What I'm really interested in is whether God could have made the world in a different way; that is, whether the necessity of logical simplicity leaves any freedom at all.- Albert Einstein

Einstein seems to have had Nature's constants in mind when he mused about constraints imposed by logical simplicity. Small adjustments in constant values could have resulted in a very different universe and not one hospitable to life. The musing has an unmistakable telic aspect to it. Is it even reasonable for us to expect that an empirical approach would yield answers to questions about ranges of constant values if we don't discern the initial cause for our resulting universe?

Somewhere in Telic Thoughts, Mike Gene went on record as saying that he did not consider SETI to be science. Meanwhile, Zachriel said:

SETI is based on a well-defined, albeit weak, scientific hypothesis.

SETI's (the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) hypothesis, if I understand it, is that if we found a narrow bandwidth radio signal from outerspace, it would be reasonable to conclude that it was generated by an extra-terrestrial intelligence. This is based on (1) the prior experience that we human beings generate such narrow signals, due to the energy required to produce a radio signal powerful enough to send long distances, and (2) the lack of knowing what non-intelligent causes would produce narrow bandwidth signals. Further evidence might come, if the signal is of a type unlikely to be produced by non-intelligent means, such as the prime numbers, from 2 to 101 (as in the movie, Contact).
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Pat Robertson's less-than-impressive ability to predict the future:

Last year, Robertson predicted that a terrorist act, possibly involving a nuclear weapon, would result in mass killing in the United States. Noting that it hadn't come to pass, Robertson said, "All I can think is that somehow the people of God prayed and God in his mercy spared us."

Comments ScienceBlogs' Ed Brayton:

And this is exactly why supernatural actions cannot be a part of science: they can't be tested because no matter what happens, you can always find a rationalization for why it didn't happen.

But this is the wrong conclusion to draw from poor Pat's sorry prophecy-record. You can always find rationalizations, whether or not the supernatural is involved. For example, Pat Robertson could have made the exact same "prediction", claiming that space aliens with the ability to read and influence minds had prevented the terrorist attack. This explanation is fully naturalistic, yet no less ridiculous than the supernatural explanation involving a terrorism-foiling god.

The God-did-it and the space-aliens-did-it explanation are ridiculous for the same reason: They both involve an inscrutable, capricious designer. But there's no reason why natural or supernatural designers must be capricious. In The Design Matrix, for example, my fellow telician Mike Gene uses the concept of a rational designer to flesh out insights about the machinery of life.

Bradford posted about Paul Davies' op-ed in the New York Times on the thread Science and Faith. Which quickly went downhill as our live-in critics decended like vultures to put a quick stop to any real discussion.

The SciBlog community wasn't hampered by such tactics, so came out hot and heavy in defense of their ideology against Davies' observations. Anti-theist PZ Myers insisted that Faith is not a prerequisite for science, but only managed to demonstrate laughable ignorance of the relevant science. My favorite excerpts…

When someone says that life would not exist if the laws of physics were just a little bit different, I have to wonder"¦ how do they know? Just as there are many different combinations of amino acids that can make any particular enzyme, why can't there be many different combinations of physical laws that can yield life?

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Over the summer, I noted the following:

There is something else subtle about this article that is of interest: Koonin seems very familiar with the writings of Dennett, Gould, Dawkins, etc. I think it's about time to more fully explore the implications of such "popular science."

Many people think of popular science books as little more than some scientist's attempt to explain science to the general public. But I think such books are more influential than this. I think the primary readers of popular science books are scientists themselves.

