| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"johac" |
| Date: |
22 Feb 2007 06:47:26 PM |
| Object: |
What is wrong with intelligent design? |
How to argue with ID.
---
What is wrong with intelligent design?
In a thought-provoking paper from the March issue of The Quarterly
Review of Biology , Elliott Sober (University of Wisconsin) clearly
discusses the problems with two standard criticisms of intelligent
design: that it is unfalsifiable and that the many imperfect adaptations
found in nature refute the hypothesis of intelligent design.
Biologists from Charles Darwin to Stephen Jay Gould have advanced this
second type of argument. Stephen Jay Gould's well-known example of a
trait of this type is the panda's thumb. If a truly intelligent designer
were responsible for the panda, Gould argues, it would have provided a
more useful tool than the stubby proto-thumb that pandas use to
laboriously strip bamboo in order to eat it.
ID proponents have a ready reply to this objection. We do not know
whether an intelligent designer intended for pandas to be able to
efficiently strip bamboo. The "no designer worth his salt" argument
assumes the designer would want pandas to have better eating implements,
but the objection has no justification for this assumption. In addition,
Sober points out, this criticism of ID also concedes that creationism is
testable.
A second common criticism of ID is that it is untestable. To develop
this point, scientists often turn to the philosopher Karl Popper's idea
of falsifiability. According to Popper, a scientific statement must
allow the possibility of an observation that would disprove it. For
example, the statement "all swans are white" is falsifiable, since
observing even one swan that isn't white would disprove it. Sober points
out that this criterion entails that many ID statements are falsifiable;
for example, the statement that an intelligent designer created the
vertebrate eye entails that vertebrates have eyes, which is an
observation.
This leads Sober to jettison the concept of falsifiability and to
provide a different account of testability. "If ID is to be tested," he
says, "it must be tested against one or more competing hypotheses." If
the ID claim about the vertebrate eye is to be tested against the
hypothesis that the vertebrate eye evolved by Darwinian processes, the
question is whether there is an observation that can discriminate
between the two. The observation that vertebrates have eyes cannot do
this.
Sober also points out that criticism of a competing theory, such as
evolution, is not in-and-of-itself a test of ID. Proponents of ID must
construct a theory that makes its own predictions in order for the
theory to be testable. To contend that evolutionary processes cannot
produce "irreducibly complex" adaptations merely changes the subject,
Sober argues.
"When scientific theories compete with each other, the usual pattern is
that independently attested auxiliary propositions allow the theories to
make predictions that disagree with each other," Sober writes. "No such
auxiliary propositions allow Š ID to do this." In developing this idea,
Sober makes use of ideas that the French philosopher Pierre Duhem
developed in connection with physical theories theories usually do not,
all by themselves, make testable predictions. Rather, they do so only
when supplemented with auxiliary information. For example, the laws of
optics do not, by themselves, predict when eclipses will occur; they do
so when independently justified claims about the positions of the earth,
moon, and sun are taken into account.
Similarly, ID claims make predictions when they are supplemented by
auxiliary claims. The problem is that these auxiliary assumptions about
the putative designer's goals and abilities are not independently
justified. Surprisingly, this is a point that several ID proponents
concede.
---
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/uocp-wiw022207.php
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
Contact - Throw a .net over the .com
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: What is wrong with intelligent design? |
07 Mar 2007 08:25:57 PM |
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On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:47:26 -0800, johac <jhachmann@sbcglobal.com>
wrote in alt.atheism
How to argue with ID.
---
What is wrong with intelligent design?
The lack of Christian Intelligence.
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
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| User: "johac" |
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| Title: Re: What is wrong with intelligent design? |
08 Mar 2007 12:54:13 AM |
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In article <j0tuu25kubrbp2gqkjbmdrm6qinui54886@4ax.com>,
stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:47:26 -0800, johac <jhachmann@sbcglobal.com>
wrote in alt.atheism
How to argue with ID.
---
What is wrong with intelligent design?
The lack of Christian Intelligence.
I thought that intelligent design was like the religious right. It's
neither.
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
Contact - Throw a .net over the .com
.
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: What is wrong with intelligent design? |
12 Mar 2007 09:22:52 PM |
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On Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:54:13 -0800, johac <jhachmann@sbcglobal.com>
wrote in alt.atheism
In article <j0tuu25kubrbp2gqkjbmdrm6qinui54886@4ax.com>,
stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:47:26 -0800, johac <jhachmann@sbcglobal.com>
wrote in alt.atheism
How to argue with ID.
---
What is wrong with intelligent design?
The lack of Christian Intelligence.
I thought that intelligent design was like the religious right. It's
neither.
Religious Reich®.
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
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| User: "johac" |
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| Title: Re: What is wrong with intelligent design? |
13 Mar 2007 12:54:09 AM |
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In article <gn2cv2p029q2ilo9djei2upkm8lpu8r38m@4ax.com>,
stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
On Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:54:13 -0800, johac <jhachmann@sbcglobal.com>
wrote in alt.atheism
In article <j0tuu25kubrbp2gqkjbmdrm6qinui54886@4ax.com>,
stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:47:26 -0800, johac <jhachmann@sbcglobal.com>
wrote in alt.atheism
How to argue with ID.
---
What is wrong with intelligent design?
The lack of Christian Intelligence.
I thought that intelligent design was like the religious right. It's
neither.
Religious Reich®.
The comparisons are grim and rather obvious.
--
John #1782
"We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be
white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."
- Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) Founder of the Jesuit Order.
.
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: What is wrong with intelligent design? |
22 Mar 2007 12:05:53 PM |
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On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:54:09 -0700, johac
<jhachmann@remove.sbcglobal.net> wrote in alt.atheism
In article <gn2cv2p029q2ilo9djei2upkm8lpu8r38m@4ax.com>,
stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
On Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:54:13 -0800, johac <jhachmann@sbcglobal.com>
wrote in alt.atheism
In article <j0tuu25kubrbp2gqkjbmdrm6qinui54886@4ax.com>,
stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:47:26 -0800, johac <jhachmann@sbcglobal.com>
wrote in alt.atheism
How to argue with ID.
---
What is wrong with intelligent design?
The lack of Christian Intelligence.
I thought that intelligent design was like the religious right. It's
neither.
Religious Reich®.
The comparisons are grim and rather obvious.
As well as odious.
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
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| User: "duke" |
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| Title: Re: What is wrong with intelligent design? |
08 Mar 2007 04:31:02 PM |
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On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:47:26 -0800, johac <jhachmann@sbcglobal.com> wrote:
How to argue with ID.
What is wrong with intelligent design?
It doesn't explain atheists.
duke, American-American
*****
"The Mass is the most perfect form of Prayer."
Pope Paul VI
*****
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| User: "Hatter" |
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| Title: Re: What is wrong with intelligent design? |
22 Mar 2007 12:18:28 PM |
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On Mar 8, 6:31 pm, duke <duckgumb...@cox.net> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:47:26 -0800, johac <jhachm...@sbcglobal.com> wrote:
How to argue with ID.
What is wrong with intelligent design?
It doesn't explain atheists.
duke, American-American
*****
"The Mass is the most perfect form of Prayer."
Pope Paul VI
*****
Good, we agree there. An intellegent designer wouldn't create
something that does not believe in him, so there cannot be an
intelligent designer. Thank's duke, you have put the final nail in the
coffin of the case for God. He is now official dead.
Hatter
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