Stephen E. Jones wrote:
>This will be my last post for a while (what's that cheering? :-)).
>I have exams in a week!
Yeah, but what happens after that?
>The point is that one can be "agnostic" about the Designer. One could
>believe the Designer to be "deistic", theistic, polytheistic, pantheistic, or
>just leave the identity of the Designer unresolved "agnostic". Fred Hoyle's
>"intelligent universe" (and maybe Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis) would
>probably be acceptable under ID.
If all those things are acceptable under ID, maybe my stuff is too.
Maybe the designer is an agnostic.
>Since we are talking about the kind of evidence that *I* could provide, on
>this List, this just again goes to show that evolutionists request for
>"evidence for ID" is meaningless. It is like a creationist saying he would
>believe in evolution if an evolutionist would bring Charles Darwin back
>from the dead, or build a time machine and take the creationist back to
>witness the origin of life or a major macroevolutionary transition.
The time machine idea seems completely reasonable. I would think
a creationist would have to become a theistic evolutionist if he were
able to witness the process. Or if he became so convinced through
analysis of the evidence we have of the past.
>I admire Cliff's honesty and self-awareness here. He at least acknowledges
>his prior "built-in prejudice in favor of naturalistic explanation". But then
>he should also acknowledge that his repeated requests that I provide
>evidence for ID is therefore meaningless.
Not at all; I'm simply curious about what you would have to say, other
than railing against the mere asking of the question.
>The question Cliff might ask himself is, how could his position ever be
>falsified? That is, if design was real, how would Cliff ever know it?
There's no design without a designer. The existence of the designer is
what this is all about. Well, better minds than ours have failed to prove
that.
>CL>I like to puzzle out
>>particulars; the one big all-inclusive answer is boring to me.
>
>There is no reason why accepting "one big all-inclusive answer" should be
>"boring". If God created the raw materials of the universe and then
>progressively modified them over 15 billion years (which is what I believe)
>the task of trying to find out how He did it anything but "boring"!
How would this puzzling out of particulars differ from they way I would
puzzle out the particulars of past events?
>CL>How about 'idealist-naturalist?' You do realize that idealism is not the
>>exclusive property of theism or 'designerism'? A philosophical idealist
>>may simply be a person who thinks ideas and values and words are more
>>interesting and important than physics and chemistry. There's no necessary
>>connection to ID or theism.
>
>I deliberately add "materialist" for *precisely* that very reason - that there
>is an "idealist-naturalist" position which I might have no problem with.
>Arthur Koestler, for example his essay "An Intimate Dialogue" in Koestler
>A., "Kaleidoscope," 1981, was probably an idealist-naturalist and he was
>antimaterialist/anti-Darwinist for that reason.
>
>So is Cliff claiming to be an "Idealist-naturalist"? If so I would be
>interested in Cliff stating briefly what he sees as the main tenets of the
>"idealist-naturalist" position and the main difference between it and that of
>materialist-naturalists.
I proposed the term as a counter to the false connotations of the
'materialist-naturalist' term. An idealist-naturalist would be a naturalist
who is interested not in the substance of the universe, but in the forms,
the logic, the ideas and values we deal with. I think this describes most
naturalists. As for 'materialist-naturalists', I leave it for those who use the
term to define it.
>I have in the past made it clear (as does Johnson) that "materialism" in this
>sense is the claim that "matter is all there is".
There are no values, no ideas, no good or evil, no dreams? Who thinks
that?
>"Naturalism and materialism mean essentially the same thing for present
>purposes, and so I use the terms interchangeably. Naturalism means that
>nature is all there is; materialism means that matter (i.e., the fundamental
>particles that make up both matter and energy) is all there is. Because
>evolutionary naturalists insist that nature is made up of those particles,
>there is no difference between naturalism and materialism. In other
>contexts, however, the terms may have different meanings. Materialism
>sometimes used to mean greedy for material possessions, as in "he who
>dies with the most toys wins." Naturalism also has quite different meanings
>in other contexts, such art and literary criticism. These other meanings are
>irrelevant for our purposes." (Johnson P.E., "Defeating Darwinism by
>Opening Minds", 1997, pp.15-16)
If Johnson means this, that naturalism and materialism are the same, then
why does he use the controversial latter term at all?
