly, sexes are life-history stages rather than applying to organisms over their entire lifespan. This fact has been obscured by concentrating on humans, and ignoring species which regularly change sex, as well as those with non-genetic or facultatively genetic sex determination systems."
https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2
You lot are almost as bad as the "trans women are women" crowd for untenable mantras and articles of faith ...
Jeez, Jim, I know I'll regret this. Can you not accept the idea that sex is determined by by the kind of gamete an individual is equipped to make during their reproductive years? So a boy, a girl, a crone and an old man are sexed by the gametes they will make, can make, or once made?
🙂 Though I think you mean "defined" and not "determined" -- something that Colin had elaborated on in a previous post:
CW: "So this is an important point to make about some confusion on terminology. A lot of people, when they talk about how sex is determined, they conflate this with how sex is defined. As a biologist—so it's a—in developmental biology, for instance, when we talk about how sex is determined, we're talking about the mechanisms that cause an embryo to eventually develop into a male or a female, but that is very different from how sex is defined, which is based on the types of gamete that they can or would produce."
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/defending-reality-my-expert-testimony
Though that closing "can or would produce" is the crux of your argument and of the more general problem. Which is, How are we going to DEFINE the sexes? How are we going to STIPULATE the necessary and sufficient conditions to qualify as male or female? Or as neither.
And it IS a matter of choice -- there are no intrinsic meanings to any of our words, to "male" and "female" in particular -- but some choices and reasons for them are better than others. Something that even Colin seems to be more willing to consider of late:
https://substack.com/@colinwright/note/c-40114942
So I can at least sympathize with your own choice -- it has some currency, utility and value, at least in a rather circumscribed set of circumstances. Like your own practice of medicine.
But how will they work when applied to ALL anisogamous species? Largely Colin's point in that Note of his. And Griffiths in that PhilPapers article of his.
And the short answer is that they don't. They lead to a great many rather ridiculous or cumbersome constructions at best -- if not some real howlers and quite sticky wickets. For example, see this conversation I was having in another RLS thread on how Wikipedia, in their article on sequential hermaphrodites, have bastardized and corrupted the biology:
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/defending-reality-my-expert-testimony/comment/40159157
Wikipedia: "Both protogynous and protandrous hermaphroditism allow the organism to switch between functional male and functional female."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_hermaphroditism
They're basically turning male and female into binaries -- the functional and non-functional halves -- which is basically what Colin and Emma Hilton are also doing. A repudiation and denial of the essential element of sex itself: reproduction. Rather moot how non-functional gonads have any use at all in that process ...
And all because some Wikipedian editors with a feminist bent have bastardized the more credible previous version, because they can't say "sexless", because it "offends" their precious "fee-fees", because it does not comport with their ideological dogma, vanity, and articles of faith.
If we're going to follow suit then how will you feel about saying that those "girls, boys, crones, and old men" of yours are "non-functional females and males"? That only those of us in the "prime of life" qualify as "functional females and males"? How about a definition of "woman" as "adult human female, functional or non-functional"? Not quite sure how one might defend that latter definition against transwomen who might claim to be the non-functional variety of "female" ...
The general problem is the fractious and enervating "debate" over the most reasonable and scientifically justified DEFINITIONS for the sexes. One which largely consists of us painting ourselves into some very tight corners because too many of us dogmatically insist on "definitions" predicated on "past, present, or future functionality", on "immutable", on "will make, can make, or once made".
Houston, we have a mission-critical problem. Trying to sweep the elephant in the living room, or the details and the devils therein under the carpet is not any sort of a solution.
Humans do not change sex. Sex is established at fertilization and endures until death, irrespective of the functional state, or even the absence, of gonads. Puberty and menopause are simply developmental stages but human sex is immutable and lifelong.
This is the standard biological definition.
There is no other.
I've only recently become alert to how "argument from complexity" operates not only in gender ideology and, as you note, intelligent design, but in other issues in which a simpler truth is inconvenient to advancing a desired dogma. It's the loose converse of Occam's Razor, i.e. "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem," or "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" (credit to Wikapedia for translation) in arriving at reliable explanations. Conversely, "argument from complexity" brings to mind the old razzle-dazzle from "Chicago," Richard Gere tap dancing to legal legerdemain. I now see needlessly complicated arguments as red-flag indicators that I'm dealing with obstructions to truth, rather than truth itself. Thanks for this explication, Colin.
‘How can they see with sequins in their eyes?’ 🎼🎼😀😀. Yes - great comparison! The ‘three ring circus’ of gender ideology (and ID) arguments about fungi and clown fish mean arguing is sometimes like whack-a-mole.
Gender identity isn’t an “argument of complexity.” If you listen to someone competent on the topic.
Well and concisely put. :)
It seems to me the most powerful argument against gender affirming hormonal and surgical treatment of children is (1) the absence of any evidence that it benefits them and (2) the clear evidence that it has harmful, irreversible effects.
Arguing about the definition of sex and whether it is binary is less important than this. It is also fragile because what matters is the legal definition, and that can be changed.
"Gender identity," and probably "gender" itself, need to be removed entirely from psychology, medicine, and law.
Supreme Court Justice Katanji Brown Jackson doesn’t know what a woman is, yet she was appointed for being a woman of color. Hope you can teach her and help turn the tide in our kangaroo courts!
I think it’s more accurate to say she didn’t have the courage to stand up to trans activism. “I’m not a biologist” reads as a canned response that deflects an easy, politically charged question.
