The goal of the Intelligent Design movement is the dismantling of modern science

[TheLurch]

Are you saying God is not possibly going to break my car or hide my keys? This is Deism, pure and simple.

The God you envision certainly could. But that same God could easily change the results we've gotten from every single experiment we've ever performed, making them completely unreliable indicators of the natural world. Including retrospectively, by changing our memories and records of the experiments.

This is why science can't include God. It makes the whole process unreliable. And people of faith throughout the centuries have recognized that, as Rogue has made clear repeatedly here.

But obviously you feel you've got a superior intellect to all of those people. The arrogance is astonishing.

[Seeker]

Let me ask you this: If supernatural creation of life is the truth, what conclusion should science come to?

I have to agree with Dave there. If it is the truth, science should be able to discover it. How do skepctics refute that point (except to point out that, obviously, methodological naturalism is sometimes certainly useful)?

[rogue06]

Are you saying God is not possibly going to break my car or hide my keys? This is Deism, pure and simple.

"... the king commanded Jerahmeel, a son of the king, Seraiah son of Azriel and Shelemiah son of Abdeel to arrest Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet. But the LORD had hidden them." (Jer. 36:26)

Are you seriously saying that when you look for your keys that you consider the notion that God hid them from as a viable reason you can't find them?

In any case, the point is that science is not equipped to examine the supernatural in spite of your loony "if-it's-complex-it-must-be-designed" God-of-the-gaps methodology.

As the influential mid 20th cent. geoscientist Arthur Newell Strahler observed "The naturalistic view is espoused by science as its fundamental assumption." He then provided the follow for why this is the case.

[S]upernatural forces, if they can be said to exist, cannot be observed, measured, or recorded by the procedures of science -- that's simply what the word "supernatural" means. There can be no limit to the kinds and shapes of supernatural forces and forms the human mind is capable of conjuring up "from nowhere." Scientists therefore have no alternative but to ignore the claims of the existence of supernatural forces and causes. This exclusion is a basic position that must be stoutly adhered to by scientists or their entire system of evaluating and processing information will collapse.... To find a reputable scientist proposing a theory of supernatural force is disturbing to the community of scientists. If the realm of matter and energy with which scientists work is being influenced or guided by a supernatural force, science will be incapable of explaining the information it has collected; it will be unable to make predictions about what will happen in the future, and its explanations of what has happened in the past may be inadequate or incomplete.

IOW, the introduction of supernatural explanations into science demolishes its explanatory force because it would be requires that the premise that literally anything which is logically possible can become an actuality, despite any and all scientific laws be incorporated as an operational principle. Consequently, the destruction of the stability of science would come to an abrupt end.

Methodological naturalism is an essential component of science -- though it is not a dogmatic requirement, it flows from reasonable evidential requirements, such as the ability to test theories empirically ... the preference for naturalistic causes may have been encouraged by past successes of naturalistic explanations.

As Maarten Boudry and his colleagues at the University of Ghent note, the preference for naturalistic explanations in science is a sensible rule of thumb that has been arrived at after the consistent failure of so many supernatural explanations in the history of science. This means that the decision to eschew the supernatural "did not drop from thin air, but is just the best methodological guideline that emerged from the history of science, in particular the pattern of consistent success of naturalistic explanations."

Likewise, Niall Shanks, a professor in the History and Philosophy of Science argues that "the methodological naturalist will not simply rule hypotheses about supernatural causes out of court," but rather based on the failure of supernaturalistic arguments

Finally, in his Physico-Theology and the Mixed Sciences: The Role of Theology in Early Modern Natural Philosophy, the Australian philosopher of history and science, Peter Harrison, argues that while folks like Bacon, Descartes and Galileo were overwhelmingly motivated by piety, that they all began excluding theological considerations from natural philosophical inquiries. So what we have is that during the Enlightenment, Christian philosophers outlined the philosophical justifications for removing appeal to supernatural forces from investigation of the natural world. Interesting one of the motivations for Bacon's opposition to supernatural explanations in science was a fear that this "undoubtedly will make an heretical religion, and an imaginary and fabulous [science]."

