What else could be expected from Dembski?

More of the same, of course. Dembski's math is basically irrelevant, but the critiques of his approach are valid and he knows it. How can he address these critiques honestly? Clearly, he can't.

So how can he most plausibly dodge them? The easiest way is to ignore them. Where they are difficult to ignore, the easiest way is to dismiss their authors as not qualified to make them.

But what if those who write the critiques ARE fully qualified? Simple. He lies. It's not like his target audience will ever bother with the math anyway.

The worst part about it to me though is that Dembski and DaveScot have no room to play the "not fully qualified" card.

Mark, you have nothing to defend or apologize for; the rigor and reason in your book, "Unintelligent Design," speaks for itself.

The thing is, when I see Dembski's attempts to make a case for his explanatory filter or no free lunch "application" or whatever, I just marvel that they can be taken seriously at all. I am horrible at maths and duly hate them, so perhaps I am the wrong person to comment, because I know that intuition is no proof of anything. But in reading Dembski's efforts to create a math defense of ID, I get the strong intuition that there is no "there" there. He seems merely to be assigning values to things that cannot be known, then fabricating conclusions on the basis of presuppositions. I don't know if certain areas of math allow for this (I suppose Bayesian theorems might come close?), but to the lay reader, it just looks like an exercise in trying to dazzle, and thereby baffle, people like me with symbols and double-talk. This would seem to be the opposite of what serious science ought to be doing. Can someone please explain to me why Dembski's claims, which appear unfounded on their face, seem to be so hard to knock down and keep down in public opinion? Is it just that people want so badly for him (and Behe and other quacks) to be right, or is there something more to it than that--such as, the explanation of why they are wrong being simply too sophisticated for average people to grasp, while expression of the falsehood is more easily apprehended?

Professor Dembski's reference to the Boris Yeltsin of higher learning may be attempt to remind us of his own supposed status as the Isaac Newton of information theory.

Newton, however, invented the calculus. The Isaac Newton of information theory is Claude Shannon.

Typical Dembski: not a single word about the substance of my critique, and instead an assault on my qualifications. That is the same device he used when "replying" to Wein, Matzke, Tellgren, and others, avoiding the substance of critique but asserting the supposed insufficient qualifications of his critics. What else could be expected from Dembski whose supercilious self-assurance of being way above his critics has been well documented? How about saying something, for a change, about the substance of critique of his hackneyed "theories"? (Later.....) While Dembski promptly deletes from his site any comment he does not like (which contrasts with how Panda's Thumb behaves), he allows posting of libelous pieces like the comment alleging that I have not published as many papers as I claim.

— Mark Perakh

GCT said, "The worst part about it to me though is that Dembski and DaveScot have no room to play the "not fully qualified" card."

Kind of reminds me of the creationist claim of "the many gaps in the fossils record"... while having no "record" of anything supporting their own beliefs.

Logically, then, they wouldn't want to talk about that, and focus instead on the so-called "gaps" which they can claim until the end of time because, as has been pointed out by those brighter than me, every new transitional fossil simply creates a new "gap".

It can all seem very frustrating. Why, one wonders, do we still have the same ridiculous arguments 150 years after Darwin? But understand that 150 years is really nothing. And in the end, truth prevails. Rather than getting into name calling with creationists, just keep doing the science. It speaks for itself. Don't suppose for a minute that the world accepted the notion that the earth was spherical or that it was not the center of the universe until hundreds of years after these things were first observed by scientific minds.

"...when I was not yet as old as I am now..."

Pardon me for going a bit off topic, but I am unfamiliar with this interesting euphemism for "younger". Is this what you meant to say, or is it simply a turn of phrase that I haven't encoutered before? I must admit, it did take me aback for a moment. No criticism intended, just curious...

I seem to recall television images of Boris Yeltsin, then the mayor of Moscow, standing on an armored fighting vehicle, sometime in 1989. Unless I am mistaken, he was demanding that the old-line Communists who were trying to overthrow Gorbachev's 'perestroika' reforms surrender to the populace.

There are worse people to be compared to.

I'm a bit confused as to why Dembski seems to feel that comparing someone to Boris Yeltsin is an insult. Yeltsin was the first (some would say only) democratically elected Russian leader. Like Gorbechev before him, he led his country through very difficult times. Yes, appointing Putin was probably his dumbest move, but aside from that and his penchant for vodka, he really was a remarkable man.

My guess is that Dembski may know even less about politics than he does about science.

Here's the nuts and bolts of the matter: Were Prof. Perakh to apply for federal funding, his vita would be an impressive spur to the reviewers to approve the funding.

Were Dembski to apply, he'd have to edit his vita to stay within the bounds of the laws governing federal funding for research.

Fusilier hs it exactly right. Yeltsin stopped the communist tanks from taking over (either ending or delaying the return of oppressive regimes, depending on one's views of Putin).

What's Dembski done, lately? What's Dembski done, ever?

I've posted about this a bit on Pharyngula.

This is a common "postmodernist" trick: bury one's argument in endlessly verbose and very difficult to decypher cryptic text and then criticize you for not being sophisticated enough to decipher it. It's also a tactic engaged in by mystics an occultists. "OOooooh... I can't understand that... you must know the secrets of the universe! Can I be in your cult?"

Baloney.

This is a rejection of the essence of conceptual thought; the ability to *simplify* ideas.

Nobody on Earth has enough time to delve into every detail of every idea or hypothesis that is presented to them. If such a thing were required to form an educated opinion about something, then we would be bewildered drifters on a sea of uncertainty. But fortunately, we have the faculty of concept formation and conceptual thought. This enables very complex things to be reduced to *ideas* that can be communicated efficiently.

As I said on Pharyngula... if someone has something to say, they will say it. Nearly all ideas, even very sophisticated ones, can be explained *in essence* to a five year old. I have no problem explaining relativity, integrals, derivatives, evolution, the photoelectric effect, etc. to children or to people who have absolutely no background in the relevant subjects at all.

If the devil is in the details, then Dembski should respond by elucidating said devil more clearly. If he has already done this, he could simply provide a link or an article reference and say "go read this."

What I have seen of Dembski's argument makes it look like a hopeless canard that consists of nothing more than the overapplication of a theorem that applies to a certain class of computer search algorithms combined with a rehash of the old 'first cause' philosophical argument.

See: http://www.greythumb.com/Members/api/thoughts/first_lunch/document_view

When called out on this, Dembski says "you obviously don't understand the math." No Dembski. You, as the purveyor of this argument, are the teacher. We are the students. You must explain it to us.

I can't stress this point enough: if he cannot elucidate, then there is nothing there. Period.

Hiding behind verbosity and complexity is a trick of the intellectual impostor.

One of my favorite quotes of all time:

"Things are often confounded and treated as the same, for no better reason than that they resemble each other, even while they are in their nature and character totally distinct and even directly opposed to each other. This jumbling up things is a sort of dust-throwing which is often indulged in by small men who argue for victory rather than for truth."

- Frederick L. Douglas, from a speech on the unconstitutionality of slavery in Scotland in 1860.

This quote represents to me just how much intellectual honesty and subtilety we seem to have lost since the enlightenment era.

I should note, Jason Rosenhouse thinks your calculations are impeccable. "As an exercise in formal mathematics the paper seems unobjectionable. I have never questioned Dembski's ability to manipulate symbols in accordance with the rules of algebra and calculus." http://evolutionblog.blogspot.com/2005/08/dembski-and-perakh.html

And that is where Dembski fails completely. He certainly has not modelled anything remotely like Darwinian evolution. His pride and joy, "The Displacement Theorem" (which he has immodestly dubbed The Fundamental Theorem of Intelligent Design), contains so many abstract symbols lacking real-world counterparts that there is no way to apply it in any biological context. The fact is, Dembski's recent series of technical mathematics papers exist for the sole purpose of providing a shield against would-be critics. You can see Dembski employing the strategy in his brief remarks above. Rather than respond to Perakh's cogent arguments, he simply refers to his technical papers and says Perakh should be rpelying to them instead. It's as if we're supposed to ignore his seemingly endless output of popular-level tripe. No doubt if Perakh, or anyone else, does respond to Dembski's papers, then Dembski will simply produce something new and say, "Now you must reply to this one." Dembski's displacement theorem does not in any way further the argument he made in section 4.7 of No Free Lunch. He has simply translated the argument he made there into symbols. But an argument that is inane in everyday language remains inane when translated into math-ese.

— Rosenhouse

Besides being libelous, anti-Christian, and plain evil, Dembski latest attack reveals his appalling lack of regard once again for actual evidence and his preference for an authority beyond that proper to the evidence. He sounds like some unthinking twit pompously telling Galileo off for not delving deeply into Ptolemy's epicycles in Galileo's criticism of the appropriateness of epicycles for explaining retrograde motion.

Of course this is the game plan. The whole point of Dembski, and even mostly with the less appalling Behe, is to avoid the only sound conclusions that are possible from shared genetic data across related but highly divergent organisms. One has no real alternative to concluding that the bacterial flagellum inherited the information it shares with other organelles, and especially has no scientific basis for claiming that Darwin's finches share inherited information based on comparison of shared information, while denying the same line of reasoning with regard to bacterial organs. Dembski wants us to forget this through his flim-flam and irrelevant mathematics, implicitly claiming a higher authority for math divorced from empiricism than the "authority" of the math which so ably shows inherited correlations where Dembski must claim these do not exist.

To the extent that Dembski is "honest" within his thoroughgoing lack of integrity (in the non-moral sense--he appears to be incapable of effecting an integration of intellect with his reactionary beliefs), he's probably "honest" in faulting Perakh for not paying attention to the mathematics that he considers superior to the actual data and its normal scientific interpretation. He depends on his claim to a higher mathematical authority than the mere data showing shared ancestry among bacterial organelles, and by no means can he allow that this "authority" is in fact nonsense. Particularly because it is nonsense and it is bound to his ego, he has to strike out irrelevantly at anyone who does actual biology instead of doing Dembski's scholastic side-step of the evidence.

Just another sorry episode showing how desperately anti-scientific such quackery is.

"I seem to recall television images of Boris Yeltsin, then the mayor of Moscow, standing on an armored fighting vehicle, sometime in 1989. Unless I am mistaken, he was demanding that the old-line Communists who were trying to overthrow Gorbachev's 'perestroika' reforms surrender to the populace. There are worse people to be compared to."

I think that even the alcohol angle is reading too much into Dembski's logic. I think that he noted Dr. Perakh's national origin and wanted to compare him to a Russian authoritarian leader to emphasize "evolutionist dogma" or some such, and reached for the first Russian leader whose name came to mind, and wound up picking the one non-communist, non-authoritarian, democratically elected Russian leader of the 20th century. This is not to sing Yeltsin's praises, he certainly wasn't Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln, but it just strikes me as a really odd metaphor.

One more point:

I am aware that mathematicians often say that there are some ideas that can only be expressed in mathematics. I'm not sure that I believe this.

What I am willing to believe is that there are ideas that can only be perfectly accurately expressed in mathematics. For example, "the area under a bell curve centered on 2 and with a width of 1/2" is much fuzzier than it's mathematical representation. Fuzzy, yes, but it conveys the idea conceptually. Combine it with a picture, and you get something that could be understood by a small child.

Math is a language, and all languages can be at least loosely translated into other languages.

Speaking swahili and then claiming that only someone with an understanding of swahili can possibly understand what one is saying is a cop-out. If someone can attempt a translation of the Egyptian Book of Going Forth by Day (a.k.a. the "book of the dead") then you can at least try. That one is from a dead language, for cryin' out loud.

If any mathematicians here wish to provide an example of a useful idea that they are convinced absolutely cannot be explained outside of mathematical representation, I am open to the possibility and curious. I'll try to tackle the math, and see if I agree.

Just for the record, DaveScot (people here will remember him as a frequent PT troll months back, who was eventually and repeatedly banned for threatening to hack the site, posting under false identities and sending abusive e-mails to some of the contributors) could not have known about Mark's previous last name. A search of the ISI Web of Science database for "Perakh M*" alone, however, gives 48 hits between 1974 and the present, most of which are clearly independent peer-reviewed publications in Mark's field of expertise.

It is hard to believe that DaveScot, who claims to be a scientist himself, really thinks that "Google scholar" is a legitimate science publication database.

"Mark Perakh, the Boris Yeltsin of higher learning, has weighed in with yet another screed against me (go here). The man is out of his element.