She should have given the same answers Colin did and let them howl. They howled anyway.
Why is it that evolution and intelligent design are always discussed as mutually exclusive? It is not this or that. These two ideas can co-exist.
It's interesting that we live in a time where those who believe in the written word are more in touch with reality when it comes to sex than those who believe in this gender as a spectrum nonsense.
ID has famously made claims like the eye couldn’t have evolved by natural selection, but then evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins walks through a series of organisms through which the eye becomes increasingly sophisticated. It’s embarrassing case studies like that which illustrate why science and ID can’t co-exist.
Eyes have evolved at least fifty separate times.
"Intelligent Design" has its foundation in scientific illiteracy and just plain old garden-variety ignorance.
Our ancestors knew nothing of what we now call science and thought lightning reflected the anger of superbeings and shivered in fear. They invented supernatural omnipotent beings and made faith in them the centerpiece of life. Thousands of years later, we are still stuck with them. Religion is like a childhood toy. Put it back in the box, indulge in occasional nostalgia if you want, but never forget it's just a toy.
And can we please stop the pretense that ID is not creationism? Of course it is.
I'm not so sure that all advocates of ID would agree with that claim.
What is an evolutionary biologist's explanation for how life started? Where does consciousness come from and how do we measure it?
Consciousness has been settled by Saturday night dormitory arguments with a keg of beer,
Not to make too fine appoint here boys, but could you just stick to the original comment?
The appearance of life has been all but recapitulated in a flask of water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment
Throw in some millions of years and a whole ocean and stop pretending there is any mystery here. There isn't.
In fact, life appeared about fifteen minutes after the primordial oceans cooled enough to not destroy the molecules. Life is probably common in the cosmos.
The two ideas are indeed mutually exclusive. There is no supernatural power needed for evolution by natural selection to occur.
I agree with Vee. I can easily hold both concepts in my mind - creation by design, adaptability by design. This typically makes me a pariah in both camps. The smartest people in the world are moving toward simulation theory.
You can hold contrary ideas in your mind.
Orwell called that doublethink. The CIA calls it compartmentalization.
I counsel you to work hard at breakiung that habit.
Not really, they can intermingle over a ... spectrum ... of possibilities. We are already manipulating life at the most fundamental level, what might we be able to do in ten thousand years? We ain't gods, but we will surely be able to create life in the *foreseeable* future. Will we not seed any planets we find that are habitable but as yet sterile? There is nothing in ID thinking that mandates a supernatural intervention. I put it to you that we are guaranteed to do it ourselves.
I believe, as a general rule, that individuals or parents of minors or guardians of incapacitated individuals should be able to make their own medical decisions. However, doctors must follow laws and regulations in practicing medicine. What has happened with so-called "transgender care" is that, in the medical community, many (but by no means all!) doctors and medical associations such as the AAP are not complying with laws and regulations that require them to adhere to scientific principles in treating patients, including the "First Do No Harm" credo, to which all doctors agree when being licensed. While families remain free to choose the medical path for their children (with the glaring exception of many parents whose children are chemically and/or surgically poisoned and/or mutilated over the parents' objections!), what must be regulated are the doctors who are violating the law. If a parent wanted a doctor to shoot their child with a gun to make the child feel better, and the doctor was willing to do this despite the fact that he/she knew (or should have known) that there was no scientific basis for such a treatment, and the doctor was stopped by a statute or regulation from shooting the child, would we say the parent was being deprived of their right to treat their own child as they wish? It's not a perfect analogy, but the point is valid. We have to regulate medicine to prevent doctors from running amok with treatments that have absolutely no scientific basis and for which the harms are clear. This does not interfere with parental rights.
One characteristics of a dark age is the rejection of data in favor of narrative. It is notable that this author sees the danger and damage of the anti-scientific claptrap of the gender movement.
It isn't only the gender movement. What we are witnessing might be some feedback mechanism that we don't see because we are so enamored with being the Crown of Creation that we don't allow ourselves to see what is before our eyes. There are too many people and the ecosystem is allowing us the means to reduce our numbers, except instead we are destroying ourselves.
Pandemics and sterilization cult. Am I the only one who sees a pattern?
Yes, the tragic conundrum of history. From at least Roman types the cyclic rise and fall of civilizations has been noted. Romans developed their Republic with a Senate held in check by Tribunes to counter oligarchies and despotism, as well as to prevent mob action. It worked famously, until it didn't...the USA, being liquidated in all but name, was designed to prevent the perceived flaws of Rome from happening in America. It worked very well, for awhile...
Every civilization rises and falls. Many of us apparently, despite allegedly knowing better, saw this unfolding nightmare becoming a woke reality.
Asked about the development of intelligent life in the cosmos, and how common it should be, Enrico Fermi famously replied, "where are they?"
Now we know.
Previous collapses hadn't made the world uninhabitable and we didn't have nuclear weapons.
I don't think any children alive today are going to die of natural causes. Pandemics, thirst, hunger, and many varieties of flame.
I enjoy the clarity of your writing.
