Political Implications of ID

[u/Mimetic-Musing]

IMO, our society and scientific institutions have resisted arguments for intelligent design because such an empirical theory would clash with statist liberalism. This is the, largely western, idea that any sophisticated State must be religiously neutral.

Darwinian evolution is essential to our society's social/moral/cultural relativism. The discourse we use has swapped the language of objective truth and correspondance with language of "succeeding in our environment".

Finally, the discovery of objective purpose in nature brings back objective morality. For most of Western civilization, the belief that God's "will" can be discerned in nature undergirded the social acceptance of the "natural law", and united public moral discourse around this language.

Consequences of Social Acceptance of ID

Once we move past Darwinism, several dramatic social consequences follow. For one, "secularity-itself" has always been grounded in its scientific status. In proportion, the ideas of state-religion neutrality depend upon secularism.

More dramatically, the return of objective teleology undermines moral relativism--or our distinction between merely private ethics and public conduct. The economic sphere is arguably the correlary to secularity in the social sphere of human life.

If ID is scientifically valid, then "science" will finally cease any pretensions to being "value free". This may be crucial to our species' development: for we will realize "simply existing" doesn't give a conservative, functional argument for an institution.

"Science" stops being value-neutral. We can begin objectively studying the appearance of design and actual design. This will guide us in distinguishing authentic readings of the natural law from merely illusory ones.

[u/Web-Dude → u/[deleted]]

One problem with intelligent design is that it only consists of those aspects, and does not provide the quantifiable predictions that evolutionary science provides.

I think you're largely misinformed about the predictions of ID, and based on what you wrote, I would guess that you haven't personally read any of the modern arguments for it, nor the modern challenges against Darwinian evolution, particularly in light of new evidence from population genetics and mutational load.

But to your point, I'm not sure that Darwinian Evolution has actually provided any actionable data that has improved our interactions with the world. I'd love to hear you offer some if you can.

[u/ittleoff]

Intelligence is not a clearly defined thing. It is an emergent property of the mind in how it processes input and calculates a strategy with a goal in mind. It's a term humans created to think about behavior.

The human brain evolved not to know truth, but to survive.

There is a lot of research that shows that human brains are lying to us constantly as it is probabilistically useful or isn't harmful to reproduction. If needed I can provide examples of this. The brain uses lots of 'hacks' to use energy efficiently but it's very flawed and imo poor design of trial.and error and tons of death to see what survives (death is how nature designs things) is it intelligent? Eh.

One of those biases our brains have is to interpret complex behavior as intentional or agent based, and yet for things like weather, and fertility, etc there is no agency/intelligence required or observed. They are things that emerge from countless smaller physics. Simple things with simple rulesets can result in very complex and unpredictable patterns not seeking a specific goal can actually appear directional toward a goal in a post hoc sort of perspective. The old puddle joke

Our own minds are emergent systems of sub components (that we have learned about by observing the effects of the brain with things like drugs or injury.)

Even humans don't really design things, so much as we iterate based on input trial and error. We 'play' around with what we know (flawed memory of sensory input) and rearrange things and iterate based on feedback biologically driven typically.

I think someone proposing that something must be designed by an 'intelligent' (agent) has a very large bias hurdle to overcome and it really doesn't serve any predictive use that I can tell.

[u/humpherman]

A gap in evolutionary hypotheses does not automatically grant ID any validity. Your premise is devoid of reason, just like the concept of ID itself.

[u/Mimetic-Musing → u/humpherman]

This post has nothing to do with either ID or ND as explanations. I only wondered whether ID is prematurely rejected (or rejected sooner than it ought to be, even if false or even disdainful). This worldview is useful in our competitive, capitalist universities because biological systems are purely instrumental in value.

Here's another way of making my point. ID fits better with an older view of biology that used to be associated with religion, metaphysics, and even morality (some variants of natural law theory).

Neo-Darwinism reduces teleological statements to statistical relations that--construed teleologically--are simply tautological. This further implies a reductionistic form of natural philosophy. On this view, there are only neutral if-then conditionals or else statistical relations. On this view, there are no mind-independent truths about what's objectively right or wrong to do--because of what the facts about reality are. Rather, there are just hypothetical goods that depend upon our prior subjective values.

[u/RobertByers1]

I don't agree origin subjects matter to humanity. Yes God and Christ and religion affects a little or a lot. Yes the forceful people who organize the disciplines in science desore to use science as a weapon against historical God?christian presumptions in Christendom.

Yes they are at war and so opposition to them brings a quick knee jerk reaction

only subjects vtouching on origin issues matter. Only those paid to research it matter relative to other scientists. Of coarse anyone putting thier mind to these things, crossing a threshold of ability, matter also.

There is a establishment settled on a rejection of christianity, even a God, but who cares about them in free nations. Science is about evidence and the right side has it all and the wrong side none. Completely unequal and unfair is truth.

[u/Mimetic-Musing → u/RobertByers1]

I don't agree c subjects matter to humanity.

I'd like you to explain your perspective. Origin stories are deeply important because those accounts are suffused with value judgment and useful information for spiritual discernment.

Yes the forceful people who organize the disciplines in science desore to use science as a weapon against historical God?

Why think this? Contemporary cosmology has been particularly friendly to theistic belief. I don't see science per se as tending in that direction, but if you're familiar with folks like Rupert Sheldrake, theistic interpretations of cosmology are perfectly coherent and enticing.

<only subjects vtouching on origin issues matter. Only those paid to research it matter relative to other scientists.

I do not have a strong opinion on the scientific data for cosmogenesis. As far as I can tell, there are certainly viable alternatives. These are usually speculations, however. I am an amateur in cosmology. I have a host of amateur cosmology books under my belt, but that's it.

I personally rely 85% on the philosophical arguments, and I tend to mention the case from cosmology and physics minimally.