I don't pretend to know where Dembski's math, per se, is sophisticated or not; that's why I'll wait until some serious mathematician, applied or theoretical, has anything positive to say about it before attempting to wade through it.

I do know this, though: Whatever mathematical wizardry you apply to it, calculating the probability of the components of bacterial flagella coming together by chance is just plain ridiculous*. Clearly unburdened by the most basic concepts of chemistry and biology, Dembski apparently feels comfortable impugning the competence of anyone to question his brilliance. The guy is either completely tone-deaf to irony, much better suited to politics and PR than academia, or both.

While delving into the math might be a worthwhile enterprise in and of itself, no one should be distracted by Dembski's apparent position that no criticism is valid unless it comes from a math PhD. Dr. Perakh has it exactly right: if the question is about evolution and biology, it's up to Dembski et al. to make the case for the relevance of his formulas before anyone should be asked to even care about their mathematical validity.

*I believe this would be a classic case of "garbage in, garbage out".

Read for instance Dembski's response to the Australian reporter. It shows how Dembski truly believes, contrary to fact, that intelligent design is scientifically relevant.
Yet he has not even addressed the inherent scientifical vacuity of intelligent design by not only providing no relevant explanations as to how it happened but also insisting that these requirements are 'pathetic'. In other words, do not hold ID to the same standards as real science since it is so much 'better'. And yet, ID's only success so far is that it has embraced evolutionary theory and is merely arguing that what we do not yet understand should therefor be seen as potentially intelligently designed. But rather than resting in the knowledge that ID is always a logical possibility, ID proponents insist that our ignorance IS evidence of INTELLIGENT DESIGN.
And yet, ID proponents also are on the record that there is not really any scientific theory of ID and that it is at most based on some loosely (and poorly) developed concepts.

That Dembski is unwilling or should we say unable to address these basic objections, should be evidence that ID is all about smoke and mirrors. By hiding our ignorance in mathematical concepts, it can pretend to have a scientific relevance when in fact it is 'rotten at the core' or fundamentally flawed.

ID cannot stand up for itself in a court of science and when it is given an opportunity, Dembski's comments cause manuscripts of a yet to be published book to be placed in the record and thus it becomes discoverable...
Earlier versions of the book revealed how the term creationism was replaced by the term intelligent design. Indicating strongly that ID is merely a politically/religiously driven move from creationism to a more scientifically sounding concept. Yet both remain fully founded on ignorance.

We do not understand all the circumstances leading to the Cambrian explosion? Must be intelligently designed. And yet when given the opportunity to make its case scientifically, ID proponents miserably failed (Meyer's paper comes to mind).

To use a common word used by ID-Cers: Pathetic...

Why, one wonders, do we still have the same ridiculous arguments 150 years after Darwin? But understand that 150 years is really nothing. And in the end, truth prevails. Rather than getting into name calling with creationists, just keep doing the science. It speaks for itself. Don't suppose for a minute that the world accepted the notion that the earth was spherical or that it was not the center of the universe until hundreds of years after these things were first observed by scientific minds.

Come now, tovarisch - you may not have personally ordered an artillery attack on the Duma, but (like most thoughtful citizens under most legislatures), you must have felt a strong desire to do so...

Adam, again I'm willing to admit the possibility that the problem is mine and that I am merely ignorant, but what it APPEARS to me that Dembski often does is to take ideas that are conceptual, that can be expressed in normal language, and are amenable to various analogies, and THEN he works like hell to translate that stuff into inscrutable symbolic jabberwocky that must be retranslated into something like real language again. And the only motive I can infer for this is that the initial, plainer languages is vulnerable to attack, so Dembski tries to innoculate it by putting it into symbolic format so that when experts critique it he can claim that they simply didn't understand the math.

The points made here about the requirement to demonstrate that the math is relevent is easily shown in ways that almost everyone can grasp:
2+2=4 is incontrovertibly true.
Therefore, argues a variant of Dembski, there must be an intelligent agent behind the occurrence of less than 4 liters of fluid when one mixes 2 liters of water and 2 liters of ethanol. Any argument about miscibility of fluids is ignorant and reflects a refusal to come to terms with the math or an inability to understand the math.
Similarly, 1+2=3 is incontrovertibly true.
Therefore, argues a variant of Dembski, there must be an intelligent agent behind the fact that 1 oxygen atom plus 2 hygrogen atoms results in 1 molecule of that dangerous substance dihydrogen monoxide. Any attempt to differentiate molecules and atoms is obfuscation and an obvious attempt to mask one's inability to deal with the math.

If Dembski's theology is approximately correct, he'll burn in hell forever for his lies and distortions.

hugs,
Shirley Knott

Nearly all ideas, even very sophisticated ones, can be explained *in essence* to a five year old.

— Adam Ierymenko

from Hoopman:
{every new transitional fossil simply creates a new "gap".}

It's worse, every new "missing link" that is found creates 2 gaps - one each side.

And...
Old Boris was much more of a fun guy than Putin and the whole Bush gang.

As for Dembski, isn't simplicity one of the goals of a good design? Oh, I guess not.

version 2.1, 4 March 2005 Abstract Searching for small targets in large spaces is a common problem in the sciences. Because blind search is inadequate for such searches, it needs to be supplemented with additional information, thereby transforming a blind search into an assisted search. This additional information can be quantified and indicates that assisted searches themselves result from searching higher-level search spaces---by conducting, as it were, a search for a search. Thus, the original search gets displaced to a higher-level search. The key result in this paper is a displacement theorem, which shows that successfully resolving such a higher-level search is exponentially more difficult than successfully resolving the original search. Leading up to this result, a measure-theoretic version of the No Free Lunch theorems is formulated and proven. The paper shows that stochastic mechanisms, though able to explain the success of assisted searches in locating targets, cannot, in turn, explain the source of assisted searches. 1 Blind Search Most searches that come up in scientific investigation occur over spaces that are far too large to be searched exhaustively. Take the search for a very modest protein, one that is, say, 100 amino acids in length (most proteins are at least 250 to 300 amino acids in length). The space of all possible protein sequences that are 100 amino acids in length has size 20**100, or approximately 1.27×10**130. Exhaustively searching a space this size to find a target this small is utterly....

— Dembski

Accordingly, determining the relative effectiveness with which A and B locate T in m steps is a matter of comparing two probability measures:....

I don't see anyone here considering the possibility that Dembski is mereley a distraction.

The obfuscations, the defelections, the borderline libelous behavior... all scream to me that he is being posted up as a simple distraction; a beacon to attract your attention...

but away from what, is the real question.

Upon reading the comments above and other prior topics on PT having to do with the work of Dr. Perakh, I have become intrigued into the reasons behind his activity in the intelligent design controversy. I can't help but notice and reflect on how much of his prior scientific work in the fields of semiconductor films, electric fields in electrolytes etc, seems to be quite unrelated to the philosophy of science and intelligent design which he now deals with. I do not think this discredits him as a credible and worthy opponent of ID, but I am interested into Why he got into the debate.

ID theorists are often accused of being feuled by religious convictions. I agree that this claim has some merit, although I think the "religious motivations" behind ID are better understood when taking into account the metaphysical space that religious people already possess concerning ontology when they view the natural world.
Philosophical theists are allowed to see design in nature for it is consistent with their deeply held ontological beliefs about reality. A metaphysical naturalist, in contradistinction, cannot see design or admit that the design she sees is actual because she simply does not possess the metaphysical space to allow it.

But all that aside for another time, I am curious as to the motivations behind Dr. Perakh's involvment in issues of faith and science, evolutionary theory, and ID debate. From what I have read concerning zealous ID opponents from some writers, they are often fueled by anti-religious, or atheistic, views. Is this true in the case of Dr. Perakh. Is anybody willing to give me an answer to my query. Perhaps even Dr. Perakh himself.

I myself would very much like to see a lengthy reply to Dr. Perakh's arguments from Dr. Dembski. He may very well find Dr. Perakh's arguments of little concern, but as for the attention that this issue is getting here among Dr. Dembski's fiercest opponents, I think a lengthy reply would be in order.

T.Russ

But all that aside for another time, I am curious as to the motivations behind Dr. Perakh's involvment in issues of faith and science, evolutionary theory, and ID debate. From what I have read concerning zealous ID opponents from some writers, they are often fueled by anti-religious, or atheistic, views. Is this true in the case of Dr. Perakh. Is anybody willing to give me an answer to my query. Perhaps even Dr. Perakh himself.

— T. Russ

I don't see anyone here considering the possibility that Dembski is mereley a distraction. The obfuscations, the defelections, the borderline libelous behavior... all scream to me that he is being posted up as a simple distraction; a beacon to attract your attention... but away from what, is the real question.

— Sir_Toejam

Yes, the reason is clearly obfuscation.

But I see a deeper element to the reliance on bogus math and the emphasis on pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo, and that is that the very idea of ID suffers from a rhetorical condition I will call "Poverty of Metaphor."

If you read Dembski's "Defense" of ID, his apparently honest attempt to do what others here have said he cannot do: make his ideas comprehensible in plain language, the analogies are simply terrible. I began an essay on the piece, and found that I could go on, literally for pages, about *just how bad* Mt. Rushmore is as an analogy for, well, life, certainly, but, if you want to get into it, for anything actually.

So it's partly that he uses bad to non-existant math for scaring the masses/impressing the flock, but it's also all he has, because the analogies available to him wouldn't impress a five year old.

Hmmm...

William Dembski, the William Hammesfahr of INformation Theory?

Cordova:Dembski:Shannon

::

Humbert:Lolita:Nabakov?

Philosophical theists are allowed to see design in nature for it is consistent with their deeply held ontological beliefs about reality. A metaphysical naturalist, in contradistinction, cannot see design or admit that the design she sees is actual because she simply does not possess the metaphysical space to allow it.

Regarding what Pete said, I think the large-dimensional parameter space seems like a fairly good model (though feel free to yell at me or correct me; I'm not a biologist). Only problem is, Dembski seems to be searching for a global maximum of some fitness function with n paramters, where evolution just picks individuals with the highest values of this function. Thus, the population is taking what would be a random walk of sorts in the parameter space, were natural selection not guiding it and making the walk decidedly un-random. Nobody is assisting a search moreover, because there is no absolute goal. And if the population gets stuck in a local maximum of its fitness function, what of it? It's either good enough or the critter becomes extinct. The idea of a walk through parameter space seems interesting and perhaps useful, but I fail to see the applicability of the words "blind" and "assisted", or for that matter, "search".

Dr. Perakh,

This is entirely off-topic, but as a (former) student of the Russian language, I was struck by your command of written English. I'm well aware of how difficult it is for native speakers of either language to write like a native in the other. Please accept my compliments on your excellent prose.

Colin

Tim, I would agree - the basic issue is not that Debmski's math is inaccurate; but rather that his math is irrelevant to the question of evolution.

I'd also like to point out from bitter experience, that ISI Web of Science is an absolute bag of arse. It will not list all of Mark's publications by a long stretch.

But you can get past that, eventually. What is more important is that two key delusions are already in the Abstract: 1) Evolution procedes by searching, randomly or otherwise, all sequences of a given length 2) Evolution is aiming at a taget Can you find additional delusions in this paper? Talk about searching large spaces! But he also discusses 'assisted searches'. This may be an assist: look in the area of Displacement.

Cordova:Dembski:Shannon :: Humbert:Lolita:Nabakov?

From what I have read concerning zealous ID opponents from some writers, they are often fueled by anti-religious, or atheistic, views. [...] Is anybody willing to give me an answer to my query.

— T. Russ

{every new transitional fossil simply creates a new "gap".} It's worse, every new "missing link" that is found creates 2 gaps - one each side.

A metaphysical naturalist, in contradistinction, cannot see design or admit that the design she sees is actual because she simply does not possess the metaphysical space to allow it.

— T. Russ

I have been recently active in debunking the nonsense propagated by pseudo-scientists which I believe is, although not very rewarding, a necessary activity.

...and with regard to the quality of Russian science, gosh, I wonder whose rockets have been keeping the, um, International Space Station going while we've been having our little Space Shuttle detaching foam problem?

it APPEARS to me that Dembski often does is to take ideas that are conceptual, that can be expressed in normal language, and are amenable to various analogies, and THEN he works like hell to translate that stuff into inscrutable symbolic jabberwocky that must be retranslated into something like real language again. And the only motive I can infer for this is that the initial, plainer languages is vulnerable to attack, so Dembski tries to innoculate it by putting it into symbolic format so that when experts critique it he can claim that they simply didn't understand the math.

