Various stuff
Raithere
Is he addressing the current state of evolutionary science or simply the principles of Darwinism?
For the issues of that article, the question is best left to the author of the book being reviewed. I tend to think Gold at least is addressing the pseudo-religious reliance on "Darwinism". Evolution is a vastly important area of science that, because of its political entanglements--not the fault of science at all--people tend to regard in as two-dimensional and fixed.
Cris noted that science doesn't care. I agree. That's why I put a fish "and chips" symbol on the back of my car instead of a Darwin-fish eating the Christian fish.
They are not at all the same thing although his article deliberately attempts to make them out to be
I'll take your word for it.
It amounts to a straw-man argument.
Yes .... So mote it be.
The perception of order does not constitute proof of design or intent.
Agreed.
Evolution as an observable fact demonstrates how apparent order (or 'design') may occur through natural processes.
Stop letting the religious folks set the limits of your vision. We both agree that religious vision is for the most part myopic and narrow as well, do we not? Why let them set the limits of your regard for the issues at hand?
ID is then forced to distinguish and prove Intelligent Design from natural 'design'.
Yes, you seem to agree with Mr. Gold on that point, as well as my own litany of posts in defense of evolution.
I wonder how such a code would be identified (there are certain inherent problems in decoding without a specified key) but this could indeed be a beginning of a testable hypothesis.
And that's all there really is to it. Certes, it's a monumental task, but if people religiously spurn the ID movement and its produce, you'll never know if they manage to build a workable hypothesis. I mean, my big problem with Creationism is that the current excuses for hypotheses are simply not testable. And if I'm busy thumping the thumpers and focusing on my distaste for their ilk, I might actually miss it the day someone from ID throws a testable hypothesis at me.
I find it slightly disturbing that more important than the human-level connection of searching for answers and happiness, the atheist faithful and the Darwinian faithful continue to let some of the most undereducated people in the first world--e.g. Genesis creationists--set the tone according to superficial differences.
He does not seem to be addressing ID metaphorically; is that what you are suggesting?
I'm suggesting the idea that for every X number of ideas you find wrong about ID, you might find even one idea worth growing on. If you discount the idea on the merit of the thinker being part of ID, you are not judging the idea on its own merit.
But to lament that ID, which doesn't even amount to a scientific hypothesis, does not receive serious consideration from the scientific community is like complaining that a writer who has never actually completed a novel has not received any favorable reviews.
I don't see that lament specifically. Especially in light of the paragraph I emphasized in the topic post. Are that paragraph and its implications just too difficult for the ID-haters to cope with?
One must first submit an acceptable work.
(A) This is covered in the article.
(B) I would not expect the Darwinian crowd to notice the day they do develop a working and testable hypothesis about
anything.
The article reflects point A. The response to this topic reflects point B.
Dr. Lou
I'd oppose any stance robin williams has purely out of spite but this stance of his I find particularly objectionable.
You don't even know the joke associated with that moment, do you?
But it has certain implications for how we view Darwinism. If we choose to apply natural selection at a purely individual level, then yes, Darwin was wrong. Humans, that certain self-awareness we have that isn't evident elsewhere in nature, screws up the formula a little. We can choose irrationally, and if this makes our species unfit, so it shall go. But demonstrably, in human life, the strong do not always succeed, do not always survive; we have protection nets in some places for the weak, and if a California surfer with bleach-blond hair and bloodshot eyes standing in the Sistine Chapel, looking upward, saying, "Wow. Oh, wow, dude. Wow," is the pinnacle of evolution, then yes, Mr. Williams' joke has no merit whatsoever.
Anyway, tiassa, please tell me this isn't coming down to the "humans are too badass for evolution" argument.
Geez,
Lou, I don't see that anywhere in here. Maybe it's somewhere in the book being reviewed, but where, aside from your own perception according to your individual priorities, does that idea enter into it?
I really hate that argument.
So why raise it as an issue here?
If this was a "the earth and universe are too badass for mindless evolution" argument then i might be a little more interested.
It treads close, so your inclusion of it here doesn't puzzle me as much.
