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.

Often proponents of ID will argue that a certain kind of teleology is necessary for objective morality. A good example of this can be found in Ben Wiker's book, Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists:

If we, as a part of nature, are ultimately derived from purposeless material forces, morality should be defined as moral Darwinism has defined it. If, on the other hand, we are ultimately the result of an intelligent designer, morality must follow that design. (p. 30)

In my reflections below, I raise some concerns about the claim that ID can play a role in grounding an objective morality, but considering a distinction between two types of teleology made by traditional philosophers.
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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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The following essay was written by Thought Provoker 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.

My daughter is well on her way to getting a PhD. She casually mentioned my interest in Libet and Orch OR to one of her mentors. He asked for more informations. Here is the letter I am sending to him…

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The following essay was written by Albert de Roos 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.

The endosymbiotic theory for the origin of mitochondria claims that our mitochondria were derived from an engulfed bacterium that was enslaved to become the current powerhouse of most eukaryotic cells. This endosymbiotic theory has become consensus among evolutionary biologists to such an extent that it is considered a fact and forms the basis for most research on molecular evolution. In fact, a falsification of the endosymbiotic theory would shake the scientific world and would have to lead to the reinterpretation of virtually all phylogenetic data. I argue that the mechanistic basis of the endosymbiotic theory is not sound and even contradictive to our current concepts of evolution. Therefore, there seems to be no reason to consider the endosymbiotic theory a fact.

All evolutionary theories must offer an explanation in mechanistic terms of how it should or could have happened in order to be tested. The difficult thing with the endosymbiotic theory is that it proposes no real mechanism and most textbooks show the simplistic picture of a cell that swallows another cell that becomes a mitochondrion. Unfortunately, it is not so simple as that. There is a difference between the process of endosymbiosis and its incorporation in the germline, necessitating genetic changes. What were those changes? What was the host? Was it a fusion, was it engulfment, how did the mitochondrion get its second membrane, how did two genomes in one cell integrate and coordinate? The theory is also strongly teleological, illustrated by the widely used term "˜enslavement'. But how do you enslave another cell, how do you replace its proteins and genes without affecting existing functions? The existence of obligate bacterial endosymbionts in some present eukaryotes is often presented as a substitute for a mechanism, but they remain bacteria and give not rise to new organelles. So, before we can speak of the endosymbiotic as a testable scientific theory, we need a mechanistic scenario which is lacking at the moment.

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The following essay was written by Thought Provoker 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.

On October 4th, Paul Nelson and Michael Ruse are/were scheduled to have a debate for discussing what it would take for them to switch sides. Here is a link to Paul Nelson's announcement where he said "Michael Ruse and I are going to have a sort of un-debate." I am making the easy prediction of a non-outcome to the un-debate where the spin-masters on both sides will claim victory. This is my overt attempt at preempting with my un-spin to provoke thinking about the polarization that this represents. Allow me some hyperbola to illustrate the point; one extreme view would be to ask for the equivalent of the random assembly of a 747 from a pile of junk another extreme view would be to ask for the equivalent of an Intelligent Designer saying "I am" accompanied by a pyrotechnical display of local shrubbery.

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The following essay was written by Wonders for Oyarsa 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.

As a Computer Scientist, I never was terribly impressed by the notion of "junk DNA". The idea that 90% of our DNA has no function is counter-intuitive at best. The human genome already seems to be surprisingly small to specify all the information required to describe how to build a human being from a single cell (implying to me some pretty good compression), and further reducing this to the information content of Microsoft Office is not what I would expect. But then again, life isn't always intuitive. Stranger truths have been found in nature, so I suppose we need to keep an open mind.

Then I remembered that we have around 96% genetic similarity to the chimpanzee - meaning large chunks of our genome can be matched up with chunks of the chimp genome almost exactly. These things seem completely at odds to me. If a portion of the genome is junk, than there should be no selective pressure to keep this portion the same. In fact, there may be a functional advantage in removing it altogether (the organism can get by with less nucleotides in its cells). Over 5 million years, it certainly feels like these junk sections would become completely scrambled, rather than maintaining almost total similarity.

So, what better way to demonstrate this than with the clear irrefutable scientific proof of a toxic asexual bunny mutation simulator?

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The following essay was written by Thought Provoker 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.

I am a critic of the Intelligent Design Movement. I am also a supporter of Intelligent Design science. In the past MikeGene has indicated this makes me "rather unique". Another "rather unique" aspect to my thinking is that I separate the concepts of "ethics" and "morality".

Plenty of people have told me the terms mean the exact same thing. I suspect dictionary definitions and word origins would generally support their contention, but I still offer there is a dichotomy. Here is a question that might help expose the dichotomy I see"¦

Is morality defined by God, or do practical ethics guide our behavior?

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As readers of TT know, we periodically guest host essays from people who are not official contributors. Since I am about to get very busy again, I was going to try an experiment for the rest of the year - I would like to unilaterally offer the opportunity of my own posting space as a platform to all TT members. All you need to do is post your essay in the comments section of a Rabbit thread and request it be guest-hosted. The platform is open to both ID people and critics of ID. But there are some criteria I will informally employ.

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[Author: Thought Provoker]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of The Future

One of the biggest obstacles to accepting ID hypotheses as scientific endeavors is their appeal to magic-like mechanisms. But what if a magic-like aspect in nature has been around so long that we don't see it for the magic it is? I suggest what we think of as randomness is, for all practical purposes, magic.

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[Here is a guest post from TT member, Thought Provoker]

Front Loading is a popular hypothesis among the earnest ID scientists. Whether these scientists refer to it by name or just in general concepts, they are looking for the answer to ID's "innocuous question" by searching for biological solutions that presume later biological needs. A designer-centric term for this would be "planned". A mainstream scientific term would be "supernatural". For the Third Choice model I suggest "retrocausal" (a generalized observation of an action occurring before a cause.) While "retrocausal" normally implies time travel, we need a looser definition due to the lack of appropriate candidates in the English language. For example, a soft retrocasual example would be the action of someone taking an umbrella out of the closet and carrying it before it rains. This is the designer-centric 'planning". A hard retrocausual example would be precognition. This is mainstream's "supernatural".

Retrocausalty alone isn't enough to explain design. We also need an organizing process or agency. The designer-centric answer is "the designer did it". The mainstream answer is "nature selection did it". The Third Choice involves interconnected quantum effects.

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