Personal anecdotes mean nothing, but...while I don't know any biologists, with all the professional scientists that I do know it is utterly impossible to even begin to hint that any critic of Darwinism anywhere might possibly have a point.

First step: exclude all non-natural causes as a priori inadmissible.

This is pretty much a definition of science. If non-natural phemomenon are admissible for any explanation of phenomena, then you'd have to throw out everything we know about the physical world to date. Why settle on the idea that combustion provides the energy to make a car go? If I have a theory that cars have spirits, and the spirits make the car go, then I should get equal time with the combustionists.

Robert: Wow! Unlike all other strawman arguments, yours is actually totally convincing! Congratulations! Bravo!

b
If you can explain the difference betwen "spirits make the car go" and "spirits make species change into other species", I'd be glad to hear it.

Robert:

Bingo. You have to start by ruling out innumerable possibilities before you can even begin to build your faith.

b:

The Other Brother is Biology PHD and The Wife is a medical doctor--both are skeptics.

What bingo? I didn't agree with you. Please decode your statement.

b and Robert:

Your statements seem to be based on false premises. Just to go over a few things:

1. ID is not an alternative theory to Darwinism. It is a very strong challenge to Darwinism. But as Thomas Kuhn stated, scientists have a strong resistance to abandonning a theory until an acceptable alternative presents itself.

2. ID was not the concoction of religious people, like young-earth creationsts. It came out of the scientific community itself. Its proponents do include religious people, like Michael Behe (a Catholic; Catholics, by the way, are not fundamentalists) but also non-religious people like Dean Kenyon.

3. ID is not the same as proposing that pixies cause a car to go. It is not a proposal to entertain any stupid fairy story some fool can dream up. Instead, it is a plea to be allowed to break out of the Darwinian straitjacket and FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE WHERE IT LEADS. Dean Kenyon abandonned his own theory when looking at molecular machines, concluding that it was impossible to believe that they could have come into being via natural selection, etc. They look designed and being designed is the most logical conclusion. So, let's follow the idea that there is a designer and see where it leads.

4. Finally, belief in a designer is not antithetical to science. In fact, it made science possible. As a number of historians of science (Grant, Lindberg, Crombie et al.) have stated, science grew out of a Christian civilization and only a Christian civilization because it required a belief that the world was rational and could be understood by humans becaue it was created by one, rational, good God. Even the Greeks did not believe this; remember that Aristotle continued to attribute human characteristics to heavenly bodies, the earth etc. since the Greek cosmic view did not depersonalize nature. Also, Aristotle favored believing what should be true versus what could be proven experimentally; hence, his belief that larger objects fall faster than smaller ones, etc.

"The Other Brother is Biology PHD and The Wife is a medical doctor--both are skeptics."

Would they (or you) care to explain their skepticism in some kind of meaningful detail?

There may be good arguments against evolution, but one based on Gould, Popper, and Kuhn certainly isn't one of them.

Carter:

To the contrary, each offers a compelling case against it.

creeper:

No. But it's hardly surprising they are skeptics since most doctors disbelieve Darwinism.

Robert:

Yes, you do agree. You first need to exclude so much in order to begin speaking of science as to make it trivial.

So they're just skeptics in general?

The natural world is hardly trivial, and it includes an awful lot.

It's surprising your a fan of Kuhn and Popper because in your reviews you give David Stove's Against the Idols of the Age an A+.

Gould's Marxism tainted everything he did.

creeper:

Indeed, it includes everything. It's only when y'all start narrowing it down that it becomes trivial.

Carter:

That's the exquisite thing about Gould--when push came to shove he couldn't accept where following Darwinism would lead him so he chose the other alternative religion instead. Of course, both Darwinism and Marxism (and Freudianism for that matter) are false for the same reasons.

Stove demonstrates the silliness of Darwinism from within Darwinism, he doesn't even need to use Kuhn and popper, to whom he's hostile.

Robert:

This is pretty much a definition of science.

Fair enough, but if the a prioridefintion of science excludes the non-natural, how can science purport to then go on to exclude the non-natural as a cause of anything?

The scientific naturalism of the Darwinists � the belief that everything can be explained by natural, material forces�is ultimately founded on rhetorical legerdemain that has nothing to do with science.

"Everything"? For some Darwinists, perhaps. For everyone who believes evolutionary theory, not hardly.

