Hi FMAJ,
You wrote: "I think that the jump from "people think that ID is
pure garbage" to "people who believe in ID are stupid,
irrational, dishonest etc" is a bit of a leap.
How so? If ID is indeed pure garbage, what type of person
would accept it?
FMA: Nor would I state that all ID critics see ID as
pure garbage.
Obviously, I can't claim something true for "all,"
nevertheless, I have yet to encounter an ID critic
who doesn't think ID is essentially garbage at its
core.
FMA: Wesley Elsberry comes to mind as someone who
has acknowledged the usefulness of ID in certain areas of our
daily life.
This dispute is not about areas of our daily life. It is about
ancient biological origins.
FMA: True. I was just hoping to find a condensed form of your
arguments. I am quite interested in finding out about how
ID is used to further our scientific understanding.
For me, it follows from the initial states associated with
the first appearance of life on this planet. Suffice it to
say that life, as a product of advanced bioengineering,
carries very different implications about what we should
see when compared to the traditional formulations of
life-from-non-life (expressed through the non-teleological
template). I probably have about a dozen ideas about this
currently on slow-simmer in my brain.
FMA: Yet. Or that perhaps such explanations did exists (Robison's
pathway on the talk.origins website for instance comes to mind)
but were never clearly classified. Classifying the pathways revealed
several pathways that Behe might have missed. Even if IC systems
had not been explained, this paper provides for an outline of potential
pathways.
Yes, but coming up with a possible explanation is not sufficient. After
all, ID is already a possible explanation. The point, however, behind my
introductory observations was in response to the common claim that
Behe ignored all the explanations that were out there. The quote I
provided from the T&U paper undermines those claims (or so I think).
FMA: Behe also makes a good case that now in order for ICness to be a
reliable indicator of design that one need to estimate pathways
and probabilities to eliminate Darwinian pathways. Of course
the same applies to ID pathways.
It sounds to me like you are confusing reliability with infallibility.
A criterion can still be reliable even if it is not infallible. For it to
be unreliable, we would need reason to think the criteria is more
likely to mislead than shed light.
FMA: In my opinion this complicates matters significantly since
ICness used to be a clean way to infer design, no real pathways
or explanations needed to support ID, just the assertion that
ICness meant that Darwinian pathways could not lead to
ICness.
Yes, but I've never been convinced that there are clean ways to
infer a teleological cause as opposed to a non-teleological cause.
In my opinion, we're dealing with an inherently ambiguous
topic complicated by deep time and all the extrinsic rhetorical
baggage that comes with these questions.
FMA: Sure, that's like saying that YEC'ism has contributed
to research and papers that showed their arguments to be
fallacious.
The fact remains that this paper would never have been
written if Behe had not written his book. In contrast, I
don't think any papers have been published as a response
to YEC (although I could be wrong). But again, this
introductory observation was always a minor point, in
response to common claims that Behe's arguments have
been completely irrelevant to science.
FMA: I disagree. That IC structures had not been explained
by science was not validated.
Well then, we disagree. I think the quotes I cited from the paper
do indeed amount to just this.
FMA: But Behe went further, he claimed that IC structures
could never be explained by Darwinian pathways and that
therefore ICness was a reliable indicator of design.
I don't recall Behe claiming they would never be explained
by Darwinian pathways. Of course, this all turns on what we
mean by "explain." Do you mean "explain" in the sense of
coming up with any story or "explain" in the sense of reflecting
what happened?
FMA: It's that thesis that I believe has been invalidated by
this paper. That Behe raised an interesting issue of ICness
and has furthered our understanding of how such systems
could arise naturally.
I think you are right. However, the issue of what "could arise"
is not very significant in a historical analysis.
FMA: My argument is merely reflecting the claims that
empircal evidence exists for ID.
I think such empirical evidence exists. If I didn't, I wouldn't
take ID seriously.
FMA: Some have taken the IC ID argument further
than perhaps warranted by evidence.
I would personally agree with that. But the same observation
also holds true (IMO) with regards to many non-teleological
claims (i.e., abiogenesis did happen; the flagellum evolved
by random mutation and natural selection, etc.)
Mike
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