"*just how bad* Mt. Rushmore is as an analogy for, well, life, certainly"

Comment #43745 Posted by Russell on August 18, 2005 01:19 PM (e) (s) While delving into the math might be a worthwhile enterprise in and of itself, no one should be distracted by Dembski's apparent position that no criticism is valid unless it comes from a math PhD. Dr. Perakh has it exactly right: if the question is about evolution and biology, it's up to Dembski et al. to make the case for the relevance of his formulas before anyone should be asked to even care about their mathematical validity.

While verifying the quotes sent by Dave and Steve, I noticed a few other comments on Dembski's site. While Dembski promptly deletes from his site any comment he does not like (which contrasts with how Panda's Thumb behaves), he allows posting of libelous pieces like the comment alleging that I have not published as many papers as I claim.

"fairly basic ignorance"

understatement of the year?

T. Russ wrote: A metaphysical naturalist, in contradistinction, cannot see design or admit that the design she sees is actual because she simply does not possess the metaphysical space to allow it.

If I recall Boris Yeltsin stopped the overthrow of a goverment, stopping tanks on their way to the Kremlin. So I guess Mark is stopping this group from over throwing the credibility of science.

I hear metaphysical space is a hot commodity on the trading floor these days.

I can't afford any shares in it myself.

I don't see anyone here considering the possibility that Russ is mereley a distraction.

Even if Mark Perakh WAS a world-class fraud who had actually only written 10% of the papers he claims to have written, I do believe that'd still make him a significantly more prolific scholar than William Dembski. Does anyone know off-hand how many papers Dembski has published? If I recall correctly, he published some papers involving real mathematics before selling his soul to Jesus.

I really think Dembski should have compared Dr. Perakh to Trofim Lysenko. The sheer irony of him doing so may have caused a rip in the space-irony continuum to form and eat Dembski.

Just how does one go about possessing metaphysical space? Just curious.

— Steve

now that we have defined metaphysical space as possesible, will we assume there is a manifest destiny for us to control it and steal it from the natives?

hmm. i noticed that a google search for "dembski blog" no longer actually turns up his blog on the first page any more. rather, it turns up mostly anti-dembski blogs. lol.

interestingly, i ran across this:

http://blogshares.com/blogs.php?blog=http://www.uncommondescent.com%2F

does it mean that he is trying to sell his domain name??

ah, nvm. i see now it is fantasy trading. what a strange thing. I did IT work for 7 years, and i still feel like the web is leaving me behind sometimes.

Dembski's Fourth Way of Answering Critics

I think Dembski may have found a fourth way of "answering" his critics. His First Way is to completely ignore all substantial criticism. His Second Way is to reply to a critic, but to post only on irrelevant things, such as the number of degrees a critic has. His Third Way is to promise to answer the criticism in a future book, and then not do it.

Now I think he's found a Fourth Way: Try to decieve the critic by making him think that he's posted your criticism when he really hasn't.

I was the first to reply to Dembski's "Boris Yeltsin" post. I posted a reply (below) at about 4:00 AM the day after he wrote it. I happened to post it using Internet Explorer, which my ISP insists on bringing up every time I log on. There were zero replies at that time. That afternoon, I checked from home and, as I expected, it wasn't there. A half dozen other replies were posted, but not mine. No surprise, that's Dembski's First Way - ignore all substantial criticism.

But then, the next night, I checked Uncommon Descent again prior to writing Mark - and there my reply was, number 1 on the list! I was amazed and wondered if Dembski had had a change of heart or what? Well, it turned out to be "what" because when I looked at the same site with another browser, my reply was gone!

I turns out that when I view UD from my dial-up account, using Internet Explorer, my reply is fully visible. When I view from any other account or from my dial-up account with Firefox, it's gone!

In fact, when I view the site with IE or Firefox from home or from my work computer, it's gone. The only time I see it is when I'm using my dial-up account from my laptop and using the same Internet Explorer that I posted the reply with.

Then I noticed one other thing. With both browsers, the site said there were 20 replies, but with IE there were actually 21. Mine was jammed into the top of the list and the other twenty followed, with the last one being numbered 21.

Today, the site tells my IE browser that there are thirty four comments, but there are actually 35, including mine. Firefox shows the correct 34 replies, with mine missing.

I can only conclude that Dembski has found a Fourth Way of replying to his critics: try to decieve them and hope they don't notice. Ironically, I knew he'd deep sixed my reply long before I ever noticed the deception! Life is hell when you're about half as smart as you think you are.

Here's my post, by the way, as copied from Uncommon Descent using Internet Explorer on my laptop. (I know, it's badly written. Look at the post time):

------------------------

"The man is out of his element. I'm still awaiting his detailed critique of "Searching Large Spaces" --- does he even understand the relevant math?"

Critiquing the math isn't necessary. For purposes of argument, I'm willing to stipulate that all the math in "Searching Large Spaces" is perfect.

The problem with your paper is that it proves that it's effectively impossible to find "T" if you're not already in it. While this is true, it also misses the point. "T" is the area of the search space where organisms have the ability to successfully reproduce. Since any organism that exists is descended from a four billion year long string of ancestors, all of who are known to be in "T" because they successfully reproduced, no organism has to search for "T". All successful organisms are already inside "T" and no organism has to search for "T" from the outside.

The First Living Thing, whatever it was, found a reasonably high probability section of "T" and all of its successful descendents have been in "T" ever since. Any offspring that were out of "T" died without leaving descendents.

The "goal" of all living things is to produce offspring that are also in "T" and thus capable of passing their genes on. They do this by producing offspring that are either identical or almost identical to themselves. If offspring are identical to their parents and their parents are in "T", then the offspring will be in "T" too. If offspring only differ from their successful parents by a small amount, they are only exploring the region of the search space in the immediate vicinity of their parents, not the whole search space. This raises their chance of landing in "T" to near certainty.

You can think of making only small changes or no changes at all as importing information from the world - an organism doesn't have to search the entire search space. It already knows where one part of "T" is because it's already in it.

Comment by djmullen --- August 16, 2005 @ 4:22 am

---------------------------------

As I said, not well written, but I'd like to hammer home the main points:

1: It doesn't matter if Dembski's math is right or wrong. He's trying to prove that it's virtually impossible to find "T" from the outside and, in reality, we're ALL inside "T" and have been since the First Living Thing, whatever it was.

2: Evolution DOES import a whopping amount of information. Reproduction starts with one or two pairs of DNA that are ALREADY IN "T".

3: I don't blame Dembski for wanting critics to focus on his math. His real source of error lies in not understanding what the hell he's criticizing in the first place.

If any mathematicians here wish to provide an example of a useful idea that they are convinced absolutely cannot be explained outside of mathematical representation, I am open to the possibility and curious. I'll try to tackle the math, and see if I agree.

— Adam Ierymenko

Dave Mullenix - to be fair you may just have run into a caching issue. Hitting F5 should sort out similar issues in the future and clearing the cache is something else to try (For Firefox Tools >Options >Privacy).
If you've already checked this then I apoligise and return to my normal lurking

I myself would very much like to see a lengthy reply to Dr. Perakh's arguments from Dr. Dembski. He may very well find Dr. Perakh's arguments of little concern, but as for the attention that this issue is getting here among Dr. Dembski's fiercest opponents, I think a lengthy reply would be in order. T.Russ

An imaginary number is any number that, when multiplied by itself, produces a negative number. Easy enough to describe to someone that understands the concepts of multiplication and negative numbers. Or if you want it in a real world application, let me know ;)

As far as I remember one of the early uses of Imaginary numbers were to solve problems with surveying.

Caspar Wessel introduced the interpretation of imaginary umbers as points in the plane - an idea that later Agard and Gauss stumbled upon, thus duplicating the relatively obscure work of Wessel.

So an imaginary number can be intepreted as a number in the complex plane - which could be explained for anyone with knowledge of maps.

(1+i) is simply one step right and one step up, whilst (-1-i) is one step left and one step up.

This might also be used to explain another representation of the same number, namely the angle and distance form the origo.

/Soren

Dave Mullenix:

Dembski deletes comments. It's part of his (buried in the archives) policy. Woe betide the person who doesn't know where to find it.

What's just as bad, an allied blog, IDtheFuture, deletes trackbacks.

Odd behavior for those who complain so vociferously about crushing dissent.

I've expected IDtheFuture to start censoring Trackbacks ever since Jay Richards's article telling us Einstein was confused.

Dave Mullenix: "T is the area of the search space where organisms have the ability to successfully reproduce. Since any organism that exists is descended from a four billion year long string of ancestors, all of who are known to be in T because they successfully reproduced, no organism has to search for T. All successful organisms are already inside T and no organism has to search for T from the outside. ... I don't blame Dembski for wanting critics to focus on his math. His real source of error lies in not understanding what the hell he's criticizing in the first place."

How amusing.

Everyone here knows about conditional probability, right? It involves a multiplicative sequence of probabilities associated with a nested series of progressively restrictive conditions or constraints.

Consider an arbitrary target T in a sample space or search space S, and suppose that T is small (unlikely, hard to find) in S. As Dembski observes, this implies (by definition) that relatively more information is required in order to "hit the target". [This is implied "by definition" because that's how probability is implicated in the definition of information.]

Dave Mullenix agrees, but says that the necessary information can be acquired a little bit at a time by a long sequence of "reasonably low" probabilistic deviations. The automatic effect of this process, Dave surmises, is to keep all organisms "inside T". That is, in seeking to explain how organisms get to T through S, he cites a certain cumulative S-process, "evolution", which, like any process, obeys certain rules and requires a certain framework in which to operate, including but not necessarily limited to S. That's right - it's a "gradualistic" search!

But in Dave's scenario, what we're really dealing with is a conditional probability in which the "evolution" process is implicated as an information-rich condition unto itself. One isn't allowed to simply take the process for granted; it too must be figured into the total probability. How likely, then, is the process called "evolution", given that it has this uncanny knack for converging on targets of extremely low probability (i.e., extremely low measure in S)?

And that, you see, is the million dollar question...the thing to be decided. Dave appears to think that the existence of this process is extremely likely, and that the problem of finding T is fully solved by remaining in T over the course of many slight (and therefore not very improbable) incremental changes. No doubt Dave is bursting with knowledge to the effect that T changes with location in the fitness landscape, that T is actually a really, really large class of targets {T} that are equivalent with respect to survival and reproduction, and so forth, all serving to bolster Dave's initial assumption that a gradualistic evolutionary process automatically converging on {T} is really, really likely.

But guess what? That's precisely what's at issue! So Dave can't simply assume it at the outset; by doing so, he is merely leaping to the very conclusion he pretends to have deduced.

The moral of the story, I suppose, is that sometimes, in trying to understand the meaning of a mathematical argument, one must take care to avoid circular reasoning.

[Perhaps, if Bill really did block Dave's post, he was merely trying to spare Dave the humiliation of a detailed response.]

Dr. Perakh's reply to my query:

Dear T. Russ: You are right asserting that during the long years of my career I did not publish anything on the topics I am dealing with now. The main reason for that was that I was too busy with my research related to my profession. Moreover, when still in the USSR, I had no chance to publish any paper expressing my views which rather cardinally differed from the official Marxist-Leninist ideology. Just for speaking too much I was arrested and sent to a Siberian prison camp. As soon as I got to the West, I started publishing papers in several languages addressing political and sociological problems in the USSR. In particular, in a paper that appeared in the mid seventies in Russian, Ukrainian, English, and Norwegian, I predicted the collapse of the USSR and even predicted with a reasonable accuracy how it would happen (although I thought it would take twice as long until it will take place than it actually happened). Naturally, being busy with my research and writing the mentioned articles, I simply had no time to deal with philosophy of science and related problems. However, soon after my retirement, I accidentally met a Canadian who asked me about my opinion on the Bible code. I had no knowledge of that subject whatsoever but promised him to look into that matter. I approached it as any other problem in my research, without any preconceived opinion. The result of studying the problem was my conclusion that the "code" was imaginary. I posted an essay expressing my conclusion and received many responses. It led to the exchange of views on a wider set of topics beyond the codes. Some of my interlocutors requested that I write a paper on probablilities (which I did), then asked that I read Behe's book and say what I think of it, and so it naturally led to my involvement in the ID - related debates. My opinions on that subject are well known, I view ID as a pseudo-science and feel I have to say that to all who wish to listen. Hopefully it answers your question. Feel free to let other people see this letter. I hope you'll not try to misrepresent its gist, although my limited experience with IDEA does not seem to be very encouraging in this respect (just look at the review of my book on IDEA site by Uminsky which distorts its contents). Best wishes,
Mark

My reply to Dr. Perakh:

Thanks for your response. You have had an interesting life, and the reason that I ask you about it has to do with my being a sort of social constructionist or just one who believes that our cultural-to-societal-to-personal philosophies go along way in shaping our thinking. (even to the point of our not recognizing it.) I believe that a scientists' life (well anybody for that matter) experience dramatically affect their work and drive them in what they do. What I am interested in knowing about ID and Creation opponents is whether or not many of them are in fact atheist or at least people who believe that traditional religion is something that ought to be done away with. I have nothing against people holding such views. I am just interested in what kind of a debate this truly is. At some points, and you'll disagree with this I am sure, it appears to be Science vs. Science. At other times it is easy to see this debate as Science vs. Religion. But often times, I believe it really comes down to Religion vs Anti-Religion. I am not alone in my interest of this aspect of the debate. Ronald Numbers, and recenlty Donald A. Yerxa, and Karl W. Giberson have tried documenting this.

