An inference to the only valid admission: "We don't know"

After blogging about 4thought.tv's series last week, "Is it possible to believe in God and Darwin?" and discussing it during the recording of Skepticule Extra 007 yesterday, I checked out Alastair Noble's introduction video again, at the Centre for Intelligent Design's website. The video is embeddable, so I include it below:



Noble is saying much the same as he did in his 4thought.tv contribution, but expanded a little. He appears to be claiming that methodological naturalism is an unwarranted philosophical constraint on the progress of science, and that intelligent design is an inference to the best explanation. But I still don't see how "Someone did this, we don't know who (and even if we think we do know, we're not saying)" is any kind of explanation. If you can't tell how something happened, how is it scientific to conclude that someone must have done it? The correct conclusion is to admit that you don't know how it happened, and then to attempt to find out. If you convince yourself that someone must have done it, where do you go from there?

Why don't anti-evolutionists understand evolution?

I sometimes wonder if certain Christians' objections to "Evilution" would be less if they understood even the basic idea of evolutionary theory. If someone goes to the trouble of producing a YouTube video claiming that evolution is a fairy tale because the theory claims that an animal evolved in a particular way for a particular reason, it's a good idea to know what evolutionary theory actually states.

http://youtu.be/p_Kgv_iJ8hA


In this video much scorn is poured on the reason given for the evolution of the giraffe's long neck. But anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with the process known as "Darwinian evolution by random mutation and natural selection" will be aware that the giraffe's neck did not get longer by stretching. So this video misses its target completely.

The video's producer is in need of some fairly basic education regarding evolutionary theory, and usually there's no shortage of commentary in that vein. But in this case comments are disabled. Why is that, I wonder?

Burnee links for Sunday

How William Lane Craig misleads his followers | The Uncredible Hallq

Craig genuinely is better informed than most apologists. That does set him apart from the pack. He just doesn’t use his knowledge to make his followers better informed. Instead, he uses his knowledge to put out a series of misleading half-truths and unsupported claims, while side-stepping any discussions that he knows would go badly for him.

The more prominent Craig becomes, the more people see through his debating shenanigans.

Follow-up to the above:
Biblical scholars are not a bunch of baffled skeptics (also: Craig lies about Ehrman) | The Uncredible Hallq

Science is my God | Science | The Guardian
Oh look, there's some space on our website. Let's fill it with rubbish.

Science is not my God | Martin Robbins | Science | guardian.co.uk
Not rubbish.


DarkOptics : Chernobyl's Zone of Alienation - Photography By Darren Nisbett
Here's an unusual photography project. See the eerie ghost town of Pripyat in the website gallery, or visit the exhibition itself in Eton in July — it's in a good cause. The infra-red treatment makes everything look as if it's glowing with radiation (which I suppose, technically, it is). I was reminded of Christy Moore's "Farewell to Pripyat" (lyrics by Tim Dennehy) on his album Voyage — also available on iTunes in The Box Set (1964-2004).

Kevin Myers: Myth of Dawkins as an intolerant, atheist crusader is just that -- myth - Kevin Myers, Columnists - Independent.ie
Good article, shame about the pic.

OMG! It's Richard Dawkins - Tom Whipple - The Times - RichardDawkins.net
More from the Dublin convention. I challenge anyone who has met Richard Dawkins, or seen him in person deliver a talk, to substantiate the claim that he is shrill, strident or angry.

Dublin Declaration on Secularism and the Place of Religion in Public Life | Atheist Ireland

"On Sunday 5 June 2011, the World Atheist Convention in Dublin discussed and adopted the following declaration on secularism and the place of religion in public life. Please discuss and promote it with your friends and colleagues, and if you are a a member of an atheist, humanist or secular group, please discuss and promote it with your fellow members, and with the media and politicians."

The Declaration is here:

http://www.atheist.ie/2011/06/dublin-declaration-on-secularism-and-the-place-of-religion-in-public-life/

It's worth looking briefly at the four sections of this succinct document:

1. Personal Freedoms

(a) Freedom of conscience, religion and belief are private and unlimited. Freedom to practice religion should be limited only by the need to respect the rights and freedoms of others.
(b) All people should be free to participate equally in the democratic process.
(c) Freedom of expression should be limited only by the need to respect the rights and freedoms of others. There should be no right ‘not to be offended’ in law. All blasphemy laws, whether explicit or implicit, should be repealed and should not be enacted.

Freedom of conscience, democracy and freedom of expression — universal rights encapsulated in a few short sentences.

