Is fully secularized science an intellectual dishonesty?

[JAL]

In response to my watchmaker arguments you replied:

Note again your evident bias. You know that humans create "devices". As it is, I can't think of a single life-form that I would call a "device". Can you?

EVERY life form is a machine – and, in my view, one heck of a lot more impressive than any man-made machines I’ve ever seen.

In my view the human being consists of two parts. The first part is a WHOLLY MECHANISTIC DEVICE – a machine called “the human body.” It is wholly subject to physical laws. Such machines cannot violate the laws of physics. The second part is a soul which, by the exertion of free will, is capable of pushing and pulling the body in ways NOT constrained by the laws of physics. (A good parallel is God moving a rock by free will. The rock did not violate the laws of physics. God did).

Even more than I, YOU science-minded people are the ones emphasizing the non-supernatural, wholly mechanistic approach to the human body and motility. Now you dare to suggest that animal bodies are NOT machines? Your position is so entirely self-contradictory that it hardly merits a reply.

 

[JAL]

Hey shernren. You forgot to mention our blindspots, wisdom teeth, and back problems!

Most of the "defects" for which you blame God are the result of divine judgment since the fall of Adam.

Other "defects" are probably the result of logical impossibilities unknown to you (and are painful only as a result of a lack of divine intervention since the Fall). By logical impossibility I mean that the human body is faced with two conflicting tasks which probably makes it logically impossible for God to fashion a body without conflicts (what you might call "defects"). The first task is obvious – a machine which grows, sustains itself, and reproduces. The second task is not so well-known. I will elaborate, as to help you realize that the human body is of a designer whose genius is UTTERLY beyond our understanding. Hopefully you’ll be less likely to complain about how poor a job that God has done.

As stated, the most blatant contradiction in Cartesian psychology is that an immaterial, intangible soul cannot be mutually interactive with a tangible human body. The most effective way to resolve this contradiction is to postulate a tangible soul. Assume for the moment this is true. In such a model, our currents of thoughts are literally physical streams of activity. Thus one ROLE of the brain is to organize those currents, inclining them to flow in directions conducive to intelligent thought, emotional well being, and accurate sensory perception.

Thus, why does a cat act like a cat? And a dog like a dog? And a man like a man? A good example is hormones. Why is it that, at the age of puberty, a young man is suddenly unable to empty his mind of thoughts about women? The answer to all these questions is the same – because the body impacts the mind, causing its currents of thought to move in certain directions. It’s not a one-way street of course because, conversely, the mind often moves the body, as already argued.

Note how this creates a conflict of interest. On the one hand the body must be a machine capable of incredibly sophisticated mechanistic tasks such as the combustion of food, the oxygenation of the cells, the cooling of overheated areas, and immunological resistance to disease. But it must accomplish these tasks – it must regulate the directions in which its constituent particles move – in such a way that the mind is properly cultiavated and its integrity never compromised. Even a slight failure in this regard (viz. brain damage) can reduce the mind’s mental capacity to that of a vegetable.


Please desist from your childish pretenses of postulating exceptions to the mechanical excellence of the human body. The truth is that neither you nor I will ever understand how ineffably transcendent is the genius of the Creator in forming such a body. You and I are not sufficiently worthy intellects to critique the human body. It's little wonder that Paul stated, "If an man thinks he knows something, he doesn't know as he ought to know."

 

[JAL]

I listed five other reasons why your arguments don't make sense besides your admitting to being a dummy.

Actually I nowhere you recall you addressing the logic of my position.

What else was I supposed to understand from "human motility is driven by the kind of supernatural force typically associated with God's own strength"?

Note the word "kind". So if I said that you and I like the same kind of apples, you would read this as stating that you and I are sharing an apple?

And even if you missed the word "kind", the rest of the post was abundantly and repeatedly clear.

 

[Mallon]

Most of the "defects" for which you blame God are the result of divine judgment since the fall of Adam.

