It is pseudoscience, since it offers no testable hypotheses and no evidence. Bringing in God has nothing to do with a determination of pseudoscience.
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Hoover Institute video on Mathematical Challenges to Darwin's Theory
- Thread starter Shaul
- Start date
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
No. One conceivably could say "God did it" but one would still need evidence of that. ID is pseudoscience because their only claim amounts to God did it. No evidence of that is given.
Could we see their calculations?
(No want watch long video, which might
have me discovering hour was wasted.)
Many fundies claim "Math!", but get the
initial assumptions wrong, & then go on
to get the math wrong too.
(No want watch long video, which might
have me discovering hour was wasted.)
Many fundies claim "Math!", but get the
initial assumptions wrong, & then go on
to get the math wrong too.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
exchemist
Veteran Member
I am correcting your false statement, that is all. 2 out of the 3 are IDers, while the 3rd is someone with no relevant expertise and crank views.
Yerda
Veteran Member
ID proponents claim it very specifically doesn't bring God into the equation.
Regular science doesn't assume no God. Doesn't assume no djinns, elves or kelpies either. It just doesn't need to talk about these things to model the world.Brian2 said:
That got the frubal.
exchemist
Veteran Member
Science does not pretend to answer all questions. It answers questions about nature, based on reproducible observation and the formation of testable hypotheses. Where it doesn't know, it is happy to say so - and that area of nature becomes the focus of research. If science had all the answers, nobody would do any science any more.
What is objectionable about ID is that it pretends to be science, when it is no more than a Trojan horse for one (rather naïve) variety of religion. As a practising Catholic I have no objection to religion being taught in schools, but not in science classes. I strongly object to having the discipline of science corrupted by bogus ideas, introduced in a duplicitous manner.
As for designers (i.e. God), the success of science after the Renaissance was due to the avoidance of relying on "God did it" explanations for natural phenomena. Most of the early scientists had religious belief. Indeed one common view was that they were uncovering the marvellous intricacy of the world that God had created. Plenty of scientists today have religious belief too. But neither they, nor their post-Renaissance forbears, try to put God into their theories of nature, because that immediately makes them cease to be science.
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Still no math to check out?
Good grief! From punctuated equilibrium to punctuated delirium ...
Apparently, it being an awkward time to peddle Trump, some turn briefly to peddling another form of crap.
Yerda
Veteran Member
I was studying the biosciences when I first encountered the creationists and also the science-resenters (not quite deniers but often convinced science was some plot to keep their theology down). The overwhelming complexity and beautiful intricacy of the millions of things happening in every cell in every living thing on Earth seemed to me then (and still) as something of a miracle. If I'd been into God I'd have leapt all over this as confirmation of how spectacularly great God would have to be to have created this world. How huge the chasm between intelligence like ours that can discover this and the intelligence that could make a world that gives rise to it.
exchemist
Veteran Member
Yes exactly. I'm sure plenty of people are struck by the same feeling today. But thinking that way leads to a far more subtle idea of the Creator than these ID people seem to be able to grasp. In the end it is the fundamental order in nature, what we sometimes call the "laws" of nature, that we have to take on trust because there is no deeper explanation of why they are as they are, where metaphysics comes into things. Indeed Spinoza and Einstein seem to have had the idea that the laws of nature ARE what we mean when we speak of God. (The personal God of Christianity requires something more than this of course.)
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
It makes no such presumption. "god" isn't factored in because the concept can't be verified via the scientific method.
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
The Discovery Institute is a collection of professional liars.
Don't take *anything* they say at face value.
The main characteristic of the 'Cambrian explosion' is the development of hard body parts (shells, bones), which allowed for a much larger range of preservation than before.
That is why there are so many 'body plans' at that point with no obvious precursors: the earlier forms weren't preserved. But, we *do* know of some earlier forms.
Their first argument is one of simple disbelief: they can't see how small changes add up to larger changes over ore generations. Their second argument is the misrepresentation of the Cambrian 'explosion'. The third is a misrepresentation of how new proteins form (usually by duplication and subsequent mutation).
They are playing off the ignorance of their audience.
Especially when you think that the time involved is longer than the time since the dinosaurs lived.
Look at how much mammalian evolution happened in an equivalent time period (not to mention birds, and other branches of life).
As a mathematician, be wary of any probability calculations that simply multiply probabilities together. That is, in essence, an assumption of independence that is seldom true in biology or chemistry.
Again, the Discovery Institute is a collection of professional liars. They have been informed, repeatedly, how their facts are wrong and still continue to use the falsehoods. That is simple dishonesty.
exchemist
Veteran Member
It's not bigotry to reject that which doesn't withstand scientific rigor.
Yes, sort of, but it is worth bearing in mind that this is very idealised. In practice, the cycle can start with observation or with a hypothesis and can go back and forth somewhat untidily among the steps. Nobody in my experience is ever taught this flow scheme when they are learning science.
The crucial point is that a scientific theory must be testable by observation (not necessarily "experiment" - laboratories and people in white coats are not mandatory).
Do you need to? This is Hoyle's fallacy, the one using a 747 being assembled in a junkyard by a tornado. The mathematics is useless because the way the problem is set up is flawed even before the first calculation occurs. It assumes that the various biological steps are independent the way that the steps of assembling a 747 would be, and simply multiplies the likelihood of the individual steps to come up with an astronomical number. That's not how biological systems increase in complexity. The steps are not independent, because a process that directs them is involved - natural selection of the most fecund - something the airplane doesn't enjoy.