2. Secular Democracy

(a) The sovereignty of the State is derived from the people and not from any god or gods.
(b) The only reference in the constitution to religion should be an assertion that the State is secular.
(c) The State should be based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Public policy should be formed by applying reason, and not religious faith, to evidence.
(d) Government should be secular. The state should be strictly neutral in matters of religion and its absence, favouring none and discriminating against none.
(e) Religions should have no special financial consideration in public life, such as tax-free status for religious activities, or grants to promote religion or run faith schools.
(f) Membership of a religion should not be a basis for appointing a person to any State position.
(g) The law should neither grant nor refuse any right, privilege, power or immunity, on the basis of faith or religion or the absence of either.

As concise a summary of secular principles as I've seen.

3. Secular Education

(a) State education should be secular. Religious education, if it happens, should be limited to education about religion and its absence.
(b) Children should be taught about the diversity of religious and nonreligious philosophical beliefs in an objective manner, with no faith formation in school hours.
(c) Children should be educated in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge. Science should be taught free from religious interference.

Glad to see education given specific focus — the future of human civilisation depends on it.

4. One Law For All

(a) There should be one secular law for all, democratically decided and evenly enforced, with no jurisdiction for religious courts to settle civil matters or family disputes.
(b) The law should not criminalise private conduct because the doctrine of any religion deems such conduct to be immoral, if that private conduct respects the rights and freedoms of others.
(c) Employers or social service providers with religious beliefs should not be allowed to discriminate on any grounds not essential to the job in question.

Obvious though this may be, it's threatened in the UK by law-making judges who may give special exemption to religious discrimination (though so far the judges have generally been sensible about this). It also addresses the idea of different laws for specific groups of people, as Sharia is supposed to for Muslims. Such agreements to be bound by a subset of national law should only be in the same sense as an agreement — by all parties in a dispute — to arbitration, which itself must be within the law.

If I have a (pedantic) quibble it's that 4(b) seems syntactically ambiguous — it could be read as saying that since religious doctrine deems some conduct immoral, that conduct shouldn't be criminalised, which is nonsensical. I know that's not what it's supposed to mean, but perhaps in this instance they've made it a little too concise.

Not enough 4thought? Channel 4 goes for "balance" on evolution

All this week Channel 4's daily "let's have some controversial views, but not too much — in fact let's keep it down to under two minutes" slot, called 4thought.tv, has been attempting to answer the question "Is it possible to believe in God and Darwin?" An odd question — if to "believe" in something means you think it exists. I think Darwin existed. There's documentary evidence to show that Charles Darwin actually walked this Earth, and — famously — sailed the seas, as well as perambulating the tangled bank, and so forth.

That's not what Channel 4 means, I suspect, which gives us an indication how seriously or rigorously it's taking the real question, which I assume is "Is belief in God compatible with an understanding of Darwin's theory of evolution by random mutation and natural selection?" As a further demonstration of their lack of commitment to rationality, on Monday Channel 4's choice of first participant to discuss this important issue was a Young Earth Creationist:

http://www.4thought.tv/4thoughts/0339-Dr-Sandr%C3%A9-Fourie-Is-it-possible-to-believe-in-God-and-Darwin-

Dr Sandré Fourie comes out with some dreadful nonsense that makes her credentials as a veterinary surgeon distinctly dubious (note the stethoscope round her neck, to add verisimilitude to her utterly unconvincing contribution — though to be fair I wouldn't be surprised if this medical adornment was at the instigation of the show's art director).

Next, on Tuesday, we have a voice of sanity with Simon Watt, an evolutionary biologist, who makes several valid and relevant points — including that the Bible story is not meant to be taken literally and is in a completely different category from what science has shown us about evolution, and that he's not irrevocably wedded to the theory of evolution. If something better comes along, he's ready to take on new scientific ideas:

http://www.4thought.tv/4thoughts/0340-Simon-Watt-Is-it-possible-to-believe-in-God-and-Darwin-

Wednesday we heard Dr. Alastair Noble, director of the Centre for Intelligent Design, telling us that if something looks designed, it must have an intelligent cause. Not that Channel 4 mentions Noble's affiliations anywhere, only that he's been involved in science education (he's actually an ex-inspector of schools) and that he thinks science should take the "theory of intelligent design" seriously. A scientific theory, however, should make specific, testable predictions, which intelligent design has so far failed to do. Noble claims that evolution (he calls it "Darwinism") is inadequate to explain the complexity seen in living things. But then he says that intelligent design is a sufficient explanation, when it clearly isn't an explanation at all. ID is a philosophical idea — there's nothing scientific about it. He mentions that the cell is very complicated, and that anywhere else such complexity is observed (he means in engineering) we infer a designer. As usual he leaves out an important component in this inference: what we actually infer when we see such engineering is a human designer — every time. Even William Paley inferred a human watchmaker. We have no other examples of design intelligence, apart from human intelligence. ID proponents make an invalid extrapolation from an inadequate sample size:

http://www.4thought.tv/4thoughts/0341-Dr-Alastair-Noble-Is-it-possible-to-believe-in-God-and-Darwin-