Certainly, but that does not mean he is not in control of natural processes, or that he never intervenes.

" The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD." (Prov. 16:33)

He's obviously intervened at least twice.

But this gets back to First and Second Causes. God is always the First cause. Science tries to determine the Second cause. The how.

Yes, it does, if you ignore the possibility that God has acted.

By estimating the probability of natural causes producing a result. If it's remotely improbable, then we deduce that an intelligent agent has been at work.

That is utter nonsense.

If I shuffle a deck of cards the order they end up in when I'm done is astronomically improbable and therefore according to you evidence of "an intelligent agent has been at work."

My best friend and "girlfriend" in the first grade when I lived in Florida moved to Texas whereas mine moved to Washington D.C. Years later I ran into her outside Atlanta, Georgia in a class we were both taking in college. According to you our meeting could only be the result of an intelligent agent being at work.

In your model, every coincidence, every unlikely event is the result of an "intelligent agent" stepping in and caused it. Are you now finally starting to grasp why your method isn't just worthless but worse than worthless?

We went through the flagellum, and you were not able to tell me what the function of the rod and hook were, as the flagellum was putatively developing.

An example of your notorious Dory-like memory. These were in fact explained to you. Go back and look again.

Inquiry may proceed, it's just that at some points we may reasonably conclude design.

Your if-it's-unlikely-it-must-therefore-be-designed bilge again?

And inquiry gets shut down. As Michael Ruse has carefully explained supernatural explanations are "science-stoppers." They are dead-end explanations that may provide a false sense of having explained the problem of, say, the origin of life, by appealing to a miracle from God, but in reality, all that we have done is given ourselves an excuse to stop looking for better, naturalistic explanations that generate further testable predictions. Basically, a supernatural explanation isn't really an explanations at all, since it offers no predictions over and above the fact to be explained.

God's intervention in Joseph's life led to the brothers being shown to be responsible for what they did.

The point you seem to have missed is that God typically uses natural means to enact His will.

Another example would be His use of the Assyrians as His instrument for chastising Israel. Of course God could have summoned a supernatural force to have accomplished this since He is after all God and not limited by such things. But He didn't.

Well, he's describing the scientific method, but without appealing to methodological naturalism.

As noted earlier Boyle sought to study and understand natural phenomena without what he called "intermeddling with supernatural mysteries." One can look through his writings and clearly see that while Boyle was most definitely a believer in Intelligent Design he also held that it was mistaken to invoke God or miraculous explanations while seeking to comprehend the operations of natural phenomena on its own terms.

For Boyle, this was simply due to the fact that those sort of explanations provide no insight into the physical nature of the phenomena or the principles under which they operated, and that rational and practical engagement with creation was the only means for us to increase our knowledge of it.

As Robert C. Bishop Professor of Philosophy and History of Science and associate professor of physics and philosophy at Wheaton College (one of America's foremost Christian institutions) explains:

Boyle defended the idea that biblical studies were superior to natural theology for learning about God and his activity. In contrast, the study of creation was superior to biblical studies for learning about the particulars of creatures and natural principles

Bishop added that

With respect to MN, then, Boyle argued that it was illegitimate to explain the operations of natural phenomena in terms of the actions of spiritual beings, because such explanations gave us no insight into the physical nature of the phenomena and the principles by which they operated.

This is again Deism. And this is an appeal to MN, which is what we are arguing about. And God doesn't intervene?

There is a profound difference between occasionally intervening as needed or desired and constantly tinkering.

[TheLurch]

I have to agree with Dave there. If it is the truth, science should be able to discover it. How do skepctics refute that point (except to point out that, obviously, methodological naturalism is sometimes certainly useful)?

There's nothing to refute. The number of things we don't know will always vastly outweigh the number of things we do, since the universe is a very big place. Any cases where supernatural intervention were involved will just remain perpetually in the "we don't know yet" category.

For now, though, we've made far, far more progress on understanding the origin of life than we have on how to make relativity and quantum mechanics compatible. So the particular instance everybody seems to keep focused on is a misdirection, in my view.