Patterson related that he had asked the members of an evolutionary morphology seminar at the University of Chicago to tell him just one thing about evolution that they knew to be true. The response was a long and embarrassed silence.

Ooh! Ooh! Call on me! Here's one: A combination of basic physical laws and random chance can produce extremely complex phenomena. See Conway's Game of Life and the book Laws of the Game: How the Principles of Nature Govern Chance by Eigen and Winkler.

Papaya:

Yes, that's an argument for intelligent design, not Darwinism.

Peter:

Because it's not scientific--it's just a circular ideology.

Peter,
It can't, it just can't say anything about the non-natural. The problem with invoking the non-natural is that it doesn't tell us anything more than just saying "I don't know". It's a non-explanation explanation.

Instead, it is a plea to be allowed to break out of the Darwinian straitjacket and FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE WHERE IT LEADS. Dean Kenyon abandonned his own theory when looking at molecular machines, concluding that it was impossible to believe that they could have come into being via natural selection, etc. They look designed and being designed is the most logical conclusion. So, let's follow the idea that there is a designer and see where it leads.

Unless you've invented a telescope that can see into the supernatural realm, it doesn't lead anywhere. How can that assumption lead to any useful theories? You will be stuck on that theory until one of two things happen: God will reveal the answer, or material science will conclusively prove that the artifact evolved.

Conway's Game of Life? How about a game of dice? Saying "basic physical laws and random chance can produce extremely complex phenomena" is like saying "rolling a pair of dice can produce two fours". I believe the gentleman asked for a "fact" about evolution that they "knew" to be true. It is a fact that objects fall to the Earth at 32 feet/second squared. It is a fact that light travels at 186,282.397 miles/second through a vacuum. What PapayaSF said is not a fact, but rather a potential relationship, which may or may not occurr. What biological laws? How does one define random? Random in the sense of having no discernable order, or merely unknown origin? How is it that one cannot tell the difference between a "fact" and a relationship between two undefined variables?

It is sad that grammar, logic and rhetoric are no longer taught in school.

Robert:

You're too smart to truly be missing the point: Nothing is unnatural until you insist it is. You're being unscientific by simply claiming from authority that some things aren't to be considered part of nature.

Robert: Since there's pretty much NEVER a case where one and only one explanation fully describes a set of observations, the choice ultimately comes down to aesthetics. Deciding that some biological feature "proves" that evolution is Designed is no different from deciding that it "proves" that evolution is totally random & unplanned.

b:

Indeed, everything ultimately just comes down to aesthetics.

Robert:

Not only are you too smart, you are too honest as well.

Why settle on the idea that combustion provides the energy to make a car go? If I have a theory that cars have spirits, and the spirits make the car go, then I should get equal time with the combustionists.

If I have a theory that combustion makes the car go, and I say that my theory is restricted a priori to the natural, physical causes of motion, then how can I claim more time for the conclusions of my theory than the guy who says it's all driven by spirits?

The answer in that case would be repeatable, observable, testable experimentation. What's Darwinism's answer?

CHM: No, the quote was a "thing" about evolution, not a "fact," so my example is apt and your lecture is unwarranted.

OJ: Apparently in your worldview, everything is proof of ID. That makes it rather difficult to convince you of any specific natural law or event. I once knew someone who went to a Jesuit high school, and his way of being the class clown in chemistry class was to respond to the teacher's question "Why does this reaction occur?" with "It's God's will!", forcing to teacher to say "Well, yes, but more specifically in this case...." You remind me of that guy, except you're not trying to be funny.

As Robert says, ID isn't science because ID is in essence a supernatural explanation, and science doesn't work that way. Now, that doesn't mean science can explain everything, and few scientists claim that it can. There's plenty of room for religion, so there's no point in being defensive about evolution. Darwin is no more a threat to religion than Galileo was.

Peter, there's a heck of a lot more "repeatable, observable, testable experimentation" in evolutionary biology than there is in ID or religion, so I don't think that helps your case.

PapayaSF: "there's a heck of a lot more 'repeatable, observable, testable experimentation' in evolutionary biology than there is in ID"

Please tell me what, because I'd love to be converted. (Note that I don't give a fig for ID in particular, and don't think it should be taught in school, because I'm not an evangelical Christian). As far as I can tell, ID just takes the whole pile of evolutionary biology knowledge and says that it points towards a Designer. Darwinism takes the whole pile and says it points to No Designer. (If you want to say they're both wrong, you & Peter are on the same side).