I was once asked, very first question, by a doctor about to treat me for a medical problem, what gender pronouns I preferred. This ideology-driven question translates for me to "Are you by any chance delusional (so I can coddle you if you are)?" I found that offensive and refused to engage, so the doctor kept asking repeatedly. Apparently, it was the policy of the medical practice. This was a week or so after I'd read about a woman who had presented herself as a(n obese) man, and was accepted without question as such by her doctor against any evidence of their own eyes. She then unexpectedly started giving birth after denying/ignoring 9 months of pregnancy and died in childbirth along with the child due to lack of prenatal care. Doctors need to accept biological reality before they can competently help their patients.
Gnostic creationism.
Transgeder cult is more of a Gnostic cretinism, rather than creationism
And Jeffrey Marsh is the Demiurge.
Gender ideology is indeed a religion, a modern manifestation of gnostic religion which separates the mind/soul from the body, with the mind being more superior than the body. Historic Christianity, in the other hand, believes that the mind/soul cannot be detached from the body-- the body, both mental, physical, and spiritual is all connected, and the body, both male and female (in the biological sense) is made in the image of God and therefore valuable.
However, I think it’s unfair to lump in believers of Intelligent Design with gender ideologies. Gender theory is a social science and has no bearing in material reality. ID adherents don’t deny reality or science as gender theorists do, they simply believe that the scientific evidence points to a divine, intelligent Creator as the ultimate cause for processes seen in the material reality of our world. Gender theory argues some complexities that be fairly easily explained biologically and it argues some complexities that simply don’t exist biologically, but only as social constructions (for example, they conflate the social constructions of things like boys should like blue and girls should like pink to then mean something about biological reality). (And not to mention that all these ‘complexities’ in gender theory ultimate contradiction each other, leaving the theory on no solid ground logically.)
But the complexities that ID point out DO exist. The gender theorists and evolutionary biologists like you actually disagree on the nature of those complexities, but ID adherents don’t disagree with you about the nature of evolutionary complexities— they only differ on the cause of them.
ID looks at and analyzes the real science of the material world and follows the evidence where it leads them— and sometimes the simplest explanation for complex systems is indeed the idea of Intelligent Design. You may disagree that the evidence leads to their conclusion, but you can’t accuse them of ignoring scientific evidence the way gender theory does.
No doubt you will protest that ID is simply a “god of the gaps” theory, and that given enough time, science will explain everything that ID leaves to supernatural explanation. But (1), saying that the gaps in knowledge that can’t be explained by evolution will simply one day be explained by science isn’t an evidence-based claim. It’s simply a “science-of-the-gaps” approach. (Just because science has filled in many knowledge gaps of the past doesn’t mean that it will continue to fill in all knowledge gaps about our world in the future, that’s only possible if we assume that science can indeed reveal to us all about our world) Which leads to (2) Science presupposes that anything supernatural is out-of-bounds, it presupposes that only the material physical world exists. How do you know that the supernatural doesn’t exist? This presupposition is like limiting a crime scene to the room the victim was found in, even though you have bloody footprints leading out the door. If you presuppose that the murderer didn’t leave the room, that nothing outside of the room entered in and caused action within the room, then you are left explaining certain evidences in a very limiting way. ID follows the scientific evidence where it leads, not presupposing, but simply finding that an intelligent designer seems the simplest and best explanation for the evidence at hand— even if we don’t fully understand how biological processes can be both material reality and caused by a supernatural divine being.
(3)Also the lack of a naturalistic material cause is not the only basis for inferring design. ID theory has positive experience-based knowledge of an alternative cause that explain such effects. And ID is testable.
See this article https://evolutionnews.org/2011/03/a_closer_look_at_one_scientist/, which I’ll summarize below:
ID theory first identifies four ways in which designers act:
* Intelligent agents think with an “end goal” in mind, allowing them to solve complex problems by taking many parts and arranging them in intricate patterns that perform a specific function...
* Intelligent agents can rapidly infuse large amounts of information into systems...
* Intelligent agents re-use functional components that work over and over in different systems (e.g., wheels for cars and airplanes)...
* Intelligent agents typically create functional things (although we may sometimes think something is functionless, not realizing its true function)...
Then, we can make four predictions that can be made from these observations of designers:
* Natural structures will be found that contain many parts arranged in intricate patterns that perform a specific function (e.g. complex and specified information).
* Forms containing large amounts of novel information will appear in the fossil record suddenly and without similar precursors.
* Convergence will occur routinely. That is, genes and other functional parts will be re-used in different and unrelated organisms.
* Much so-called “junk DNA” will turn out to perform valuable functions.
What do we find when we put these ideas to the test?
(1) “Language-based codes can be revealed by seeking to understand the workings of genetics and inheritance. High levels of specified complexity and irreducibly complexity are detected in biological systems through theoretical analysis, computer simulations and calculations (Behe & Snoke, 2004; Dembski 1998b; Axe et al. 2008; Axe, 2010a; Axe, 2010b; Dembski and Marks 2009a; Dembski and Marks 2009b; Ewert et al. 2009; Ewert et al. 2010; Chiu et al. 2002; Durston et al. 2007; Abel and Trevors, 2006; Voie 2006), “reverse engineering” (e.g. knockout experiments) (Minnich and Meyer, 2004; McIntosh 2009a; McIntosh 2009b) or mutational sensitivity tests (Axe, 2000; Axe, 2004; Gauger et al. 2010).”
(2) “The fossil record shows that species often appear abruptly without similar precursors. (Meyer, 2004; Lonnig, 2004; McIntosh 2009b).”
