Morris Dovey wrote:

Tim Daneliuk (in ) said:

| But the exact argument in question is
| whether or not it *ought to become* a part of science. As I have
| said over and over, this reluctance by the science establishment
| smacks of turf protection, ideological defense (by atheists), and
| undermines the claims of the objectivity of the establishment
| scientific community. If it's baloney demonstrate it, otherwise
| engage and have a meaningful conversation on the matter ...

[referee blows whistle]

You're claiming here, as I understand your words, that your opponent
in this debate can only hold a valid stance if he can prove a
negative.

If that's the case, then the subject matter of the debate is moot -
because the debate process itself has already been tainted. To insist
on carrying any debate forward under such terms at least verges on
intellectual dishonesty.


Huh? The ID claim is that the current philosophical base for modern
Science (materialism) is insufficient to entirely embrace what we can
observe. They do not claim that Science is completely incorrect, nor do
are they claiming to prove a negative. Rather, the debate is about the
*sufficiency* of these various epistemic systems.

Also, a fine point. It is a logical rathole to attempt to prove a
negative, I agree. But that's not what the IDers are saying. Rather,
they are claiming that they can show a concrete lack of sufficiency in
materialist epistemology. That's not at all the same as trying to prove
a negative. It is an "adequacy" argument, at least as I understand it so
far.

The basis for this claim, BTW, is their argument for what they call
"irreducable complexity". In a nutshell, irreducable complexity argues
that aspects of biological life especially could not be any less complex
and have the larger living organism survive. That is, there is a lower
bound of biological complexity (in some cases) that you could not get to
evolutionarily because the path to that point would not exhibit
sufficient complexity for the precedant organisms to survive and
evolve.

And this is the guts of the debate. The IDers make this conjecture (with
some elementary examples) but of course cannot absolutely prove it.
OTOH, the Darwinian argument is that *all* life evolved to get to its
current state, and this too is unprovable, especially given the
absence of the "transition" fossils that would say get you from
priomordial ooze, to slime, to reptiles, ... to Hillary Clinton.

The real reason this debate is so important, in my view, is that it is
about the basis for scientific knowledge. Materialism (the idea that
everything in the Universe is describable solely in matter-mechanical
terms - i.e., That the sum is never bigger than the parts) as a
scientific epistemology really is pretty new - Darwin more or less
codified it. But it is hardly incontestible. There remains considerable
debate, for example, as to whether human consciousness is merely a
byproduct of brain electicity or whether there is something larger at
work there. Contemporary Science *assumes* that it's just a mechanical
system of some sort, but it *has* to given its philosophical starting
points. Even if ID turns out to have no substance, it is an important
debate because it asks the question "Are the current assumptions about
knowledge in Science valid?" I, for one, have real problems with the
matter-mechanical view of the Universe and I welcome the discussion to
see if it just might be possible to know *more* about the Universe than
our current philosophic system enables.

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Tim Daneliuk
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