Ed Feser's New Post against ID

Aristotelian/Thomist philosopher, Ed Feser, has a new post:

Thomism versus the design argument

The crucial part of his argument:

"Similarly, so long as you insist (for whatever reason) on treating natural substances as if they were a kind of artifact, and on predicating attributes of both the world’s “designer” and of human designers in a univocal way, you will never (from an A-T point of view, anyway) get even one inch closer to the God of classical theism, because you will necessarily be describing the “designer” in a way that not merely falls short of, but is positively inconsistent with, classical theism."

A commenter by the name of Maolsheachlann (how the heck do you pronounce that?) made what I thought was a very good point:

"I don't understand how intelligent design in the ID sense would be different from a miracle. A miracle is a kind of bypassing of the usual operations of nature, and yet it it attests to God-- not to some kind of sorcerer or Urizen. You may not be able to reach the God of classical theism from a miraculous cure of Parkinson's disease, and yet God doesn't disdain to act in this way."

So why must God disdain to directly intervene and create life?

9/11 Truthers and Truth

A movement that describes themselves as a truth movement should be pursuing the truth, even if it seems to weaken their view of what the truth is. I've found a number of instances in the 9/11 Truth movement that seem to be evidence that that it is seeking the truth. A recent example is a recent entry at the blog, ae911truth.org. Architect Richard Gage debated journalist Chris Mohr on the question of what caused the WTC building collapses. Apparently Mr. Mohr did his homework and communicated with NIST, in order to find out their responses to truthers ojbections.

What is admirable is that ae911truth printed the responses that Mr. Mohr received: Answers from NIST.

I haven't listened to the debate, yet. I'll be interested in seeing if there is a written response to NIST's answers.

9/11 Truthers aren't always upfront about weaknesses in their case. Examples that come to mind would be their calling David Chandler a physics professor, when he's only a high school physics teacher, or their not admitting that there might be a problem with the online journal that supposedly peer-reviewed some of their papers. So I'm not claiming they're perfect. But there seems to be some sincere effort to find the truth, regardless of where it leads.

How Important are Gaps?

Are gaps important in design inferences? Most ID proponents seem to think they are. Usually an ID argument tries to show two things:

(1) Natural (non-intelligent) processes (probably) cannot account for x.

(2) x closely resembles designed objects.

And concludes,

(3) Therefore, x is probably designed.

But what if (1) were false? What if

(4) Natural processes not only can but do account for x?

Does that mean that x was not designed?

No. For either

(5) The designer could have either introduced a previous designed object y, knowing that natural processes (probably) would then take y and produce x.

Or

(6) The designer could have produced the natural processes themselves, knowing that they (probably) would in turn produce x.

And if (2) is still true, then the design inference should work.

So really, showing gaps is only one of the ways to construct a design inference.

Mike Gene seems to rely upon (5) in constructing his design inferences.

Thomists seem to rely upon (6) in conducting their design inferences.

Of course, I don't think there's an inherent reason why proving (1) is a bad way to go.

This Should be Interesting

Bradley Monton will be speaking at a Time Travel Conference on April 9th, and telling us on April 8th what happened there. :)

PZ certainly gets this one right.

Somebody Tell Them Dickens London Wasn't a Utopia

"Damn, no. We're in the middle of a storm with 35-50 mph winds howling outside. I guess I'm just going to have to face this universe sober."

Yes, PZ, we're in the middle of a storm. I'll face it with you, but I don't think we'll win this one. I'm hoping Jesus comes soon.

Charlie who?

I hear that Charlie Sheen has been in the news quite a bit, lately. Something about him going completely whacko. In case you didn't know, Charlie is one of those celebrity 9/11 truthers. So what should we conclude from this?

Of course, we 9/11 whackos are already devising our own conspiracy theories about ol' Charlie. Or at least, I am. The powers behind 9/11, in order to discredit 9/11 truth, have been feeding Charlie a regular diet of psychedelic drugs, sure to induce a psychotic state.

So if I start boasting about how my tired blood has turned into tiger blood, somebody check out those vitamin supplements I've been taking.

Objectivity or Subjectivity?

Mike Gene often argues that perceiving design is a subjective exercise and therefore is not science (here for example). But I'm not sure that there is anything that is completely objective. Mike would say that measurement is completely objective, but it isn't. Is the volume in that beaker 50ml or 51ml? I see 50ml. You see 51ml. So we get a third person, who sees 52ml. We keep asking people and eventually get a majority who see 51ml. So now our measurement is what the majority of people see? So if the majority of people see design, then it's designed?

Well, let's fix the problem. We'll have a machine measure the liquid. When it measures out 51ml, it will stop pouring the liquid. The problem is that we first need to calibrate the machine so that it knows what 51ml is. And who gets to do that? Some subjective human being, of course. And we're right back to square one.

But we can argue that whereas most people will agree on whether it is 50ml or 51ml, it is more difficult to get a majority of people to agree of whether something is designed or not. So then the question of objectivity or subjectivity becomes a relativistic one: how easy is it to get a majority of people to agree on something?

So if ID advocates could get a majority of people to agree that something was designed, then it would be objective and science? I doubt that Mike would agree with this. I'm curious what his response would be.