"Indeed, it includes everything. It's only when y'all start narrowing it down that it becomes trivial."

The natural world (and natural science) doesn't include everything, as it rather obviously excludes the supernatural. This has been pointed out to you before.

b:

Not both wrong, both unpersuasive. We poor non-scientists have to rely on plausibility and what we live and see before our eyes.

Papaya:

But your comparison doesn't help darwinism one bit, because no one else (here) is asserting a competing comprehensive, self-conatined theory of life and human history. This step, to which Darwinists inevitably have recourse whenever the holes in the theory are pointed out, Philip Johnson astutely notes in Darwin on Trial, is the equivalent of preventing a criminal defendant from presenting an alibi until he can produce the real criminal.

No doubt some Darwinists say the pile points to "no designer," but there are distinctions here that OJ & Co. tend to gloss over. The problem is where one draws the line between natural and supernatural, between science and religion. When primitive man was learning about fire, no doubt the explanations were supernatural. Now we know about oxygen and combustion and such (as per Robert's example above), and no sane, educated person think the gods intervene to make each flame (except in the most general sense of creating the universe and its laws).

In that way the realm of the supernatural has been pushed back, which I think is on balance a Good Thing. Darwinism/evolution merely pushed superstition back in a different way, one that upsets some people. They want to think of humans in terms of Adam and Eve and God as some bearded guy sitting on a throne in the sky, so the idea that humans evolved seems like heresy. But as I've said, there's still plenty of room for God in all this. I just object to the anti-science attitude of ID.

One more point: Anyone who looks at all the evidence of evolution and think it clearly points to ID is either a fool or must think God has a weird sense of humor: nipples on men, the appendix in humans, vestigal tails, millions of fossils, dozens of kinds of radioactive dating, shared DNA, etc. etc. God seems to have done a good job leaving lots of clues that evolution did occur. Is He really trying to fool people?

"But it's hardly surprising they are skeptics since most doctors disbelieve Darwinism."

only 38% agree that "humans evolved naturally."

Papaya:

When you offer examples of human game playing then yes you're proving intelligent design.

creeper:

Yes, and as has been pointed out to you before there is no such thing as the supernatural unless you first declare by simple fiat that God is not present in nature. Of course, at that point your argument is circular and unscientific.

creeper:

Yes, that's some three times the number for the population generally--not surprising given they've had six extra years of indoctrination before getting out into practice and seeing that it's bogus--but still a weak minority.

OJ: You are giving evolution proponents an impossible task. Since evolution happens over millions of years, experiments are necessarily created by humans on a smaller scale. That doesn't "prove ID."

And you've never answered my point about all the things that do point to evolution as opposed to ID: is God really leaving false clues just to fool us?

OJ,
It is the Christians that decided God was not in or of nature. Those who claim that God is embedded in nature are called pantheists.

Peter,
Darwinism can't say that there is no designer, it just says that we don't need a designer to explain evolution.

OJ, the fact that intelligent beings are involved in a process does not make the result of that process design. It is only design when the specific outcome was planned for. As with the "invisible hand" of economics.

Everyone thinks that complexity is the hallmark of human design, but non-intelligent, recursive systems have proven to be able to generate more complexity than any human mind can.

Papaya:

To the contrary, all those flaws suggest an intelligence at work, rather than a relentless natural process winnowing away at everything. We seem like exactly the sorts of creatures we'd design.

The problem you posit is, of course, a false one. If Darwinism were true there would be speciations going on all the time, not just one every several million years. Instead nothing has changed in recrded history. The argument that Darwinism not only doesn't meet the criteria of other sciences but shouldn't have to is especially revealing.

Robert:

God Created and intervenes in nature. In what sense then can God be said to be unnatural? Is a car natural once it's made?

Robert:

That's nonsense, of course. The Soviet Union of the 1980s didn't look much like what Lenin wanted to create, but it was undeniably a product of intelligent design. The Edsel looked exactly like what Ford wanted to create, it just wasn't popular.

Here again you guys stumble into your theological quarrel with God. Just because you don't like the Creation He gave us doesn't mean it wasn't a product of His intelligence.

Papaya: "I just object to the anti-science attitude of ID."

And I object to the anti-religion attitude of the scientific establishment (of which I suppose I still technically count as a member). As I said above, it all boils down to aesthetic choices...

And I object to the pro-science attitude of ID. Even if they're just trying to displace one fake science with another, they lend the current orthodoxy entirely to much credence.