3. I personally will be attacked in some fashion.

Looks like ID supporters want to fulfill that prophecy even before any critics get around to reviewing the book.

This is from DaveScot at UD:

Mike Gene is a shrinking violet. He carefully hides his identity so his notions about ID can't be used to blemish his reputation (whatever that reputation might be). While I admire his thinking on the subject to some extent I don't have any respect for the man (or possibly woman) himself. His rejection of ID as science is par for the course - my guess is he's covering his ass in case his boss or peers find out what he's been doing in his secret life. No doubt he appeals to many Western Europeans. Western Europe has lost its backbone and has become a continent full of shrinking violets. I'm guessing the United States will have to rescue it yet again in the not too distant future when the Muslim horde successfully takes it over.

As angryoldfatman put it, all you Mike-loving Europeans might as well pick out your prayer rugs now, while you still have a choice.

A starting point for what exactly? MikeGene has "conceded" that ID is "not science." If it's not science, what exactly is it, and what kind of book should we classify the Matrix as? Is it a starting point for a particular philosophy?

I see this coming up repeatedly, but the quote I saw with MikeGene is that he doesn't believe ID is science, but is instead a nascent protoscience. Psychology could have been classified as the same, once upon a time. So could sociology, or a number of other fields (Hard as well as soft, I imagine.)

My only regret with MikeGene saying that is it's nuanced, and it's easier to quote him out of context. On the other hand, watching people do that is a great way to expose people who either misunderstand what he's saying, or are being dishonest.

Wonder if that's by design or chance.

A starting point for what exactly? MikeGene has "conceded" that ID is "not science." If it's not science, what exactly is it, and what kind of book should we classify the Matrix as? Is it a starting point for a particular philosophy?

I think Mike should retract the nonsense about ID not being "scientific." It's every bit as scientific as the blind-watchmaker hypothesis. Ideas regarding design detection, retroviral influence, front loading detection, CSI, etc, are not merely philosophical. One need not be religious nor non-religious to consider them. One or more of the "ID" ideas may be true or false, but they are within the realm of scientific enquiry.

It is interestng to speculate on a post-FLE world (i.e., where FLE has been accepted as mainstream science). I would suggest that 99+% of modern evolutionary theory would survive in the new theory (comon descent, natural selection, point mutations, etc., all these would still be rellevant), though obviously with additions.

Oh, I doubt it'll be just FLE. I've long suspected science was moving much more rapidly toward an EAM-like model. And I expect that will factor large in the amalgam we end up with.

Atheism would survive unscathed; we are only talking about a human-like intelligence, afterall (and personally I would find it very it fascinating that we had evidence for ETI). The creationists would still be campaigning against the new version of modern evolutionary theory, as it still disagrees with the Bible about God creating each kind.

The die-hard ideologists fighting science vs. religion wars have been at it for thousands of years, they aren't going to quit any time soon. For most people, such perennial dueling metaphysics is a total bore, doesn't affect their lives or beliefs in the least, and nobody but the combatants really cares. For all the good it does them, which is zilch. Wannabe mind-tyrants are a dime a dozen in all generations.

What I'd like to see is less rust on the scaffolding of science (rust never sleeps, you know). IOW, get the wannabe mind-tyrants out of the business of claiming their metaphysical beliefs *are* science. That's a hefty corruption bound to lose in any open warfare with the 99% of the rest of humanity who believes as they choose to believe despite what scientists have to say about it. Science is too important to allow it to collapse from sheer weight of ideological corruption.

As far as the culture war goes, the difference would be a few people at Telic Thoughts coming on to our side!

If "our side" means real science, most of us have been there all along, just waiting on you to open your eyes. Is that really so surprising to you? §;o)

CThomas

Then, one day in the future, philosophy may put the disparate conclusions together into a new uber-theoretic. They won't call that Intelligent Design either, but it will look a lot like ID. And everyone will go on as if they'd known it all along, and wonder why scientists ever felt so threatened by it here in our age of relative ignorance. Such is the way of things"¦ time (and knowledge) marches on.

It is interestng to speculate on a post-FLE world (i.e., where FLE has been accepted as mainstream science). I would suggest that 99+% of modern evolutionary theory would survive in the new theory (comon descent, natural selection, point mutations, etc., all these would still be rellevant), though obviously with additions. Atheism would survive unscathed; we are only talking about a human-like intelligence, afterall (and personally I would find it very it fascinating that we had evidence for ETI). The creationists would still be campaigning against the new version of modern evolutionary theory, as it still disagrees with the Bible about God creating each kind. As far as the culture war goes, the difference would be a few people at Telic Thoughts coming on to our side!

Does Bill Dembski calling you an "amateur at the philosophy of science" qualify as a personal attack?

I don't think so. Dembski's statement qualifies more as a philosopher of science asserting his expertise in that particular subject to a critic who cited philosophers in his agreement with Mike that ID isn't a scientific theory [critic]. I don't recall that Mike ever claimed to be a philosopher of science.

Dembski apparently believes ID *is* a scientific theory. I do not agree, though I do think it's 'science' if one approaches it scientifically. There are a couple of developed sub-theories (CSI and IC), but these two things - possibly testable yet not so far confirmed - do not an uber-theoretic make. The NDS and its many developed sub-theories *do* add up to an uber-theoretic and it still holds sway in science. Will continue to hold sway until and unless something comparable in scope and more explanatory than this comes along. ID is not there yet.

Mike clearly approaches the issue scientifically in his book, but asking the questions and seeking the clues is not a theory. Developing a test and doing the experiment is not a theory either, even if it confirms your suspicions and falsifies the standard model's predictions per that experiment.

There is a good deal of design-informed and design-oriented science going on in fields of biology, with spin-offs to pharmaceutical design, information systems and materials science. It's just not called Intelligent Design. It's called "non-linear dynamics" or "self-organizing systems" or "computational genomics" or even "programmed nanotechnology." The RM-NS ideology-tainted pablum will soon fade away from disuse, and biology will do just fine for awhile without any restrictive uber-theoretic to constrain its discoveries.

Then, one day in the future, philosophy may put the disparate conclusions together into a new uber-theoretic. They won't call that Intelligent Design either, but it will look a lot like ID. And everyone will go on as if they'd known it all along, and wonder why scientists ever felt so threatened by it here in our age of relative ignorance. Such is the way of things… time (and knowledge) marches on.

The same goes for ID. The questions we should be asking are: Is it interesting? Can it be a useful? Can it lead to further research? Is it a correct reading of the evidence?

If ID can answer yes to all these, then it will start to get accepted as science.