The ID Report

Post details: Put some Fingo in your Lingo

01/30/06

by Kevin Wirth 06:30:23 pm, Categories: Commentary - Announcements, 403 words

Put some Fingo in your Lingo

Window on ID: Why ID isn’t ‘religious’

Many critics of ID flatly state that the notion of a creator or creative force behind the origin and development of life is a strictly ‘religious’ concept. Well, it’s not, and there are many facets to ID theory that underscore this. One of those facets is the inability of ID theory to identify who or what the creative agency behind life on this planet might be. This isn’t a denial or side-stepping of the issue – it’s a legitimate acknowledgement of the limitations of the theory. After all, science can’t directly speak about supernatural agencies or entities (although it can investigate evidence that may have been formed from a supernatural source). From a strictly scientific perspective, ID theory simply cannot speak about who the creator is.

What this means is that if you believe in Intelligent Design, you are free to fill in the blank about who or what you think the designer or creative intelligence might be.

In fact, ID architects like Behe and Dembski even refer to a latin term for this “you fill in the blank” approach that you should know about – it’s called “Hypothesis non fingo”.

The phrase appears to have been first coined by Newton in his book in mathematical physics – Principia Mathematica, and means "I feign (to assert as if true) no hypotheses". This is the actual passage from Principia containing this famous remark:

“But hitherto I have not yet been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction.”

What this means is that ID can’t provide a scientifically based observation or comment about who the designer might be.

Simply put – according to key ID architects – ID theory does not seek to be "creationism in a tuxedo", does not seek to "sneak religion into the science classroom", and in fact explicitly refuses to identify who the Candidate for Creation might be.

Newton. Principia (1687); F. Cajori (ed.) Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of natural philosophy and his system of the world; translated into English by Andrew Motte in 1729.

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