The problem with that argument is that it's non-scientific. You don't get to pick and chose those parts of the human body that agree with your Intelligent Design hypothesis and then reject all those that don't on account of a spiritual fall. That's ad hoc and unscientific. And that's why shernren made the comment "Do you really want to start playing 'Look how well-designed the human body is'?".
So, if you're going to pretend that your Intelligent Design hypothesis is somehow validated by science, you also have to account for those shortcomings of the human body, such as our poorly constructed spine and the inefficient laryngeal nerve, in a scientific manner. You don't get to refer to an ancient Hebrew story about a man, a woman, and a talking snake for support.
Your best bet is to leave God out of your methodological approach and have faith in His providence instead. God doesn't want to be tested by science. He says so in the Scriptures (Deuteronomy 6:16).

 

[JAL]

The problem with that argument is that it's non-scientific.
You don't get to pick and chose those parts of the human body that agree with your Intelligent Design hypothesis and then reject all those that don't on account of a spiritual fall. That's ad hoc and unscientific. And that's why shernren made the comment "Do you really want to start playing 'Look how well-designed the human body is'?".
So, if you're going to pretend that your Intelligent Design hypothesis is somehow validated by science, you also have to account for those shortcomings of the human body, such as our poorly constructed spine and the inefficient laryngeal nerve, in a scientific manner. You don't get to refer to an ancient Hebrew story about a man, a woman, and a talking snake for support.
Your best bet is to leave God out of your methodological approach and have faith in His providence instead. God doesn't want to be tested by science. He says so in the Scriptures (Deuteronomy 6:16).

(BTW, Please stop making that silly kind of reference to a verse which simply does not demonstrably pertain to the issue of “scientific testing.” If you want a plausible exegesis of that verse, take a look at how Jesus used it in His TEMPTATION in the wilderness. There it becomes fairly clear that the rendering is, “Thou shall not TEMPT the Lord thy God.” So enough of your sloppy exegesis – and don’t even get me started on the sloppy way that you are throwing around the term “faith”.)


Actually the question whether schools should be religiously neutral is probably debatable. Citizens of the USA, for example, enjoy certain freedoms largely as a result of their Constitution which is biased in favor of Christianity. Apparently there was a history of Christianized education in that nation. The problem with changing this Constitution is that the whole of it then becomes fair game for alteration – the personal freedoms as well. There is value in supporting the whole of the Constitution, therefore, even if it provides ground for an education which is NOT religiously neutral. This is not to suggest that non-Christians in the USA should be persecuted, but neither do the Christian citizens necessarily “owe” the non-Christians a fully secularized education.

My point being, it is by no means clear that the Bible is inappropriate material for debates about whether Intelligent Design should be taught in schools.


AnyWho, there is no need for me to resort to the Bible to make essentially the same argument. I could possibly rephrase the point thus, “Those anomalies in the human body which seem to be defects are possibly advantageous in ways that we have not been able to understand to date. For instance they possibly resolve conflicts logically impossible for the Designer to resolve in any other fashion. Or perhaps these are post-creation corruptions to – deviations from - the original design.”

After all, even evolutionary scientists will likely admit that some of the data presented before them is very puzzling, that it seems, on the face of it, to challenge some of their assumptions.

 

[Mallon]

(BTW, Please stop making that silly kind of reference to a verse which simply does not demonstrably pertain to the issue of “scientific testing.” If you want a plausible exegesis of that verse, take a look at how Jesus used it in His TEMPTATION in the wilderness. There it becomes fairly clear that the rendering is, “Thou shall not TEMPT the Lord thy God.” So enough of your sloppy exegesis – and don’t even get me started on the sloppy way that you are throwing around the term “faith”.)

Perhaps a better verse to cite would be Luke 11:29, then: "And when the people were gathered thick together, he began to say, This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet." Matthew 6:4 says much the same thing.
I think it is applicable because it strikes me that Intelligent Design is in the business of seeking signs. It scours the animal kingdom for complex systems that supposedly cannot be explained by evolution, in an attempt to validate Christianity with appeal to miracles. Jesus' answer to that can be found above.

