Origins science: Origins science: The scientific study of our origins helps us probe the roots of our existence. This gives it great importance.
http://iose-gen.blogspot.com.br/2010/06/introduction-and-summary.html#methnat
And, is it not reasonable that science should seek to discover and provide good observational evidence and objectively unbiased explanations about what really happens in our world -- and (so far as that is possible) about what really happened in the remote past of origins, without a priori ideological blinkers?
This is in effect what ID thinkers and scientists have argued in recent years.
In simple terms, noted ID Scientist William Dembski, argues:
We know from experience that intelligent agents build intricate machines that need all their parts to function [[--> i.e. he is specifically discussing "irreducibly complex" objects, structures or processes for which there is a core group of parts all of which must be present and properly arranged for the entity to function (cf. here, here and here)], things like mousetraps and motors. And we know how they do it -- by looking to a future goal and then purposefully assembling a set of parts until they’re a working whole. Intelligent agents, in fact, are the one and only type of thing we have ever seen doing this sort of thing from scratch. In other words, our common experience provides positive evidence of only one kind of cause able to assemble such machines. It’s not electricity. It’s not magnetism. It’s not natural selection working on random variation. It’s not any purely mindless process. It’s intelligence . . . .
When we attribute intelligent design to complex biological machines that need all of their parts to work, we’re doing what historical scientists do generally. Think of it as a three-step process: (1) locate a type of cause active in the present that routinely produces the thing in question; (2) make a thorough search to determine if it is the only known cause of this type of thing; and (3) if it is, offer it as the best explanation for the thing in question.
Positive evidence: CSI - Complex specified Information :
Philosopher of Science Stephen Meyer similarly argues the same point in more detail in his response to a hostile review of his key 2009 Design Theory book, Signature in the Cell:
The central argument of my book is that intelligent design—the activity of a conscious and rational deliberative agent—best explains the origin of the information necessary to produce the first living cell. I argue this because of two things that we know from our uniform and repeated experience, which following Charles Darwin I take to be the basis of all scientific reasoning about the past. First, intelligent agents have demonstrated the capacity to produce large amounts of functionally specified information (especially in a digital form). Second, no undirected chemical process has demonstrated this power. Hence, intelligent design provides the best—most causally adequate—explanation for the origin of the information necessary to produce the first life from simpler non-living chemicals. In other words, intelligent design is the only explanation that cites a cause known to have the capacity to produce the key effect in question . . . . In order to [[scientifically refute this inductive conclusion] Falk would need to show that some undirected material cause has [[empirically] demonstrated the power to produce functional biological information apart from the guidance or activity a designing mind. Neither Falk, nor anyone working in origin-of-life biology, has succeeded in doing this . . . .
The imposition of methodological naturalism is plainly question- begging, and it is thus an error of method.
No one can know with absolute certainty that the design hypothesis is false. It follows from the absence of absolute knowledge, that each person should be willing to accept at least the possibility that the design hypothesis is correct, however remote that possibility might seem to him. Once a person makes that concession, as every honest person must, the game is up. The question is no longer whether ID is science or non-science. The question is whether the search for the truth of the matter about the natural world should be structurally biased against a possibly true hypothesis.
For, we did not – and cannot -- directly observe the remote past, so origins science theories are in the end attempted “historical” reconstructions of what we think the past may have been like. Such reconstructions are based on investigating which of the possible explanations seems "best" to us on balance in light of the evidence. However, to censor out a class of possible explanations ahead of time through imposing materialism plainly undermines the integrity of this abductive method.
http://iose-gen.blogspot.com.br/2010/06/introduction-and-summary.html#methnat
And, is it not reasonable that science should seek to discover and provide good observational evidence and objectively unbiased explanations about what really happens in our world -- and (so far as that is possible) about what really happened in the remote past of origins, without a priori ideological blinkers?
This is in effect what ID thinkers and scientists have argued in recent years.
In simple terms, noted ID Scientist William Dembski, argues:
We know from experience that intelligent agents build intricate machines that need all their parts to function [[--> i.e. he is specifically discussing "irreducibly complex" objects, structures or processes for which there is a core group of parts all of which must be present and properly arranged for the entity to function (cf. here, here and here)], things like mousetraps and motors. And we know how they do it -- by looking to a future goal and then purposefully assembling a set of parts until they’re a working whole. Intelligent agents, in fact, are the one and only type of thing we have ever seen doing this sort of thing from scratch. In other words, our common experience provides positive evidence of only one kind of cause able to assemble such machines. It’s not electricity. It’s not magnetism. It’s not natural selection working on random variation. It’s not any purely mindless process. It’s intelligence . . . .
When we attribute intelligent design to complex biological machines that need all of their parts to work, we’re doing what historical scientists do generally. Think of it as a three-step process: (1) locate a type of cause active in the present that routinely produces the thing in question; (2) make a thorough search to determine if it is the only known cause of this type of thing; and (3) if it is, offer it as the best explanation for the thing in question.
Positive evidence: CSI - Complex specified Information :
Philosopher of Science Stephen Meyer similarly argues the same point in more detail in his response to a hostile review of his key 2009 Design Theory book, Signature in the Cell:
The central argument of my book is that intelligent design—the activity of a conscious and rational deliberative agent—best explains the origin of the information necessary to produce the first living cell. I argue this because of two things that we know from our uniform and repeated experience, which following Charles Darwin I take to be the basis of all scientific reasoning about the past. First, intelligent agents have demonstrated the capacity to produce large amounts of functionally specified information (especially in a digital form). Second, no undirected chemical process has demonstrated this power. Hence, intelligent design provides the best—most causally adequate—explanation for the origin of the information necessary to produce the first life from simpler non-living chemicals. In other words, intelligent design is the only explanation that cites a cause known to have the capacity to produce the key effect in question . . . . In order to [[scientifically refute this inductive conclusion] Falk would need to show that some undirected material cause has [[empirically] demonstrated the power to produce functional biological information apart from the guidance or activity a designing mind. Neither Falk, nor anyone working in origin-of-life biology, has succeeded in doing this . . . .
The imposition of methodological naturalism is plainly question- begging, and it is thus an error of method.
No one can know with absolute certainty that the design hypothesis is false. It follows from the absence of absolute knowledge, that each person should be willing to accept at least the possibility that the design hypothesis is correct, however remote that possibility might seem to him. Once a person makes that concession, as every honest person must, the game is up. The question is no longer whether ID is science or non-science. The question is whether the search for the truth of the matter about the natural world should be structurally biased against a possibly true hypothesis.
For, we did not – and cannot -- directly observe the remote past, so origins science theories are in the end attempted “historical” reconstructions of what we think the past may have been like. Such reconstructions are based on investigating which of the possible explanations seems "best" to us on balance in light of the evidence. However, to censor out a class of possible explanations ahead of time through imposing materialism plainly undermines the integrity of this abductive method.
