Faith Well Grounded

Good stuff.

I’m revisiting this for a couple of reasons. First, traffic has been slow here, so why not? I realize you’re busy, so feel free to ignore me. Second, I don’t recall reading some of the points in your reply the first time through, and thought I had something to add. This might be due to my oversight during original reading or you adding to the post after I read it. I can’t be sure which because the software here doesn’t seem to time stamp edits, and I’m frequently guilty of negligent comprehension.

Newton: “this most beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."

ID science: “The universe (including life) could only have come from the counsel of an intelligent designer.

My interpretation:
Newton: I've reached the limit of what current science can tell me. Here are some religious statements that I use to provide a comforting explanation (note: no science claimed or implied).

ID pseudoscience: Since science has no detailed explanation for [insert pet biological system here], we must therefore conclude that God... er, scratch that... some intelligent designer (wink, wink) must be responsible, even though there's no positive evidence for that conclusion.

Newton: Scientists “deduce causes from effects, till we come to the very first cause, which certainly is not mechanical.”

ID science: “As scientists, we deduce that natural selection is an insufficient cause to produce the vast array of diversified life we see in the world.” (ID's positive induction is considered separately below.)

Newton: Science has the capacity to tell us about the natural universe. Mechanistic explanations don't apply beyond the natural universe.

ID Pseudoscience: The current scientific explanations of biological diversity are in conflict with our intuitions and/or religious beliefs, therefore we reject those explanations in favor of an unscientific one. (note: your ID statement is completely divorced from Newton's sentiment. Newton's "first cause" has no connection to ID's god-of-the-gaps.)

“How then will science “officially” treat the identity of the designer? Will biochemistry textbooks have to be written with the explicit statements that “God did it”? No. The question of the identity of the designer will simply be ignored. The history of science is replete with examples of basic-but-difficult questions being put on the back burner. For example, Newton declined to explain what caused gravity…”

It’s apparent that ID actually stops shorter than even Newton did, in that they refuse to identify the ultimate cause, while Newton went as far as inferring our responsibility to Him.

One might ask the question, WHY would ID explicitly stop short of examining the designer that they say is so obviously suggested by the evidence? A cursory glance at the history of the ID movement makes it clear that this position was not arrived at by honest delineation of scientific and religious bounds, but it is the direct result of the Edwards v. Aguillard court decision. If you choose to dispute that assertion, please show me a shred of evidence dating this tenet of ID to a time before that case.

As an aside, what makes you think ID's proposed designer is "the ultimate cause"? Why rule out a super-advanced race of beings dropping the seeds of life on the earth? Sure, those beings would have to come from somewhere, so you might argue they had to have a designer of their own, but at that point you're addressing their identity even though the "science" of ID recommends against it. Without knowing anything about these beings (and refusing to investigate their identity) why would you assume they're not eternal? If they are eternal, would they have to be supernatural?

One is ill-advised to try to create a separation between Newton’s definition of science and ID’s.

Well, you just presented an argument for such a separation yourself! Your ID movement excludes (well, publicly at least) from science such explicit religious statements as Newton's, yet you seem eager to include Newton's creationism as part of his science. So, according to your statement above, would you agree that ID "serves an apologetical purpose" for its proponents?

A closer examination shows that Newton barred not the supernatural, but that which is not deduced from the evidence. As a matter of fact, he is opening the door to anything that the evidence points to, including that which is “metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities”, for he lumps them all together as equivalent and makes only the judgment as to whether they are deduced from the evidence.

Actually, he lumps those three together as types of "hypotheses," which have no place in science. He most certainly did NOT say that metaphysical or occult qualities could be deduced from the evidence.

So, if ID sees known specified complexity as designed and infers design into organic specified complexity, one would conclude from Newton’s quote that he would have viewed this as scientific.