Thursday and we're back to real science with Alanna Maltby, who announces that she's an evolutionary biologist and an atheist. Echoing Simon Watt she mentions the elegance of Darwin's theory, and the overwhelming evidence in support of it. She also hopes that there aren't too many people who believe in six-day creation and a 6000-year-old Earth. I hope so too, but so far in this series we've had two evolutionary biologists, a Young Earth Creationist and an intelligent design proponent:

http://www.4thought.tv/4thoughts/0342-Alanna-Maltby-Is-it-possible-to-believe-in-God-and-Darwin-

On Friday Dr. Ruth Bancewicz began by saying "My Christian faith tells me who made something out of nothing. Science can't answer that question." She ought to realise that though science does not at present have an answer to that question — if indeed it's a valid one — the idea that her Christian faith does have an answer is obviously absurd. Christianity, or any other religion, just makes up an answer. There's no compelling evidence or reason supporting it, only variable interpretations of ancient texts of dubious provenance. Dr. Banciewicz goes on to tell us she has a PhD in genetics, and she thinks the word creationist has been hijacked by the young-earthers. She prefers to think of all people who believe that God set things in motion — including evolution — as creationists. I think she could  be fairly described as a theistic evolutionist, but of a particularly vague and woolly kind:

http://www.4thought.tv/4thoughts/0343-Dr-Ruth-Bancewicz-Is-it-possible-to-believe-in-God-and-Darwin-

Is it significant that of the five contributors so far, all three of those claiming that evolution is untrue, that "Darwinism" is inadequate, or that Goddidit — have "Dr." in front of their names?

There are two more "4thoughts" on this subject to come — I'm guessing we'll have one believer and one non-believer — as if such a near even split is representative of scientific opinion as a whole.

Burnee links for Thursday

The Insidiousness of Catholicism « Choice in Dying
Eric MacDonald on the death and life of Jack Kevorkian, and the religious resistance to assisted dying.

I guess that saga is now done : Pharyngula
Premise Media, responsible for Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, has folded. Good riddance.

Maryam Namazie: The Islamic Inquisition
The text of Maryam Namazie's keynote speech at the recent World Atheist Convention in Dublin.

Gay Teen Girl Abducted and Tortured at For-Profit American “Re-Education” School(s) | violet blue ® :: open source sex
This sounds like a horror film. Are these establishments actually legal in the US?

Follow-up to the above:
EXCLUSIVE Interview: Abducted Queer Teen Xandir to Appear in San Francisco Today | violet blue ® :: open source sex

Gonzalez & Richards back-to-front in Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God

"Designed for Discovery" by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards is the nineteenth chapter of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God. It appears to be a book-promotion disguised as a litany of fine-tunerisms. Gonzalez and Richards have written a book titled The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery, and if this chapter is representative of it then they've got a problem. The whole thing is upside down and backwards. Let's face it, the idea that the universe is specifically designed so that the human race can "discover" things about it is ludicrous.

Here's what's wrong with the fine-tuning argument. Suppose you invent a teleportation machine, but there are a few snags with it, such that the first time you use it, it transports you to a completely random location in the entire universe. What do you think the chances are of finding yourself in a part of the universe where you can survive for more than a few seconds? A location, for instance, where you can breathe, where you're not immediately frozen solid, fossilised or incinerated, or subjected to lethal radiation. Pretty slim, I'd suggest. In fact your chances of survival would be infinitesimal. The universe is not fine-tuned for life.

As for being "designed for discovery", Gonzalez and Richards go through a list of recipes that their "cosmic chef" would need to compile in order to produce an environment suitable for inquiring human minds to explore, but they do it as if the human race is here first — as if everything has to be adjusted to meet the needs of pre-existing humanity (or at least a humanity whose characteristics have been predetermined). That, in case they haven't noticed, is not how it happened. This is such an obvious flaw in their argument I'll belabour it no more. I'll simply quote the late, great Douglas Adams and his famous sentient puddle:

"...imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise."

(From Biota)

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4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbscience.aspx?pageid=8589952941