[rogue06]

Are you seriously saying that when you look for your cars that you seriously considered that God hid them from as the reason you can't find them?

In any case, the point is that science is not equipped to examine the supernatural in spite of your loony "if-it's-complex-it-must-be-designed" God-of-the-gaps methodology.

As the influential mid 20th cent. geoscientist Arthur Newell Strahler observed "The naturalistic view is espoused by science as its fundamental assumption." He then provided the follow for why this is the case.

[S]upernatural forces, if they can be said to exist, cannot be observed, measured, or recorded by the procedures of science -- that's simply what the word "supernatural" means. There can be no limit to the kinds and shapes of supernatural forces and forms the human mind is capable of conjuring up "from nowhere." Scientists therefore have no alternative but to ignore the claims of the existence of supernatural forces and causes. This exclusion is a basic position that must be stoutly adhered to by scientists or their entire system of evaluating and processing information will collapse.... To find a reputable scientist proposing a theory of supernatural force is disturbing to the community of scientists. If the realm of matter and energy with which scientists work is being influenced or guided by a supernatural force, science will be incapable of explaining the information it has collected; it will be unable to make predictions about what will happen in the future, and its explanations of what has happened in the past may be inadequate or incomplete.

IOW, the introduction of supernatural explanations into science demolishes its explanatory force because it would be requires that the premise that literally anything which is logically possible can become an actuality, despite any and all scientific laws be incorporated as an operational principle. Consequently, the destruction of the stability of science would come to an abrupt end.

Methodological naturalism is an essential component of science -- though it is not a dogmatic requirement, it flows from reasonable evidential requirements, such as the ability to test theories empirically ... the preference for naturalistic causes may have been encouraged by past successes of naturalistic explanations.

As Maarten Boudry and his colleagues at the University of Ghent note, the preference for naturalistic explanations in science is a sensible rule of thumb that has been arrived at after the consistent failure of so many supernatural explanations in the history of science. This means that the decision to eschew the supernatural "did not drop from thin air, but is just the best methodological guideline that emerged from the history of science, in particular the pattern of consistent success of naturalistic explanations."

Likewise, Niall Shanks, a professor in the History and Philosophy of Science argues that "the methodological naturalist will not simply rule hypotheses about supernatural causes out of court," but rather based on the failure of supernaturalistic arguments

Finally, in his Physico-Theology and the Mixed Sciences: The Role of Theology in Early Modern Natural Philosophy, the Australian philosopher of history and science, Peter Harrison, argues that while folks like Bacon, Descartes and Galileo were overwhelmingly motivated by piety, that they all began excluding theological considerations from natural philosophical inquiries. So what we have is that during the Enlightenment, Christian philosophers outlined the philosophical justifications for removing appeal to supernatural forces from investigation of the natural world. Interesting one of the motivations for Bacon's opposition to supernatural explanations in science was a fear that this "undoubtedly will make an heretical religion, and an imaginary and fabulous [science]."

I'll add one more quote, this one from an essay by the historian of science Ronald Numbers, Science without God: Natural Laws and Christian Beliefs that is contained in at least two of his works, When Science and Christianity Meet and Science and Christianity in Pulpit and Pew (the former he helped edit the latter he wrote):

By the late Middle Ages the search for natural causes had come to typify the work of Christian natural philosophers. Although characteristically leaving the door open for the possibility of direct divine intervention, they frequently expressed contempt for soft-minded contemporaries who invoked miracles rather than searching for natural explanations. The University of Paris cleric Jean Buridan (a. 1295-ca. 1358), described as "perhaps the most brilliant arts master of the Middle Ages," contrasted the philosopher’s search for "appropriate natural causes" with the common folk’s erroneous habit of attributing unusual astronomical phenomena to the supernatural. In the fourteenth century the natural philosopher Nicole Oresme (ca. 1320-82), who went on to become a Roman Catholic bishop, admonished that, in discussing various marvels of nature, "there is no reason to take recourse to the heavens, the last refuge of the weak, or demons, or to our glorious God as if He would produce these effects directly, more so than those effects whose causes we believe are well known to us." Enthusiasm for the naturalistic study of nature picked up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as more and more Christians turned their attention to discovering the so-called secondary causes that God employed in operating the world. The Italian Catholic Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), one of the foremost promoters of the new philosophy, insisted that nature "never violates the terms of the laws imposed upon her."