By "known specified complexity" I presume you mean items/systems known to be designed (by humans). Applying that knowledge to "organic specified complexity" is not inferring the general from the specific. It is simply misapplication from one specific to another. It's also somewhat confusing, in that human intelligence is cited as the cause in your specific example, but part of the effect in the “general.” Let's see if I have the argument straight: a type of biological complexity (human intelligence) is the only known cause of manufactured complexity, therefore a supernatural intelligent agency must be responsible for biological complexity. It's a non sequitur, as I'd like to think Newton would agree.

One should be careful in trying to confine ID as a non-science, because the neo-Darwinian pet axiom may be thrown out with the scientific bathwater. If you disallow ID’s positive claims to a designer, you must then disallow neo-Darwinism’s negative argument against it.

There's that false dualism rearing its ugly head again! Neo-Darwinism does not propose a negative argument against a designer, it simply refuses to address supernatural causes that can't be observed or otherwise verified. BTW, I like how you've turned around the common argument against ID as being simply a negative argument against evolution. Calling ID's claims "positive" does not change the fact that the nature of the claims is: current scientific explanations are insufficient so our supernatural claim wins by default.

Further, you’ve thrown out the naturalist’s positive claim that natural selection occurred via strictly natural processe[s] without the input from a guiding hand.

Current science does not claim that a guiding hand wasn't involved, just that if it existed it left no evidence behind. It's a bit like the old conjecture that maybe we were all created just five minutes ago. Our memories could have been created to make us think that we've lived for years, but we have no way of knowing because our experience is entirely locally temporal. Why waste time wondering if our memories are actual or artificial if we have no evidence to point either way? If our memories were faked, something is going out of its way to fool us and it's powerful enough to make our thoughts useless to us. Same goes for biological evolution: if ID is correct, the designer went out of its way to try to fool us to think otherwise.

If ID’s voice to such absolutes is pseudo-science, then so is neo-Darwinism’s. But oddly enough, we see such statements in textbooks and journals routinely.

Neo-Darwinism gives voice to these absolutes? Please show me where a journal or textbook says that god does not exist, or absolutely did not have had a hand in biological development. The absence of mentioning a supernatural possibility is not the same as claiming an absence of the supernatural.

He was arguing that gravity is not a mystic throwback, but based on observable principles. The paragraphs immediately following your quote define the context that Newton’s science worked within—that of an observable order that is imposed by God. Thus, by observing Newton’s quotes within the context that he made them, and from within the mindset that he formed them, we are safely able to escape a schizophrenic account from one of the fathers of our modern scientific process. This last quote safely resided within the larger mindset that science is the pursuit of God. (I mean, gosh... It was only two paragraphs later that started with the sentence, "Gravity thus served an apologetical purpose for Newton". :^) )

I’ve got no problem with someone using science to promote (or criticize) a particular religion, provided that it’s good science. The object is still religion, which by definition rests firmly on faith. One should not, however, reverse this course of argument and employ religion to promote (or criticize) a particular science.

Newton, in his famous quote, was saying his scientific presentation of gravity did not have a supernatural component, even though he believed the cause was ultimately supernatural. He didn't think the supernatural had a place in science, though he wasn't reluctant to place god as the gatekeeper of the boundaries of his scientific understanding. Instead of making god part of his view of science, he viewed science as part of his god. No schizophrenia involved—just one man's choice of faith.

It's interesting to note that by placing god right at the limits of contemporary knowledge, he risked disproof of some of his religious ideas when, for example, the irregular motions of heavenly bodies were found to be part of a quite stable mechanistic system and not, as Newton proposed, in need of constant supervision by god. I don't point that out to ridicule his beliefs, nor to claim that his religion was false, just to warn against placing god actively and directly responsible for anything that one can't currently explain otherwise. Newton's failure is repeated by today's ID creationists. The difference is that Newton’s failed claims were presented as religious opinion, while ID is claimed to be science.

And hopefully with a bit more tact!

You seem to be arguing that Newton's success as a scientist lends credence to his creationist beliefs because those beliefs influenced his scientific pursuits. Would that line of reasoning not also apply to his other non-scientific beliefs?