Re: The status of ID and a personal reflection

On 24/02/2025 1:41 pm, RonO wrote:

On 2/23/2025 4:23 PM, MarkE 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.
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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?

 Was your effort to start this thread a serious effort? 

Translation: you disagree with me, therefore you want to call my post non-serious.

Shouldn't you try to explain why you refused to support the ID scam for decades, and just let IDiots like Kalk and Bill make fools of themselves without trying to help them out?

Are you serious?!

 You seem to be claiming that you have supported the ID scam for a very long time, but that was not apparent in your posting to TO.  You were obviously a creationist, but you seemed to be skeptical of the original creationist claptrap, and the the ID creationist scam that took the place of scientific creationism.

Ron, you seem to live in a black and white world of the good guys vs "IDiots and ID perps". I don't. I've made a substantial effort here to explain that I find a core of ID that aligns with my convictions, and aspects that I'm ambivalent about or critical of.
Look, you can once again choose to just rant, but only at the price of shouting into the void.

 It is apparent that Biblical creationist IDiots like Kalk and Bill were never interested in the science that never existed because they both quit supporting the ID scam when the ID perps rubbed their faces in the best evidence for the creationist scam.  The ID perps were honest enough to not claim that it was the best scientific evidence.  All they claimed was that it was the "best evidence" that they had to support the ID scam.  Neither Kalk nor Bill wanted to support the best evidence that the ID perps claimed to have for the simple reason that, that evidence is inconsistent with the Biblical creation mythology.
 Why claim to support the unsupportable at this time?  Doesn't it seem sort of cowardly to have let the other IDiots dangle and be made fools of without trying to help them out for decades?  Really, if you had believed that there was a serious argument to be made for IDiocy, why didn't you try to make it?  Even when you posted on the ARN board, I do not recall that you were openly in support of the ID creationist scam that was being discussed there.  When the bait and switch went down most of the creationists at ARN just stopped talking about teaching the junk, but some of them kept claiming that the bait and switch had not gone down, and that ID was still going to be taught in Ohio.  That ended a year later with the publication of the Ohio model lesson plan that did not mention that ID had ever existed.  Mike Gene came out and admitted that he had given up on teaching the junk back in 1999 (he made that claim in 2003).  Most of ARN just went into denial.  You had never supported teaching the junk in the public schools either here on TO, or at ARN.  Before the bait and switch started to go down getting ID taught in the public schools was one of the main effort of the ID perps at the Discovery Institute.  It was one of the 5 year goals listed in the Wedge document published by the ID scam unit.  The ID perps are still claiming that it is legal to teach ID in the public schools outside of Dover, and that the Kitzmiller decision was wrong.  You are trying to support something that even the ID perps decided could not be supported because they resorted to the bait and switch instead of giving the rubes any ID science to teach.  What you are trying to support is the continued use of the ID scam as bait.  Bait is all that ID has been for over two decades.
 Ron Okimoto

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In any case, ID has endured now its modern form for about three decades,
and of the various creationism streams is, as far as I'm aware, by far
the most credibly and substantially engaged with current science. The DI
claims a research program and over 250+ peer-reviewed papers published
in mainstream journals [3]. Of course, the validity of these may be
disputed - as are most perspectives and papers in contentious areas
(e.g. string theory).
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While ID has not delivered a knock-out punch (obviously), it does seem
to continue to track progress in science and develop its arguments
accordingly. Examples include:
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1. OOL. Although I've mentioned some specific criticisms of the Long
Story Short video series, overall the fact that they can be made today
is revealing. The series critiquing naturalistic abiogenesis [4]
(claimed to made by five "PhD scientists") directly challenges OOL on
the basis of current science, and exaggerated claims of progress (IMO).
Along with this are books like The Stairway to Life [5], and many
others. And James Tour has waded in to this issue, as an ID sympathiser
at least, and despite his shouty and sometimes dismissive manner, I
think his work very much reinforces what ID is saying [6]. YMMV.
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2. Stephen Meyer on most things. He is now the public face of ID, and
its most prominent intellectual spokesperson, debater, and book author.
His guest appearance on Joe Rogan confirm his popular positioning. His
genteel conversations with skeptic Michael Shermer I think point to the
substantive arguments ID presents. And Meyer's books have deserved
infleunce and impact across topics like first-case, fine-tuning, OOL,
complexity, information, Cambrian explosion, macroevolution, etc.
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4. The whole complexity thing. Yes, I understand (for example) PZ Myers'
frustration with ID veering toward "complexity therefore design".
However, the complexity problem is real and growing. Science is
discovering more and more complexity in living cells and living things.
This correspondingly increases the challenge to OOL and macroevolution,
and ID knows this and is rightly pressing the point.

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Complexity exists as a consequence of interacting natural processes.
Its existence does not inform design; some functional designs are
complex, others are remarkably simple.  And once again, until you're
willing to specify the abilities of your designer, you have no basis
for saying which functions are the result of intelligent purpose or
unguided natural processes.
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4. Behe's IC, and more recently his waiting time problem analysis. Your
mileage well vary on this one.
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5. The information issue. Biology is as much about information storage,
processing and maintenance as it is about physics and chemistry.
Naturalism has not come to grips with this IMO, and I think ID is on the
right track with the focus it has on this.
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6. ID taking on first-case, fine-tuning, OOL, complexity, information,
Cambrian explosion, macroevolution, etc.
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That's an incomplete and uneven summary. As I hope I've made clear,
YMMV; I acknowledge that. This post is not an opportunity to dive down
the hundred rabbit holes that this overview touches on. That is
something I've been demonstrably (laboriously) willing to do in many
other threads. Rather, this is an invitation for conversation about your
own journey, perspective, doubts, convictions etc. I'm happy to consider
correction and criticism, within the framework described.
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If you are convinced that ID (or creation in general) is not something
that can be meaningfully discussed with reference to science, this is
probably not the thread for you.
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If I haven't been able to convince you in some of my previous posts that
my own faith is definitively not dependent on ID being correct, so be
it, but that's not my interest here.
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Thank you for reading this far if you've managed that. As always, I
welcome open-ended, open-minded civil dialogue.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design
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[2] From a recent TO post of mine titled "To sum up":
"And what of the Origins debate? My contention is that progressive
discoveries with the complexity and precision of life are making Mt
Improbable higher and higher. ID has gained and sustained traction
because this trend is real. I would add to this arguments relating to
first-cause, fine-tuning, the Cambrian explosion, etc."
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[3] Discovery Institute - ID research and responses to criticisms:
https://www.discovery.org/id/research/
https://www.discovery.org/f/10141
https://www.discovery.org/id/responses/
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[4] Long Story Short - YouTube playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist? list=PLR8eQzfCOiS0AfFPsMAUYr_VVkpU13uv9
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[5] The Stairway To Life: An Origin-Of-Life Reality Check
https://www.amazon.com.au/Stairway-Life-Origin-Life-Reality/ dp/1734183705
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[6] James Tour cf. William Bains
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/RwhAxtqls4A/m/eQFJbd-5AgAJ

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