Methodological naturalism is a tool that was developed by Christians. As Numbers observes in the aforementioned work

Despite the occasional efforts of unbelievers to use scientific naturalism to construct a world without God, it has retained strong Christian support down to the present. And well it might, for, as we have seen, scientific naturalism was largely made in Christendom by pious Christians

[Seeker]

There's nothing to refute. The number of things we don't know will always vastly outweigh the number of things we do, since the universe is a very big place. Any cases where supernatural intervention were involved will just remain perpetually in the "we don't know yet" category.

But if we were to find just one indisputable event of supernatural intervention?

[TheLurch]

But if we were to find just one indisputable event of supernatural intervention?

Then we'd still know that, in the vast majority of cases, science provides excellent practical guidance.

[rogue06]

But if we were to find just one indisputable event of supernatural intervention?

That would be a game changer, but first we need to have one rather than change everything in anticipation of an event we may never witness.

[rogue06]

I'll add one more quote, this one from an essay by the historian of science Ronald Numbers, Science without God: Natural Laws and Christian Beliefs that is contained in at least two of his works, When Science and Christianity Meet and Science and Christianity in Pulpit and Pew (the former he helped edit the latter he wrote):

By the late Middle Ages the search for natural causes had come to typify the work of Christian natural philosophers. Although characteristically leaving the door open for the possibility of direct divine intervention, they frequently expressed contempt for soft-minded contemporaries who invoked miracles rather than searching for natural explanations. The University of Paris cleric Jean Buridan (a. 1295-ca. 1358), described as "perhaps the most brilliant arts master of the Middle Ages," contrasted the philosopher’s search for "appropriate natural causes" with the common folk’s erroneous habit of attributing unusual astronomical phenomena to the supernatural. In the fourteenth century the natural philosopher Nicole Oresme (ca. 1320-82), who went on to become a Roman Catholic bishop, admonished that, in discussing various marvels of nature, "there is no reason to take recourse to the heavens, the last refuge of the weak, or demons, or to our glorious God as if He would produce these effects directly, more so than those effects whose causes we believe are well known to us." Enthusiasm for the naturalistic study of nature picked up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as more and more Christians turned their attention to discovering the so-called secondary causes that God employed in operating the world. The Italian Catholic Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), one of the foremost promoters of the new philosophy, insisted that nature "never violates the terms of the laws imposed upon her."

Methodological naturalism is a tool that was developed by Christians. As Numbers observes in the aforementioned work

Despite the occasional efforts of unbelievers to use scientific naturalism to construct a world without God, it has retained strong Christian support down to the present. And well it might, for, as we have seen, scientific naturalism was largely made in Christendom by pious Christians

The bolded is essentially an expression of the "Two Books" view.

[lee_merrill]

Are you seriously saying that when you look for your keys that you consider the notion that God hid them from as a viable reason you can't find them?

Yes, I certainly believe it's possible, just as God hid Baruch and Jeremiah. And you have not answered the charge of Deism.

... If the realm of matter and energy with which scientists work is being influenced or guided by a supernatural force, science will be incapable of explaining the information it has collected; it will be unable to make predictions about what will happen in the future, and its explanations of what has happened in the past may be inadequate or incomplete.

Well, we want to know the truth, don't we? If a supernatural agent can intervene, and has intervened, then we'd like to know it! This states exactly ID's point, that the scientific explanation of what has happened in the past is inadequate and incomplete. Shutting your eyes to this is to miss an important aspect of the truth.

IOW, the introduction of supernatural explanations into science demolishes its explanatory force because it would be requires that the premise that literally anything which is logically possible can become an actuality, despite any and all scientific laws be incorporated as an operational principle. Consequently, the destruction of the stability of science would come to an abrupt end.