(3) Similar parts are commonly found in widely different organisms. Many genes and functional parts not distributed in a manner predicted by ancestry, and are often found in clearly unrelated organisms. (Davison, 2005; Nelson & Wells, 2003; Lönnig, 2004; Sherman 2007).
(4) There have been numerous discoveries of functionality for “junk-DNA.” Examples include recently discovered surprised functionality in some pseudogenes, microRNAs, introns, LINE and ALU elements. (Sternberg, 2002, Sternberg and Shapiro, 2005; McIntosh, 2009a).”
Lastly, the article mentioned above also highlights how ID theory has contributed to science and knowledge. Far from being a “science-stopper,” ID has furthered scientific inquiry in areas such as microbiology, engineering bacteria and antibiotic resistance research, understanding genetics and the origin of biological systems, etc.
Since ID is testable, some might consider it a science. The only reason it is disqualified from science depends on how you define science— is science using the scientific method, or is it any explanation that presupposes only material processes to be the cause? Perhaps ID isn’t “Science” with a capitol S, but it indeed uses the scientific method, so it’s a hell of a lot closer to evolutionary biology than gender theory. It’s fine if you don’t find the evidence and argument of ID compelling— but at least acknowledge your presupposition and do not make the mistake of lumping in a rigorous field of research that uses the scientific method with a pseudoscience repackaging of Gnosticism that denies reality in the first place.
"ID is simply a “god of the gaps” theory"
... which only succeeds as an insult if we presuppose that science will fill those gaps. If the gaps are actually there -- if some phenomena are in fact created/designed --then that's the way it is. As I like to ask the materialist fundamentalists: Is it OK if I suggest that the Diesel engine did not arise due to random mistakes in the blueprints of Otto engines, but was, rather, intelligently designed by Rudolph Diesel? They usually say that it's OK. Well then, is Herr Diesel a 'Diesel-of-the-gaps'? Ridiculous, they say. I agree, because Herr Diesel did what he did. Likewise, if some intelligence was in fact involved in the development of life, then that's the fact of the matter and talk of 'gaps' is silly . It's a failed insult.
I've seen enough of the gaps filled in during my lifetime to know that there is nearly zero room left for a god. When I was young there was still talk of other cosmogenies like Hoyle's Steady State, and protons & neutrons were believed to be elementary particles.
Render unto Cæser that which is, etc. Well, sorry but Cæser runs the table and it's time to put God on a shelf with the other toys.
I still have the two Steiff tigers I've had all my life. I love them, but I know thery're just toys.
If no God (very broadly defined) then we won the lottery 30 times in a row and the laws of chemistry are wrong. Not impossible, but, being as I am a fundamentalist Old Believer in experimental science, I *observe* that the universe does not create information systems and that chemistry is always entropic. I observe that the DNA replication system is irreducibly complex and is based on a 'language' that is arbitrary, but that all components of the machinery must 'agree on' ab ovo. I await experimental evidence that this system could have arisen spontaneously. In the mean time, it looks designed and I observe that things that look designed almost always are.
If I came up to you with a lump of stuff and handed it to you and said: "Look Chris, a lump of nylon, produced by nature!" I suspect that what you'd say is:
"Ah, no Ray, nylon is not produced in nature." And that's as far as I'd get. Because nylon is not produced in nature. If I told some fantastic tale about how it might be, I'd still be laughed at because it doesn't happen. Proteins are not produced in nature either.
"Proteins are not produced in nature either."
Demonstrably false, unless you are saying something completely different from what it looks like.
In most species generations are too long to observe evolution. In bacteria we can observe it easily.
Of course DNA arose spontaneously. If someone designed it, he did a lousy job,
Demonstrably false? Outside a cell? Let's not beg the question here. If DNA arose spontaneously I await experimental results demonstrating that. Meanwhile, as discussed, bad design might still be design. We design things badly all the time. So far there isn't even a hypothetical pathway for spontaneous life, just completely vague just-so stories.
I agree. But I mention it for others who think it’s a valid argument against ID. I’ve seen quite intelligent people including Quillete’s own Lawrence Krauss make this silly argument.
"is science using the scientific method, or is it any explanation that presupposes only material processes to be the cause?"
Probably the latter, but the problem here is that 'science' is presumed to be equivalent to 'legitimate'. ID is not science, because science studies nature and what intelligent agents do is not natural by definition. It is not a claim of science that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling -- but it is a true statement nevertheless. The design of the Diesel engine is not subject to scientific explanation either because that engine did not evolve, it was created. (Tho exactly how it works is of course a scientific question.) So when materialist fundamentalists object that 'ID is not science' they are quite correct -- but that is no argument that ID might not be true.
I understand what you are saying, and if that’s how we choose to define “science” then I mostly agree with one small counterpoint: scientists don’t go out and “do ID research” in the sense that they specifically try to find intelligent design in nature, at least not the majority of the time. They simply do regularly science, stumble upon a mystery and after further exhausting all other explanations are let with the fact that the ID theory may be the right answer to explain how something works. In this sense, they “do science” in the colloquial sense of the term— they are studying by scientific method, natural processes that can only be explained by an intelligent designer. They are studying and analyzing how the Diesel engine works. The one flaw in your metaphor here is that a Diesel engine in created by unnatural pierces. But ID says that God created the very natural processes and natural elements that we are in fact studying! So it begs the question “what do we mean by natural?” I believe it is certainly within the realm of possibility that something can be seen, studied, and understand in the materialistic realm of reality, in a natural process, AND still be caused by a supernatural divine being at the same time (with power that I can’t see, study, or understand.) In other words, we can’t study the intelligent designer himself, because he is beyond our reality or outside of it, but his creation (our reality) has imprints of him all over the place that we can study as we study the material world around us. Because we can study these imprints with scientific inquiry, I don’t think it unreasonable to argue that ID is “science” if the define science as a mode of inquiry about the world. And that’s my point, that ID being science really depends on one’s definition of the term “science.”
