Has anyone else noticed how hard it is to get one's comments to actually appear on Bill Dembski's blog, Uncommon Descent? I've posted lots of times on Richard Dawkins' site, as have lots of other religious believers (mostly fundamentalists). Sites like that of the Discovery Institute don't even have forums. One way to interpret this, of course, would be that whereas Dawkins and others like him are confident that intelligent discussion and evaluation of relevant evidence leads to truth, the Intelligent Design crowd are less confident, perhaps even afraid.
A more charitable interpretation is also possible. The proponents of Intelligent Design want their sites to glorify God, and this motivates their unwillingness to allow just any posts and any lines of questioning to appear. Nevertheless, this shows the same sorts of problems one faces in talking about a theocracy. I consider myself to be interested in the glory of God, but because I think about God and science differently, my posts never appear on Dembski's site. Concern for God's glory quickly become concerns that God as I understand God be glorifies as I consider God ought to be glorified.
Although much of the discussion of religion and science in online forums suffers from poorly-informed participants, one still must hope that, unless one wants to bypass the scientific process that ideas will be subjected to criticism, and that likewise if a religious viewpoint is to be put forward, it too must be open to criticism. This is not just about democracy. It is about avoiding idolatry, the identifying of my image of God (whether physical, mental or verbal) with God's own self and nature.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Friday, June 29, 2007
Can we backengineer a bug?
I'm been reading Sean B. Carroll's book Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo
, which is thoroughly fascinating. One can almost understand the response of proponents of intelligent design to the marvels of the workings of our genes, which mirror the workings of logic circuits. But of course, this is a reaction appropriate to someone who hasn't read the whole book, and ID proponents are very much in that situation. It was rather ironic that, upon the suggestion being made that "junk DNA" might not be mostly junk after all, the ID crowd claimed this as a prediction of intelligent design. What should not be ignored is the fact that, even though this may have been an expectation of theirs, they were not doing the scientific research necessary to test it. Yet they still want to claim that they are doing scientific research.
The truth (although a thought-provoking one) is that, when we created artificial logic circuits, we were actually creating something alot like the 'machinery' that created us. So in a sense, it is ultimately the case that natural logic circuits produced artificial ones.
The question now is whether we can create software that will replicate all the logic circuits in a particular organism's genes - perhaps the fruit fly, although it might be better to start with something simpler. Not only would this allow a fast-running computer to speed up simulated evolution and test its workings, but we might even be able to get it to work backwards, through all the possible paths that would have viable organisms, to get a clearer sense not only of the course evolution may have followed, but perhaps it might even be able to simulate the course back all the way to its beginnings. Is it too much to hope that the computer circuitry that the creations of DNA have created might actually be able to return the favor in reverse and show how DNA got us to this stage of computer-constructing organisms?
, which is thoroughly fascinating. One can almost understand the response of proponents of intelligent design to the marvels of the workings of our genes, which mirror the workings of logic circuits. But of course, this is a reaction appropriate to someone who hasn't read the whole book, and ID proponents are very much in that situation. It was rather ironic that, upon the suggestion being made that "junk DNA" might not be mostly junk after all, the ID crowd claimed this as a prediction of intelligent design. What should not be ignored is the fact that, even though this may have been an expectation of theirs, they were not doing the scientific research necessary to test it. Yet they still want to claim that they are doing scientific research.The truth (although a thought-provoking one) is that, when we created artificial logic circuits, we were actually creating something alot like the 'machinery' that created us. So in a sense, it is ultimately the case that natural logic circuits produced artificial ones.
The question now is whether we can create software that will replicate all the logic circuits in a particular organism's genes - perhaps the fruit fly, although it might be better to start with something simpler. Not only would this allow a fast-running computer to speed up simulated evolution and test its workings, but we might even be able to get it to work backwards, through all the possible paths that would have viable organisms, to get a clearer sense not only of the course evolution may have followed, but perhaps it might even be able to simulate the course back all the way to its beginnings. Is it too much to hope that the computer circuitry that the creations of DNA have created might actually be able to return the favor in reverse and show how DNA got us to this stage of computer-constructing organisms?
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Got Genesis? Homogenized and Pasteurized!
This was my last actual entry on my old blog, and I've decided to offer it as the first 'real' post on my new blog site as well...
I've already said plenty, I imagine, on the problem of homogenizing the creation stories in Genesis 1-3. But what about "Pasteurizing" them? Before this is dismissed as nonsense, let me explain. Young-earth creationists regularly refer to Pasteur's work disproving spontaneous generation, and suggest that Pasteur's conclusion that "life does not arise from non-life" disproves a natural explanation for life's origins (actually, they usually confuse matters and suggest that it disproves evolution, but I'll let that one slide for now).
Pasteur was not addressing the question of whether, in ancient earth conditions very different from those today, natural processes could lead to the origin of life. Pasteur was addressing the notion that life forms such as maggots appeared fully-formed in raw mean, mice in cheese, mold on bread, and so on. No scientist thinks that either today or in the past, living things arose in one giant leap like that. The author of Genesis, however, presumably accepted (as did all people in that period in history) idea of spontaneous generation and of the earth's generative power, since he has God command the earth to bring forth living things. So young-earth creationists, in drawing attention to Pasteur's work, have misunderstood it and its relationship to both the scientific study of origins and to the Bible.
By way of follow up to my last post, let me also provide a link to the TalkOrigins page "Quote Mine Project".
I've already said plenty, I imagine, on the problem of homogenizing the creation stories in Genesis 1-3. But what about "Pasteurizing" them? Before this is dismissed as nonsense, let me explain. Young-earth creationists regularly refer to Pasteur's work disproving spontaneous generation, and suggest that Pasteur's conclusion that "life does not arise from non-life" disproves a natural explanation for life's origins (actually, they usually confuse matters and suggest that it disproves evolution, but I'll let that one slide for now).
Pasteur was not addressing the question of whether, in ancient earth conditions very different from those today, natural processes could lead to the origin of life. Pasteur was addressing the notion that life forms such as maggots appeared fully-formed in raw mean, mice in cheese, mold on bread, and so on. No scientist thinks that either today or in the past, living things arose in one giant leap like that. The author of Genesis, however, presumably accepted (as did all people in that period in history) idea of spontaneous generation and of the earth's generative power, since he has God command the earth to bring forth living things. So young-earth creationists, in drawing attention to Pasteur's work, have misunderstood it and its relationship to both the scientific study of origins and to the Bible.
By way of follow up to my last post, let me also provide a link to the TalkOrigins page "Quote Mine Project".
Trying something new
This is my first entry using Blogger rather than Easy Blogs. I will keep my old blog entries archived at the same addresses as previously, with the old front page available at: http://blue.butler.edu/~jfmcgrat/blog/index2.htm
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