Are creationists returning to their YEC roots?

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The buzsaw contention is that if ID exists, involving the existence in the universe of higher intelligence than is normally observed on this one little speck of a planet called earth, it can be regarded as scientific. Like evolution, until the evidence of it is empirically falsified, then and only then does it cease to be science.

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The problem with ID, buz, is that it is based entirely upon a lack of positive evidence. All of the proposed evidence for ID has already been falsified, or is simply not falsifiable in the first place since it involves the actions of the supernatural.

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Nope. All the positive evidence points to ID, especially the informational aspects of QM, which is the foundation of matter and thus chemistry, which underlies biology.

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All of it, huh?Well cool.I'll be the first to congratulate you when you, or some other IDer, collects his or her Nobel Prize in Stockholm.

No, Dawkins' Atheism is not taught in public school science classrooms in the US.

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All evidence must be interpreted.

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Through theory.The evidence is the evidence. Facts do not change.How the proposed theory explains all of the facts and successfully predicts future findings is what makes it a useful theory.Can you tell me what predictions ID has proposed, and what evidence, if found, would falsify such predictions?Can you show what greater understanding of the workings of the natural world we have gained through ID?What predictions have been made based upon ID? Have those predictions been tested?How can we tell the difference between a Intelligently Designed system and a natural one that we do not currently understand or may never understand?

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Some bring a straight foreward conclusion. Much does not.

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I agree that many scientific findings are counterintuitive, but what does that have to do with ID?If you answer the questions I pose above, you will undestand.

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This is the case only for this group of people. It is not the case for the concept itself. The concept itself simply looks into the question of intelligence in the process.

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It thus far has only done so through philosophy.It has not used science.

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It is an idea quite worthy of scientific pursuit.

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When are they going to use science to pursue it, then?

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"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
- Ned Flanders"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson

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My approach to ID is that reason alone leads me to believe in a metaphysical designer.

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Reason alone can't take you there.Reason alone could only take you as far as "We don't know".Faith can take you all the way to belief in the supernatural, though.

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I only partly agree with you but to the same extent that it requires faith to believe in a metaphysical desginer it requires faith to believe that no such entity exists.

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Do you require faith to disbelieve in the existence of Thor, or Ganesha, or Isis, or the FSM, or Santa Claus, or Invisible Pink Unicorns?I don't.

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The fact is either there is an intelligence behind the existence of the universe or there isn't. When we gather all of the evidence, such as what we have learned from science, the fact that we have consciousness, morality, appreciation of beauty etc we use reason to decide whether it is more likely that this intelligence exists or not.

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What do the existence of consciousness, morality, and aesthetics have to do with the existence of an Intelligent Designer?Morover, why does it follow that it is a single supernatural entity who is also the designer of everything?Couldn't it also be just as likely that there is an entire pantheon of unfathomable numbers of gods, each controlling only a single particle of matter?

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To say that reason can only take you to the point of saying that we don't know is a cop out. It is like a court of law. In the end the jury has to decide guilty or not guilty but they can never be completely sure.

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Never heard of a hung jury?

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I have come to the conclusion that with all thing considered that the evidence points to a metaphysical intelligence.

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But those things (consciousness, morality, aesthetics) are simply the result of our really big brains and the need to live peacefully in groups.You cannot or do not understand how such things could have come about naturally, so you assign their cause a supernatural origin.Considering that we have only been studying the brain for a few decades, don't you think it's a bit premature to use our lack of understanding of certain aspects of it's function as a basis for your religious faith?What happens to your faith if there is a breakthrough and a naturalistic, evolved mechanism for consciousness or aesthetics is discovered?Furthermore, just because we do not currently, or may not ever, understand the natural origin of some phenomena doesn't indicate that any supernatural designer exists, nor had a hand in the design of it.That is just a God of the Gaps fallacy.

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As I understand your beliefs you have come to the opposite conclusion.

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No.I don't know if the supernatural exists or not. There hasn't been any evidence to suggest that it does, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

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Neither of us can prove that we are right.

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But you just tried to.What do the existence of consciousness, morality, and aesthetics have to do with the existence of an Intelligent Designer?Morover, why does it follow that it is a single supernatural entity who is also the designer of everything?Couldn't it also be just as likely that there is an entire pantheon of unfathomable numbers of gods, each controlling only a single particle of matter?

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We both have faith that we have come to the correct conclusion.

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I have not come to any conclusion because it is not possible to do so.I don't know if the supernatural exists, and neither do you.Nobody does.I happily live with the ambiguity of not knowing if the supernatural exists or not, although I realize that most people cannot or choose not to and therefore make that leap of faith.

