Tether: Kansas State Board of Ed room

[Rocket Man]

The Kansas State Board of Education has been sharply divided for years along conservative/moderate lines. In recent years, that split gained nationwide prominence in a public battle over evolution, with Darwin being pulled out of the state's science standards or put back in depending on which side was in power.

Things have been momentarily quiet on that front. But Malphas, the Demon Prince of Factions would like to change that.

You see, all the highly-publicized wrangling succeeded in making the board room a minor Tether of Factions. Malphas would like to expand its power and has sent a small group of demons to stir things up a bit. He doesn't actually care which side on the board gets the upper hand just as long as the fighting goes on ... and on, and on.

Meanwhile, Marc and Novalis would rather see everyone calm down and play nice. So they, too, have quietly sent a small group of angels to try to shut down the tether or even convert it to Heaven's use, without subverting the free will of the humans involved.

Both sides may soon find that open warfare is a piece of cake compared to negotiating the minefield of human politics ....

[Moe Lane]

Originally Posted by Rocket Man

Both sides may soon find that open warfare is a piece of cake compared to negotiating the minefield of human politics ....

Particularly since Heaven can't actually assign any Seraphim to this one - unless, of course, they decide that the Intelligent Design people should in fact win, which would completely go against the grain of Revelation and Development's careful sanitizing of the evolutionary record.

This could be a fun adventure to run, particularly if you have players who haven't fully thought out some of the implications of the setting. :)

Moe

[William]

Originally Posted by Moe Lane

Particularly since Heaven can't actually assign any Seraphim to this one -

Sure they can. In fact, quite a few Seraphim would probably want to tackle the Intelligent Design movement, which is based almost in its entirety on lies like:

"There are no transitional fossils" -- false in the IN world as well as reality

"Radiometric dating gives bad dates" -- false in the IN world as well as reality

"The Earth is 6000 years old" -- very very false in both worlds. (Just who the heck was Archbishop Ussher in IN, anyway?) Ditto for "there is geographic evidence of a worldwide flood that laid down the Grand Canyon, carved out the Mississippi, etc., etc."

"There is a big scientific debate about this, worth teaching" -- no, there isn't. If there were, an ID author would have published a peer-reviewed paper by now.

Bear in mind, some apologists for ID theology are simply taken in by the movement's leaders, but many are consciously lying. The facts of neither our world nor the IN world support the movement's claims, which are very far from the "natural law, with tweaks" model that was the Game Master's Guide describes angels working with during early Creation.

It also encourages sloppy, sloppy thinking. "Irreducibly complex forms could not have evolved" is the theological argument from ignorance -- it elevates the speaker's lack of imagination to the status of natural law. An "irreducible" rock arch can be carved by the wind. Remove one piece and the whole arch falls, but it wasn't built up rock by rock; it's the leftovers of a larger solid structure. Ditto multipart biological systems, which are the co-opted mutations of systems that used to serve other or multiple purposes.

Intelligent Design claims that speciation is impossible, but unless Eli & Co. have been madly generating new species from the Archean to the Holocene, that's false too. A finite number of new species may have been attributable to angelic intervention -- that's radically different from believing natural speciation is impossible.

IN's God apparently went to great lengths to design a Universe where it was at least plausible that everything happened through natural means, until one starts to get into the fuzzy borders of causation like "how come the fine structure constants are in convenient ratios of x over blah"? Which is entirely different from the nonsense that is ID, in this world or that.

[Archangel Beth]

An "irreducible" rock arch can be carved by the wind.

And Janus preens a bit.
*beth swats the windbag* "Go blow away some of this snow, if you want to be useful. You already dropped the top of one of our trees in our back yard." O:p

*nod* The ID premise is... fuzzy in IN. Arguably, God was tweaking things to get the results that It wanted, nudging genes here and there. Or, It being all-knowing, did It make Mercurians in the form of Man, knowing how Humanity would evolve?

I doubt anyone ever asked, in those days when the Metatron was still taking questions. Does anyone else remember? Eli? Eeeeeeelllliiiii? Where aaaaare you? ...well, he's not taking questions either, looks like.

