On 12/8/05, Sandwichman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
"sandwichman",
(1) you sed, "That says that religion isn't science. Well, I wan't saying it is and, with some possible exceptions, that's not what the ID folks claim either." unfortunately, this is simply wrong. IDers wouldn't want to reduce religion to science, but they DO want to confuse religion/theology with science. maybe there are some of them who don't, but the prominent figures in the debate do.
for example, "Dembski, in Signs of Intelligence, claims 'Proponents of Intelligent Design regard it as a scientific research program that investigates the effects of intelligent causes. Note that Intelligent Design studies the effects of intelligent causes and not intelligent causes per se'" (i grabbed this from wikipedia). the there's _the creation hypothesis: scientific evidence for an intelligent designer_. this is an effort to use something the proponents see as "science" to support an essentially religious (or at the very best philosophical) "hypothesis" (their word, not mine). Dembski, in the preface to _intelligent design_, notes: "Intelligent design is three things: a scientific research program [sic] that investigates the effects of intelligent causes; an intellectual movement that challenges Darwinism and its naturalistic legacy; and a way of understanding divine action. Intelligent design therefore intersects science and theology." leaving aside the infelicity of using "intersects" as a transitive verb, it's very clear from these very small pieces of evidence that ID sees itself as encompassing both a religious and a scientific program, not as if they were reducible to each other, but nevertheless as if "investigating the effects of intelligent causes" (which already assumes what it intends to prove) is properly understood as scientific. the debate, then, is largely over what exactly constitutes science. this is of course ideologically charged. what isn't? but to say that is not at all to say that we cannot make claims about what "science" means to us now and what is properly understood as scientific and what is not. the IDers want to, afaict, return science to its aristotelian roots, something it seems to me we moved beyond in the so-called "scientific revolution". even dembski's epigram from william paley, the modern father of the intelligent design argument (which he understood as a philosophical rather than scientific argument), emblematizes this understanding of the project. in that respect, ID is 100% reactionary.
in any case, you may rightly say that IDers don't think that religion is the same as science, but you do not thereby demonstrate that they do not purport to make properly scientific claims -- that is to say, claims they themselves understand to be properly scientific. they do.
(2) i agree that the universe is complex. i did not mean to indicate otherwise. i even agree that science is not the monolithic Investigator of Truth many (but not all) scientists and others often want it to be. but it seems to me that the idea of a scientific hypothesis is a pretty straightforward one. we cannot simply dismiss the real differences (plural) between religious and scientific approaches to the world's problems as so much ideological claptrap. if that's not what you're saying, then please help me understand what exactly it is that you ARE saying.
if you were writing a science textbook (and i'm not concerned with textbooks as such; that seems to me a separate -- not unrelated -- question), what would YOU put in it and why? if you were designing the curriculum, what would you or would you not include and why (not)? would you include, for example, jean of jandun's argument that neither the revolution nor the immobility of the earth can be proven, and so we ought on faith to accept that it is immobile? why not teach bruno? should we teach both heliocentric/ptolemaic and geocentric models of the universe? why or why not? if you don't think ID should be taught in the science classroom, why not? should we teach genesis 1 and 2, and if not why not? i don't think you want us to teach genesis in science classrooms. what i want to know is your reasoning, which i cannot discern from your posts.
these are serious questions. it seems to me that the fight is over what is or is not to be understood as scientific.
(3) speaking as someone who works in the field of philosophy/religion (and maybe you do, too; i don't know), my experience has been that people like cp snow or carl sagan, on the one hand, and dembski and behe on the other in fact precisely reinforce that "mythical" conflict between religion and science. it is not just a matter of journalists and talking heads. many who talk about "reconciling" science and religion (like, imo, dembski) really want to subordinate the one to the other. personally, i do NOT think religion and science at all need to be understood as mutually exclusive. but in practice, many people -- both "intellectuals" and my students and non-academic friends -- DO. this is precisely because they think science and religion seek to ask and answer the same questions. ID only reinforces this mistaken approach to things.
imo
j
Jeffrey Fisher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:it seems pretty simple, really: either intelligent design is a scientific hypothesis or it isn't. if there is a "mythical" (interesting choice of words) conflict between science and religion, it is as much religious as scientists who keep it alive.No, it's not simple, the universe is complex. Or so I believe.I don't think it is either scientists or priests who promote a mythical conflict between science and religion. It is, rather, newspaper editors and talk show producers. That is to say, the class of salaried intellectuals-in-uniform who populate the infotainment--advertextbook spectacle complex. Coming down on one 'side' or the other of the 'conflict' simply recharges the myth
It's not as if textbooks were scientific before the IDers came along. Textbooks are inherently ideological. So to the extent there is a conflict it is between ideological partisans who want their views to dominate and not between science and religion. Show me a "non-ideological" textbook and I'll show you a textbook that, at the very least, is not prescribed in the state schooling system.