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I'm not talking about any specific deity or creator. I am only talking about whether there is intelligence that is responsible for what all that exists or not. Two choices and either choice requires a faith that we have made the correct choice.

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You claimed that it takes faith to believe in the supernatural and also to not believe in the supernatural.The question of needing faith to disbelieve in Isis and Santa Claus is a perfectly valid question given your premise.Now in this post, however, you are using a different definition of "faith" than the one you initially used."Faith" in a correct choice is very different from what you were talking about.

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My reasoning leads me to believe that there aren't natural causes for those properties of our existence, therefore there must be some other reason for them.

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No, your faith leads you to that belief, not your reason.Your reason would lead you to the realization that we don't know enough about those properties of our existence to say one way or the other.How do you know that there aren't natural causes for those properties of our existence?In other words, how do we tell the difference between a Intelligently Designed system and a naturalistic one that we do not currently or will never understand?

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I only said that I believe that there is an intelligence and that there is intelligent design. I didn't limit it to one entity.

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That's fine for you to believe that, of course.But faith gets you there, not reason.

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Sure there is evidence, it just that you don't accept it as such.

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Like what?

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It is not scientific but it is still evidence.

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If it isn't scientific than it isn't woth much from a reasoning point of view.

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It is like finding a glove at the scene of a robbery. Just because someone's glove was found there, doesn't prove that they were there, but it is evidence.

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But you, nor the ID movement, has not shown that the glove was either supernatural in origin, nor placed there by a supernatural method.Given all of our knowledge of the natural laws of the universe,
which is more likely; that the glove was put there by natural processes or that it was zapped there by supernatural magic? I notice that you didn't acknowledge my refutation that there HAS to be a verdict in your trial analogy.

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That's fine, but I still say it's a cop-out.

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Are hung juries copping out of making a decision, or are they just not able to given the evidence given to them?In other words, why don't you consider "I don't know" to be a valid conclusion if there is no way to know?Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.

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"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
- Ned Flanders"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson

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My reasoning leads me to believe that there aren't natural causes for those properties of our existence, therefore there must be some other reason for them.

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How do you know that there aren't natural causes for those properties of our existence?

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In other words, how do we tell the difference between an Intelligently Designed system and a naturalistic one that we do not currently or will never understand?Until you can answer those questions in bold, (and you haven't answered the questions in the slightest) you are not using reason alone to come to the ID conclusion.AbE: I suppose that it's possible you could be using reason alone.It would just be very, very poor reasoning . Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.

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You and I look at the same world with pretty much the same information and we come to entirely different conclusions. It seems to me that if we were product of natural selection alone we would come to similar conclusions.

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Why on Earth would it be likely for people to think in the same ways or come to similar conclusions if we were a product of mutation and natural selection?Could you walk me through the reasoning here?

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I don't know.

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Right.You don't know.You just believe that there are no natural causes for certain properties of our existence.

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I believe that an intelligent designer is the most reasoned answer.

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You haven't used "reason alone" to reach the ID conclusion.You simply believe it.As PaulK said, you are rationalizing your belief and simply saying that you have used "reason alone", but you have done nothing of the sort.

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You seem to think that the only conclusions that we come to about ourselves and our environment are things that we can know for sure through the empirical method.

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We can't know anything for sure using the scientific method. We can only do our best to come closer and closer to perfect knowledge knowing that we will never get there.YOU are the one who has been making the absolute statements regarding what can and can't have natural origins.

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If I had that type of evidence then reason wouldn't be necessary. Science tells me that we rotate around the sun and not the other way around. It takes virtually no reason to agree.

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Er, I think we may be using very different definitions of the word "reason".I am using the word to mean something like:to form conclusions, judgments, or inferences from facts or premises.It very much takes reason to accept the Theory of a Heliocentric Solar System. It took centuries of scientific effort to figure it out, and it was an enormously revolutionary (pun intended) finding that changed the world in profound ways.To trivialize that enlightenment is to utterly disregard the shoulders of the scientific giants we are currently standing on.Tell me, did YOU learn that the Earth orbits the sun by viewing the night sky every night for years, carefully tracking the planetary motions and developing your own geometry and algebra?Why don't you provide the definition of "reason" you are using?

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It is only when we have to come to conclusions about things like; why we have consciousness that it does actually require reason?

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This requires reason no more or less than any other question.

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To make a decision we review all the information that is available to us and reason out a conclusion. It may or it may not be right, but at least we haven’t just deserted reason and declared that we are unable to decide.