But ID says that God created the very natural processes and natural elements that we are in fact studying! So it begs the question “what do we mean by natural?”
Yeah that's a good point. But for ease of communication I think we tend to agree that 'natural' means 'no intelligence involved' even if, technically, there's *nothing* that isn't natural if you zoom out that far.
"AND still be caused by a supernatural divine being at the same time"
The same argument used above could have us saying, rather pedantically, that 'anything that exists is 'natural' therefore God is 'natural' therefore there is nothing 'supernatural' by definition -- but again I prefer the more common usage.
And recall that ID says nothing about whether the designer is a deity or simply a more advanced species. Tho most IDers are at least open to the deity if not actively in favor of that hypothesis.
"but his creation (our reality) has imprints of him all over the place that we can study as we study the material world around us."
Sure. If you know your Bible, St. Paul says exactly that in Romans -- we know God via his creation. Mind, with a deity we ascribe the entire universe to him, whereas some species advanced enough to go seeding life around the universe -- so many science fiction stories revolve around that -- might not have done much more than just drop off some custom cut DNA.
"And that’s my point, that ID being science really depends on one’s definition of the term “science.”
Which is hard to avoid. Newton surely was a scientist tho he was also a creationist. I'd say if you are studying nature then you are a scientist, even if that nature was itself designed.
Ok, I see your point about using the word “natural.” I tend to define it as anything “created,” which would then exclude God or a deity, but perhaps not advanced alien species. Which leads us to our agreement about your last point— if you study nature, you are a scientist, even if nature itself was designed.
You are correct that ID doesn’t specifically mean you believe in God, just simply a deity. An advanced alien species dropping off DNA could be possible, never actually considered that from an ID perspective. I showed my hand a bit there, I suppose. It is definitely a next step to the connect a possible Designer to the God of the Bible. No everyone who confirms ID does this, but after looking at all evidences we have, I find this to be a reasonable and likely conclusion. Given that we have no other evidence of an advanced alien species being our “creators”, whereas we do have evidence of a God, (I.e. there is plenty of archeological evidence that corroborates the Bible, as well as evidence that the Gospels were reliable witness testimonies, etc.) I would tend to favor the idea of Designer God as being much more likely than Designer Advanced Alien Species.
From a simplistic perspective, a deity makes the most sense to solve the ID ‘problem,’ but I find it fascinating that scientists who can’t accept that idea are now reaching to every more complicated theories about the multiverse and such. They don’t realize though that it simply pushes the beginning of the universe creation back further. If our universe sprung from a multiverse, then who created the multiverse? We have no way of knowing if the multiverse was always there or created, and since we have no way to test it, then why is that theory any more credible than the theory that God created our universe? They really make such pains to avoid suggesting any plausibility to the idea that there is a God— it’s because they don’t want to believe. I don’t remember which interview it was, but Richard Dawkins was asked “What evidence would you need in order to believe in God,” and once he finally admitted that the answer was “Nothing.” God himself could come down in a fiery bush or perhaps Jesus in the flesh could touch Richard Dawkins, and he still would say “Nope! I don’t believe!” Which is honest of him— he doesn’t want to believe. But man, talk about blind faith.
"It is definitely a next step to the connect a possible Designer to the God of the Bible."
There's a lot of false flagging out there. Lots of people now claiming to be 'just' IDers are really recycled creationists trying to sneak in the back door. I think these are the sort of people that Colin is really thinking about above, and I share his annoyance at them. But Colin should understand that many if not most IDers are *not* creationists and should not be tarred with that brush.
"I would tend to favor the idea of Designer God as being much more likely than Designer Advanced Alien Species."
You are an excellent example of a rational person -- you can discuss the issue from a non-dogmatic and open minded, truth seeking perspective. In contrast we have the fundamentalist atheist/materialist (and the fundamentalist theist) who are both True Believers in their respective faiths.
"They really make such pains to avoid suggesting any plausibility to the idea that there is a God— it’s because they don’t want to believe."
Exactly. It is almost comical. Is an infinite number of universes really the simpler explanation than the very clear observation that the universe is designed? It would seem that life on earth won the lottery about 30 times in a row. Accident? Well, if you insist on believing that, I can't stopya, but if you can't believe it, I confess that I can't believe it either. Nature simply does not produce information systems spontaneously. Nature is many magnificent things, but the fact is that she is not very clever. When we see things that look designed they are almost without exception designed. (The exceptions are very interesting!) The DNA replication system looks designed. In fact, it looks like the designer was intelligent beyond our comprehension. But some say it was just an accident.
Agreed on all accounts. And there are certainly the die-hard creationists who are as dogmatic as Darwinian acolytes, but I know many reasonable Christians and ID’ers who can think critically, logically, and with reason, so I dislike when atheists paint the brush that all Christians or all ID’ers are somehow dogmatic and unthinking.
"many if not most IDers are *not* creationists and should not be tarred with that brush."
