Daniel Smith
Posts: 970 Joined: Sep. 2007
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Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ Oct. 07 2007,08:14) | Quote (Daniel Smith @ Oct. 07 2007,06:17) | Also, when people say that science cannot investigate God or the supernatural, that's not entirely correct. Science can (and does) investigate claims of supernatural activity - so long as the supernatural activity is supposed to have affected the physical world... |
This passage is correct, and also encapsulates the challenge you have set for yourself. I'll sharpen my earlier statement to reflect your comment: "The existence of God is not amenable to scientific investigation, because God can do anything, in any order, at any time, outside the constraints of natural law, and hence no empirical test can be devised to verify God's existence. However, specific claims regarding God's actions in the physical world can be put to empirical test."
One source of assertions regarding God's actions has been the Bible, which makes very specific, testable claims about the world as God created it (e.g. the age of the earth) and his actions within the world (creation of animals and human beings ex nihilo a few thousand years ago; a subsequent world wide flood). One reason why friction has arisen between those who are inclined to Biblical literalism and the advances of the natural sciences is that many Biblical claims about the actions of God CAN be tested, have been tested, and have been found to be obviously false. | I am not as quick to abandon biblical claims as you might think, since many biblical claims have not been proven false. For instance the biblical claims about death and disease, war and poverty, human childbirth, even weeds, all still hold true today. But that's another subject. Quote |
However, you are not drawing from Biblical claims about God's actions (although I gather you once did). Your claims are much more sophisticated, and concern the origination of the astounding complexity we observe in the biological world. You don't find current theory about the origination of such complexity believable (for reasons you are happy to enumerate). You claim, instead, that the emergence of biological complexity was accomplished by an all knowing God.
Here you've already gone much beyond the claims of the intelligent design movement generally, as represented by Behe, Dembski, Meyer etc. They have carefully avoided publicly speculating about the identity and nature of the designer, and have repeatedly declined to make any claims whatsoever regarding the designer's characteristics, modes of action, etc. Because they have been unwilling to propose a model of the design or of the designer, and claim they are solely interested in design detection, that brand of ID has been utterly incapable of generating unique testable predictions about future empirical findings, and fails to rise to the level of a an empirical science. | I can't speak for them but I suspect their reluctance is due to the fact that they are trying to make their theory fit into the realm of naturalistic science - and thus they feel they can't identify the designer as God. I feel differently. I feel that we can speculate about how the "mind of God" has affected the physical universe and make testable predictions based on those speculations. Quote |
You've identified the designer. God is the designer. You've also offered some speculations about the manner in which he originated design: he did it by means of "front-loading" information into the genome or genomes of one or more early organisms, front-loading that reflected foreknowledge of the history of the world in all of its detail, as I described above. You see the outcome of that designer's actions in nature - "I find complex intricate systems analogous (but far superior) to power plants, factories with automated assembly lines, communication networks, super highway systems, waste management (with recycling!), and on and on."
OK, now a careful distinction: "Complex intricate systems analogous (but far superior) to power plants, factories with automated assembly lines, communication networks, super highway systems, waste management" are the phenomena that (you say) still demand explanation. | Yes that's true. Quote | Your explanation is that these complex systems were designed by an all knowing God. | Yes that's true also, but I went beyond that - since I first pointed out their analogous qualities with known designs - thereby establishing the precedent of the designer/design as a workable, observable explanation for such systems. Quote | I think you can see that it would be circular to then point to those self-same "complex intricate systems" as proof that your explanation for their existence is correct - those complex systems that so amaze us all are the very phenomena that call for explanation in the first place. Poring over and expressing amazement at biological complexity, even if that complexity has been elucidated by science, is not itself a scientific activity. | That's true, but I've done more than that: I've suggested a source - an all knowing God that (as you say) "can do anything, in any order, at any time, outside the constraints of natural law", and I hope to show that the evidence actually requires such a being. I believe that any unbiased look at all the requirements for life on this planet will lead any honest person to rule out chance as a cause. We are then left with only non-random causes. My argument is that - once we get to that point - if we examine the delicate balances that exist in nature, and all the intricate complexities of the literally trillions of systems involved in life, a mind of infinite intelligence is the only logical, non-random cause for all of this. Quote |
Rather, to rise to the level of a scientific assertion, your model must make testable empirical predictions that uniquely "put your theory at risk." That is, you must formulate predictions regarding future empirical findings that, if disconfirmed, indicate that the model from which those predictions arose must be modified or discarded. Because you have already asserted that the designer is an omnipotent, all knowing God, you have put yourself in the position of having to make specific predictions regarding God's actions in the world, predictions with power to put your model at risk of disconfirmation.
I think you will agree that this is a problem. It is inherent in the definition of any "God" of sufficient capability to set the entire universe into motion that there are no limitations upon his activities. As I stated earlier, God can do anything, anywhere, anytime, without constraint of the laws of physics. He even specified the laws of physics themselves. Given that, any empirical finding regarding his proposed actions in the world would appear to be compatible with the God hypothesis. Hence it falls to YOU, as you formulate your model of the origins of biological complexity in a scientific manner, to make statements about God's characteristics of sufficient specificity to predict future empirical findings regarding his actions in the world. These assertions must limit God's scope in some way, either based upon constraints (God can do this, but he can't do that) or upon other more intentional characteristics (God would do this, but wouldn't do that). It falls to you to do this before making the relevant observations, in such a way that subsequent disconfirmation would prompt you to conclude, "God does not have the characteristics I proposed."
That's a tall order. In a some respects you've already made some such assertions, although you haven't described how they arise from a specific model of God, or how to test them. Nevertheless, since front-loading is an action in the world, it is potentially testable. I could easily generate some unique testable predictions regarding future empirical findings that arise from front-loading. However, because I find front-loading implausible for reasons I have already described and believe such tests are likely to be a waste of time, it falls to YOU to devise unique empirical predictions that put your theory at risk and then conduct the relevant tests. Ideally, your predictions would put your assertions about God's actions in the world, and hence his characteristics, at risk, as well.
You've got your work cut out for you. |
You are right - and I'm feeling the pressure!
-------------- "If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance." Orville Wright
"The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question." Richard Dawkins
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