I noticed that you did not tell me your personal religous outlook, and maybe for you that doesn't have any influence on your being active in this debate. But that would be very surprising to me however.

I would never attempt to willfully misrepresent your words to anyone so I am going to go ahead and post your response to me and my email back to you over on PT. I think some of the fine folks over there are making fun of my use of metaphysical space and so forth.

Thanks for your response,

T. Russ

[Perhaps, if Bill really did block Dave's post, he was merely trying to spare Dave the humiliation of a detailed response.]

But in Dave's scenario, what we're really dealing with is a conditional probability in which the "evolution" process is implicated as an information-rich condition unto itself. One isn't allowed to simply take the process for granted; it too must be figured into the total probability. How likely, then, is the process called "evolution", given that it has this uncanny knack for converging on targets of extremely low probability (i.e., extremely low measure in S)?

Re: "Religion vs. Anti-religion"

*sputter*
But IDers are attacking science with religion.

It's like hitting me over the head repeatedly with a stick, and then asking inanely, "why do you hate sticks so much, huh? Why are you anti-stick, huh?"

Because you're attacking me with one, you fool.

Re: "Religion vs. Anti-religion" *sputter* But IDers are attacking science with religion. It's like hitting me over the head repeatedly with a stick, and then asking inanely, "why do you hate sticks so much, huh? Why are you anti-stick, huh?" Because you're attacking me with one, you fool.

and with regard to the quality of Russian science, gosh, I wonder whose rockets have been keeping the, um, International Space Station going while we've been having our little Space Shuttle detaching foam problem?

T. Russ wrote: What I am interested in knowing about ID and Creation opponents is whether or not many of them are in fact atheist or at least people who believe that traditional religion is something that ought to be done away with. I have nothing against people holding such views. I am just interested in what kind of a debate this truly is.

T. Russ wrote: Philosophical theists are allowed to see design in nature for it is consistent with their deeply held ontological beliefs about reality. A metaphysical naturalist, in contradistinction, cannot see design or admit that the design she sees is actual because she simply does not possess the metaphysical space to allow it.

Truss wrote:

"What I am interested in knowing about ID and Creation opponents is whether or not many of them are in fact atheist or at least people who believe that traditional religion is something that ought to be done away with. "

the difference is, regardless of what opinions some scientists hold of traditional religious practices, THEY are not attempting to turn their opinions into law.

that's a rather large difference, don't you think?

(opens door and pokes head in)

So, has the religious war and all the silly dick-waving ended yet?

lol

I thought the discussion about penis size was in a different thread?

So, has the religious war and all the silly dick-waving ended yet?

sounds like you have garned a few, er, fans here ts-not-tim...

Neurode merely repeats Dembski's error. Recall that the theory of evolution begins when there is a population of imperfect replicators with heritable variation. The theory of evolution observes that there is descent with modification. What is modified? The existing population, which is itself in T. Given the several evolutionary operators that we know exist (mutations of various kinds, recombination of various kinds), a population exists on several fitness landscapes, one for each operator. Those fitness landscapes (or at least one of them) must have properties conducive to evolutionary 'search' (much as I hate the search metaphor for evolution). Notably, they must have non-random topographies. See especially Section 6.4.2 of the linked paper. (Warning: large pdf)

An evolving population is always either in T, with the evolutionary operators generating a cloud of variants in or near T (where"near" on any landscape is defined as one application of the operator that induces that landscape), or it is extinct. Extant evolving populations at any time slice are in T. The evolutionary operators do not generate variants randomly over the whole space; the distribution of variants is biased to be near T. Hence the probabilities, conditional or otherwise, that Dembski and his sycophants trumpet are irrelevant.

Given that, evolution will occur. Precisely what will evolve is unpredictable in particular, depending as it does in part on stochastic processes, but it is predictable in general. If one takes an end-point of the evolutionary process and looks back, pretending that the end-point was somehow "targeted" or "intended", one will calculate a tiny probability of occurrence of that particular end-point. When one realizes that no particular end-point was "targeted", the probabiity is 1.0 that the process will produce end-points far from the origin of an evolutionary trajectory, the original replicating population. It follows that in using his tiny probabilities to infer design, Dembski is merely begging the question: He must assume that the end-point was "intended" or "targeted" in order to calculate his tiny probabilities. But of course, that's the question he pretends to address.

The only "probability" that's relevant is the probability of occurrence of the original population of replicators, and that is currently unknown.

RBH

Mongrel - Caching issues were the first thing I thought of, so I hit F5 several times, exited and entered the program and finally went to tools/internet options/temporary internet files/delete files, checked "Delete all offline content" and hit "OK". Clearing all the files took some time, but at the end, my comment was still visible.

I wasn't surprised because my comment was never visible from the time I uploaded it until I saw it for the first time the next night. There was no way for it to get into the cache, let along get into the cache and renumber all the other comments to accomodate it. Dembski could probably prove mathematically that it had to be there by Intelligent Design, but frankly, I don't trust his ability to handle word problems.

neurode - You will go a long way in the ID industry because you have already mastered the art of seeing what you want to see in your reading.

neurode: "Consider an arbitrary target T in a sample space or search space S, and suppose that T is small (unlikely, hard to find) in S.

You go off the rails right here. We're not searching for a tiny T in a vast S, we're LIVING IN T AND TRYING TO GET OUR OFFSPRING IN T TOO. Until you realize this, you are making the same blunder as Dembski and you will never understand the problem.

neurode: "As Dembski observes, this implies (by definition) that relatively more information is required in order to "hit the target".

And we get the information necessary for STAYING IN THE TARGET from our DNA, which comes from our parent or parents, who are already in it. As a human being, you inherited over six billion bits of information in the DNA you got from Mommy and Daddy. That's a hell of a lot of info! Not enough to find T if you're out of it, but plenty enough to keep you in T if your parents who supplied this information were already in it.

neurode: "The moral of the story, I suppose, is that sometimes, in trying to understand the meaning of a mathematical argument, one must take care to avoid circular reasoning."

The real moral here is that if you don't understand the problem, math won't help.

neurode: [Perhaps, if Bill really did block Dave's post, he was merely trying to spare Dave the humiliation of a detailed response.]

I hesitate to speculate on what goes through Bill Dembski's mind, but I'm sure he wasn't trying to spare anybody but himself from humiliation. Why don't you post a comment on Dembski's blog and ask him if we're outside of T trying to get in or inside T trying to keep our children inside too. I'll be interested to see if your comment even survives deletion. I'd be even more interested to see how Dembski handles your comment if he doesn't delete it.

RBH and I were writing the two above comments at the same time.

Summary: Dembski is okay at math, but he can't handle word problems.

Yeah, but I looked up some references! :) But I couldn't find one I was looking for, on neighborhoods. The sad thing is it's also somewhere on one of my machines here, and I don't know which one! :(

RBH

Jim Anderson - I was aware of Uncommon Descent's policy when I posted and never really expected my comment to be published. It was intended to be more of a personal communication, to tell Dembski that his paper has a lethal hole in it. I didn't really expect it to do any good, but in public debate, you'er supposed to warn someone when he's walking off a clift. I assume a similar obligation in the case of someone who's already stepped off.

For Mongrel and the record, the exact sequence, as I remember it, is that I posted the note from my laptop dialup using Internet Explorer at about 4:20 am, looked immediately to see if it had been published and wasn't surprised not to see it because of the hour and Uncommon Descent's being moderated.

I looked that afternoon from my DSL line, using Firefox, and there were several other comments present, but mine was absent. As I say, I wasn't really surprised it wasn't there because of Uncommon Descent's reputation.

I looked early next morning from my laptop dialup using Firefox and my posting was still missing, although I think some more comments had been posted by then.

Sometime later that same morning, I looked at the site again from my laptop using Internet Explorer and was very surprised to see my posting right there in front of me as post number 1.

I was even more amazed when I switched back to Firefox and there my post wasn't!

I spent the rest of the morning and that afternoon checking things out, using varous combinations of browsers and ISPs and then wrote my first post above.

RBH - I suspect it was something about choosing a location in the same neighborhood as your parent's or as near as possible instead of choosing a location at random.

Let's consider bacteria, to keep the genetics simple, and assume that DNA alone determines what spot in S we land in, ignoring other hereditary factors such as methylation. If a bacteria divides perfectly, its offspring's DNA will be exactly like it's parent's. Therefore, it will occupy the exact same place in S as it's parent. Definitely in the same neighborhood - same house, in fact!

If the offspring's DNA contains a few mutations, the other 99.9999999% will still be the same, so the new DNA sequence will be very close to its parent's location in S. In the neighborhood, so to speak. The more mutations, the further away from our parent we wind up and the more likely we'll land in a bad neighborhood, where we won't thrive.

Dembski's calculations prove that if every baby's DNA is assembled randomly at conception, there is no practical hope of ever getting a live baby. The "bad neighborhoods" of S vastly outnumber the good ones. But he fails to take into account the huge amount of Data parents copy from their DNA to their offspring's DNA in his calculations. For humans, it's well over six gigabytes - enough to keep us as in the same neighborhood as our successful parents, and usually on the same street.

Dave Mullenix:

A somewhat weird possibility is that Dembski bans comments via IP address such that his server still displays them to the computer having that IP but not to other IPs (the numbering of them occurring on the fly anyway). Your browser should be irrelevant. All that should matter is that you are on a fixed (and different) IP rather than dial-up (when various different random people on the same service would be able to see your comment pop in and out of existence!).

It's just about feasible to imagine someone writing buggy code which accidentally produced that effect. However, it could also be a borderline insane/cunning deliberate strategy of making the person think their post hasn't been deleted so that they don't try to repost. The possibility of someone having (and routinely using) more than one computer with a different IP might be beyond narrow-minded IDiotic expectation.

RBH (and Dave):

Yes, it's obvious - unless you're an IDiot (whether foolish sheeple or deliberate conman).

RBH, Dave, your comments are good. The basic problem by Dembski (and others, Dave Heddle does this too) is that they have to start by assuming a teeny tiny target. Once you do that, you can go to town on the math. The problem, of course, is that there is no justification for having to find a teeny tiny target. As someone who in undergrad research manipulated proteins willy-nilly to add amino acids to which flourescent molecules could be added, I can tell you, there are a hell of a lot of nearby sequences which'll work fine. The teeny tiny target is irrelevant to evolution.

RBH - I suspect it was something about choosing a location in the same neighborhood as your parent's or as near as possible instead of choosing a location at random.

OK, so the dick is still waving.

(closes door and walks away)

its nice to see lenny and russ again, i was starting to fall asleep at my computer. Russ where is that goldarned scientific theory of intelligent designed that you so strongly hinted in the past that you actually knew what it was? I am glad that mr.Elsberry is a member of the United Methodist Church as is the pro, (flourish of trumpets),
lenny doesnt like religious evangelizing but at PT but in the past others have asked why dont main stream churches come out against I.D. and creationism as topics in science classes at the high school level? At St. Andrew UMC in Highlands Ranch Colo. they sure do and there have even been sermons on this exact topic (which are probably available on their website). The motto: the church where you dont check your brain at the door. It has been vere heartening to see the increase in membership since the church moved to that site when you consider that this is an ultra-consrvative area of a very red state (excluding the peoples republic of Boulder). Although I havent seen it yet on PT, legislation is being introduced to include ID
at the high school level and is being supported primarily by Catholic educators and representatives. Much skirmishing has been taking place in the editorial section of the Rocky Mountain News.