Not at all, investigation of natural laws and principles may proceed, with the caveat that someone may interfere with your apparatus (perhaps a jealous human colleague?), and you hope to be able to detect that.

As Maarten Boudry and his colleagues at the University of Ghent note, the preference for naturalistic explanations in science is a sensible rule of thumb that has been arrived at after the consistent failure of so many supernatural explanations in the history of science. This means that the decision to eschew the supernatural "did not drop from thin air, but is just the best methodological guideline that emerged from the history of science, in particular the pattern of consistent success of naturalistic explanations."

But science is stuck at (for instance) the origin of life, how is it that science is consistently succeeding?

Finally, in his Physico-Theology and the Mixed Sciences: The Role of Theology in Early Modern Natural Philosophy, the Australian philosopher of history and science, Peter Harrison, argues that while folks like Bacon, Descartes and Galileo were overwhelmingly motivated by piety, that they all began excluding theological considerations from natural philosophical inquiries. So what we have is that during the Enlightenment, Christian philosophers outlined the philosophical justifications for removing appeal to supernatural forces from investigation of the natural world. Interesting one of the motivations for Bacon's opposition to supernatural explanations in science was a fear that this "undoubtedly will make an heretical religion, and an imaginary and fabulous [science]."

Source: The Return of the God Hypothesis

Johannes Kepler perceived intelligent design in the mathematical precision of planetary motion and in the three laws he discovered that describe that motion.81 Robert Boyle insisted that the intricate clocklike regularity of physical laws and chemical mechanisms as well as the anatomical structures in living organisms suggested the activity of “a most intelligent and designing agent.” Carl Linnaeus later argued for design based upon the ease with which plants and animals fell into an orderly groups-within-groups system of classification. Many other individual scientists made specific design arguments based upon empirical discoveries in their fields.

© Copyright Original Source

But this gets back to First and Second Causes. God is always the First cause. Science tries to determine the Second cause. The how.

But this is more, this is God claiming to be in control of dice (Prov. 16:33), and the one who sends rain (Jer. 14:22).

If I shuffle a deck of cards the order they end up in when I'm done is astronomically improbable and therefore according to you evidence of "an intelligent agent has been at work."

You are confusing the probability of an event after the fact with the probability of an event before the fact. Before the fact, the probability that I will wind up with a particular arrangement of cards is indeed most improbable. After the fact, it is a probability of one that I got this arrangement. P(A|A) equals 1, but that is not the same as P(A).

As Michael Ruse has carefully explained supernatural explanations are "science-stoppers." They are dead-end explanations that may provide a false sense of having explained the problem of, say, the origin of life, by appealing to a miracle from God, but in reality, all that we have done is given ourselves an excuse to stop looking for better, naturalistic explanations that generate further testable predictions. Basically, a supernatural explanation isn't really an explanations at all, since it offers no predictions over and above the fact to be explained.

But this is science-of-the-gaps, the view that science will answer every question. And archaeologists do stop looking for natural explanations, once they conclude that an artifact was designed, and this is not earth-shattering.

The point you seem to have missed is that God typically uses natural means to enact His will.

Another example would be His use of the Assyrians as His instrument for chastising Israel. Of course God could have summoned a supernatural force to have accomplished this since He is after all God and not limited by such things. But He didn't.

"Does the ax raise itself above the person who swings it,
or the saw boast against the one who uses it?" (Isa. 10:15)

Here God says "I am wielding Assyria like an ax", God is using Assyria, and he intervenes in so doing.

Bishop added that

With respect to MN, then, Boyle argued that it was illegitimate to explain the operations of natural phenomena in terms of the actions of spiritual beings, because such explanations gave us no insight into the physical nature of the phenomena and the principles by which they operated.

There is a profound difference between occasionally intervening as needed or desired and constantly tinkering.