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Geobiologist Elisabet Sahtouris gives a rather interesting interview to Scott London (HT: MatthewCromer)

She says:

When the scientists decided that they didn't need God in their worldview, they eliminated God from their Cartesian worldview but kept the idea of an array of mechanisms. Now how do you explain the origin of mechanisms without a creator? By definition, a machine cannot exist without a creator. If they are there and couldn't have been assembled on purpose by an intentional creator, the only alternative is to say they came together by accident. So you got these bizarre theories that literally say that if enough parts of a Boeing 747 blow around in a whirlwind in a junkyard eventually one will assemble itself. This is going to appear to us as perhaps the most bizarre and perhaps harebrained concepts of how things work that has ever been proposed in the history of the world. And I think it will be seen that way in the very near future, because it is fundamentally an illogical point of view. The problem was that they thought you had to choose between God, the purposeful inventor, and accident. We had no theory of self- creation as a perfectly natural, biological, universal event. Now we do, so we don't have to invoke either hypothesis.

Sahtouris nicely captures the perceptual Triad at work. When it comes to the origins, we have the Non-teleological Perspective (it's all an accident) and the Teleological Perspective. The Teleological Perspective then breaks down into two primary schools of thought: Design from Beyond(God or ETI) and Design from Within (Self-Creation). In my opinion, ID exists at the interface of these two schools. By focusing on design, and not the designer, ID bridges these two schools, providing points of commonality. The ID movement may have blown some holes in this bridge, but I think it still exists (as evidenced by the various types of IDers I have encountered on the Internet throughout the years).

Sahtouris also expresses her views on Darwin.

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Something very significant is going on with Michael Behe's The Edge of Evolution, and it seems to be going largely unremarked.

So begins this brief commentary of Viewpoint. The author follows up with this observation:

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Loved the teaching. Loved the science. Couldn't take the politics. Couldn't take the tenure stress. That about sums it up.

Another one bites the dust. It's not always about dueling metaphysics. Sometimes it's just about politics and money. I can't comment on this story better than He Who Lives It (and makes the best of it), so here you go…

A farewell to academia

There is an episode of South Park where Jimmy and Timmy, the two physically challenged kids in South park, accidentally join a gang. They mistakenly thought that the Crips were a gang for crippled kids. Upset that the Crips have a rivalry with the Bloods, Jimmy organizes a lock-in at a local rec center for the Crips and the Bloods, since lock-ins are always so fun. When Jimmy realizes that things might get ugly at the lock-in, he responds with "Why don't we at least give it a chance? I mean … Come on!"

"I mean … come on" is about the only response I have to this op-ed. It's written by John Hauptman, a physics professor at Iowa State University, in response to the denial of tenure of Guillermo Gonzalez. I haven't said anything about Gonzalez yet because I had no idea of the reasons he was denied tenure and without knowing that, there isn't much to say. I thought it was going to come down to an issue of economics, not ID, but it appears I was at least partially wrong.

For Hauptman, the issue came down to the question "What is science?" Gonzalez, Hauptman says, is "very creative, intelligent and knowledgeable, highly productive scientifically and an excellent teacher." Furthermore, Hauptman says he has always been fascinated by the ideas Gonzalez is researching,

"always been fascinated by his ideas, for example, that the first few millimeters of moon dust contain pieces of ancient Earth, the circling moon acting as a vacuum cleaner scooping up impact debris, or that numerous but precise and delicate conditions allow life on our Earth. Where else is life allowed? These are great questions."

So Hauptman admits that he is fascinated by Gonzalez's research, that he's asking great questions, and that he is "highly productive scientifically." (my emphasis)

What's the problem then? It is that he has "expressed his belief" in ID. I really don't know how to respond to that. I mean … come on. Give me something specific, man. Point me to some faulty arguments. Point me to incompetence. Give me anything. I mean … come on. "ID isn't science" is about as much of a non-answer as "God did it." It's a fancy slogan that just gets in the way of the real issues. Ironically, in this case, it appears to be a "science stopper" if we are to take Hauptman at his word when he said Gonzalez is "highly productive scientifically."

I mean … come on.

Telic Thoughts member, Thought Provoker, writes:

I am mindful of the length this thread is getting, but I didn't know where else to respond.

Well, here y'go, TP. The thread is all yours to gently guide.