Is this a joke?

Maybe the T space thing was the final nail in the coffin..

Never mind.

RBH: "Neurode merely repeats Dembski's error. Recall that the theory of evolution begins when there is a population of imperfect replicators with heritable variation."

That might be where the theory begins, but the theory purports to describe a process, call it E. The nature and efficacy of this process - and the correctness of the theory in describing it - is what is really at issue. RBH apparently doesn't want to admit that his preferred theory of evolution T(E), whereby E supposedly produces information in great abundance, cannot be implanted a priori in arguments regarding the possible existence of such a process.

RBH: "The theory of evolution observes that there is descent with modification."

However, the theory does not guarantee that the modifications in question will conduce to survival and reproducibility. This is an important point, because even according to T(E), the mutations in question contain much of the probability-busting information arising through the process E.

RBH: "What is modified? The existing population, which is itself in T."

But of course - the population is already in T! But the issue is, how did it get there, and how does it remain there? This is the central question in the ID-evolution debate...the question about which Dembski is arguing. Without keeping this question squarely in mind, one cannot properly interpret Dembski's work.

RBH: "Given the several evolutionary operators that we know exist (mutations of various kinds, recombination of various kinds), a population exists on several fitness landscapes, one for each operator."

However, these operators require additional information in order to get us into T, and even into the fitness landscape containing T, and T(E) does not explain this. I'll grant that the evolutionary efficacy of these operators, which is the matter to be decided, has certain implications regarding the fitness landscape. But these implications are dependent on information, the source of which remains to be explained. It is not enough to observe that a group of organisms already conveniently resides in an information-rich sector of the landscape, where the reason for that is the issue to be resolved.

RBH: "Those fitness landscapes (or at least one of them) must have properties conducive to evolutionary 'search' (much as I hate the search metaphor for evolution). Notably, they must have non-random topographies. See especially Section 6.4.2 of the linked paper. (Warning: large pdf)"

Unfortunately, the properties in question - the information implicit in the landscapes - cannot be exclusively attributed to the operators mentioned by RBH, at least as they have thus far been described. Specifically, RBH is omitting the all-important correlation between mutation and fitness, simply taking it for granted in applying his operators. This appears to be an attempt to avoid the brunt of the issue.

RBH: "An evolving population is always either in T, with the evolutionary operators generating a cloud of variants in or near T (where"near" on any landscape is defined as one application of the operator that induces that landscape), or it is extinct."

In which case it is no longer evolving, regardless of whatever definition of "evolution" one happens to favor, which may not be valid in the first place.

RBH: "Extant evolving populations at any time slice are in T."

But WHY? That's the issue. One can't base his argument on the application of "evolutionary operators" without justifying their evolutionary efficacy, and one can't do that without identifying the source of the information implicit in the specific genotype-phenotype correspondences on which evolutionary efficacy is critically dependent.

RBH: "The evolutionary operators do not generate variants randomly over the whole space; the distribution of variants is biased to be near T. Hence the probabilities, conditional or otherwise, that Dembski and his sycophants trumpet are irrelevant."

And there it is - the argument of Dave Mullenix again, in a nutshell. "Given that a class of evolving organisms is always in T, and given that evolution occurs gradually by small displacements along the fluctuating gradient of a shifting fitness landscape, and given that all of these little displacements are by definition within the range of possibilities permitted by the evolutionary operators driving the whole process, evolution effortlessly follows the contours of evolutionary space, as captured by the fitness landscape(s)! It's all in the way the operators automatically, in fact by definition, follow the topography of the fitness landscape(s)!"

Unfortunately, something very important has gotten lost in there: the ultimate source of the information implicit in the overall relationship between organisms, operators and landscapes. This information can be at least partially identified with the strange occurrence of beneficial mutations, something which T(E) conspicuously fails to explain. (Note: One cannot explain the possibility of a long string of cumulative beneficial mutations by the continuous presence of organisms within T, when one is simultaneously attempting to explain the continuous presence of organisms in T by a long string of beneficial mutations.)

RBH: "Given that, evolution will occur."

In other words, "Given the applicability of my definition of evolution T(E), which is given by proximity to T, evolution will occur." This is already circular. But worse still, proximity to T is NOT necessarily given by RBH's (weak and inspecific) definition T(E) of E; it is only given by the actual process E, the correct and comprehensive definition of which is the very issue to be decided.

RBH: "Precisely what will evolve is unpredictable in particular, depending as it does in part on stochastic processes, ..."

Stochastic dependency, while present in T(E), is not necessarily present in E as it actually exists.

RBH: "...but it is predictable in general. If one takes an end-point of the evolutionary process and looks back, pretending that the end-point was somehow "targeted" or "intended", one will calculate a tiny probability of occurrence of that particular end-point. When one realizes that no particular end-point was "targeted", ... "

However, something IS targeted, namely a particular relationship between the state of the organism and its fitness landscape, as described in terms of nameless invariants which remain constant as the merates (organism and landscape) cross-adapt. The fact that these invariants have not yet been clearly identified does not imply the absence of a target. If there were no target of any kind, then fitness would have no meaning, natural selection could not occur, and neo-Darwinism would lose its central content.

RBH: "...the probabiity is 1.0 that the process will produce end-points far from the origin of an evolutionary trajectory, the original replicating population. It follows that in using his tiny probabilities to infer design, Dembski is merely begging the question: He must assume that the end-point was "intended" or "targeted" in order to calculate his tiny probabilities. But of course, that's the question he pretends to address."

Dembski doesn't have to address that question, because there IS a target, namely the predicate "fitness" (viability and reproducibility), the definitive relationship between living organisms and their environments. Call this target T'. The fluctuation of T does not preclude the existence of T', and for present purposes, it is enough to know that finding or remaining within T' requires some amount of information. The issue, once again, is whether RM&NS, plus some set of physical operators, can provide this amount of information, and how.

RBH: "The only "probability" that's relevant is the probability of occurrence of the original population of replicators, and that is currently unknown."

This would be true only under certain assumptions whose validity has yet to be established.

Neurode

All this fake math from the creationists. Do they believe it? Do they really think something in Information Theory debunks evolution? I would like to see Neurode alert some Information Theory researchers to his concerns, and see what they have to say. This math charade has gone on for some time now. Perhaps the Lords of PT would consider asking an IT researcher to comment on the claims?

RBH: "Extant evolving populations at any time slice are in T." But WHY? That's the issue.

That's a good idea, steve. So feel free to get off your duff and get a real, certified "Lord of IT" right on over here so that everybody can watch what happens. (Make sure he uses his real name, since that's the only way we can know that he's a real "Lord of IT".)

That IS a good idea! Personally, speaking as just your average scientist on the street, I find RBH's explanations lucid, and Neurode's not. I know that RBH is, in fact, professionally and academically involved at least in the ballpark of these issues. Who knows? Maybe if we knew neurode's real name, we'd realize we already have an IT expert gracing the barstools of Panda's Thumb!

Maybe if we knew neurode's real name, we'd realize we already have an IT expert gracing the barstools of Panda's Thumb!

Pro said:

"lenny doesnt like religious evangelizing but at PT but in the past others have asked why dont main stream churches come out against I.D. and creationism as topics in science classes at the high school level?"

On PT??? When?? never has anyone here on PT thought it would be a good idea that i have ever seen. I have seen suggestions (from myself as well), that ID be brought up as an excercise in failed logic in a logic analysis class, or could be brought up in ethics courses or even comparative philosophy courses/religion. However, I have NEVER seen anyone representing PT or supporting evolution ever suggest that this would be a good thing to do in science class.

I highly recommend you reword or rethink that statement.

Save the bratty chitchat, boys. Just get Mr. IT Big Cheese right on over here, so that everybody can witness at first hand the degree of logical acumen possessed by a real honest-to-betsy "Lord of IT" in this modern technologically advanced society of ours.

(Just be careful that you choose a fellow hardcore ID critic rather than a real information theorist. Because if he's real, then when the heat gets turned up on him, it's dollars to doughnuts he'll turn on you.)

to repeat a phrase - what ARE you on about?

It's already been explained to you several times that no REAL information theorists have ever or ever will take Dembski's musings seriously.

Why on earth would any of them bother to come here to debate it then? Especially when the very assumptions Dembki's drivel is based on are flawed to begin with.

sad.

(Just be careful that you choose a fellow hardcore ID critic rather than a real information theorist. Because if he's real, then when the heat gets turned up on him, it's dollars to doughnuts he'll turn on you.)

"in the past others have asked why dont main stream churches come out against I.D. and creationism as topics in science classes at the high school level?" On PT??? When?? never has anyone here on PT thought it would be a good idea that i have ever seen. I have seen suggestions (from myself as well), that ID be brought up as an excercise in failed logic in a logic analysis class, or could be brought up in ethics courses or even comparative philosophy courses/religion. However, I have NEVER seen anyone representing PT or supporting evolution ever suggest that this would be a good thing to do in science class.

the mutations in question contain much of the probability-busting information arising through the process E.

these operators require additional information in order to get us into T

I'll grant that the evolutionary efficacy of these operators, which is the matter to be decided, has certain implications regarding the fitness landscape. But these implications are dependent on information, the source of which remains to be explained.

Unfortunately, something very important has gotten lost in there: the ultimate source of the information implicit in the overall relationship between organisms, operators and landscapes.

What I am interested in knowing about ID and Creation opponents is whether or not many of them are in fact atheist or at least people who believe that traditional religion is something that ought to be done away with. I have nothing against people holding such views. I am just interested in what kind of a debate this truly is.

— T. Russ

"You seem to be misparsing; pro is suggesting that [mainstream churches should oppose [the teaching of creationism in science classes]], not that [[mainstream churches should oppose creationism] in science classes]."

thanks TS; yes, you appear to be correct, and nice presentation of set theory too :p

Russell, actually, according to Barbara Forrest most IDers are evangelicals:

"There is a marriage of convenience between young-Earth creationists (YECs) and ID creationists. The fundamentalist YECs insist on the literal interpretation of Genesis, which includes the view that Earth is only 6,000-10,000 years old. Most ID proponents are evangelicals who allow a little more room for biblical interpretation than fundamentalists do. They are not literalists but accept modern scientific evidence that Earth is several billion years old. This is a source of conflict between the two groups, but YECs have had their day in court (quite a few of them, in fact) and have lost every time. They know that they have no hope of getting their own views into public school science classes. Phillip Johnson knows this, too, but he also needs the YECs' political support. And there are YECs in the ID movement such as Paul Nelson, a philosopher, and Nancy Pearcey, a Christian writer and commentator. Both are longtime CRSC fellows. YECs and ID proponents are united by their social and political conservatism, so Johnson has tried to construct a "big tent," a coalition of YECs and ID creationists, hoping to use the strength of their combined numbers as a political force. The YECs have gone along, grudgingly at times, eager to profit from the Wedge's hoped-for success at getting ID into public schools. For them, ID is now the only game in town."

Rest of her interview here.

That might be where the theory [of evolution] begins, but the theory purports to describe a process, call it E. The nature and efficacy of this process - and the correctness of the theory in describing it - is what is really at issue. RBH apparently doesn't want to admit that his preferred theory of evolution T(E), whereby E supposedly produces information in great abundance, cannot be implanted a priori in arguments regarding the possible existence of such a process.

However, the theory does not guarantee that the modifications in question will conduce to survival and reproducibility. This is an important point, because even according to T(E), the mutations in question contain much of the probability-busting information arising through the process E.

But of course - the population is already in T! But the issue is, how did it get there, and how does it remain there? This is the central question in the ID-evolution debate...the question about which Dembski is arguing. Without keeping this question squarely in mind, one cannot properly interpret Dembski's work.

However, these operators require additional information in order to get us into T, and even into the fitness landscape containing T, and T(E) does not explain this. I'll grant that the evolutionary efficacy of these operators, which is the matter to be decided, has certain implications regarding the fitness landscape. But these implications are dependent on information, the source of which remains to be explained. It is not enough to observe that a group of organisms already conveniently resides in an information-rich sector of the landscape, where the reason for that is the issue to be resolved.