You could get quite some mileage out of INID debates, yes.

[Moe Lane]

Originally Posted by William

Sure they can. In fact, quite a few Seraphim would probably want to tackle the Intelligent Design movement, which is based almost in its entirety on lies like:

William, I wasn't talking about our universe: I'm talking about the IN one, where the central premise of Intelligent Design (Something went to considerable trouble to specifically design humanity, to a particular plan) - is True, and where the central premise of Darwinian Evolution (that you don't need a supernatural agent to explain a species' existence, particularly our own) is not*. Remember? The one where angels and demons are running around and shooting each other with AK-47s, and where's there's a Demon Prince in charge of television sets**?

Personally, I'm a theistic evolutionist, but then I don't live in the IN universe. :)

Moe

*You think that's bad: imagine how the IN universe's believers in secular humanism and dialectal materialism feel when they get to the afterlife and discover that they had fallen for what were (at best) charmingly ignorant superstitions. Although the young-Earth Creationists are equally pwn3d, either way. :)

**I can't wait for the Jean playtest, btw. We're going to have so much fun exploring the consequences of having a supernatural entity be effectively in charge of promoting scientific and academic theories that do not draw from the supernatural. :)

[Rocket Man]

Actually, I can see the Seraphs of the In Nomine universe getting a little dizzy as they get caught in the middle of the debate:

"God created the Universe to a specific plan" (rings true)
"The universe evolved into its present state over several million years" (also rings true)

At this point, I suspect any of the Most Holy would just shake their heads and leave the room for a bit. On the other hand, their resonance would be very useful for discovering whether each side actually believed its own arguments or was just trying to score political points.

Thankfully, the angels don't have to "prove" either side of the debate. They just have try to keep things reasonable. ("Just"? Excuse me while I chuckle)

[chris the cynic]

Originally Posted by Moe Lane

William, I wasn't talking about our universe: I'm talking about the IN one, where the central premise of Intelligent Design (Something went to considerable trouble to specifically design humanity, to a particular plan) - is True

Moe, you've missed something very important here. The central premise of Intelligent Design is not that "Something went to considerable trouble to specifically design humanity to a particular plan" but rather, "It can be scientifically demonstrated that there was an intelligent thing creating species instead of the processes currently accepted."

That difference is important both in real life and In Nomine. In real life it is important because the first thing is a religious question science should stay away from, and the second is demonstrably false.

It is important in In Nomine because while, "Something went to considerable trouble to specifically design humanity, to a particular plan," may be true (though wouldn't the details about what is and is not considerable trouble to God be ineffable?) that the existence of that work can be scientifically demonstrated would be false and would be continue to false unless Jean makes some major changes to what science is available and possibly remain false even in that eventuality.

A Seraph might not be able to say, "God didn't create the universe," but they should have no problem saying to a human, "You can't prove that god created the universe." Remember that the debate isn't religious people versus atheists, there are plenty of people fighting against ID who devoutly believe in god. Many of them believe that god created the universe in general and people in particular, those ideas are not incompatible with opposition to intelligent design in any way.

There's a difference between saying, "You don't need God (or angels and demons) to explain X," and saying, "God (or angels and demons) didn't do X," there are many times when a Seraph could say the first without any problem (because it was the Truth) and would become dissonant by saying the second. To oppose ID you need only say the first, never the second.

and where the central premise of Darwinian Evolution (that you don't need a supernatural agent to explain a species' existence, particularly our own) is not*.

Either you're mistaken or I've missed a very important part of the setting.
Assuming I'm the one who is wrong, please point me to where that is made clear.
Assuming I'm not, in In Nomine you don't need a supernatural agent to explain a species existence, even our own, it's just that if you don't have one in your explanation your explanation will not be True. Since science is not concerned with Truth that isn't a problem.

There is a world of difference between, "X didn't do Y," and, "You don't need X to explain Y." The truth of the first depends entirely on whether or not X did Y, the truth of the second is unaffected by whether or not X did Y.

Remember? The one where angels and demons are running around and shooting each other with AK-47s, and where's there's a Demon Prince in charge of television sets**?

