John Dough wrote: What are you talking about? I didn't say anything about Dembski's equations. I just argued that Dembski doesn't posit the supernatural in his hypotheses. That's all. John Dough wrote: No, but so far you haven't given me any reason to think your views regarding the first 60 years of Darwins theory are more valid than those of Michael Ruse.
there is no such requirement... unless you assume that CAUSALITY itself is a valid or necessary assumption / premise... which it is not in absolute... just a useful construct for inferential-type reasoning...
Ruse is a philosopher for goodness sakes. His position is not scientifically supportable. The things Ruse stands upon can't be and are not verifiable. Darwin is verifiable and continues to be rigorously tested and confirmed. Ruse's main arguments are based on untestable assertion. Darwin's on fact. What more reason would you want that Darwin was more valid?
just thought i'd add, for educational purposes: we know since early 20C that causality breaks down at relativistic and at quantum level, but we also now know that it breaks down even at nano (molecular) level... there's tons others in the field on this but here's the best layman-oriented paper i cld find: http://www.science.org.au/sats2003/evans.htm in addition, signal theory has been using both causal and anticausal descriptive formalism for years in tons of practical applications incl image processing for instance and no reason to believe everything at macro-level necessarily obeys causal-type laws exclusively... iow, there is a scope of validity for causality, time-dependent inferential reasoning etc... but that's about it... sorry god...
21C: nonlinear science, full swing http://www.routledge-ny.com/ref/nonlinearsci/introduction.html have fun guys {unsubscribe}
Uhhh, how has ignorant chance been verified without excluding the possibility of intelligent design? Oh yeah, a wild guess... Every change we see has a cause, right? So the cause of the change we see is? Oh yeah, that mysterious thingy called evolution... That mystery force, that is a random, unpredictable, unmeasurable, unformulated, ignorant, incalculable thingy...and since we are ignorant of what it really is, we must consider it ignorant too.... Oh man, too ridiculous...
If that were right, everything has a cause, and the intelligent designer will need a cause. Oh It's "special" It doesn't need a cause. Then Gnomes Elves and Fairies don't need a cause. They have special pleading too. Still non of it has anything to do with validation, proof or science.
If you are referring to God, God isn't a thing. Things exist separate from other things, God exists separate from nothing... Your material logic always breaks down around the concept of infinite, eternal, unlimited... Of course, what to expect of a limited brain? Your so called science validates on the basis of a lack of information, a wild guess, an assumption that shows no method to verify it beyond continued ignorance...
Stu wrote: That evolution occurs has been tested and confirmed but ID doesn't dispute that evolution occurs. The dispute is over what causes evolution. Now, as I see it, evolution and life's history is wide-open and vulnerable before ID. Even beings as modestly intelligent as we can shape and alter evolution through artificial selection (where selection is guided) and genetic engineering (where mutations are planned). Science has no test that can confirm that any major evolutionary innovation originated through accidental mutation and coincidental selection rather than planned mutations and guided selection.
You're right. Science does break down around concepts of infinite, eternal and unlimited... Science requires measurability, and Infinity is not measurable. However, the scientific method routinely uses Calculus as a means of hypothesizing and then measures as far as reasonably possible, even though it is recognized that the limit of a function cannot be ascertained with absolute precision. So your comments about limitlessness, while valid, are irrelevant to determining the scientific reliability of evolutionary theory, because evolutionary theory is measurable within reasonable limits. Conversely, ID is not measurable within limits, because if it were, then someone would have measured it by now. If Dembski's formulas were so terrific, IDers would be able to measure the specified complexity of any object and thereby quantify the amount of intelligent design therein. The math could be use to determine, for example, whether an artifact which looks like an ancient stone axe, is actually one, or whether it only looks like one. There are pattern matching algorithms which can be used analyze a digitized portion of a painting and determine if it is an original or a forgery. An ID advocate should use said algorithms to various organic DNA and see if any life form falls far outside the normal distribution. If one does, then maybe that life form was designed by an alien rather than being the product of natural evolution. But, all of this ducks the real issue. There is no scientific test that can ever discover anything about a limitless creator, because as you have pointed out, science breaks down in this area. So, you are left with a public policy statement. Science cannot absolutely rule out a creator, therefore the creator should be given equal weight in the biological sciences, even though all of the measurable evidence rejects the influence of a creator. That's fine as public policy. But it's not science, because science reasonably excludes attempts at measuring the unmeasurable. If this wasn't the case, there would be no science. Everything would be philosophy. Which is, obviously, what you want, because it's what you continuously preach without interruption.