An analogy would be a planet forming from countless gas, dust, and rock particles. It would be an error to calculate the odds of these pieces finding one another and coming together as it there weren't a directing process involved - gravity. As the planetesimal grows larger, the odds of additional pieces coming to it are increased. And they will form into a spheroid if massive enough under this direction.
It's pseudoscience because it is looking for God. Science doesn't do that. Science looks at the universe to see what is there and to try to identify its repeating patterns. This needs to be done without expectation of finding a god. We know that if one does that, he is likely to "see" what he is looking for - a cognitive bias that deforms the scientific method. And not surprisingly, they kept finding mirages of irreducible complexity, all debunked.
This is a well-known cognitive bias - confirmation bias. It's the problem that is addressed when designing clinical trials and double blinding the patients and clinicians so that they don't "see" what they are hoping to find.
It doesn't. Others have told you this on this thread, and I have told you myself. Science does not say that there is no god. Neither does agnostic atheism.
Have you noticed any differences between what is called science and what is called pseudoscience? Let me give you a few examples of each, the pseudoscience coming first in each case: astrology and astronomy, alchemy and chemistry, bloodletting and scientific medicine, creationism and cosmology, creationism and evolution. What do all of the pseudosciences have in common that is different from all of the sciences? The pseudosciences are based in principles believed by faith, such as that the positions of the stars determine personalities and fates, or that a deity made the universe and life in six days by fiat ex nihilo, and that the pseudosciences are all sterile, that is, generate no useful ideas.
If one can't evaluate himself directly, the mathematics should not be taken seriously if it comes from an apologetics site. Their agenda, methods, and values are incompatible with humanism or science.
In case you want to call that the genetic fallacy, I would disagree. For starters, that occurs when one says the argument is wrong because of its source. That is not what I am saying. I am saying that I don't trust the source and am unwilling to do the necessary fact checking to make an assessment of whether I buy the argument or not. That came home to me when reading some creationist apologetics arguing that human evolution from the ancestors of other extant great apes was impossible, since the other apes all have 24 pairs of chromosomes and man only 23. The argument was that if these other apes had a common ancestor, it could not have been an ancestor of man, since no chromosome dropout mutation is survivable, much less selected for. I happen to have been aware of human chromosome 2, and could rapidly reject the argument, but what if I hadn't been? The argument presented was sound. The conclusions followed from the premises provided. The facts provided could be confirmed, and the subsequent reasoning flawless. Yet the conclusion was false anyway.
It's the same argument for not going to a known or suspected dishonest investment counselor. He makes his presentation, and it seems like a good investment. The facts provided can be corroborated. If he were a trusted source of investment advice, you might take his advice based on that sound presentation. But this guy? Don't even listen to him. And that's not the genetic fallacy, either, since I'm not concluding that he is lying, just that I don't care to find out if he is or put him to the test..
The mathematical problem and the data provided here are imagined by theists like Hoyle. They need a deity to explain their 747 version of evolution, where proteins are built like they're in a windstorm and the amino acids need to randomly come together in a specified time and place in a specified order. Reality is different. Inserting an intelligent designer into science adds no explanatory or predictive value, and so is not done according to Occam's razor.
Religious apologists all. There is nothing factual known only to the religious. If they get a hold of a fact and post it in one of their sites or other resources, it is not because it is a fact, but because they think it supports their beliefs.
And if it is a fact, it will appear elsewhere than in apologetics sites such as the paper where it originated - sources acceptable to critical thinkers. Reference those, please, if they exist. And if they don't, then what you've got is fiction.
Sure it's allowed. Recommended, even. One should consider that possibility. I have. It might even be correct. But hypothesizing isn't enough.
It's enough to show that nature is up to the task. This is how abiogenesis will progress. Eventually, multiple paths from simple chemical substances to life will likely be discovered, and we will never know which of them if any actually transpired, but that's enough. Creationism will never be seriously considered as long as naturalistic processes are sufficient to account for observations.
According to you, there is no such thing as science, just pseudoscience. To date, science has needed nothing more than the laws of nature to explain how the universe works and how it got to be this way.
The ID people are as dishonest as any other type of religious apologist, like the one I described above who left human chromosome 2 out of his apologetics. That's what I mean by a different agenda, value, and methods. Their agenda is to promote their religions, not discover how the universe works. They value faith over empiricism and consider lying doing God's work.
Yes, we know. But it is the case that if science (empiricism) can't answer a question about reality, it can't be answered except with sterile guesses. The religions are looking for a place for their god and their dicta, and so make idle speculations about metaphysical topics and want them taken seriously as an alternate magisterium, as if this were knowledge.
Occam's razor teaches us that naturalistic explanations are preferred wherever possible. One can always clutter any idea with additional inclusions into a narrative that account for and explain no observation, but why? Why throw in a god where none is needed? And if one is willing to do so, why stop there? Maybe a leprechaun, too. Or two gods. Or four gods and a baby. Why not? Let's throw them into Newton's Laws. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction and also an angel get its wings. More? And Jesus smiles. And a child is born to a virgin. Why not? The science still works.