Source: Return of the God Hypothesis

Many histories of science—the kind you encounter in physics textbooks or in New Atheist books and videos—claim that Newton depicted a “mechanistic universe,” an autonomous self-organizing and self-maintaining “world machine”—one that left no place for the activity of a divine creator, sustainer, or legislator of nature. This view misrepresents Newton in three ways. First, he rejected the idea that gravity—with its mysterious action at a distance—could be explained by any mechanistic cause. Second, Newton thought that laws of nature express God’s way of ordering “brute matter” through the constant action of his will and spirit. Third, Newton saw evidence of initial acts of intelligent design in the complex configurations of matter in both the solar system and biological systems.

© Copyright Original Source

"The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word." (Heb. 1:3)

Sounds like constant action, to me.

Blessings,
Lee

[lee_merrill]

Then we'd still know that, in the vast majority of cases, science provides excellent practical guidance.

Certainly we'd not need to fall down in a heap of helplessness if there were to be one undeniable intervention. It would then of course behoove us to get to know the Intervener.

Blessings,
Lee

[shunyadragon]

Certainly we'd not need to fall down in a heap of helplessness if there were to be one undeniable intervention. It would then of course behoove us to get to know the Intervener.

Blessings,
Lee

You need to address 'The Lurch's' and not this meaningless response

[shunyadragon]

Yes, I certainly believe it's possible, just as God hid Baruch and Jeremiah. And you have not answered the charge of Deism.


Well, we want to know the truth, don't we? If a supernatural agent can intervene, and has intervened, then we'd like to know it! This states exactly ID's point, that the scientific explanation of what has happened in the past is inadequate and incomplete. Shutting your eyes to this is to miss an important aspect of the truth.


Not at all, investigation of natural laws and principles may proceed, with the caveat that someone may interfere with your apparatus (perhaps a jealous human colleague?), and you hope to be able to detect that.


But science is stuck at (for instance) the origin of life, how is it that science is consistently succeeding?

Source: The Return of the God Hypothesis

Johannes Kepler perceived intelligent design in the mathematical precision of planetary motion and in the three laws he discovered that describe that motion.81 Robert Boyle insisted that the intricate clocklike regularity of physical laws and chemical mechanisms as well as the anatomical structures in living organisms suggested the activity of “a most intelligent and designing agent.” Carl Linnaeus later argued for design based upon the ease with which plants and animals fell into an orderly groups-within-groups system of classification. Many other individual scientists made specific design arguments based upon empirical discoveries in their fields.

© Copyright Original Source

But this is more, this is God claiming to be in control of dice (Prov. 16:33), and the one who sends rain (Jer. 14:22).


You are confusing the probability of an event after the fact with the probability of an event before the fact. Before the fact, the probability that I will wind up with a particular arrangement of cards is indeed most improbable. After the fact, it is a probability of one that I got this arrangement. P(A|A) equals 1, but that is not the same as P(A).


But this is science-of-the-gaps, the view that science will answer every question. And archaeologists do stop looking for natural explanations, once they conclude that an artifact was designed, and this is not earth-shattering.


"Does the ax raise itself above the person who swings it,
or the saw boast against the one who uses it?" (Isa. 10:15)

Here God says "I am wielding Assyria like an ax", God is using Assyria, and he intervenes in so doing.

Source: Return of the God Hypothesis

Many histories of science—the kind you encounter in physics textbooks or in New Atheist books and videos—claim that Newton depicted a “mechanistic universe,” an autonomous self-organizing and self-maintaining “world machine”—one that left no place for the activity of a divine creator, sustainer, or legislator of nature. This view misrepresents Newton in three ways. First, he rejected the idea that gravity—with its mysterious action at a distance—could be explained by any mechanistic cause. Second, Newton thought that laws of nature express God’s way of ordering “brute matter” through the constant action of his will and spirit. Third, Newton saw evidence of initial acts of intelligent design in the complex configurations of matter in both the solar system and biological systems.

© Copyright Original Source

"The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word." (Heb. 1:3)

Sounds like constant action, to me.

Blessings,
Lee

Please address the issues in terms of science. I particular your failure to respond to the problems how Intelligent Design folks consider manipulating Methodological Naturalism.

Plausibility has no meaning without a falsifiable hypothesis to justify your ID agenda. Still waiting . . .

