Re: [asa] YEC and ID arguments

Greg wrote in small part:

   “Bull. TEs are concerned enough about clarity to recognize that
teleology is not a scientific term. They recognize that the hand of
God is not evident in empirical studies.” – Dave Siemens
 
   It seems that Dave is among those David O. mentioned as having
‘deep hostility.’ Yet, from a philosophical viewpoint, he chooses to
define what is ‘scientific’ and what is not ‘scientific,’ ala the
demarcation game. This just yawns us back to the creation vs.
evolution standoff. Is the hand of God evident in miracles? The issue
for Dave is simply ‘why teleology *cannot* be used scientifically?’
What about teleological evolutionists (or evolutionists who think
teleologically) – are they/ can they be scientific?

On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 13:30:39 -0500 "David Campbell"
<pleuronaia@gmail.com> writes:
>
> <snip>
> A more fundamental aspect comes from the question of what design or
> teleology ought to look like. The ID models such as specified
> complexity
> and irreducible complexity to me have the ring of post hoc efforts
> to
> identify biochemical complexity as designed rather than a priori
> efforts at
> developing a model of design rooted in actual comparison of designed
> and
> non-designed objects. Identifying human agency in an
> archaeological
> setting, for example, depends not on finding complexity but on
> finding
> things that related to known human activity and cannot be accounted
>
> for by
> natural causes. Often simplicity is more distinctive than
> complexity-straight lines are relatively uncommon in nature.
>
> Can biology detect design or purpose? Only certain subsets of them,
> and
> even then the actual inference of purpose is often outside the
> biology. In
> and of itself, evolution and any other natural law has no purpose
> or
> goal-it's just a description of the regular patterns in the physical
>
> world.
><snip>

I am not, as Greg accuses, a demarcationist. I know better. If someone
sees a way to empirically approach a matter, they can develop a new
science. Psychology was so developed from what had been simply a
philosophical study for millennia. But it was soon divided into,
depending on orientation, the rat psychologist and the real
psychologists, or the scientists and the pseudoscientists. This is always
tacitly accompanied by, "My categories are correct."

Now, I believe wholeheartedly in design, but that is because I believe in
creation and providence, that all events are under divine supervision.
But that does not mean that I can detect God's hand empirically. It does
mean that I thank God for my food while I recognize that its presence on
my plate involves a host of people and events. It didn't arrive by a
miracle.

Turning to biology, we see a vast number of creatures interacting on the
basis of internal mechanisms. How did they come about? The answer,
scientifically, is found, for the most part, in paleontology and
genomics. In the latter, did an adaptation come about through genetic
drift, cooptation, natural selection or mutations? in what combination
and what order? In none of them do I, by the application of empirical
measures, detect design. I may determine that I don't know just how
something occurs, but that does not let me declare "Miracle!" Indeed,
even dealing with human beings, I note the recent claim that they act in
certain ways because of "lizard brains," not reason, logic, intellect
(but the ascription of irrational forces is apparently exempt).

To take a different tack, the universe is the same whether I adopt the
strong or weak anthropic principle, or reject both.
Dave

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Fri Oct 27 15:23:21 2006