An Idea Whose Time Has Come
An article authored by Jonathan Bartlett which appeared in 'Tulsa Today' took the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Alan Leshner, to task for his arguments against proposed Oklahoma legislation which related to teaching science. Leshner's views appeared in 'The Oklahoman.'
Bartlett showed that Leshner referred to a legislative intention to encourage critical thinking and expose students to the debate over evolution. He quoted Leshner as stating:
"But this is the sort of code language that supporters of intelligent design doctrine have tried to inject into science education standards in other communities and states nationwide -- not to promote science, but to promote a narrow religious agenda."
It is not just a religious agenda but incredibly, according to Leshner, "a narrow religious agenda." How narrow can it be when no particular religion or religious doctrine is endorsed and intelligent causality points to a likely divine source only as a secondary inference? And who is Leshner to judge what will promote religion? While there are advocates of intelligent design, there are also opponents of the concept and the arguments and data fought over reference actual scientific research. What Leshner and others like him want is to control how science is defined; an endeavor that philosophers of science have differed over for quite some time. Ironically, in my view, it is intelligent design opponents like Leshner who fuel the growth of the movement which has developed roots throughout the world. What began as an American phenomenon now has spread to other parts of the globe including the non-Christian world. Who was it who said there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come?
posted by William Bradford @ 10:44 PM
9 comments
9 Comments:
Yawwwn! Perhaps you ID supporters should try doing some actual science before attempting to get your unproven hypotheses inserted into high school curriculum. Despite attempting to strip as much of your God out of your ID movement as possible, you're still merely rehashing the same creationist arguments against evolution that have been addressed and rejected by the scientific community for a long time. Cheers.
The arguments advanced in this blog have been primarily aimed at abiogenesis. The arguments arrayed agasinst standard origins beliefs are sound. The scientific evidence supporting them is manifestly weak. If this is about science then scientific critiques aimed at empirically weak theories should be welcomed. If it is simply a matter of faith in which origins theory is better then citing scientific consensus is a vapid scientific argument.
How narrow can it be when no particular religion or religious doctrine is endorsed and intelligent causality points to a likely divine source only as a secondary inference?" "Intelligent causality"... is that what they call inteligent design nowadays?
Where is the evidence of a narrow religious agenda?
And how is "divine source" a scientific explanation, even if a "secondary" one?
Secondary inferences are not scientific explanations. That's the point. That theological arguments could be predicated thereon should no more negate data supporting ID than atheistic arguments would negate the data associated with them.
Nobody can control how science is defined, but it is open to debate in a field of philosophy called Philosophy of Science. Although I doubt that any contributor on this subject, like Karl Popper or Bertrand Russell, would have any problem discarding Inteligent Design as unscientific.
Russell's atheism would have prejudiced his views. As for Popper he wrote the following about a prediction made by Einstein that was verified experimentally:
"Now the impressive thing about this case is the risk involved in a prediction of this kind. If observation shows that the predicted effect is definitely absent, then the theory is simply refuted. The theory is incompatible with certain possible results of observation"
Before gettting smug about Popper's assumed views about an ID explanation for origins how do you think he would view current alternative explanations? How is the claim that life arises from non-life ever put at risk? How could it be?
Inference is a process of the scientific method where conclusion is derived from observed facts. These facts come from repeatable experiments, systematic procedures and reasoning. That's not how theological knowledge came to be. So, theological arguments couldn't possibly be predicated by an "unbiased" science, free of "preconceived atheistic arguments". Because theological knowledge is not obtainable by scientific experiments.
I have no argument with this but would point out that a scientific theory must allow for falsification. If scientific experiments indicate that a minimal genome is not generated from stochastic reactions involving nucleotides in prebiotic conditions, then inferences can be drawn from this relevant to the insufficiency of abiogenesis based explanations. There is nothing theological about it.
How is the claim that life arises from non-life ever put at risk? How could it be?
Anyway, I assume you are just trying to tell me that those explanations are not falsifiable experimentally, so they should not be considered science. Am I close? The most important aspect of falsifiability is that it allows scientists to make predictions. And by making wrong predictions based on those theories, they can be falsified. And those theories are also potentially falsifiable with experiments simulating prebiotic Earth in laboratory.
The falsification referred to relates to specific hypotheses connected with the formation of amino acids, nucleotides etc. The questions relate to the theory behind the hypotheses. Popper wrote:
"Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is."
What does abiogenesis forbid happening? Popper also wrote:
"A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice."
What event would refute abiogenesis?
What does this explanation have to do with using "divine source as a secondary inference" anyway?
I did not write of using a divine source as a secondary inference. Rather I wrote: "How narrow can it be when no particular religion or religious doctrine is endorsed and intelligent causality points to a likely divine source only as a secondary inference?"
The point of the secondary inference comment was to indicate that secondary inferences are irrelevant to the scientific nature of a hypothesis. Hypothesis x cannot be discounted a priori because it might advance a non-scientific agenda.
What does abiogenesis forbid happening?
Well, it certainly forbids criacionism and spontaneous generation. It also forbids life being too complex 3.5 billion years ago.
It is not abiogenesis which forbids spontaneous generation. It is knowledge based on an historic scientific experiment and subsequent ones that revealed the nature of cells. As for creation, by which I assume you refer to the belief that God both exists and created the universe and the life in it, the appropriate response is that science takes no position either way. To contend that abiogenesis forbids it does science no favors. The complexity of life issue is valid but I would phrase it as abiogenesis forbidding the concept that cellular complexity is a barrier itself.
For instance, a discovery that could change the current established knowledge of how prebiotic Earth was like could change the "ingredients" necessary for amino acids and primitive life.
That would put abiogenesis in need of a reform.
There are specified events that could refute Einsteins' GR. There were events, like numerical molecular measurements, which could have refuted Avogadro's Principle. Your comments indicate that events could only lead to differing related hypotheses based on different starting conditions. If so abiogenesis is fundamentally unlike GR and AP in that both of them potentially could be discredited by experimental outcomes, not just shown to be in need of adjustment. Abiogenesis is more like a basic assumption than a theoretical proposal.
Sinned34-
I rejected your comment for two reasons. First, I don't allow labeling with words like jerk or idiot etc. Second, if you are going to level a charge related to
quote mining, misrepresentations, and baldfaced lies then be prepared to back it up with specifics. Anyone can make allegations but if they are serious charges they need to be linked to evidence. The quotes found in this blog are linked to online articles or books and articles not online. Lying should be easy enough to substantiate if the allegation is true. Most of the comment was printable even though I disagreed with it. If you want to revise it by all means do so.
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