[TheLurch]

This is a long post, but there's three things that are blatantly wrong that i want to highlight:

But science is stuck at (for instance) the origin of life, how is it that science is consistently succeeding?

Science isn't stuck. It's made impressive progress, developed an entirely new hypothesis based on a previously undiscovered chemistry, developed supporting data for it, etc., all since i started my PhD. There's entire fields of active research that didn't even exist 30 years ago.

You're using a definition of "stuck" that isn't in keeping with its English definition.

But this is science-of-the-gaps, the view that science will answer every question.

Even if everything in the universe operates by natural principles, there are some questions science may never answer. Maybe some aspects of physics are only apparent at energies we can't practically reach. Maybe some critical evidence is irretrievably lost in the past. etc. This is an accepted limitation of science. So no, it's not trying to fill in every gap with "science", unlike ID's attempt to fill in gaps with God (and its tendency to declare things that have already been solved to be gaps).

And archaeologists do stop looking for natural explanations, once they conclude that an artifact was designed, and this is not earth-shattering.

Archeologists know when to stop because they know of the existence and capabilities of humans. Again, as mentioned many times now, in sharp contrast to ID. How many times does that have to be repeated?

[rogue06]

Yes, I certainly believe it's possible, just as God hid Baruch and Jeremiah.

Hiding your keys from you is no different than God hiding Baruch and Jeremiah from their enemies. You sure you want to make that comparison?

Perhaps I should have asked you if you start out assuming that your keys might be supernaturally concealed from you.

And you have not answered the charge of Deism.

The only thing close to deism here that I'm aware of were by Boyle who while definitely a believer in what is now called Intelligent Design, envisioned a clockwork creation.

Well, we want to know the truth, don't we? If a supernatural agent can intervene, and has intervened, then we'd like to know it!

The problem is and will remain being able to detect the presence of a miracle and to test it. Science just is not equipped for it. And your "solution" is comically unworkable.

Maybe instead of sitting around and whining about it, the boys at the Discovery Institute should get off their lazy butts and start working on a means for detecting miracles. And perhaps the reason that they have failed to even start on such a project is because, when they're being honest with themselves, they know they don't have the first clue on how to start.

Science doesn't have all the answers. It never will. For example, as I've pointed out several times over the years, while we have nothing better for answering "how"-based questions, it is totally useless when looking for trying to solve the "whys." Those type of questions are much better suited for religion and philosophy to tackle.

This states exactly ID's point, that the scientific explanation of what has happened in the past is inadequate and incomplete. Shutting your eyes to this is to miss an important aspect of the truth.

We cannot just presume that everything has a supernatural explanation. If you do then you are welcome to go find some cave to go crawl into and wonder at the mystery that his fire and wondering which evil spirit is plaguing you whenever you don't feel well.

The cold hard truth of the matter is that as long as we have no way to detect or analyze a miraculous event it does nobody any good wondering if something might be the result of one. And simply redefining science so as to included pseudoscience and superstition as legitimate science does not in any way help. In fact all it does is turn science into a useless guessing game.

Not at all, investigation of natural laws and principles may proceed, with the caveat that someone may interfere with your apparatus (perhaps a jealous human colleague?), and you hope to be able to detect that.

In the time it took me to turn this sentence into a quote I had already come up with half a dozen practical and easy to do ways that one could test for and detect human interference. In sharp contrast, in spite of centuries of trying, nobody has come up with even one workable means for detecting a miracle.

But science is stuck at (for instance) the origin of life, how is it that science is consistently succeeding?

You must have a very peculiar way of defining "stuck" to have come to this conclusion.

Source: The Return of the God Hypothesis

Johannes Kepler perceived intelligent design in the mathematical precision of planetary motion and in the three laws he discovered that describe that motion.81 Robert Boyle insisted that the intricate clocklike regularity of physical laws and chemical mechanisms as well as the anatomical structures in living organisms suggested the activity of “a most intelligent and designing agent.” Carl Linnaeus later argued for design based upon the ease with which plants and animals fell into an orderly groups-within-groups system of classification. Many other individual scientists made specific design arguments based upon empirical discoveries in their fields.