My point being, it is by no means clear that the Bible is inappropriate material for debates about whether Intelligent Design should be taught in schools.

We're not talking about teaching Intelligent Design in schools. We're talking about whether it is acceptable to appeal to religious texts for scientific support. The scientific method answers with a resounding "No!" Imagine the mess we would be in if every culture in the world referred to their favourite religious text in support of their claims about science. We would get nowhere.

AnyWho, there is no need for me to resort to the Bible to make essentially the same argument. I could possibly rephrase the point thus, “Those anomalies in the human body which seem to be defects are possibly advantageous in ways that we have not been able to understand to date. For instance they possibly resolve conflicts logically impossible for the Designer to resolve in any other fashion.

Fair enough. But again, that's an ad hoc argument. It is untestable, and advanced for the sole purpose of protecting your pet hypothesis. How can you test an argument like that?

 

[JAL]

I stated,

“AnyWho, there is no need for me to resort to the Bible to make essentially the same argument. I could possibly rephrase the point thus, “Those anomalies in the human body which seem to be defects are possibly advantageous in ways that we have not been able to understand to date. For instance they possibly resolve conflicts logically impossible for the Designer to resolve in any other fashion.”

And you replied

Fair enough. But again, that's an ad hoc argument. It is untestable, and advanced for the sole purpose of protecting your pet hypothesis. How can you test an argument like that?

I wish you could see things from my point of view. You have no idea how this type of reaction sounds to me. It sounds to me like the scientific community has brainwashed you to be inordinately loyal to their cause of desupernaturalizing science, to the extent that it blinds you to the obvious.

OF COURSE such a theory is testable. Basically, what you science-minded people want is to insure that science isn’t stifled. You want testable theories that provide an impetus to research, that create a drive to leave no stone unturned in the investigation of nature. Instead of ASSUMING that all ID theories have no such value – that we are all much better off the more we exclude God from our thinking – why don’t you make a serious attempt to at least TRY to construct a testable thesis from the issues raised by me in this discussion? Here again is what I stated:

“Those anomalies in the human body which seem to be defects are possibly advantageous in ways that we have not been able to understand to date. For instance they possibly resolve conflicts logically impossible for the Designer to resolve in any other fashion.”

What my words imply is that what YOU might call “defects” are actually advantageous in ways not currently understood. This potentially creates a driving impetus to discover all possible information about the human body as to make a better determination whether there are some possible advantages to these “defects.” Far from stifling science, this could be the inception of some our greatest discoveries.

 

[JAL]

I looked up the watchmaker argument on Wikipedia. The writer states that the argument fails if we can provide a naturalistic explanation of biological life (i.e. evolution) without recourse to a Creator. Surely this conclusion is biased – and false. The watchmaker argument doesn’t FAIL on this basis. Sure it loses some points, there is some shifting in the balance, and perhaps even the scales are tipped in favor of evolution (though I doubt it). But the argument hardly fails.


As seen on this thread, evolutionists claim that the watchmaker proponents are biased, and unjustified, in regarding biological life as a machine. They say, “I am justified in regarding a watch as a machine because I have seen watchmakers, but we are not justified in regarding organisms as machines because we have never seen anyone make an organism, nor do we know how a designer would manufacture an organism.” This kind of reasoning seems to me a bit silly. Suppose that God poofed into existence a truck in front of an ancient cave man, with the key in the ignition. After some experimentation, he learns how to drive (we’ll assume for the moment that God keeps the tank full of gas) and puts this machine to use. Given the mechanical advantages afforded him by this machine, is he unjustified in calling it a machine, or postulating a designer, merely because he has (1) never seen the designer and (2) never seen a manufacturing plant for automobiles? Hardly.