Nonsense. Who else could they be talking about? More advanced aliens? OK, then where did they come from? It's a null hypothesis.
Intelligent Design is a pretext to teach religion in science class without violating the First Amendment. And it is nothing more.
Because if life was designed then the designers were as incompetent as most of the programmers it's been my unfortunate lot to work with. Our spines, the appendix, tonsils.
The metabolic pathway common to all aerobic life is a masterpiece of inefficiency.
Idiotic Design is more like it.
So if not God, who’s the Designer? It IS a creationist idea.
Reminder: the concept of "natural" is not a scientific one. It came out of an ad campaign in the 1950s.
And aside from such obvious cases like "don't stick your hand in a flame," the idea of "common sense" is an insult to educated people.
"the concept of "natural" is not a scientific one."
From the 50's? Can you support that? Anyway I take your point regardless. It's one of those rather nebulous words but when it comes to science I think we know what we mean when we say that lightning is 'natural' and LED lights are not natural.
Common sense an insult? Surely not. Seems to me that everybody relies on it at every moment of their lives, and education should refine and improve on common sense, not replace it.
> Common sense an insult?
Yes, it reminds the educated that their education has made them dumber than five year olds.
It has no scientific meaning.
I need to get to work, I've been writing here for hours, but I hold TV advertising responsible for a lot That's why people walk around smiling (which I can't STAND) when a smile used to be a reaction.
I, ID is a religious argument. It just seeks to evade suppression by pretending to not be about Sky Daddy.
Because that Design is not very Intelligent. Evolution is a lousy engineer.
I could be about Sky Daddy or not, the identity of the designer is secondary. If one of our rovers on Mars comes across a pane of tempered glass (not associated with any human landing) we will instantly and accurately know that there was technologically advanced life on Mars -- maybe native or maybe some aliens visited there. We may not know anything else whatsoever about this intelligence, but we will know that it exists (or did). There is no valid apriori reason why design cannot be suspected when design is evident.
"Because that Design is not very Intelligent."
Finally a strong argument! Yes, there are aspects of life that seem poorly designed. This is a problem for IDers to be sure. OTOH there are aspects that scream 'design'. As an agnostic I have the luxury of being able to admit that, so far, all hypotheses seem abysmally bad. I'd piss on all of them except for the fact that it seems inevitable that one of them must be correct because we are here after all. I keep hoping for some new idea that simply hasn't been thought of previously and that might actually be plausible.
In oxidative metabolism a molecule of glucose goes through a process called oxidative phosphorylation to promote 38 molecules of adenosine diphosphate to adenosine TRIphosphate. The energy difference between the two is the basis of all life on Earth. If glucose is the dollar, ATP - ADP is the penny. OK.
The sugar in fruit is not glucose, it's fructose. Both are 6-carbon monosaccharides. When you eat fructose, it has to be converted to glucose in the blood to enter this cycle. This is a slow process, which is why you don't get sugar headaches from apples.
When oxidative phosphorylation begins, the first step in the process is converting the glucose to an isomer of fructose. So the entire expensive process of converting fructose to glucose could be bypassed. The fructose could enter the cycle without that conversion. This is wantonly inefficient!
And this pathway is in all aerobic life on earth.
Lol… gender identity is not divinely created it’s a product of the mind.
Of course it is. But that’s not what we were debating. Colin compared the arguments of gender fluidity to the arguments for an intelligent design, and some of us took issue with that comparison. Because there is no physical evidence for transgenderism or gender in a spectrum, but there is physical evidence that leads to a logical conclusion that the universe was designed and created.
I whole heartedly disagree. There is no evidence for intelligent design. In fact, all evidence points to God being a product of man’s imagination, ignorance of natural phenomena, and fear of the knowledge of their own mortality.
The process of Male to Female transgenderism is actually easy to understand with a moderate understanding of fetal-sex-differentiation. Every cell in the human body starts out the same and without the presence of testosterone will continue along the female tract, as evidenced by Swyer’s syndrome; XY individual with either underdeveloped testicular or ovarian tissue, whom all have labia and a vagina, some even have fallopian tubes and a uterus. And they typically have a female gender identity.
Every cell in the body goes through this differentiation, including the neurons of the brain. Many diseases, conditions, and disorders are caused by a dysfunction in the receptors on the cells that trigger a process (eg type 2 diabetes). Ergo, should something interfere with the brain’s differentiation into male despite there being functional testes and sufficient testosterone then the brain will continue along the female tract. Additionally, testosterone doesn’t directly act on the brain in this process it is converted, so if there is a dysfunction in the conversion process rather than the receptors again the brain would continue along the female tract resulting in male to female transgenderism.
Note: there is evidence for female to male too, but the mechanism is difficult to explain.
Rotten of Colin to compare we ID proponents with the gender idiots. Of course there are all sorts of folks who might come under the ID umbrella, and surely some of them are religious, but as to that group, I think we'd find that they'd be the strongest opponents of trans. Ask your average fundamentalist Christian how many genders there are and the answer will be 'two'. As for me, I subscribe to ID because I don't think that random chemical accidents have been demonstrated to be capable of producing information systems. I'm an Old Believer -- science relies on demonstration of hypotheses and the chemical origin of life is not only not demonstrated, it violates every known law of chemistry, physics and information theory. But once we have a demonstration, ID is out the window AFAIAC. Meanwhile, evolution most certainly happens, but does it explain *everything*? I'm not so sure, *as it stands* however there are ideas floating around in the evolutionary world that might change that. I await developments. For now, the intelligent designer postulate remains viable -- we are ourselves intelligent designers and I have no reason to suppose that we are the only ones.
