The following essay was written by Jim Madden and the views/arguments contained within do not necessarily reflect the views of Mike Gene. Mike Gene hosts such essays simply to provoke thought and promote discussion and communication.

Here's how I define "nominalism" and "realism":

The Realism Thesis (RT): There are some predications, say Px, such that 'P' refers to a property of x which is identical to all other instances of P.

The Nominalist Thesis (NT): For any predication, Px, 'P' means only that x is a member of a set of contingently associated individuals (or sense images of individuals) with nothing intrinsically in common.

[Of course NT could (should) be worked with more. It basically assumes a sort of crude set nominalism, as opposed to an exemplar or similarity view (Berkeley) or somebody who analyzes away similarity in terms of something more fundamental (Hume in the Treatise). I do, however, believe the argument can be adjusted for more sophisticated versions of nominalism.]

To get a sense of my way of thinking of RT vs. NT consider the following proposition:

(1) Pa and Pm.

One who subscribes to RT analyzes (1) as saying something (being P) is identical between a and m. The proponent of NT would analyze (1) as saying that a and m (taken either as material individuals or sense images of such) are contingently associated as members of a set, 'P'. Membership in P is accounted for not in terms of intrinsic properties of a and m, but in terms of social convention, pragmatic conditioning, prior neurological wiring, etc.

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I have always maintained that ID is not science. Yet there is a flip-side to this coin: I have also maintained that ID is not religion. Ironically, while many on the ID side are uncomfortable with the "ID is not science" position and comfortable with the "ID is not religion" position, there appears to be perfect symmetry when it comes to the critics, who are uncomfortable with the "ID is not religion" position and comfortable with the "ID is not science" position. Just another example of yin-yang.

I have previously fleshed out different aspects of my views/approach:

To this, let's now add the relationship between theology/religion and The Design Matrix.

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If the ability to detect design necessarily entails a subjective element, then any investigator should be aware of the subjective obstacles that can come into play. And for those who have noticed, I have been laying the groundwork not only in The Design Matrix, but also here on Telic Thoughts.

I have tried to get people to understand that we all don't see and think alike. I have spoken of naïve realism, disconfirmation bias, stereotypes, maintaining an open mind, and confirmation bias.

Let me now add another concept from psychology "“ tolerance for ambiguity. I myself have a very high tolerance for ambiguity, as can be seen in The Design Matrix, but also in most areas of my life. But what is ambiguity tolerance? that Let me just quote from the short Wikipedia entry on this phenomenon.

Ambiguity tolerance is the ability to perceive ambiguity in information and behavior in a neutral and open way.

Ambiguity tolerance is an important issue in personality development and education. In psychology and in management, levels of tolerance of ambiguity are correlated with creativity,[1] risk aversion, psychological resilience, lifestyle,[2] orientation towards diversity (cross-cultural communication, intercultural competence), and leadership style.[3]

Wilkinson's Modes of Leadership is largely based on ambiguity tolerance. Mode one leaders have the least tolerance to ambiguity with mode four leaders enjoying and preferring to work in ambiguous situations. In part this is due to what Wilkinson calls 'emotional resilience'.

The converse, ambiguity intolerance,[4][5] which was introduced in The Authoritarian Personality in 1950,[6] was defined in 1975 as a "tendency to perceive or interpret information marked by vague, incomplete, fragmented, multiple, probable, unstructured, uncertain, inconsistent, contrary, contradictory, or unclear meanings as actual or potential sources of psychological discomfort or threat."

This bunny needs a caption.

Telic Thoughts member kornbelt888 makes a point that I like:

Well, one definition is: Relating to the use of science or technology in the investigation and establishment of facts or evidence in a court of law. Except for an actual "court of law", I think that sounds closer to what is going on with Mike and his fellow-travelers. I don't normally think of detectives when I think of "philosophers", and I think of this as more detective work than anything else. Plus I just like the sound of the word "forensic."

The analogy between The Design Matrix and a police investigation is useful in many ways. Here are three:

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In his book, Vital Dust, Nobel Laureate Chritian de Duve writes, "A bioengineer attempting to construct a cell designed to proliferate as fast as possible could not come up with anything better than a bacterial cell." Indeed. In fact, as I point out in The Design Matrix, reproduction is the means by which a front-loading designer can perpetuate designs far into the future. Yet the simple perpetuation of design through reproduction would not be enough. The cell, as a vehicle that both expresses and carries the design, would be designed with sufficient resiliency to persist across deep time. It is this inherent resiliency that prevents the blind watchmaker from relying entirely on mutation and reproduction such that the original designs would all be erased over deep time due to countless selection pressures. Resiliency, in essense, represents a phenotypic space where the blind watchmaker is not needed. This combination (balance?) of enhanced proliferation and resiliency would allow the designed life forms to spread a network of deep roots into and througout the entire Earth, further ensuring many existing populations are significantly tied to their original ancestral states "“ the designed state (ie., front-loading).

Recent discoveries about the resiliency of bacterial life continue to impress scientists. One recently discovered species, Chryseobacterium greenlandensis, is quite remarkable:

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A new analysis of the Martian rock that gave hints of water on the Red Planet — and, therefore, optimism about the prospect of life — now suggests the water was more likely a thick brine, far too salty to support life as we know it.

The finding, by scientists at Harvard University and Stony Brook University, is detailed this week in the journal Science.

"Liquid water is required by all species on Earth and we've assumed that water is the very least that would be necessary for life on Mars," says Nicholas J. Tosca, a postdoctoral researcher in Harvard's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. "However, to really assess Mars' habitability we need to consider the properties of its water. Not all of Earth's waters are able to support life, and the limits of terrestrial life are sharply defined by water's temperature, acidity, and salinity."

["¦.]

The water activity of pure water is 1.0, where all of its molecules are unaffected by dissolved solute and free to mediate biological processes. Terrestrial seawater has a water activity of 0.98. Decades of research, largely from the food industry, have shown that few known organisms can grow when water activity falls below 0.9, and very few can survive below 0.85.

Based on the chemical composition of salts that precipitated out of ancient Martian waters, Tosca and his colleagues project that the water activity of Martian water was at most 0.78 to 0.86, and quite possibly reaching below 0.5 as evaporation continued to concentrate the brines, making it an environment uninhabitable by terrestrial species.

"This doesn't rule out life forms of a type we've never encountered," Knoll says, "but life that could originate and persist in such a salty setting would require biochemistry distinct from any known among even the most robust halophiles on Earth."

The scientists say that the handful of terrestrial halophiles — species that can tolerate high salinity — descended from ancestors that first evolved in purer waters. Based on what we know about Earth, they say that it's difficult to imagine life arising in acidic, oxidizing brines like those inferred for ancient Mars.

-Here

Christian university biology professors are keenly aware of the creation-evolution cultural war. Fueled by misrepresentation and misunderstanding by both secular atheistic scientists and fundamental Christian literalists, this controversy continues to sow unjustified and unnecessary seeds of discord and division. Both ironic and tragic, the champions of these secular and claimed Christian worldviews fail to recognize the counterproductive consequences of their flawed and self-serving pronouncements. By failing to articulate the messages of science and faith in intellectually honest and religiously credible ways, they unwittingly inflict great damage to the vital causes of rational evidence-based learning (science) and also to the credibility of Christian faith.

As a Christian biologist, I am also keenly aware that land mines abound for anyone within the Christian community possessing the temerity to speak authoritatively regarding the realities of evolution. These people tend to get run over by both extremes of the discussion - branded as an enemy of the faith by Christian fundamentalists, and professionally discredited by the secular science community for suggesting that God might have a role in creation.

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