"sandwichman",
(1) you sed, "That says that religion isn't science. Well, I wan't saying it is and, with some possible exceptions, that's not what the ID folks claim either." unfortunately, this is simply wrong. IDers wouldn't want to reduce religion to science, but they DO want to confuse religion/theology with science. maybe there are some of them who don't, but the prominent figures in the debate do.
for example, "Dembski, in Signs of Intelligence, claims 'Proponents of Intelligent Design regard it as a scientific research program that investigates the effects of intelligent causes. Note that Intelligent Design studies the effects of intelligent causes and not intelligent causes per se'" (i grabbed this from wikipedia). the there's _the creation hypothesis: scientific evidence for an intelligent designer_. this is an effort to use something the proponents see as "science" to support an essentially religious (or at the very best philosophical) "hypothesis" (their word, not mine). Dembski, in the preface to _intelligent design_, notes: "Intelligent design is three things: a scientific research program [sic] that investigates the effects of intelligent causes; an intellectual movement that challenges Darwinism and its naturalistic legacy; and a way of understanding divine action. Intelligent design therefore intersects science and theology." leaving aside the infelicity of using "intersects" as a transitive verb, it's very clear from these very small pieces of evidence that ID sees itself as encompassing both a religious and a scientific program, not as if they were reducible to each other, but nevertheless as if "investigating the effects of intelligent causes" (which already assumes what it intends to prove) is properly understood as scientific. the debate, then, is largely over what exactly constitutes science. this is of course ideologically charged. what isn't? but to say that is not at all to say that we cannot make claims about what "science" means to us now and what is properly understood as scientific and what is not. the IDers want to, afaict, return science to its aristotelian roots, something it seems to me we moved beyond in the so-called "scientific revolution". even dembski's epigram from william paley, the modern father of the intelligent design argument (which he understood as a philosophical rather than scientific argument), emblematizes this understanding of the project. in that respect, ID is 100% reactionary.
in any case, you may rightly say that IDers don't think that religion is the same as science, but you do not thereby demonstrate that they do not purport to make properly scientific claims -- that is to say, claims they themselves understand to be properly scientific. they do.
(2) i agree that the universe is complex. i did not mean to indicate otherwise. i even agree that science is not the monolithic Investigator of Truth many (but not all) scientists and others often want it to be. but it seems to me that the idea of a scientific hypothesis is a pretty straightforward one. we cannot simply dismiss the real differences (plural) between religious and scientific approaches to the world's problems as so much ideological claptrap. if that's not what you're saying, then please help me understand what exactly it is that you ARE saying.
if you were writing a science textbook (and i'm not concerned with textbooks as such; that seems to me a separate -- not unrelated -- question), what would YOU put in it and why? if you were designing the curriculum, what would you or would you not include and why (not)? would you include, for example, jean of jandun's argument that neither the revolution nor the immobility of the earth can be proven, and so we ought on faith to accept that it is immobile? why not teach bruno? should we teach both heliocentric/ptolemaic and geocentric models of the universe? why or why not? if you don't think ID should be taught in the science classroom, why not? should we teach genesis 1 and 2, and if not why not? i don't think you want us to teach genesis in science classrooms. what i want to know is your reasoning, which i cannot discern from your posts.
these are serious questions. it seems to me that the fight is over what is or is not to be understood as scientific.
(3) speaking as someone who works in the field of philosophy/religion (and maybe you do, too; i don't know), my experience has been that people like cp snow or carl sagan, on the one hand, and dembski and behe on the other in fact precisely reinforce that "mythical" conflict between religion and science. it is not just a matter of journalists and talking heads. many who talk about "reconciling" science and religion (like, imo, dembski) really want to subordinate the one to the other. personally, i do NOT think religion and science at all need to be understood as mutually exclusive. but in practice, many people -- both "intellectuals" and my students and non-academic friends -- DO. this is precisely because they think science and religion seek to ask and answer the same questions. ID only reinforces this mistaken approach to things.
imo
j
--
"lo que decimos no siempre se parece a nosotros"