If an ID supporter said that the Seraph wouldn't need to oppose them, the ID supporter would have just destroyed their own credibility. If they didn't say that there would be no reason for the Seraph to bring such facts up. If it were asked, by someone trying to screw up its credibility, it could say, Truthfully, that that is immaterial to the debate.

Look again at the examples William gave of ID claims
"There are no transitional fossils" This is false in In Nomine (again, unless I missed something really big in one of the books.)

"Radiometric dating gives bad dates" This is false in In Nomine (again, unless I missed something really big in one of the books.)

"The Earth is 6000 years old" To be honest I think this claim is related to a more strict creationist argument than the ID argument, but regardless it is false in In Nomine, so explicitly that I know I didn't miss anything on this count.

"There is a big scientific debate about this, worth teaching" Unless the state of science in In Nomine is vastly different from the one in our world (which it could be, why not have giant robots?) this is also false in In Nomine. Assuming big scientific debates are about the same topics in In Nomine as they are in this world a Seraph could say the statement is false, if it were shortened to, "There is a big debate about this," the Seraph couldn't without becoming dissonant but could say, "But it isn't scientific."

-

Sorry for the long post, sorry that it's a few days after the post I'm responding to. When I read "the central premise of Intelligent Design (Something went to considerable trouble to specifically design humanity, to a particular plan)" I felt the need to respond because that isn't the central premise. That is a part of it, but the central premise is that the something that went to considerable trouble left behind scientifically significant proof which has been discovered showing that it, and not unassisted evolution, designed things.

The part that is causing the entire conflict, and the only thing that separates ID from various other theories, is the underlined claim. The underlined claim is what makes it a scientific concept instead of a religious one, and thus the only thing that would allow it to be taught alongside or in place of evolution as a science. The underlined claim also happens to be false.

(Unless the state of science in In Nomine is vastly different than it is in this world it would also fail to ring True to a Seraph.)

Personally I hate the name because I've always felt that an intelligent designer would create a seamless reality and not leave fingerprints all over it. I believe in ars adeo latet arte sua as a design principle.

[Moe Lane]

Originally Posted by chris the cynic

Moe, you've missed something very important here. The central premise of Intelligent Design is not that "Something went to considerable trouble to specifically design humanity to a particular plan" but rather, "It can be scientifically demonstrated that there was an intelligent thing creating species instead of the processes currently accepted."

Yes, and in the In Nomine universe you can do exactly that. There are sentient entities who can remember thinking, Oh. So that's why we look the way we do. Now, you can't do it with corporeal science, but then, corporeal science isn't even up to the task of adequately explaining the Corporeal Song of Shields... which can be performed by a properly-trained human being.

Don't get me wrong: in this universe I'm right with you in thinking that ID's both unfalsifiable and not scientific. But in the game world... in the game world, the most prescient thinker of the 20th Century in the field of human origins was Erich von Daniken (even if for all the wrong reasons), the young-Earth Creationists are correct in at least one of their major assumptions, and secular humanism has the same relationship to the Truth as Ptolemic astronomy.

Also: so what? This is a game about the supernatural, after all. :)

[Moe Lane]

Sorry, I missed responding to this bit:

Either you're mistaken or I've missed a very important part of the setting.
Assuming I'm the one who is wrong, please point me to where that is made clear.

Pages 92-93 of the GMG show the official IN timeline, where it's made clear that the ethereal plane - including the Marches - existed and were being watched over before humanity's existence, where the Choir of Mercurians existed billions of years before the species whose form they've taken, and where the first expression of God on the three planes of existence takes the form of an elderly human male. In other words, it is fairly clear that there was a specific end result in mind - and I was under the impression that proper scientific theories are supposed to be able to describe how the universe actually works, no? :)

Again, this is in In Nomine. Our universe is a completely different story.

[William]

Originally Posted by chris the cynic

The central premise of Intelligent Design is not that "Something went to considerable trouble to specifically design humanity to a particular plan" but rather, "It can be scientifically demonstrated that there was an intelligent thing creating species instead of the processes currently accepted."