Science was created by philosophers. I see no reason why a science class can’t break free of scientific dogmas and allow philosophic inquiry to be practiced. ID allows space that to take place. Modern science itself was birthed out of a university system that placed theology as the “Queen of the sciences.” Now, I realize the standard response to this is that science allowed man to break free from superstitions. But a little humility might be in order. “Grandpa” (those who developed the idea of the university to study the works of God and God’s creation in order to better conduct our lives) might be more wise than we realize.
Yup, humility is the key thing. When I hear fundamentalist atheists pronounce on what they KNOW, I laugh. Me, I know that 2+2=4 and I know that there are only two sexes.
"Fundamentalist atheists" is an expression of ignorance and savage contempt.
There are militant atheists, yes, but fundamentalism is an inapplicable description.
Disagree. Dawkins is a fundamentalist atheist. He cannot admit the tiniest possibility that he could be wrong. He is righteous in his doctrinal purity and considers unbelievers to be lost souls at best, and damnable heretics at worst. His mind contains different beliefs but very much the same 'structure' as the mind of a religious fundamentalist.
He's a militant atheist. Fundamentalism would require a doctrine and atheism is more the absence of one.
I find his directness and unapologetic candor to be enriching and cathartic. But I understand what you're saying.
He finds religion disgusting. I am aware that some people, probably way under half, are moved by faith to do good things. I admire people like that. I don't admire clinic bombers or Lauren Boebert.
I resent like hell when people say that atheists are incapable of morality. I will capture a venomous spider or snake and put it outside instead of killing it. Atheists were disproportionately represented in every social advance as far back as I know about.
I respect Dawkins. Even like him. I think his totalism is mistaken but he's no bullshitter. He has integrity.
"I resent like hell when people say that atheists are incapable of morality."
They are capable of a higher morality -- one that is chosen, not imposed. God-as-we-have-him is surely a traffic-cop in the sky, mostly.
Do you believe in god?
No. Or not as the question is usually meant. I suspect that there's 'something' connected to reality that has consciousness and intention. The first Observer. In the beginning, God observed the universe and it came to be -- something like that. More deist than theist. The grumpy old man in the sky? Nope.
Thanks for a candid answer.
I love the Greek notion of god as stateless and transmundane; he didn't create the universe because then he would have changed state from "before creating" to "after creating." That has a compelling purity.
If I bercame a believer I would be a Valentian Gnostic.
Backatcha:
Dolphin religion is pretty simple. We believe we are here to admire the goddess. But we admire her willingly because she is beautiful and because she made us in her own image -- the most beautiful creatures on the planet. What's not to like? Gnostics -- a bit too hard to remember all the details for my taste.
Theology wasted millions of intelligent lives by having them copy scripture by candellight.
Queen of the sciences. Our ancestors should have slaughtered them.
That was tried in the 20th century. Stalin, Mao, Hitler...Not finished yet, you’ll get your turn.
What a boringly predictable response.
I haven't killed anyone since high school.
No, it's not rotten at all.
Intelligent Design is an Ignorance Cult. It's not an insult, it's scientific honesty.
Thinking about God gives people emotions they enjoy experiencing and don't want to give up. And don't kid yourself that ID isn't just rebranded religion. What else could it be?
"What else could it be?"
Have you read Behe? Not one scrap of religion in it. No hopeful just-so stories either. Just data and deep dives into some biological systems that look designed. BTW nothing supports Behe more strongly than the efforts to refute him, which are so weak that it backfires.
If I ever have time. Recommend any particular titles? I will add them to my kindle wish list. Won't be in the next few moinths, I have software stuff to learn and I am way behind. I also do beta reading for an Aus SF writer and I have to finish his new book.
I enjoy our discussions. Refreshing.
I haven't read Behe's latest, but his classic is "Darwin's Black Box". It's not very long and completely approachable. You'd find it a worthy challenge even if it doesn't change your thinking. Come to that, it's time I read another evolution book -- your recommendation?
Anything by Gould. Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes, easy to do worse.
BTW, Gould is now known to be a notorious fraudster.
I've already read Gould, I admired his heresy. I mean something on the cutting edge ... which might just be ... Gould! Let's give punctuated equilibrium another look.
We can confidently trace the evolution of the cosmos back to 10^~43 seconds after the Big Bang. Sorry, but Cæser runs the table.
But the real fun begins at that point. Furthermore, the fact that we are confident we know the laws of physics (from that point on) begs the question why those laws are so exquisitely fine tuned to permit life. According to the multiversialists, the laws are completely arbitrary, so we really did get extremely lucky.
No, that is not so mysterious. The chances of a universe so fine-tuned as to support life are 1.0, because we live in it.
Read 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐶𝑜𝑠𝑚𝑜𝑠 by Lee Smolin. He has since recanted his notion of "fecund universes" but the recantation is not convincing.
“It’s not fine-turned because we exist”— That’s a circular argument.
Exactly. If I flip heads three times in a row, the odds of that happening are 1:8 and they remain 1:8 whether I got luck or not. If someone wins the lottery 30 times in a row he could shrug his shoulders and say the chances of it happening are 1.0 because it happened, but that's not quite how probability is computed. We'd all suspect that something fishy was going on, wouldn't we?
