Physicist Victor J. Stenger wrote a book published late last month entitled God: The Failed Hypothesis, subtitled How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.
I of course wondered how science shows that God does not exist, and found a summary of Stenger's arguments on his page at University of Colorado. I found that he makes use of what he calls "Impossibility Proofs," a.k.a. convenient fables only fabulists believe. Only a physicist or a philosopher would attempt such a thing, so it's probably fitting that Stenger is an adjunct professor of philosophy at UC. I hope his classes are better than this outline suggests his philosophical reasoning is.
Right there in chapter 1: "Method," Stenger lists a 5-point methodological approach to test and/or falsify a given 'god model'. And he provides what he calls "The Scientific God Model" that serves as the effigy he sets out to knock down with the usual arguments that have been hashed and re-hashed millions of times over thousands of years. They are boring enough not to bother with.
Many critics have long complained about Intelligent Design books published for popular consumption. As one participant of our blog argued:
No one can stop you from inferring an intelligent designer, just as no one can stop you from inferring a real Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy. If you want convince others, however, then get off your lazy a** and do some actual research that produces positive results. Pop pseudoscience books with wild unsubstantiated claims (i.e. Privileged Planet) and empty internet verbiage will never cut it in the rigorous scientific world…
While I can certainly appreciate the desire to see ID “cut it in the rigorous scientific world,” it’s not clear that ID hypotheses can be accommodated and processed in the current scientific milieu. But that’s not the main point for today.
I review Jesus Camp here. Surprisingly (to me, at least) there wasn't any mention of ID in the movie (IIRC, the directors briefly mentioned it in the commentary). As I mention in the post, I felt that most of the things in the movie were highly politicized by the directors. This is unfortunate because, as with the politicization of ID, it tends to obscure the real issues.
On that note, I thank Ed Brayton for pointing to this statement about ID by the Templeton Foundation. I pretty much agree with everything they say. For quite a while here at Telic Thoughts, we've made the distinction between ID the (political and cultural) movement and ID the idea. This is just a guess, but I think that if somebody came to the Templeton Foundation with a solid research proposal for ID (the idea, of course), they would probably get funding. The statement is a pretty clear condemnation of ID the movement and I don't think they've given up on ID the idea. One clue to this is that the statement only talks about biological ID, which has been the most politicized version of ID. The only real politicization that has occurred with cosmological ID has centered around Guillermo Gonzalez and this politicization came from the ID critics. The politicization of biological ID has, unfortunately, mostly been driven by the ID movement, which is why the Templeton Foundation rightly condemned this behavior.
On this episode of ID The Future CSC's Robert Crowther highlights Darwin on Trial, by Philip E. Johnson. Darwin on Trial was responsible for alerting many among the public and in the scientific community to the deficiencies of Darwinism. Johnson, a UC Berkeley law professor and Program Advisor for Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, applies his skills as an analyzer of evidence to ask if Darwin’s theory holds up to scrutiny.
One of our readers, who goes by the call sign “late_model” asked for a thread on Wheeler’s thesis that information is more fundamental than matter and energy. Wheeler, was highlighted in Wired Magazine’s 2007 edition: Wired: What we don’t know.
This Wednesday, there’ll be an ID symposium at Grove City College:
GROVE CITY, Pa. – The Grove City College Society for Science, Faith and Technology and The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College will host a one-day conference Feb. 7 on “Creatively Seeking a Creation Story: Evolution and Intelligent Design in America.” All lectures will be given in the Sticht Lecture Hall in the Hall of Arts and Letters on campus and are free and open to the public.
The conference follows a series of book talks this fall on “Species of Origins: America’s Search for a Creation Story” by Karl Giberson and Donald Yerxa. The authors examine America’s conversation about creation and evolution and argue that the real issue is the confrontation between two worldviews: modern naturalistic science and traditional Judeo-Christian religions.
A commenter, at the bottom of this collection of news posts on the ID controversy, asks me whether I think that long-running atheist bore Richard Dawkins really exists. Well, I’ve given some thought to how to respond to such a sensitive question, because I do so dislike hurting anyone’s feelings. So, here’s the straight dope:
It makes me feel more intellectually fulfilled to assume that Dawkins does exist. But, unlike some people, I will not assume that a correct answer to this question will necessarily make me feel intellectually fulfilled, or you either. We must have better evidence than that.
The strongest argument for the existence of Richard Dawkins has been the books published by reputable houses under his name. But on reflection, I now see how foolish an argument that is, and am appropriately ashamed of myself. The books themselves attempt to demonstrate that mind comes from mud, in which case - if the thesis of the books has any merit at all - they could easily have written themselves.
It has been a plausible and long-standing hypothesis that genomic regulatory networks of real cells operate in the ordered regime or at the border between order and chaos. This hypothesis is indirectly supported by the robustness and stability observed in the phenotypic traits of living organisms under genetic perturbations. However, there has been no systematic study to determine whether the gene-expression patterns of real cells are compatible with the dynamically ordered regimes predicted by theoretical models. Using the Boolean approach, here we show what we believe to be the first direct evidence that the underlying genetic network of HeLa cells appears to operate either in the ordered regime or at the border between order and chaos but does not appear to be chaotic.
Edmonton Global News television report on dichloroacetate cancer cure and interview with discoverer Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, Department of Medicine, University of Alberta.
The blurb for a book review from Physics Web, copied in the Weekend Edition of Arts and Letters Daily (February 3-4, 2007 ) reads, “String theory and intelligent design belong in the same category as speculative and unproveable. They cannot be falsified.”
One would think, at first, that this was just another yawner denouncing ID. The sort of thing that trips unbidden to the lips of any third rate lecturer who has never considered the possibility that the grade school tales he was told about the the Viceroy butterflies proving Darwinism by mimicking the Monarchs might not actually be true.
About the falsifiability of intelligent design: A specific hypothesis must be proposed for falsification. I remember replying, more or less as follows, a while back to someone who insisted that ID was unfalsifiable:
Scott Adams offers some insights on P. Z. Myers, prefacing them as follows:
. . . Some people are quite certain that I am misusing my minor celebrity status to confuse the masses and turn them into creationists or pyramid worshipers. Is it intentional, they wonder? Do I really believe the things I write? Or am I simply stupid, as it appears. . . .