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But unless you can explain how to tell the difference between an Intelligently Designed system and a naturalistic one that we do not currently or will never understand, you are not using reason to then conclude that an Intelligent Desinger exists.

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I'll repeat. When I consider my consciousness, the delicate balance in nature of the world and universe etc my reasoning tells me that it is an invention by an intelligent inventor. My reasoning isn't infallible. I accept that I may be wrong. That's the thing about reason, we just do the best we can with the brain God gave us.

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But you aren't using reason alone, to reach this conclusion.You are making rather large leaps past reason, actually.

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You probably won't accept this as answering your question. You only seem to think that empirical evidence counts.

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In determining what conclusions about Biology are derived by "reason alone", it surely counts for everything.

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Life just isn't always like that. It is your choice to sit on the fence and say I don't know enough to take up any position on the issue without somebody making it easy by finding irrefutable evidence. That's your choice, but I still say it's a cop out.

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Let's say that I hand you a document in Japanese and ask you to translate it into English.I hand you a Japanese/English dictionary, but every other page is torn out, so you are not able to translate enough of the document to make much sense of it.Are you "copping out" of the translation, or were you just not given enough information to do the job?

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It just occured to me that natural selection alone would cause us to largely respond to things in a similar manner

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It depends what you mean by "similar"Many of our basic responses to stimuli are similar.However, this is only in the most general sense. For example, most people are similarly suceptable to the same logical fallacies.With training, however we can learn to become aware of them and learn to avoid them.

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as do animals that are of the same type that don't have external influences. (ie: pets are influenced by people and breeding)

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People have lots of external influences, too.

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What difference? They are the same.

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No, the ID supporters say that we can, indeed, tell the difference.If you are saying that we can't tell the difference, then OK.

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Things are what they are. It is all in how we look at them.

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Sure. But now you have moved ID away from science even further.

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Since when does natural exclude design?

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It doesn't. The "designer", however, is natural selection. Or wind and water or glaciers or sandstorms, etc.

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How is it separate from nature? We have this misconception that we are not natural? Nature has the ability to design. We are natural. We are not the only life form that designs. Intelligence and design are natural. They are a property of the process.We are not even sure where a boudary for intelligence or intelligent design exists or if there even is one. All things learn in some form or another.

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Many things in nature do not learn.And many things that happen in nature are mindless and random.

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Cells learned to replicate.

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Can you tell me how something without a brain can learn?How do organic molecules learn?

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We simply learn on a different level. How you look at things makes all the difference in what you can find. Evidence of countless things are all around us. It is asking the right questions...to do this one must look at them differently. Hence philosophy.

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That kind of philosophy sounds an awful lot like religious spin-doctoring apologetics to me.

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I came to what a believe is a reasonable opinion or conclusion through reason,

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This is doublespeak, really;"I reached a reasonable conclusion using reasoning."Can you translate into a formal logical structure your "reasoning" of how your lack of knowledge of a natural origin of consciousness, morality, and aesthetics lead to your conclusion of a supernatural, God-like Intelligent Designer?If you try, I think you will see how it falls apart and the fact that you are not using "pure reason" will become very obvious to you.What is your starting premise?As far as I can tell, you are starting out with an unwarranted, rather huge assumption.Remember, I'm not saying that you can't believe what you want to believe, but you have not given me any explanation that warrants acceptance of your "pure reason" claim.Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.

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"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
- Ned Flanders"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson

OK, I don't have any idea why you are now bringing up the Big Bang, nor Abiogenesis.Neither have anything to do with what we have been discussing.I have been trying to remain very narrowly focused on your claim that you used "reason alone" to conclude that human consciousness, morality, and aesthetics do not have a natural origin, and furthermore you used "reason alone" to conclude that a supernatural, God-like Intelligent Designer exists.What I'd really like is for you to do what I asked:Can you translate into a formal logical structure your "reasoning" of how your lack of knowledge of a natural origin of consciousness, morality, and aesthetics lead to your conclusion of a supernatural, God-like Intelligent Designer?

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First off the question that you phrase could be asked of anyone who comes to the conclusion that the natural is all there is. >How would your lack of knowledge of a supernatural origin of consciousness etc lead you to assume that everything has a naturalist explanation?<

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But I'm not claiming that, so it is irrelevant for this conversation.

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I've done what you ask, but you don't accept my explanation as being reasonable. That's fine.

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You have done no such thing!You have told me that you have "reasoned" but that's all you've done. You haven't SHOWN me the logical steps you took to arrive at your conclusion.What is your starting premise?