Indeed we could. Claims like "souls and the afterlife exist" are not only true in the IN world, they are provable to a hardcore materialist. Experiments could be run with experimenters giving long random number sequences to dying people, to be reported back by angels querying the dead persons. Even if they couldn't get them all, they could exceed chance by a long shot. The claim "I can sprout wings and fly by singing a pretty tune" isn't part of the current paradigm of knowledge, but in IN it is a claim that can be materialistically verified under laboratory conditions. So this part, the part where we're playing in a fantasy world, that's something a materialist wouldn't expect but it's something that could be verified to his satisfaction.

Unfortunately, that isn't the central premise of Intelligent Design -- at least, not as it's pursued in our Universe. (A different intellectual tradition entirely could be possible in the IN Universe, but it would have a radically different direction.)

Intelligent Design's basic claim is negative: "natural evolution is impossible." Its arguments are, e.g., the argument from irreducible complexity, the No Free Lunch theorem on search algorithms in static fitness, and the like. The hypothesis that intelligent intervention is thus required is appended after the counter-evolutionary arguments are made; essentially, having argued that hypothesis A is false, hypothesis B ("God did it.") is declared true by default.

The problem isn't that the conclusion is wrong -- you're quite correct that the conclusion is only wrong in degree, since canonically supernatural agents did some tweaking in the IN world. The problem is that the methods are wrong. They're bad science. They're sloppy thinking. They've been explained to the proponents often enough that they're no longer mistakes, if they ever were. They're lies.

A favorite example of Intelligent Design proponents is the bacterial flagellum. The argument of irreducible complexity says, "if any one of the multiple parts of this 'molecular motor' were missing, the flagellum could not function. There is no use to a nonfunctioning flagellum. Thus, the flagellum could not have evolved in small steps of gradually increasing evolutionary fitness. It either had to appear whole... a phenomenally improbable genetic mutation... or be inserted in the bacterial genome by a Designer using engineering principles." The argument is false: there is a use to a nonfunctioning flagellum, namely, the parts of the "motor" that form the rotary cage -- without a flagellum "axle," the cage functions as an injection syringe for intracellular material, useful in reproduction. As usual, evolution co-opted a simpler system as pieces of the larger one. But we never would have found that out if we had refused to imagine how a complex system might have come about.

In the IN universe, it's sometimes true to look at someone acting oddly and say, "that man is possessed by a demon," or "that woman is a witch." However, it's still a monumental improvement of the human condition, and a triumph of reason over ignorance and fear, for people to assume as a general explanation that that man is simply mentally ill and needs medical help, or that that woman is a socially awkward widow who has nothing to do with your string of bad luck recently.

Understand the difference between an incorrect conclusion and bad methodology. My math students can come up with the right answer to a problem having made mistakes in the work. They get no credit, because they didn't understand the lesson. Humanity won't understand the lessons if it takes shortcuts to the truth. "That woman is a witch" might be true in IN, but the claim requires strong evidence (which can be produced). The existence of an intelligent Designer might be true in IN, but the evidence for Intelligent-Design-the-current-movement is no stronger than "well, the heavens revolve around the Earth, don't they, use your eyes."

A Seraph, of Lightning or Faith, wouldn't say "humanity was not designed." He would say "these arguments are bad logic," "you have not understood the science you are arguing against," "you are attempting to support a predetermined conclusion regardless of the facts." It is bad science to the Jeanite and bad theology to the Dini. The Seraph of Faith might want religion taught in the public schools, but Heaven forbid, not like this! Giving up on inquiry and using God to fill in the gaps doesn't help Jean or Khalid. It doesn't glorify God; it stunts human achievement. Seraphim would hate ID as it's practiced by the Discovery Institute. Their blog, to which I will not link, is well known as a "memory hole" from which embarrasing posts are edited or expunged without comment, on which material is freely plagiarized without attribution... generally speaking, they engage in every rhetorical bit of snake oil in the book. They're not earnest preachers. They're liars. Seraphim would have no problem taking them apart point by point, and enjoying it.