Unfortunately, the properties in question - the information implicit in the landscapes - cannot be exclusively attributed to the operators mentioned by RBH, at least as they have thus far been described. Specifically, RBH is omitting the all-important correlation between mutation and fitness, simply taking it for granted in applying his operators. This appears to be an attempt to avoid the brunt of the issue.

RBH: "An evolving population is always either in T, with the evolutionary operators generating a cloud of variants in or near T (where"near" on any landscape is defined as one application of the operator that induces that landscape), or it is extinct." In which case it is no longer evolving, regardless of whatever definition of "evolution" one happens to favor, which may not be valid in the first place.

RBH: "Extant evolving populations at any time slice are in T." But WHY? That's the issue. One can't base his argument on the application of "evolutionary operators" without justifying their evolutionary efficacy, and one can't do that without identifying the source of the information implicit in the specific genotype-phenotype correspondences on which evolutionary efficacy is critically dependent.

And there it is - the argument of Dave Mullenix again, in a nutshell. "Given that a class of evolving organisms is always in T, and given that evolution occurs gradually by small displacements along the fluctuating gradient of a shifting fitness landscape, and given that all of these little displacements are by definition within the range of possibilities permitted by the evolutionary operators driving the whole process, evolution effortlessly follows the contours of evolutionary space, as captured by the fitness landscape(s)! It's all in the way the operators automatically, in fact by definition, follow the topography of the fitness landscape(s)!"

Unfortunately, something very important has gotten lost in there: the ultimate source of the information implicit in the overall relationship between organisms, operators and landscapes. This information can be at least partially identified with the strange occurrence of beneficial mutations, something which T(E) conspicuously fails to explain. (Note: One cannot explain the possibility of a long string of cumulative beneficial mutations by the continuous presence of organisms within T, when one is simultaneously attempting to explain the continuous presence of organisms in T by a long string of beneficial mutations.)

However, something IS targeted, namely a particular relationship between the state of the organism and its fitness landscape, as described in terms of nameless invariants which remain constant as the merates (organism and landscape) cross-adapt. The fact that these invariants have not yet been clearly identified does not imply the absence of a target. If there were no target of any kind, then fitness would have no meaning, natural selection could not occur, and neo-Darwinism would lose its central content.

Mona, thanks. Barbara Forrest's work should also be of interest to T. Russ.

I used the pretentious expression sensu lato partly because T. Russ had enquired about "ID and Creation opponents", and the answer, as you note, depends on which subset you're talking about.

"Fundamentalist" has a very specific meaning, and I have in mind a category that would include the "capital F" Fundamentalists as well as catholics like Santorum and Behe, and in fact pretty much all the DI illuminati. I think someone here at PT has used the term "Johnsonist", perhaps describing the category I have in mind.

I think of Johnsonism (after Phil Johnson, who articulated this quite well in "Darwin on Trial") is a someone who sees no point in believing in a god that's not actively involved in manipulating the physical stuff of the universe, a god that doesn't tangibly answer prayers. I think a Johnsonite is someone for whom literal "miracles" - divine overriding of physical laws - are central to his/her faith.

Unfortunately, something very important has gotten lost in there: the ultimate source of the information implicit in the overall relationship between organisms, operators and landscapes. This information can be at least partially identified with the strange occurrence of beneficial mutations, something which T(E) conspicuously fails to explain. (Note: One cannot explain the possibility of a long string of cumulative beneficial mutations by the continuous presence of organisms within T, when one is simultaneously attempting to explain the continuous presence of organisms in T by a long string of beneficial mutations.)

— Neurode

As is well known DNA sequences map to RNA or protein structures.

There are far more sequences than structures

Contains few highly-connected motifs and many less connected nodes

Motifs have a neutral network which extends throughout sequence space

Since CJ isn't a "Lord of IT", let's keep his initial helping of "word salad" as simple as possible: information is a function which attributes to some argument x a location in some space S of possible loci (values of attributes). Note that insofar as x either does or does not inhabit a given location in S, this is a 2-valued definition (a probabilistic definition of information is a bit more complicated, but the thrust is the same; it generates a probability distribution over S with respect to the location of x).

Now, each of the above quotes refers to a mapping of some object, e.g. an organism or class thereof, into a space of one or more attributes, e.g. evolutionary state space, with which some causality (state transition) function is associated, e.g. an "evolutionary operator" generating a fitness landscape.

Clearly, fitness landscapes and the operators that generate them purport to contain information; they supposedly restrict organisms to a subset of possible or likely locations in evolutionary state space.

The magic question: where does this information come from, and how is it generated by its source?

An argument that answers this question with a mere circular definition of states, operators and landscapes tells us essentially nothing. In particular, an argument to the effect that organisms occupy particular loci in evolutionary state space due to the action of evolutionary operators circularly defined on their loci in evolutionary state space is, you guessed it, circular. Hence, my remark: "One cannot explain the possibility of a long string of cumulative beneficial mutations by the continuous presence of organisms within T, when one is simultaneously attempting to explain the continuous presence of organisms in T by a long string of beneficial mutations."

This should paint you an adequate picture. Now, if you think you're able, stop dwelling on elementary definitions, and get busy identifying a source of evolutionary information that is not a mere circular definition nearly devoid of predictive value on the macroevolutionary scale.

RBH, let's cut to the chase here. What is it, in your view, that causes some mutations to be beneficial (fitness-enhancing), given that T(E) fails to identify a mechanism linking mutation and fitness?

Please note that any failure to identify a mechanism by which an organism's prospects for fitness can influence mutation renders the mutation operator devoid of information with respect to fitness, and contains no information serving to locate the description T(E) on a scale of validity. In that event, your entire thesis would (again) come down to: "A living organism is by definition close to a location characterized by fitness; hence, slight displacements are likely to put it near a location characterized by fitness!"

If you can answer this question in a noncircular way, I may begin to appreciate your viewpoint. Otherwise, it's just another tailchase.

The magic question: where does this information come from, and how is it generated by its source?

— Neurode (Bill?)

RBH, let's cut to the chase here. What is it, in your view, that causes some mutations to be beneficial (fitness-enhancing), given that T(E) fails to identify a mechanism linking mutation and fitness?

— Neurode

an organism's prospects for fitness can influence mutation...

What is it, in your view, that causes some mutations to be beneficial

RBH, let's cut to the chase here. What is it, in your view, that causes some mutations to be beneficial (fitness-enhancing), given that T(E) fails to identify a mechanism linking mutation and fitness? Please note that any failure to identify a mechanism by which an organism's prospects for fitness can influence mutation renders the mutation operator devoid of information with respect to fitness, and contains no information serving to locate the description T(E) on a scale of validity.

"A living organism is by definition close to a location characterized by fitness; hence, slight displacements are likely to put it near a location characterized by fitness!"

Russell writes: "Fundamentalist" has a very specific meaning, and I have in mind a category that would include the "capital F" Fundamentalists as well as catholics like Santorum and Behe, and in fact pretty much all the DI illuminati.

(I CANNOT figure out the tags here to quote people, and put their words in those nifty white boxes. And I'm done with previewing or posting "mismatched tags" every time I try!)

I'm no scientist, but I have a background in religious studies, including some significant examination of the creationist movement. "Fundamentalist" has a, shall we say, different taxonomical status than do evangelicals within the study of religion.

Bush is an evangelical. I know his recent remarks on ID set everyone off, but do not look for him to use his bully pulpit to press the issue. His comments were given in response to a question by a reporter; he is unlikely to raise the subject himself.

In the main, evangelicals do not like to politicize religion; they are experiential rather than dogmatic, and do not adhere to a tough-minded Old Testament God. But they have been compelled by their faith to act: they did, after all, contribute heavily to abolitionism and women's suffrage, among other social movements. Fundamentalists, by contrast, historically eshchewed political involvement until they perceived evolution and its purported attendant "evils" as an attack on their faith. Until Falwell, the Moral Majority & etc., they didn't appear much in politics.

Many, many evangelicals are decent and reasonable people. We need their help in defeating the few in their midst who are pushing ID and "The Wedge" agenda. This evangelical dominance in the new creationism of ID is novel. I seriously doubt most of them want to be the next creationist vanguard.

Mona: (I CANNOT figure out the tags here to quote people, and put their words in those nifty white boxes. And I'm done with previewing or posting "mismatched tags" every time I try!)

Until Falwell, the Moral Majority & etc., they didn't appear much in politics.

Russell: Thanks for the citing offer on Ed Larson. I have read all of his books and greatly anticipate his future research on this topic. Yes, Ed Larson was a student of Ronald Numbers and has continued research in the same areas of evolution, creation, and their social-religious interactions. In Larson's recent book, "Evolution. The Remarkable History of a Scientific Idea" the religious views of most of the scientists and philosophers involved with the origination and continuing progress in evolutionary theory are discussed. It is in historical works such as those coming from Larson and Numbers that much evidence can be gleemed supporting the claims of us non-naturalistic types that many hardcore promoters of evolution have been driven by philosophical commitments to naturalistic ontology.

Mona and others:

There seems to be a couple of very different conversations going on here but as for the questions of fundamentalist suppport for ID and ID's relationship to YEC...I think the issue is a bit more complex than we have yet treated it. I am now reading "Species of Origin. America's Continuing Search for a Creation Story" and the approach in this book by Yerxa and Giberson looks to be promising. As for Barbara Forrest and similar treatments of the ID communities relationship to religion, I find these to be confused at a very serious level. The distinction must be made between the ID "Movement", which is supportedly largely by Christian people in America who believe very strongly in what many call fundamentalism, and the development of ID theory or research. Many ID theorist are religionist while a few are not. I guess much could be said about this distinction and should be said but for now, let point out that Babara Forrest, a major critic of the ID Movement, is herself someone who is opposed to religious ontology. Like many others, (Massimo Piggliucci, Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, and this list goes on for quite some time) I believe a very strong case can be made that the passion which drive these scholars onward in their critique and public outcry against ID, is derived from their disdain of religion. I do not believe all hardcore anti-ID people are driven by a fear of religion gaining ground in academia or the scientific world, but it is a curious fact that many seem to.

Pierce R. Butler writes: Your "religious studies", if dealing with the contemporary US scene, really should have noted that a concerted attempt to recruit fundamentalists and evangelicals for the Republican Party began soon after Barry Goldwater's disastrous presidential campaign in 1964, led by junk-mail-meister Richard Viguerie and behind-the-scenes political fixer Paul Weyrich. They didn't really hit their stride until Jimmy Carter made white evangelists mentionable in the mainstream media in '76.

I do not see how this differs from what I wrote. Fact is, until the late 70s, fundamentalists as such were not a valued political force sought for marshalling. But if you have some counter evidence, I would certainly consider it.

And thank you for your reference to the formatting guide: I consulted it. It is so different from every other place I comment, and I just am no longer willing to expend time to learn the protocols.

T Russ writes; I guess much could be said about this distinction and should be said but for now, let point out that Babara Forrest, a major critic of the ID Movement, is herself someone who is opposed to religious ontology. Like many others, (Massimo Piggliucci, Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, and this list goes on for quite some time) I believe a very strong case can be made that the passion which drive these scholars onward in their critique and public outcry against ID, is derived from their disdain of religion.

I do not know what it means to be "opposed to religious ontology," as you allege Dr. Forrest is. But she is correct to differentiate between evangelicals and fundamentalists, as a historical and sociological matter. She is pretty much spot on in all she writes, that I have seen.

T Russ, do you really think all the evolutionary scientists, worldwide, practice their science in the service of anti-religion? C'mon.

"T. Russ" Hunter is looking to marginalize Keith Miller, Ken Miller, Simon Conway Morris, Howard Van Till, Francis Collins, and a list that goes on for quite some time, including me, of Christians who critique ID.

The inconvenient (for Hunter) fact is that quite a lot of the criticism that ID receives comes from Christian scholars. It makes the claim that there's a general trend to anti-religious stances in ID criticism laughable. Contrast that with the parallel concern over the near-universal commitment among ID advocates (and universal among the best-known ID advocates) to Christianity.

So I would like to thank "T. Russ" Hunter for validating the general mode of argument that makes it a slam dunk to say that ID is a religious enterprise. When ID advocates or cheerleaders take issue with that, I'll just point to Hunter as the relevant authority on the mode of argument and ask them to take it up with him.