© Copyright Original Source

As I've repeatedly noted while they believed that life was created by God they still went out and looking for natural explanations, and, tended to scorn those who insisted on attributing supernatural causation to various phenomena.

Just look at the quotes from Boyle and about him on just that topic that I've posted several times now. He sought to study and understand natural phenomena without what he called "intermeddling with supernatural mysteries." You continue to blithely ignore the evidence while repeating the same old things.

But this is more, this is God claiming to be in control of dice (Prov. 16:33), and the one who sends rain (Jer. 14:22).

We can read various verses in Job, Nahum, Psalms and Zechariah all saying that various daily meteorological phenomena such as frost, rain, snowfall, drought, clouds - are supernatural in origin, and yet we have an excellent understanding of how the rain cycle works. How clouds form. How and why droughts take place.

This is the difference between First Cause (God) and Second Cause (the means that He established to accomplish it). So one can say that God sends the rain and then explain the rain cycle, without contradiction.

Much like you can say that God created life (First Cause) and still seek out how exactly this was accomplished (Second Cause) -- just like we did with meteorology

Is it finally starting to sink in yet Lee?

You are confusing the probability of an event after the fact with the probability of an event before the fact. Before the fact, the probability that I will wind up with a particular arrangement of cards is indeed most improbable. After the fact, it is a probability of one that I got this arrangement. P(A|A) equals 1, but that is not the same as P(A).

You really to apply this thinking to some of your claims

But this is science-of-the-gaps, the view that science will answer every question.

More of a view that science should not stop looking for natural explanations. Given it's track record over the past few centuries, I'd say that is a pretty good system.

And as I stated previously, science can not answer every question. It isn't designed to. But what it is designed for it does remarkably well.

You are sort of like the fellow complaining that his Phillips head screwdriver is lousy at driving in or pulling out a nail so we should toss the screwdriver away.

And archaeologists do stop looking for natural explanations, once they conclude that an artifact was designed, and this is not earth-shattering.

Maybe because they can spot signs of human design? But to date we have no means of detecting design resulting from a miracle, so your analogy falls flat before taking its first step.

And again, please don't offer your it's-a-miracle-if-we-don't-immediately-have-an-answer personal incredulousness/ignorance solution. It really is an excellent example of God of the gaps reasoning

"Does the ax raise itself above the person who swings it,
or the saw boast against the one who uses it?" (Isa. 10:15)

Here God says "I am wielding Assyria like an ax", God is using Assyria, and he intervenes in so doing.

There are numerous instances in Scripture where God likens the Assyrians as the instrument of His wrath against the Israelites. For instance, in Isaiah 10:5 God calls them "the rod of My anger." The point is that God is using natural means to implement His justice. Sure He could have called forth the hosts of Heaven, or simply "poofed" a horde of unstoppable marauders into existence. But He choose a natural method rather than employ a supernatural one.

Just like He set up a naturalistic system for rainfall even though the Bible states that meteorological phenomena such as rain and snow fall, frost, cloud, drought, etc. are directly caused by God's action and/or command.

Source: Return of the God Hypothesis

Many histories of science—the kind you encounter in physics textbooks or in New Atheist books and videos—claim that Newton depicted a “mechanistic universe,” an autonomous self-organizing and self-maintaining “world machine”—one that left no place for the activity of a divine creator, sustainer, or legislator of nature. This view misrepresents Newton in three ways. First, he rejected the idea that gravity—with its mysterious action at a distance—could be explained by any mechanistic cause. Second, Newton thought that laws of nature express God’s way of ordering “brute matter” through the constant action of his will and spirit. Third, Newton saw evidence of initial acts of intelligent design in the complex configurations of matter in both the solar system and biological systems.

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"The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word." (Heb. 1:3)

Sounds like constant action, to me.

Blessings,
Lee

So does knitting each person together in their mother's womb (Psalm 139:13), and yet modern medicine, particularly embryology, provides us with a detailed look into how this is done through natural means. Again, God is the First Cause here.