Here’s another party line, “The watchmaker argument assumes purpose, and it cannot be proven that the elements of nature have purpose.” No, the watchmaker argument need not assume purpose to be effective. There are parts of watches and automobiles that are difficult to imagine being assembled without intelligent hands. When working on my car, for example, I noticed that some of the screws were in terribly nasty, awkward places. I needed one hand to hold the screw, another to hold the screwdriver, and an assistant to hold other parts of the car out of the way so I could reach into particular corner. It is very difficult to imagine such a device evolving, therefore. Adding to the difficulty is the interdependence of the parts,as I have mentioned elsewhere. For example if any of the screws are still loose when the water pump is activated, the results could be disastrous.


Here’s a related party line, “The watchmaker argument assumes purpose, because to regard an organism as a machine presumes purpose.” I disagree. To say that the notion of a machine presumes purpose is, in my opinion, is a definition of machinery that is far too narrow/strict. If the only thing that has ever existed in reality were an automobile (other than my own mind) it would STILL be a machine despite lacking any design or intended purpose. For as long as I could imagine it being put to mechanical usage, it qualifies as a machine.

A machine, then, is anything that can be put to mechanical usage, and by mechanical usage I mean a deployment of the object for causalities predictable in virtue of inviolable laws of physics. Even an atom, therefore, is a machine. It is composed of mechanical parts called electrons, protons, and a nucleus. And it can be put to mechanical use.


Admittedly not all machines lend strong support to the watchmaker argument. An atom isn’t exceedingly impressive, perhaps. But the human body is quite impressive.

 

[theFijian]

In response to my watchmaker arguments you replied:

EVERY life form is a machine – and, in my view, one heck of a lot more impressive than any man-made machines I’ve ever seen.

I quite like the new iPod touch actually.

 

[Mallon]

It sounds to me like the scientific community has brainwashed you to be inordinately loyal to their cause of desupernaturalizing science, to the extent that it blinds you to the obvious.

Is this the most intelligent thing you can say, JAL? Honestly, it seems you resort to calling your opponents brainwashed every time they disagree with you. I happen to have a degree in science, and am in the midst of earning my second. Call that brainwashing if it makes you feel smarter. What's your background in science?

OF COURSE such a theory is testable.

So propose a test! I'll even provide a test case for you (pulled from the NY Times):
In mammals, the recurrent laryngeal nerve does not go directly from the cranium to the larynx, the way any competent engineer would have arranged it. Instead, it extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done.
Why should this be? Evolution provides an answer: the condition has been inherited from a common ancestor. I assume you would argue instead that the condition is somehow advantegeous, only we don't know it yet. How could we test this assumption in a way that you would find satisfactory? What would prevent you from continuously saying "we just haven't identified the advantage yet"?

 

[JAL]

I had anticipated a few objections/questions which, as it turned out, were never raised on this thread. Here I will raise one of them myself.


Doesn’t the notion that the soul is the main propellant of the human hand contradict the fact that the hand becomes totally immobile when muscular paralysis occurs?

Perhaps this objection wasn’t raised for an obvious reason – proving that the primary impetus of the human hand is muscular energy (the metabolism of food) would only prove too much, because this would preclude moral culpability (we could only blame our food for our behavior).

Nonetheless, perhaps one would still like some explanation as to why the soul is unable to propel the human hand after some types of bodily injury.

An easy solution is to argue that the main role of the soul is to activate the brain and that, as a result of the damage, the brain signals fail to reach the hands. And indeed, this might be the proper explanation.

The reason I am hesitant about that solution, however, is that I envision the soul to be the shape and size of the human body. Take for instance the angels who looked like men standing around Christ’s tomb. One of the physically rolled the stone away from His tomb and sat upon it. This shows that an angel (a “soul”) is a tangible being who typically has the shape and size of a human body.