Here, explain "exotic R4" if possible:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ExoticR4.html

what i keep seeing over and over, and similarly anyone else that either isn't deliberately deceitful or just self deluded, is that it is ALWAYS those from the ID/creationist side that try to make this into a religious argument. all of the real scientists (including dawkins) have repeatedly attacked ID for it's lack of science primarily, not whatever religious position it takes.

the attempt to portray this as a battle of atheists vs. theists is purely a construct of the ID folks for political purposes; regardless of whether they try to couch it in terms of "methodological naturalism" or not. period.

the fact that some here and elswhere HAVE tried to point out the vacuousness of ID from a theological position as well in no way reflects the type of debate the IDiots keep trying to frame it as. You will not find on PT any official contributer having posted the idea that atheism is de-rigeur amongst "real" scientists, or that it has anything to do with why ID is considered bankrupt both morally and scientifically.

what really irks me tho, is how many folks are apparently taken in by the false protrayals painted by the IDiots. I would expect deceit from the ID side, since the people behind the scenes driving it really have no morals or scruples other than a desire to control. However, the fact that so many folks are convinced by their rhetoric is of far more concern to me.

sad, really.

Now we're back to arguing with T. Russ again. T. Russ is a philosophy and history student. Who else shows up to defend ID? Charlie Wagner was a school teacher. Neurode is, I don't know, probably a convenience store clerk. Sal Cordova has some undergrad degrees in math or engineering or something. Francis Beckwith was a philosopher. Ditto Paul Nelson. Can anyone recall an actual biologist ever, ever, showing up here to defend ID? I can't.

"Neurode is, I don't know, probably a convenience store clerk."

lol.

Plenty of christians don't go along with pseudoscience. I personally like this guy Roger C. Wiens. He's a christian and a physicist/geologist who basically got tired of wacko Young Earth Creationists making christians look like morons via anti-radiometric-dating nonsense, so he wrote a tutorial about it for them.

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

If T. Russ is still with us, I'm curious. I believe that you, and Salvador Cordova, and Casey Luskin are all involved in "IDEA clubs" - university campus organizations interested in "Intelligent Design". We learned a while back that at least Luskin's franchise has a rule that nonchristians were barred from eligibility as officers of the organization. He completely failed to understand how this in any way detracted from their scientific credibility. My question is whether this rule applies to all "IDEA clubs", or if that's a chapter by chapter thing. Does it apply to yours?

Are you kidding me? Nonchristians were barred? Is it to late to get him to Dover?

(I CANNOT figure out the tags here to quote people ...

— mona

Mona:

By "religious ontology" I mean simply the religious view of reality rather than the naturalistic, or secular. This is a broad category I am sure, but I was meaning it to be so.

In my post I did not say anything about "all" scientists who study or promote evolution being guided by fear or disdain of religion. Check it out...comment number 44153

Dr. Elsberry:

Umm, yes my last name is Hunter. My first name is Thomas, and my middle name is Russell. My fathers name is also Thomas so I grew up going by the name Russell. Of course, many of my friends shorten Russell to Russ and since I like the fact that my father gave me his name, I usually attatch a T. when writing my signature. Yup, that's how it is on my social security card. Thanks for noticing?????

I am in no way trying to marginalize Keith Miller, Ken Miller, Simon Conway Morris, Howard Van Till, Francis Collins, you or any other Christians who critique ID. I didn't bring them up. In fact if you go back up and read my posts you will see that what I am interested in is the curious fact that many anti-ID folks are either atheists or secular humanists with an interest in the removal of the religious view of reality from academic and public life. This is a documentable fact in the very same way that it is a documented fact (Forrest and Gross) that many of the most prominent ID theorists are some form of Christian evangelical.

And, I am aware that You and many others here at PT are theists or Christians. I personally do not believe that being a "christian" has very much to do with whether one thinks that complex specified information is something which exists in nature and is a true indicator of intelligent agent causation. Most of the christians I know really aren't interested in the subject, but believe in some sort of theistic evolution which they know hardly anything about, and never really let these sorts of things bother them. I do not mean this to apply to all christians everywhere however and I do not wish to "marginalize" anybody.

Sir_Toejam:

Well, I agree. It's not just Atheists vs. Theists. It's far more complex than that. But that is a part of it. A part which I find interesting. As people like to note, I am a student of history and philosophy. Can I not be interested in the relationship between science and religion within the ID/Naturalism debate? Outside of my being interested, many actual scholars have documented the apparent religious worldview versus anti-religious worldview aspect of the ongoing "Darwin" debates in America.

steve:

Do you think that because there are no biologists who blog on PT, there are no biologists who support the ID hypothesis or oppose naturalistic evolution?

Neurode: If your a convenience store clerk (which I really really doubt), then let me congratulate you for getting online and mixing it up with the friendly combatants of PT. Keep it up.

Russell: IDEA Clubs (not any of them as far as I am aware) bar non-christians from membership. At OU we certainly do not. As for leadership, that would almost make sense because if you look at the IDEA Clubs Core beliefs:

Like any organization, IDEA itself is not without its own biases. Our mission statement plainly says that "[a]t the heart of our advocacy is to promote intelligent design theory purely on its scientific merits." We recoginze that investigating over origins raises questions that are both religious and scientific in nature, but we are careful not to mix scientific claims with religious claims, and recognize that the two are distinct and different, though complementary to one-another.

Our ultimate hope is that people can at least learn about theories of "intelligent design" and be made aware of the many problems with purely naturalistic explanations for the existence of life. By exposing the lack of scientific evidence supporting the assertion that natural processes are purely responsible for life and conveying the empirical evidence supporting intelligent design theory, we hope to bring to light the value of intelligent design theory and cause people to evaluate their own beliefs.

So, we admit, IDEA does have an agenda and a bias. And, just as we encourage each other to admit bias at our events, the leadership of IDEA freely and publicy acknowledges its own bias: We believe that life is not the result of purely natural processes, but that it was in some way designed by an "intelligence." And because of religious reasons unrelated to intelligent design theory, IDEA Center Leadership believes that the identity of the designer is the God of the Bible.

That's our bias, and we'd love to know more about yours!

steve: Do you think that because there are no biologists who blog on PT, there are no biologists who support the ID hypothesis or oppose naturalistic evolution?

I am in no way trying to marginalize Keith Miller, Ken Miller, Simon Conway Morris, Howard Van Till, Francis Collins, you or any other Christians who critique ID. I didn't bring them up.

— T. Russ

Like many others, (Massimo Piggliucci, Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, and this list goes on for quite some time) I believe a very strong case can be made that the passion which drive these scholars onward in their critique and public outcry against ID, is derived from their disdain of religion. I do not believe all hardcore anti-ID people are driven by a fear of religion gaining ground in academia or the scientific world, but it is a curious fact that many seem to.

— T. Russ

Most of the christians I know really aren't interested in the subject, but believe in some sort of theistic evolution which they know hardly anything about, and never really let these sorts of things bother them.

what i keep seeing over and over, and similarly anyone else that either isn't deliberately deceitful or just self deluded, is that it is ALWAYS those from the ID/creationist side that try to make this into a religious argument. all of the real scientists (including dawkins) have repeatedly attacked ID for it's lack of science primarily, not whatever religious position it takes.

— Sir_Toejam

I am in no way trying to marginalize Keith Miller, Ken Miller, Simon Conway Morris, Howard Van Till, Francis Collins, you or any other Christians who critique ID. I didn't bring them up.

— T. Russ

In fact if you go back up and read my posts you will see that what I am interested in is the curious fact that many anti-ID folks are either atheists or secular humanists with an interest in the removal of the religious view of reality from academic and public life. This is a documentable fact in the very same way that it is a documented fact (Forrest and Gross) that many of the most prominent ID theorists are some form of Christian evangelical.

As for leadership, that would almost make sense because if you look at the IDEA Clubs Core beliefs: ... because of religious reasons unrelated to intelligent design theory, IDEA Center Leadership believes that the identity of the designer is the God of the Bible.

This reminds me, how is that remedial reading coming? I seem to have missed wherever it was that "T. Russ" got "down and dirty" with my essays. Surely there wouldn't be a violation of that "bearing false witness" rule going on, would there?

— Wesley R. Elsberry

Allright Wes, after tonight I won't come back to pandasthumb until i'm ready to get down and dirty with your essays.

I think there is some confusion between self-referential arguments and self-referential descriptions. A circular argument is bad, but circular (recursive) descriptions are common and valid. If a recursively defined system can be shown to produce a set of phenomena, then that system is a viable explanation of those phenomena.

AFAIK recursively defined things can always be defined non-recursively.

I wonder what the creationists would do with their calculators if their licence to multiply large numbers of probabilities were revoked.

AFAIK recursively defined things can always be defined non-recursively.

The Ackermann function can also be expressed nonrecursively using Conway chained arrow: ... or the hyper operators:

I would be loath to chase T. Russ away since I'm counting on him to help develop the actual *****Scientific Theory of Intelligent Design***** which I need in 2 weeks. Iwould like to point out; however, that my previous concept continues to be necessary which is: the *****Scientific Theory of Intelligent Design******(which I'd like to trademark) cannot be merely a metaphysical alternative to evolution but must replace all science from quantum mechanics to general relativity and all steps in between. No intelligent designer could possibly control the origin or diversity of life without havinng total control of all other scientific disciplines. Perhaps I am being naive, but it appears to me that evolution is the target because it has the least support in the general population(how many people would say that they dont believe in the atomic structure of matter). As I have stated in the past this could greatly simplify science education by reducing it to one sentence. This could pass great tax savings on to our citizens. We could teach our kids to say "do you want fries with that?" in every important foreign language.

"[a]t the heart of our advocacy is to promote intelligent design theory purely on its scientific merits." ...Our ultimate hope is that people can at least learn about theories of "intelligent design" and be made aware of the many problems with purely naturalistic explanations for the existence of life. By exposing the lack of scientific evidence supporting the assertion that natural processes are purely responsible for life and conveying the empirical evidence supporting intelligent design theory, we hope to bring to light the value of intelligent design theory and cause people to evaluate their own beliefs.... IDEA Center Leadership believes that the identity of the designer is the God of the Bible.

— The IDEA Clubs' Core Beliefs

Dembski wrote: Searching for small targets in large spaces is a common problem in the sciences.... ... But you can get past that, eventually. What is more important is that two key delusions are already in the Abstract: 1) Evolution procedes by searching, randomly or otherwise, all sequences of a given length 2) Evolution is aiming at a ta[r]get

— Pete Dunkelberg

Of course, we need to make sure that the random walk has no unfair advantage in finding the target. For instance, the random walk must not have an inherent tendency to drift toward the target T . This would unduly increase the probability of the walk reaching the target.

— William Dembski

By intelligence, here, I mean something quite definite, namely, factors that change one probability distribution into another and thus, present discussion, transform a blind search into an assisted search.

There is a growing debate whether the mechanisms currently proposed by evolutionary biology are adequate to account for biological structures and functions (see, for example, Depew and Weber 1995, Behe 1996, and Dembski and Ruse 2004). Suppose they are. Suppose the evolutionary searches taking place in the biological world are highly effective assisted searches qua stochastic mechanisms that successfully locate biological structures and functions. Regardless, that success says nothing about whether stochastic mechanisms are in turn responsible for bringing about those assisted searches.

What if, additionally, they inevitably result from a form of intelligence that is not reducible to stochastic mechanisms---a form of intelligence that transcends chance and necessity? The No Free Lunch Regress, by demonstrating the incompleteness of stochastic mechanisms to explain assisted searches, fundamentally challenges the materialist dogma that reduces all intelligence to chance and necessity.

Don't you just love it? From the IDEA Club's core beliefs:

"[a]t the heart of our advocacy is to promote intelligent design theory purely on its scientific merits...By exposing the lack of scientific evidence supporting the assertion that natural processes are purely responsible for life and conveying the empirical evidence supporting intelligent design theory..."

Um-m, what happened to the Scientific evidence supporting the "scientific merits" of intelligent design "theory"? I'll have to ask Casey about that.

By intelligence, here, I mean something quite definite, namely, factors that change one probability distribution into another and thus, present discussion, transform a blind search into an assisted search.

— Dembski

Intelligence acts by changing probabilities. Equivalently, intelligence acts by generating information.

— Dembski

This environment is intelligent in that, as defined in the last section, it is capable of altering probabilities by replacing a blind search with an assisted search. But in this replacement, is such an environment entirely reducible to stochastic mechanisms?

