Seversky
Posts: 442
Joined: June 2010
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Dr Liddle does not believe that the regular ID proponents at Uncommon Descent are being deliberately deceptive or lying to put it bluntly. She may be right. In their own minds, they believe themselves to be telling truth. So all we can say about Thomas Cudworth here is that he is being disingenuous, pompous and condescending.
For example, he writes of neurosurgeon Dr Michael Egnor:
| Quote | | If you are in neuroscience, you might be interested to know that Dr. Michael Egnor, one of the leading pediatric neurosurgeons in America, is anti-Darwinist and an ID supporter. But that’s just an aside. |
What he neglects to mention in his "aside" is that Egnor describes his religious beliefs as follows:
| Quote | | I'm a faithful Catholic, I'm devoted to Christ and to the Church, and I attend Mass daily if I can. My faith in God is of central importance in my life. I recognize that much of God's work is beyond my ability to discern or to understand, and there's no a priori reason that I would expect to be able to discern it in biology. |
In other words, as a good Catholic, Egnor believes in the reality of the Eucharist, that the wafer and the wine consumed as part of the ceremony are magically transmuted into the flesh and blood of Christ. Yet, as a good surgeon, I am assuming that, when faced with a patient on the operating table, he does not believe that a ruptured blood vessel can be sealed by just the power of prayer or by waving his hand over the damage like a Jedi Knight.
Of course, accepting the biological account of the structure and functions of the human brain on which his work on the 'plumbing' and 'wiring' therein is based does not conflict directly with his faith. The theory of evolution or, more specifically, the strawman of 'Darwinism' apparently does. Why should this be? The evidence for living things changing over time through natural processes is far stronger than that for the intervention of a non-human intelligent agent. Egnor denies that evidence.He denies that the vast majority of evolutionary biologists would agree with T H Huxley's comment in a letter to Charles Kingsley: "Give me such evidence as would justify me in believing in anything else, and I will believe that." He denies that ID has failed to provide that evidence. Dr Egnor does not seem to have a lot in common with Dr Liddle.
Cudworth then skates very close to deception:
| Quote | | I would point out to you that there are many full-time evolutionary biologists who are every bit as critical of neo-Darwinism as ID people are, and often for the same reasons — scientific reasons. If you do not believe this, read some of the statements of Lynn Margulis and of the Altenberg group — all infinitely more qualified to talk about evolutionary biology at a high theoretical level than any of the expert witnesses at the Dover Trial. |
There are evolutionary biologists who are critical of panadaptationism but they are almost certainly equally critical of ID. I wonder how many of those attending the Altenberg shindig believe that design theory is a serious contender as an alternative to the theory of evolution? Holding a conference to discuss the latest thinking and developments in biology is not the same as reading the last rites over evolution, much as Cudworth and others might wish it were so.
| Quote | | So please don’t assume that the criticism that ID people make of Darwinism is mainly of a religious character — it isn’t. |
Strictly speaking, that is true. ID proponents scrupulously eschew any speculation about the nature of the putative Designer, especially any references to the Christian God. From a scientific perspective, though, this is odd since the nature of any proposed designer must be a matter of intense curiosity and relevance to any theory of design. So why be so coy? Could it be to avoid prejudicing future court cases by not falling foul of previous legal decisions?
| Quote | | You say or imply that the religious motivation is more real or more obvious on the ID side than the Darwinist side. Really? |
Yes.
William Dembski:
| Quote | | Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory |
The Wedge Document goals:
| Quote | To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies.
To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God. |
The 'father' of ID, Philip Johnson:
| Quote | | We are taking an intuition most people have (the belief in God) and making it a scientific and academic enterprise. We are removing the most important cultural roadblock to accepting the role of God as creator |
| Quote | | Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools. |
| Quote | | This isn't really, and never has been a debate about science. It's about religion and philosophy. |
Cudworth being...disingenuous:
| Quote | | Have you read The God Delusion by the arch-Darwinist, Dawkins? Have you read the Brit Peter Atkins? Have you read Coyne’s blog? Have you read Myers’s blog? Moran’s? Shallit’s? Rosenhouse’s? These are all people with Ph.D.s in some science, who have openly admitted to atheism and who in most cases have confessed that their atheism does indeed affect their scientific conclusions. Most of them in fact rule out design *a priori*, if not formally, then certainly privately and existentially. How can this have escaped your notice? |
Because it isn't true.
I have no doubt that all of the above recognize the existence of design in the Universe. We have overwhelming evidence for it. It is one of the things human beings do in case you hadn't noticed.
What we do not have overwhelming evidence for is the existence of supernatural or extraterrestrial or any other form of non-human design. In fact, apart from some poor analogizing, gap-filling and wishful thinking, we have no evidence at all.
Design is not ruled out a priori. Non-human/supernatural/extraterrestrial design is not invoked as an explanation in science because, following Laplace, there has been no need for such any such hypothesis thus far.
All ID has to do to gain scientific respectability is to conduct some scientific research. Calculating the CSI of various designed and non-designed objects to see if it can actually distinguish between the two would be a good start, otherwise it will just be the usual FIASCO.
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