>Here I must disagree. I try to use mainstream terms that *accurately*
>describe a position. For example I accurately distinguished between
>"materialist-naturalist" and "idealist-naturalist". If Cliff claims
>to be an "idealist-naturalist", and it fits the mainstream defintion
>of same, then I will start calling his position by that term.
It would be interesting if a term I just invented had a mainstream
definition.
>Maybe Cliff has been reading too much *materialist* rewriting of history!
>:-) Most of the leading scientists of the 16-19th centuries were devout
>Christians (even Gallileo still after his recantation), and they wrote books
>on Christian topics also. One of these, Pascal's Pensees is a Christian
>classic.
They drew heavily upon Aristotle's philosophy, even as they were improving
on his facts.
>But the reverse doesn't necessarily apply. While a Designer could work
>either supernaturally and/or naturally, rapidly and/or slowly, the same
>is not true of a `blind watchmaker'. *All* naturalistic theories need
>the `blind watchmaker' to build complex designs, and the latter can only,
>work slowly, step-by-tiny step.
Completely ignoring symbiosis theory.
>I have answered this before. It is IMHO just `handwaving' by Cliff. There
>are several major problems with the serial endosymbiotic theory (SET) that
>I have outlined, and even if it were true, it would not explain the design
>features of the "symbionts".
Those evolved separately, perhaps through other levels of symbiosis.
>And it would not explain the design features *above* the level of the
>eukaryotic cell.
As I suggested recently, symbiosis could work at every level.
>Besides, no SET advocate AFAIK claims it happened in "a leap".
I don't see how genomic integration could be gradual. It wouldn't
work if the genetic material were divided.
>If this type of explanation were true, it would completely *gut* Cliff's own
>"symbionts" theory. Why bother with "symbionts"? Just answer every hard
>question with "In the natural world things happen when they happen"!
The point is that the timing is not important, what's important is what
happened, not precisely when it happened.
>The fact is that "evolutionary events" *had* to happen in the right order,
>at the right time, to the right organisms, or they would be worse than
>useless.
You're ignoring the astronomical number of mutations that were
unsuccessful, that happened in the wrong order, at the wrong time,
to the wrong organisms, that were indeed worse than useless.
>My point is that "Darwin and Dawkins" are *right* - if intelligent design is
>ruled out. IOW, if I was a naturalistic evolutionist, I would be a fairly
>strict Neo-Darwinist, like Dawkins. It is the *only* viable overall position,
>assuming there is no God.
How can you rule out symbiosis, and what is the connection to God?
It's just an historical mechanical question, how did it happen?
>Cliff might think they are "wrong" but he has no real consistent
>designbuilding alternative to put in its place. SET theory might explain the
>origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts in the eukaryotic cell as relics of
>freeliving prokaryotes, but even then it is only half an explanation.
Again, the point is that here is a mechanism, a wrinkle not envisioned
by Darwin, one which could function at various levels.
>It does not explain the origin of the prokaryotic symbionts themselves,
>which also have *fantastic* design features like DNA-mRNA transcription,
>mRNA-protein translation via ribosomes, and the Golgi apparatus, which is
>just *mind-blowing*:
Right, how can you envision this complex arising step-by-step?
>Big symbionts invited little symbionts
> into their cytoplasm to bite 'em,
>and little symbionts invited littler symbionts,
> and so ad infinitum! :-)
Big symbionts would be complexes built up from smaller ones.
>but it just gets worse. The idea that the mindless accidental actions of
>bacteria eating each other over 1 billion years, just happened to assemble
>the right components, to build all multicellular plants, fungi and animals for
>the next 2 billion years, with cellular machinery that is so ingeniously
>complex, that it makes Captain Kirk's Starship Enterprise look like a balsa
>wood glider, is simply, in Denton's words, "an affront to reason"!
Good ol' personal incredulity. You can't understand it, therefore it must
be supernatural. Religion can be quite egotistic.
--Cliff Lundberg ~ San Francisco ~ 415-648-0208 ~ cliff@cab.com
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