Thus since the human soul seems to be extended throughout the body from head to toe, I am inclined to wonder as to why the soul within the hands can no longer propel them after the bodily injury. I suspect the problem here is largely cognitive. As I mentioned before, damage to the brain physically impairs the soul’s ability to reason and comprehend, because one role of the brain is to provide unto the soul channels of thinking conducive to rational thought. Now let’s consider how this applies to the soul within the hands. Free will is a choice – but it is a COGNITIVE choice. Furthermore it is a UNIFIED choice (because pretty much the whole body/soul must in some sense consent to the activity). If either the cognition or the cognitive unity is compromised by the bodily injury (here too brain signals could play a factor) those parts of the soul that wish to propel the hands might never succeed. Indeed God Himself might perhaps impede it because, if the proper cognitive unity isn’t in place, perhaps the soul’s propulsions run the risk of rupturing the body in two.

 

[JAL]

So propose a test! I'll even provide a test case for you (pulled from the NY Times): In mammals, the recurrent laryngeal nerve does not go directly from the cranium to the larynx, the way any competent engineer would have arranged it. Instead, it extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done. Why should this be? Evolution provides an answer: the condition has been inherited from a common ancestor. I assume you would argue instead that the condition is somehow advantegeous, only we don't know it yet. How could we test this assumption in a way that you would find satisfactory? What would prevent you from continuously saying "we just haven't identified the advantage yet"?

Misses the point. As I was pointing out , the main value of the testing is not whether we FINALLY resolve every single issue under consideration, but the impetus/stimulus that the research provides to the further investigation of nature. Thus the question that you raise is really irrelevant. You claim that I could always keep saying, "we just haven't identified the advantage yet". This is somewhat like me complaining about the evolutionist who says, “all the supposed missing links (the thousands of mutational transitions) REALLY DO EXIST, it’s just that we haven’t located them all in the fossil record.” The research and the testing is an end itself, it leads to new scientific discoveries that proof to be useful. The evolutionist doesn’t need to PROVE (in a final irrefutable sense) that evolution is apodictically true before the theory becomes useful.

Further, one of the main criterion used to deem a theory “scientific” is falsifiability. What you are providing is evidence intended to falsify my theory - which only confirms that it is scientific.

 

[Mallon]

Misses the point. As I was pointing out , the main value of the testing is not whether we FINALLY resolve every single issue under consideration, but the impetus/stimulus that the research provides to the further investigation of nature. Thus the question that you raise is really irrelevant. You claim that I could always keep saying, "we just haven't identified the advantage yet". This is somewhat like me complaining about the evolutionist who says, "all the supposed missing links (the thousands of mutational transitions) REALLY DO EXIST, it's just that we haven't located them all in the fossil record." The research and the testing is an end itself, it leads to new scientific discoveries that proof to be useful. The evolutionist doesn't need to PROVE (in a final irrefutable sense) that evolution is apodictically true before the theory becomes useful.

I agree largely with what you're saying here, but there's a key flaw in your analogy. Admittedly, many transitional fossil species will not be found for the simple reason that the sedimentary record is incomplete. Certain times in certain places just aren't represented in the rocks thanks to the process of erosion. Yet, as you say, we infer evolution because we have collected enough fossils to be reasonably sure of their interrelatedness. We've done the best with what we have to explain all the data. Missing data is accounted for via reference to the nature of fossilization.
I don't think ID has done the best with what it has. Even if we were to accept ID's arguments for irreducible complexity to infer an "intelligent designer", there are many more examples of poor design that cannot be accounted for by ID in a scientific manner. Usually, these examples are just ignored or chalked up to some supernatural event that cannot be tested (like the Fall), because accounting for them would really make God look kind of incompetent. So again, I have to ask: How does ID account for those biological systems that seem poorly designed? I think this is a valid question, because unlike your transitional fossil example in which negative evidence is the only problem that must be accounted for, ID must account for existing evidence that seems to contradict it.

Further, one of the main criterion used to deem a theory "scientific" is falsifiability. What you are providing is evidence intended to falsify my theory - which only confirms that it is scientific.