— Dembski

By intelligence, here, I mean something quite definite, namely, factors that change one probability distribution into another and thus, present discussion, transform a blind search into an assisted search.

— me, quoting Dembski,

By intelligence, here, I mean something quite definite, namely, the causal factors that change one probability distribution into another and thus, in the present discussion, transform a blind search into an assisted search.

...and with regard to the quality of Russian science, gosh, I wonder whose rockets have been keeping the, um, International Space Station going while we've been having our little Space Shuttle detaching foam problem?

I was wondering the same thing. I must admit that I found the comment regarding the quality of Russian science education and Russian scientists to be baffling. This claim about a country that notoriously executed, or at least threatened to execute, and imprisoned its scientists for failing to produce results, simply makes no sense. If ever there were a motivation to be the best in your field, that would be it! You can say what you like about, for example, using slave labor to build self-contained research facilities purely for scientists and their families, but you can't say that they didn't have access to adequate educational resources (or to paraphrase Stalin: whatever you ask for) and that they did not produce some of the best scientists this world has every seen. Times have certainly changed, but I don't think one can sensibly argue that Russian science is in general shoddy.

Comment #21442 Posted by Paul Flocken on March 21 Comment #21403 Posted by Ed Darrell on March 21 Yeah, it's possible that God will curse America, and that America will stop teaching evolution. But last time we got close, the Soviets put up a satellite, and people woke up to the educational damage, and fixed it.

Did anyone notice that one of commenters on the Bill's silly "My Retirement from Intelligent Design" blog, John Piippo, is complaining about his treatment a the hands of you mean PT people when he chimed in on the ID = Postmodern Creationism Thread.

Check him out at http://theolobloggy.blogspot.com/

I mean, how can you treat a Professor of Logic so unfairly **sob**?

playing the victim is a standard debating technique, used to stall for time when you have nothing to support your position.

I wonder how long ID supporters will be able to play up the victim angle before folks finally tire of hearing it?

I wonder how long ID supporters will be able to play up the victim angle before folks finally tire of hearing it?

Did anyone notice that one of commenters on the Bill's silly "My Retirement from Intelligent Design" blog, John Piippo, is complaining about his treatment a the hands of you mean PT people when he chimed in on the ID = Postmodern Creationism Thread.

My Brief Life On The Panda's Thumb I made a comment a few weeks ago on The Panda's Thumb. I was quickly attacked by a litany of ad hominem abusives, ad hominem circumstantials, encountered one of the very best examples of begging the question I have seen (I'll probably use it as an example in the logic classes I teach in college), was sworn at, and so on. I found it very difficult simply to make one logical point and have it responded to (which was that a conclusion made by Nick Matzke did not logically follow from his premise).

By exposing the lack of scientific evidence supporting the assertion that natural processes are purely responsible for life

"BTW, it's good to type to you again, Sir. :>"

*bows*

why, thank you. always nice to be missed.

ditto ;)

I did read the entire Piippo exchange and find that i agree with Rusell; there was very little pure ad-hominem involved on either side. Aside from several folks pointing out to Piippo that he was using the same tired argument over and over that had been refuted quite early in the discussion, i saw little harsh treatment of him. Especially compared to some discussions i have seen here at the thumb.

again, I'm reasonably sure he was coached to frame this as him having been victimized in order to further "demonize" those who support evolutionary theory. It appears to be a common pattern. I wouldn't doubt that there are folks monitoring these threads who reach out to folks like Pip to encourage them to do exactly this.

perhaps it would be worthwhile to document this apparent pattern of psuedo-victimization in order to show how artificial it really is?

one more thing....

as appears common for many anti-science blogs, theobloggy restricts comments.

amazing how transparent these folks are.

I too checked out piipos site, and he seems to not be keen on random people posting there. How odd.

I also read the argument, and what i really want to do is ask him what experiments he will do in his non-materialistic science. I need to find someone to ask about that. Mind you, it looks like Lenny beat me to it.

I did read the entire Piippo exchange and find that i agree with Rusell; there was very little pure ad-hominem involved on either side. Aside from several folks pointing out to Piippo that he was using the same tired argument over and over that had been refuted quite early in the discussion, i saw little harsh treatment of him.

I found it very difficult simply to make one logical point

I don't know whether Piippo's original point - that conclusion B doesn't logically follow from premise A when stated in the particular language Matzke used - is technically valid or not. I don't even care enough to go back and check. It's essentially nit-picking grammar. The larger point, that science doesn't invoke supernatural causes, seems intuitively obvious to any grade schooler.

that massive martyr complex that they all seem to have

Johnson's quote addresses his concern (and Plantinga's, et. al.) that Neo-Darwinism is inextricably rooted in methodological naturalism.

— Piippo

Can Piippo name a currently accepted scientific theory, in any discipline from physics to biology, that is not "rooted in methodological naturalism"?

— RBH

The very fact that nearly all (if not entirely all) current scientific theories are grounded in Philosophical Naturalism (PN) supports what I (and Plantinga et. al.) are saying. PN holds that there is nothing outside of nature....PN is often also referred to as Metaphysical Naturalism. PN is a metaphysical claim...

— Piippo

When the actual number of scientific theories grounded in PN is zero, the remainder of your post becomes moot.

— Flint

it's routinely stated that science uses methodological materialism, NOT philosophical naturalism or materialism.

— harold

The very fact that Piipo substituted "Philosophical" for "methodological" shows that he has no integrity and can safely be ignored.

— ts

Then I said what I think Johnson means by this quote; viz., that Neo-Darwinism is grounded in methodological naturalism (also referred to in the literature as philosophical naturalism).

— Piippo

Science can say nothing (and indeed says nothing) about anything outside of nature, because the scientific method is necessarily silent about anything beyond the bounds of what can be observed.

I can tell you that the following argument begs the question: ... It strikes me as a textbook example.

— Piippo

Circular, question-begging arguments betray, to my mind, dogmatic certitude. They function, I think, as analytic a prior arguments to which one could never appeal via empirical reasoning. I think they betray a pre-thematic commitment to philosophical naturalism that is itself quite independent of scientific thinking.

— Piippo

Since you have to be a "Team Member" to comment on his blog, I sent the following email:

Since you apparently only allow comments from those who share your views, I am emailing you instead. I read the entire thread at PT that you referenced on your blog. I get the impression that you are referring to some other thread. You invited any and all negative remarks (of which there were initially very few) by refusing to deal with the actual responses being made. You kept insisting that the responses to your remarks were "begging the question" and "circular reasoning". I'm not a professor, or even a student, of logic, so I can't attack your logical pronouncements (although at a "gut" level I doubt them). Anyway your statement

"The very fact that nearly all (if not entirely all) current scientific theories are grounded in Philosophical Naturalism (PN) supports what I (and Plantinga et. al.) are saying. PN holds that there is nothing outside of nature. Everything in our experience can be accounted for by pure natural forces."

is, at the very least disingenuous. Science is not based on Philosophical Naturalism. Claiming this is just untrue. Then you twist the fact that science must, by necessity, deal only with that which is observable, measurable and testable i.e. natural into some sort of logical fallacy.

You seem to agree with Johnson's statement "that Neo-Darwinism is inextricably rooted in methodological naturalism". This statement is basically true, but he is trying to cast it in an unsavory light, as if methodological naturalism is some sort of evil thing. It is not. Johnson wants to overthrow science as we know and replace it with some kind of theological explanation of the world. The whole gist of the ID movement is to replace reason with belief.

You went on to a blog of people devoted to the idea of rational science and attacked them with dubious remarks. What did you expect to happen?

The problem I have with what you, Dembski, Behe, Johnson et al, is that you are deliberately misleading the non-scientific members of the public, especially those who get most of their information through a religious filter. The final outcome of your efforts, if they should somehow succeed, is to overturn the age of enlightenment and scientific knowledge and usher in a return to the Dark Ages and absolute religious certainties

Am I allowed to post his response here?

Am I allowed to post his response here?

Lenny asked for an of-course unforthcoming theory of ID:

"For some odd reason, **every** IDer who comes in here seems to find it very difficult to do that ...

I wonder why that would be?"

Why do you hate god so much, Lenny?

;)

Why do you hate god so much, Lenny? ;)

oh, well then it's all a simple misunderstanding; material requests should have been directed to god's manufacturing division: Santa Claus Inc.

lol.

btw, sorry to step on your toes (er, my handle explains that), but I made the same request in the thread started by Wes for Stenberg:

http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?s=430a7c743e31ffff;act=ST;f=14;t=23

er, make that the thread for T. Russ (not enough coffee today).

Lenny, yet again the list of things making up a standard scientific theory is needed...

the league of justice requests your talents in the thread i mentioned above...

go super lenny, go!

I've already asked Russ, several times, to tell me what the scientific theory of ID is.

For some odd reason, he never gave me one.

I even asked him WHY he won't give one. Is it:

(1) there isn't any, and IDers are just lying when they say there is?

or

(2) there is one, but Russ is too dumb to know what it is?

or

(3) there is one and Russ does know what it is, but for some unfathomable reason, he doesn't want anyone else to know.

Russ "responded" by declaring that I wouldn't accept one even if he presented it.

I, of course, pointed out that we will never know, since he apparently will never present one. (shrug)

At that point, Russ apparently had something to do, uh, elsewhere.

But please feel free to forward my questions to him. Perhaps he just forgot to answer them.

And where did Nelson go? I got some questions that HE ran away from, too . . . . . .

he seems to think he posted the theory of ID in this thread:

http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?s=430a7c743e31ffff;act=ST;f=14;t=23

Why do you hate god so much, Lenny? ;)

whose freedoms?

what freedoms?

T. Russ Posted: Aug. 22 2005,18:23 From ISCID.org Intelligent Design "Intelligent design is the theory that the directed organization of living things cannot be accounted for by purely blind natural forces but also requires intelligent agency for its proper explanation. Design is A four-part process by which a designer forms a designed object: (1) A designer conceives a purpose or goal. (2) To accomplish that purpose, the designer forms a plan. (3) To execute the plan, the designer specifies building materials and assembly instructions. (4) The designer or some surrogate applies the assembly instructions to the building materials. What emerges is a designed object, and the designer is successful to the degree that the object fulfills the designer's purpose.

"(4) The designer or some surrogate..."

T. Russ Posted: Aug. 22 2005,18:23 From ISCID.org Intelligent Design "Intelligent design is the theory that the directed organization of living things cannot be accounted for by purely blind natural forces but also requires intelligent agency for its proper explanation. Design is A four-part process by which a designer forms a designed object: (1) A designer conceives a purpose or goal. (2) To accomplish that purpose, the designer forms a plan. (3) To execute the plan, the designer specifies building materials and assembly instructions. (4) The designer or some surrogate applies the assembly instructions to the building materials. What emerges is a designed object, and the designer is successful to the degree that the object fulfills the designer's purpose.

"Goddidit".

Lenny wrote:
It's all because of that bike I didn't get when I was nine, dammit. I said "please" and everything.

Potential problem with christianity there, Lenny - I found that praying for a bike didn't work too well. So I stole one and prayed for forgiveness!

Potential problem with christianity there, Lenny - I found that praying for a bike didn't work too well. So I stole one and prayed for forgiveness!

its good to see lenny back with talons and beak sharpened. He may hate god, america, puppies , britney spears, and apple pie, he may be a total pariah but he's our pariah. He'll be glad to know that i've got THE MAN! He is Dr. Roy Friesen in Greeley Colo. He seems to have perhaps the ****official**** Scientific theory of intelligent design***** (patent pending).I've just gotta tease it out of him. Just be awed by this insight: (from his article Creation , Science and the School-what are the real conflicts) "not one true transitional life form or missing link has ever been discovered". There you go.
although this hasnt been published (after all it took Darwin 18 yrs) it can be found at royrefco@comcast.net Be the first one on your block to have the privelege to scrutinize this opus. This may come as a shock but he"s a BIG FAN of Phil.

He'll be glad to know that i've got THE MAN! He is Dr. Roy Friesen in Greeley Colo. He seems to have perhaps the ****official**** Scientific theory of intelligent design***** (patent pending).

"not one true transitional life form or missing link has ever been discovered". There you go.

he may be a total pariah but he's our pariah

Its not a fish its a gum disease.

actually its a pariasaur. As jimi Hendrix put it "scutes me while I kiss the sky" and yes it is a diapsid.

actually its a pariahsaur made famous by Jimi Hendrix in the line "scutes me while I kiss the sky." and yes it is a diapsid.