Re: The status of ID and a personal reflection

On 24/02/2025 11:16 pm, jillery wrote:

On Mon, 24 Feb 2025 09:23:12 +1100, MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com> wrote:
 

On 24/02/2025 1:24 am, jillery wrote:

On Sun, 23 Feb 2025 22:43:05 +1100, MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com> wrote:
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ID is described as "a pseudoscientific argument" on Wikipedia [1],
there's clearly no love for it here, and as far as I know ID has limited
recognition within mainstream science. The general public's awareness
and support of ID I believe is higher but still constrained.

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Thank you for making this point clear.
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ID has been accused of being a creationism Trojan Horse, and at times it
seems to have pursued a political agenda, especially with education.
  From to time to time, the Discovery Institute and Evolution News
promote a misplaced right-wing perspective.
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Personally, I have a degree of ambivalence toward ID. For example, I
think the 'information problem' claimed by ID is real, but I'm a bit
surprised that people like William Dembski have not been able to
progress it further after several decades (I've briefly but fruitfully
corresponded with him regarding this in the past). More recently, on the
topic of junk DNA, I get the impression that Casey Luskin and the Long
Story Short episode on this may have oversimplified and/or overstated
arguments against junk DNA (I've made a corrective comment on LSS's
YouTube channel in relation to this).
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ID itself is a broad-ish church, for example with a range of views on
common descent and the extent of evolution (e.g. from micro to macro).

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You recently stated in paraphrase that you reject the possibility of
macro-evolution.  Here would be a good place for you to explain how
you think micro-evolution would not inevitably lead to
macro-evolution.

  Just to be sure we're on the same page, why are you ignoring the above
challenge?  Do you reject even the possibility of macro-evolution?
Wouldn't that be just another negative claim?

As I said, "This post is not an opportunity to dive down the hundred rabbit holes that this overview touches on." The micro/macro question is _the_ evolution debate.

 

So, given all this, why would I speak in support of ID and claim it has
gained and sustained traction [2]? My comments here are somewhat
subjective, but with supporting references where applicable. To be
clear, this is intended as a more a personal reflection and not a
rigorous treatise (in contrast to other TO posts where I believe I
attempt to argue consistently and from evidence).
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First, the question of origins - either life on earth or the universe
itself - is all-encompassing, multi-disciplinary, multi-faceted,
complicated, etc. One would expect strengths and weakness with opposing
arguments and interpretation of evidence, as fallible humans grapple
with these ultimate questions. So the shortcomings of ID are not in and
of themselves unexpected or disqualifying.

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The shortcomings of ID aren't a consequence of human fallibility, but
of it's fundamental inability to make objective distinctions between
biological features and functions which are the result of unguided
natural processes and those which are the result of purposeful design.
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At its best, I think that ID correctly and non-deceptively infers a
non-specific intelligent agent from an interpretation of scientific
evidence (while acknowledging many ID proponents are Christians). This
aligns with my own position and I suspect a growing number of Christians
who sit somewhere between YEC and theistic evolution.
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The traction that ID has I think partly flows from this genuinely
"agnostic" stance when it comes to comes to inferring a designer. This
enables it to focus on the science alone.

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As long as ID fails to specify the abilities of its designer, it has
no basis for claiming any scientific foundation for ID.
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Something that needs to be understood is the inherent asymmetry between
the positions of naturalism and supernaturalism in terms of how each
applies science. Naturalism is seeking to prove a positive, i.e. to
identify at least one plausible naturalistic explanation of origins.
Supernaturalism, in this context, is required to prove a negative, i.e.
on the basis of science demonstrate that all possible naturalistic
explanations are impossible or extremely doubtful.
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One misunderstanding of this logical asymmetry is demonstrated by the
supposed counter-argument, which says that positing God merely shifts
the question to 'Who made God?', which is declared to have no
explanatory power, and therefore can be discounted. Dawkins is fond of
this approach. Sorry Richard, but you can't make God vanish in a puff of
pseudo-logic and disingenuous wishful-thinking.

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You conflate two separate lines of reasoning here, between denying
God's existence and rejecting ID's logic.  They are not the same.  I
acknowledge Dawkins might sound as if he also conflates them, and
IDists are more than happy to handwave away his arguments for that
reason, just as you do above.
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However, unless IDists specify the abilities of their presumptive
designer, they have zero logical basis for assuming what it can
do/could have done.  My experience is IDists credit their designer for
whatever phenomena they don't understand, which ranges from creating
the entire universe to creating living things to mutating DNA, all on
a whim.  That is why ID has no explanatory power.  That is why it has
no scientific basis.  The existence of ID's designer doesn't inform
those issues.

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Just to be sure we're on the same page, can you restate my 'asymmetry'
claim, and explain if and why you agree or disagree with it?

  Your asymmetry claim is simple; that supernaturalism is required to
prove a negative; ie that unguided natural processes could NOT have
been the cause of X.  You present this as if you think it's unfair
supernaturalism would have to disprove all possible natural causes
before it could be considered a logical explanation.  However, there
are logical problems associated with proving a negative. Also, I
disagree that supernaturalism is "required" to prove a negative; it
could be reworded as a logical positive claim.  My impression is
IDists prefer arguments from incredulity precisely because they can't
be disproved.  Perhaps that's the reason why you misinterpret Dawkins'
scientific arguments as religious ones.

Not "unfair", but different.
Agreed that potentially "there are logical problems associated with proving a negative". For this and other reasons, my claim is the best that ID can do is infer evidence not proof of intelligent agency.
It's important to distinguish between:
1. Personal incredulity, i.e. "I can't imagine how this could have happened by natural processes alone"
2. A probability so small that an explanation that relies on it is deemed to be virtually an appeal to miracle or magic (e.g. < 10^-50 or 10^-150, noting that there are an estimated 10^80 fundamental particles in the known universe)
3. An impossibility, e.g. claimed paradoxes such as Eigen’s Paradox, IC, etc. If demonstrated, these would reveal a logical impossibility, i.e. a probability of zero.
Legitimate ID seeks to identify and demonstrate instances of 2 and 3.

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