But no, this article doesn't seem to fit into any of the common boxes preferred by most refuters of Intelligent Design. That's why I posted it in the first place.
I see indications for this myself, evolution seems to me like it does have goals and that there is more to it than simply being an accidental freak occurence.
And if from that idea someone discovers that "objective anchor" for human conduct, morality, or existence, so be it. Then we get to examine the nature of the authority which by its nature requires those limitations.
This is not in harmony with darwin's theory, but IMO has more indications in its favour than the alternative.
See, you
do get it. Don't sell yourself so short.
I'd go into that but... you know, I'm kinda sick of changing people's subjects.
Actually, I don't think you'd be changing the subject that much at all.
Bridge
Such an idea becomes problematic merely because of its dimensions. From anarchy to tyranny is demonstrable in history, Jack Kevorkian is debatable according to whether or not there
is an objective morality, and Britney Spears I think serves the case well.
People tend to resort to a hollow argument of hedonism in response to a suggested lack of moral authority in the Universe. But what is difficult to quantify, and will only be quantified in any reasonable regard long after it ceases to matter is a perceived progressive "decline" in "civilization".
Dr. Jeffrey Burton Russell, in his examinations of the Devil, noted a certain bit about progress in relation to the ideas of "good" and "evil". Progress, you say? Progress toward what?
For certainly the progress most people seek have nothing to do with the species (see note on Robin Williams above for a suggested dimension) and everything to do with the self and kin. But how can anyone claim progress if nobody knows where we're going? Let's move off the sphere for a moment to illustrate. We can calculate the position and orbit of Mars relative to Earth for just about any day in existence. Fair enough. So we can look at the launch and path options for sending a rocket to Mars. If we do not use one of the options which shows us reaching Mars, and instead launch the rocket in another direction entirely, sending it off into the Universe, can we say it's making progress as it sails farther and farther away from Mars?
This is essentially what people seek: some sense of validation that their progress is actually progress.
Nobody knows what we're progressing toward. Individual goals, perhaps. Kin-related goals, perhaps. But these are narrow and myopic and lack any sense of objectivity.
So what "progress" are we making as human beings? We elect poor politicians to lead us, we set priorities according to individual and often-irrational needs. We are aware of evolution, but we fear its implications.
Take a look at societies. When I was young, people feared that Communism would come along and erase individuality. World destruction, while not celebrated as a great option, was viewed as being better than Communism. A transformation occurred in the American conscience during the 1990s when Clinton went after cigarettes: "Smokers cost everybody else money," they said. "It's wrong to take from everyone else like that."
Well, guess what? The same logic applies to Hummers, unhealthy food, consumption of intoxicants, excessive wealth, and even excessive individuality, as people must waste energy accommodating one another. Suddenly it was the "free society" that wanted to homogenize. The lack of individuality which people feared became a paradoxical advertising platform. Over the last few years, since death tolls don't work, it has become more and more common to picture heart disease and diet, for instance, in terms of the financial cost. In fact, it would seem that before we can call anything progressive, we must as a society agree on what the goal is, so that we might know what that progress regards. As with the rocket going the wrong way to Mars, progress is not measured by how far you are from your starting point, but rather how much nearer you come to your goal.
And that's where the breakdown in moral authority comes into play. People are not, lacking God as the moral authority, generally going to rip the world apart. But history does show, as the religious morality echoes more and more hollowly, a coincidental (?!) decline in the scope of human ambition.
And while I disagree with most, if not all religious presumptions of moral authority, I do find it ironic that an ideology focusing critically on those occasions when the religious moral paradigm tends away from "progress" should rely on conditions which do not acknowledge any consistent goal toward which we might progress.
Does anyone still look up to the night sky and ponder why?
Quite obviously, a number of our Sciforums neighbors do not. After all, it is an inefficient waste of time that doesn't lead to any scientifically-observable results. And as this debate shows, if it ain't quantifiable scientifically, it ain't real, at least for some people.
And part of that is their own lack of vision, so there's not much anyone can do for them unless they choose to grow.