The probability for each win is separate from the others.
Suppose you flip a coin and get a thousand successive heads. The possibility of getting another head is 50%, it is not diminished by the thousand that preceded it.
OTOH the probability of getting a thousand heads is about one in 10^301.
Physicists don't talk about that fine-tuning question much anymore. It could be that there have been a vast number of universes before us, or that in the multiverse every possible tuning is represented in another eigencosmos.
These are more interesting questions.
No, it's not. We are here.
Lee Smolin points out that the same tunings favorable for life are also favorable for black holes. Read this:
https://www.amazon.com/Life-Cosmos-Lee-Smolin-ebook/dp/B004TW1YY6/ref=sr_1_1
I've been dealing with this question for forty years and my answer is not flippant. Scottish physicist Paul Davis wanted to believe too.
https://www.amazon.com/God-New-Physics-Paul-Davies/dp/0671528068/ref=sr_1_1
What do you mean by "random"? If you are talking about "random mutation", that random I believe means in essence that the change may not be of benefit or detriment to the organism experiencing it.
Undirected. Chemicals coming together by chance and reacting entropically. Not the same thing as 'random mutation' but close.
Mutation is damage to the genetic material, like a thymine dimer formed by an ultraviolet photon within a certain frequency range.
Mutation is not the collision of molecules.
"But once we have a demonstration, ID is out the window AFAIAC."
What kind of demonstration do you want? Like a scientist creating life in a lab?
Well, that would surely be powerful, would it not? I don't think we can ever have absolute proof about ancient history, but one can surely arrive, in theory, at a point where natural explanations really are quite satisfactory. And since science is supposed to be about demonstration, if one's theories about the origin of life are backed up by demonstration, one holds the high ground. I'm a huge fan of Miller and Urey -- they took the bull by the horns and tried to do some real science on the issue. Speculations are just fine, but I want lab results. Mind, one should not be unreasonable -- we're not going to have a bacterium from scratch any time soon, but let's see some real progress.
What would "real progress" look like? In other words, what would it take--other than creating bacterium from scratch--to make you rethink ID?
Hard to say ahead of time. I'd know progress when I see it. Nothing could ever 'kill' ID -- it will always be a possibility that life on earth was seeded. However experimental validation of the idea that life could have arisen by itself would make the former idea simply unnecessary -- we do prefer a naturalistic explanation, do we not? But at the moment, as to chemical origin of life, we are exactly nowhere. We have vague speculations -- I myself am a fan of 'cold chemistry' -- but zero results. And reaction dynamics theory would seem to decisively prove that proteins will *never* form spontaneously. Proteins must be 'assembled'.
BTW I lost a bet on that -- I once bet that no one would ever synthesize a protein but it seems we now have machines sophisticated enough to make short chain proteins. Machines that can assemble them in a multi-step process; but that rather proves how absurd it is to suggest this can happen spontaneously. Nope, you need a family of enzymes to do it -- enzymes being themselves proteins and assembling the target proteins according to the instructions in a code -- DNA -- assembled by ... more enzymes. It is, to use the normal phrase: irreducibly complex.
"Hard to say ahead of time. I'd know progress when I see it. Nothing could ever 'kill' ID"
Ah, I get it now. To you, ID is an unfalsifiable notion, which means it isn't science. And it's fine for an idea to not be science--lots of notions people have are unscientific. We even protect many unscientific views in law; hence, the First Amendment. So long as those unscientific views stay out of science class, sure, have at them.
"To you, ID is an unfalsifiable notion, which means it isn't science."
As I said, it 'isn't science' because it claims life was engineered, not a spontaneous accident. The origin of the Diesel engine 'isn't science' either. It is unfalsifiable in exactly the same way that the spontaneous accident theory is -- until we get a time machine, there's simply no way of knowing what happened 3.5 billion years ago, is there? Or ... I suppose if some aliens land, explain to us that we're their children and yes, they seeded life on earth 3.5 billion years ago ... I suppose we'd probably take their word for it, no?
The word 'unscientific' doesn't apply to ID. It suggests 'anti-scientific'. Claiming that life arose by undirected chemical reactions without demonstrating that claim in the lab is unscientific because it ignores the fundamental law of science -- things must be demonstrated. Nope, ID is not unscientific, it claims that the origin of life is outside the domain of science, rather within the domain of engineering -- which is itself 'applied science' -- intelligence applied to some goal but using the laws of science to advantage.
As to 'science class' it seems to me that real science should be open to challenge from any angle. Tho ID is 'not science' I'd say that kids should be exposed to the challenge it presents and be invited to refute those challenges as best they can. IOW, the defense of science IS science and thus ID should be -- not 'taught' but 'presented'.
Bingo.
Economics isn't science, either. Supply-siders get tenure.
String theory has been largely falsified by the undetected neutralino, but string theorists cling to statistical straws because otherwise they'd need to insist they wasted their careers. Another cult.
It will be all about the detransitioner malpractice suits, the discrimination suits when those of us believing in biology are fired. I was in a restaurant for a late lunch yesterday, hoping to be the only one there. Nope, big loud woke table yacking it up about how terrible these places are where they won't have the "pride flag" in classrooms. Thank goodness they left before hearing The Heggen Lexicon. Here's my take on the latest malpractice suit, another woman operated on at age 16, during an obviou personal crisis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chPqKxol7F0&t=1s