Hi. I hate to be so dense, but I humbly submit that I just do not "get"
your point. The two items you deem to be irrelevant in the "design
inference" seem completely relevant to me. Cameras can take pictures of
many things, but it is only humans who decide whether the picture is of
a designed thing or not. As the ID people like to say, "If you see a
design, you infer there must be a designer." I will agree to a point,
but the designer is....ME. The design is all in my head.
In science, we use the term "objective" to describe those things that
the majority of people have declared to be X. But I submit it is not
absolutely objective.
Try this example just for fun. A few years ago, my husband and I saw an
advertisement in the newspaper for a public meeting on Crop Circles. It
was held in a very large city - the ballroom of a huge hotel. We go to
stuff like that on occasion because we find it important to keep abreast
of trends in mass belief systems (never know when it will come up in a
session).
Anyway, my husband is a notorious provocateur (you know how these
blasted Ph.D. types are - tee hee). Here we were in a ballroom with
about 500 serious crop circle fanatics all eagerly viewing the latest
slide shows. Well, it turns out the basic message was similar to that
of the ID movement: if you see a design, there must be a designer.
And...since no one person could possibly run around the planet creating
all these things, we can infer the designer to be alien.
My husband didn't just raise his hand, he stood up and raised his hand.
(I tried to melt into my folding chair). A guy with a microphone came
over to take his question, and my husband inquired of the speaker why
the crop circles couldn't be "naturally occurring." The speaker said
the question was ridiculous. My husband persisted, declaring that crop
circles are no more ornate or "designed" than snowflakes - and nobody
thinks snowflakes are designed by aliens. The speaker said, "But
snowflakes are little! And besides, we **know** how snowflakes are
created!" My husband persisted, declaring that size has nothing
whatever to do with whether or not something is naturally occurring and
further that our ability to understand a thing or an event has nothing
whatever to do with "who" or "what" created it.
OK - so here's the point. A camera could take a picture of crop
circles. We could declare that the words we will use universally to
describe "things that look like that" are "crop" and "circle." The
objectivity stops there. Whether or not the crop circle is any more of
a design than the striations in a leaf is purely subjective. Whether or
not a "designer" outside of nature is involved is also purely
subjective. It's just a system of beliefs. I can find no objectivity
beyond the photograph. And BTW, what if the camera guy slipped a bit
and took a picture only of the forested area behind the crop. Would it
be valid for someone to say, "Hey! I don't see any design here! This
proves there is no God (aliens, whatever)." I just don't understand how
there can be any relationship between proof of the existence of God and
whether or not I, we, you, anybody can detect design.
Lucy
attached mail follows:
The subject matter of science is data collected by non-human devices. How that
data is interpreted, whether by further machines or man, is not the point. Why
and how the experiment was set up to obtain the data is also secondary. The
essence is that science deals solely with data obtained by devices other than
human detectors. If someone claims to have seen a ghost, the first thing we
think of is to get a picture of it. There are umpteen reasons for collecting
particular data, but the data must be gotten by machines. Data collecting is
not objective, but the data is. It is clear that humans can collect data by
using their senses but one knows that such data can be gotten by machines as
well. In a bubble chamber one does see swirly lines that have to be
interpreted but the data was, nonetheless, taken by the chamber. Moorad
>===== Original Message From "bandstra@ese.ogi.edu" <bandstra@ese.ogi.edu>
=====
>George makes the point that theory enters the data collection process at
>the interpretation stage. I would add that theory enters also into the
>matter of what data to collect and consider. That is, deciding what
>experiments to perform is itself a subjective process. Subjectivity and
>value ladeness are present in all aspects of the scientific enterprise;
>from deciding what questions are interesting to conceptualizing experiments
>to building an apparatus to interpreting the output etc.
>
>There is, however, something to what Moorad is putting forth in that there
>is something objective about science (especially the data collection part)
>that sets it off from other human activities. This, perhaps, because it is
>a fairly easily taken assertion that the data are the same to all people.
> If the signal was 0.2 amps to me, it is so to you as well.
>
>Still, I'm not sure what Moorad is pushing towards in saying that data
>collection is objective. Moorad, care to elaborate?
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: george murphy [SMTP:gmurphy@raex.com]
>Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2001 8:53 AM
>To: Moorad Alexanian
>Cc: Lucy Masters; asa@calvin.edu
>Subject: Re: [Fwd: [Fwd: Griffin #2]]
>
>Moorad Alexanian wrote:
>
>> It is impossible for me to do science or just be a plain, ordinary human
>> being and not believe in a Creator. That is the tenure of my first
>sentence.
>
> This is your own self-understanding, with which I have no argument.
> It
>is clearly not the self-understanding of many other people, including a lot
>of
>competent scientists. & I think there's no compelling theological reason
>why it
>should be.
>
>> The statement I make is that the data for science is collected
>solely
>by non-human devices, viz. >mechanical, electrical, etc. Needless to
>say,humans
>design those devices, which are theory laden, >but the data itself is still
>collected by devices that do not include man as a "detector." Moorad
>
> 1) Doesn't data gathered by naked eye (or ear &c) observations
>qualify? & even though astronomers seldom actually look through their
>telescopes, they do look at photos, CCD readouts &c.
> 2) Theory doesn't just enter in the construction of instruments,
>but in
>inferences from the readings of instruments. As in my previous example,
>what is
>actually seen in a bubble chamber photo is swirly lines. The data usually
>reported, that certain reactions take place in protons-antiprotons
>collisions or
>whatever, requires a lot of theoretical inferences.
>
>Shalom,
>
>George
>
>George L. Murphy
>http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>"The Science-Theology Dialogue"
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 24 2001 - 23:26:15 EDT