As I've explained before, God isn't falsifiable because, as Christians, we trust that He has a hand in the goings-on of all the universe. Thus, He cannot be ruled out of any experiment.
What is falsifiable is the idea that some unnamed intelligent being created all life as-is, with in-built irreducibly complex systems. And that idea has been falsified... in court, even.

 

[shernren]

Please desist from your childish pretenses of postulating exceptions to the mechanical excellence of the human body. The truth is that neither you nor I will ever understand how ineffably transcendent is the genius of the Creator in forming such a body. You and I are not sufficiently worthy intellects to critique the human body. It's little wonder that Paul stated, "If an man thinks he knows something, he doesn't know as he ought to know."

So you're qualified to tell us that the human body is well-designed, and we're not qualified to tell you that it isn't? That sounds like the first defense of an unfalsifiable theoretician.

Anyhow, there is no need for me to resort to the Bible to make essentially the same argument. I could possibly rephrase the point thus, “Those anomalies in the human body which seem to be defects are possibly advantageous in ways that we have not been able to understand to date. For instance they possibly resolve conflicts logically impossible for the Designer to resolve in any other fashion. Or perhaps these are post-creation corruptions to – deviations from - the original design.”

So how can this hypothesis ever be falsified? Any feature of a living organism that you cannot identify as good design must be design gone wrong. What kind of evidence, then, would you consider to falsify design? You claim that you could identify design regardless of designer; I think it's more honest for you to admit you'd see design anywhere you can find it and fabricate design anywhere you can't.

As it is, nobody denies that God created life. What we are arguing about is how God created it: right now, all the evidence fits in an evolutionary framework, and none of it fits into an antievolutionary framework. Therefore evolution is the scientific theory of how life's biodiversity emerged. There are possibilities of falsification; there are things that almost certainly couldn't have evolved - swapped parts etc. There is the twin nested hierarchy which current macroscopic life - without recourse to a single transitional fossil, not that we're any too lacking in them! - falls into neatly; human designers of a system of objects almost never use any objective hierarchy to design them, let alone two!

By contrast, how is your hypothesis testable or falsifiable? If all life is "designed" but all sorts of "designed" life are allowed to contain features that appear to be bad design, how can we ever predict any characteristic of life based on the fact that it is "designed"? Again, if all life is "designed", how would you ever recognize anything that is undesigned? You might as well expect a fish to learn what water tastes like!

 

[busterdog]

I agree largely with what you're saying here, but there's a key flaw in your analogy. Admittedly, many transitional fossil species will not be found for the simple reason that the sedimentary record is incomplete. Certain times in certain places just aren't represented in the rocks thanks to the process of erosion. Yet, as you say, we infer evolution because we have collected enough fossils to be reasonably sure of their interrelatedness. We've done the best with what we have to explain all the data. Missing data is accounted for via reference to the nature of fossilization.
I don't think ID has done the best with what it has. Even if we were to accept ID's arguments for irreducible complexity to infer an "intelligent designer", there are many more examples of poor design that cannot be accounted for by ID in a scientific manner. Usually, these examples are just ignored or chalked up to some supernatural event that cannot be tested (like the Fall), because accounting for them would really make God look kind of incompetent. So again, I have to ask: How does ID account for those biological systems that seem poorly designed? I think this is a valid question, because unlike your transitional fossil example in which negative evidence is the only problem that must be accounted for, ID must account for existing evidence that seems to contradict it.


As I've explained before, God isn't falsifiable because, as Christians, we trust that He has a hand in the goings-on of all the universe. Thus, He cannot be ruled out of any experiment.
What is falsifiable is the idea that some unnamed intelligent being created all life as-is, with in-built irreducibly complex systems. And that idea has been falsified... in court, even.

Even though I disagree, this was well said and I was able to be interested by the manifest effort to address the opposition directly while acknowledging his strengths. Good post. Good job JAL.