The Panda's Thumb Legacy Archive — pandasthumb.net

The nature of ID

Posted 15 January 2007 by PvM

On UcD, Bill Dembski provides a somewhat confusing commentary on the following picture from My Confined Space creationism.jpg

If the challenge below were met, would it be evidence for ID or for teleportation?

— WAD
I guess teleportation is a purely natural process and God is of course equivalent with ID. Thank you Bill for a good laugh. Jpark expresses some concerns

Look at these guy's mocking God... They better hope that God doesn't put something like a Dragon or something in there.

Shudder, those nasty dragons... Hmm a supernatural designer sending a mythological creature, what a thought. It's good to see Bill spend his time on 'cutting edge' ID research though.

85 Comments

Wing|esS · 15 January 2007

Even if one assumed the existance of a "God" it is not necessary for the "God" to create creatures out of thin air, nor has it ever been stated in the Bible (for anti-christians) that "God" caused lightning to strike the ground and behold a new creature appeared. (sudden insertion of matter into 3 dimensional space causes an explosion, making it a scientifically inpractical method of creation) Either way, while hypothetically if a "God" exists he might be able to perform such a feat, I don't think most religions have a God that performs circus tricks.

""My friend," replied Brown, with equal seriousness, "there is one mark of all genuine religions: materialism. Now, devil-worship is a perfectly genuine religion."" - GK Chesterton

In almost every way Christians are materialists. Just not strict materialists.

Sounder · 15 January 2007

""My friend," replied Brown, with equal seriousness, "there is one mark of all genuine religions: materialism. Now, devil-worship is a perfectly genuine religion."" - GK Chesterton

B-b-but, I thought materialism stood opposite of religion and was the cause of all modern evils? I'm so confused!

In almost every way Christians are materialists. Just not strict materialists.

Meaning?

Duncan Buell · 15 January 2007

Actually, this is a takeoff from an old parody of mathematics papers called "The mathematical theory of big game hunting." The paper lists a number of methods for hunting lions in the desert. One such is to build a cage, enter the cage, and then do a 1/z inversion of the Riemann sphere, thus putting all the lions (that used to be outside the cage) into the cage, and the cage builder outside, because outside becomes inside and vice versa.

The picture here is based on the modern physics method for hunting lions: Build a cage in the desert. According to the deep laws of physics, quantum stuff, Schroedinger, etc. ("To be a physicist you must sign in blood that you won't be troubled by things that make no sense and can't be understood."--Ed Fredkin), there is a finite *but most assuredly nonzero* probability that a lion will appear inside the cage. One need only sit down and wait for that outcome.

Tukla in Iowa · 15 January 2007

Hey, my cubicle!

Tukla in Iowa · 15 January 2007

Meaning?

Meaning no matter how much they talk about faith and miracles, most of them will take the pills their doctor gives them and won't step in front of moving trucks.

Tukla in Iowa · 15 January 2007

I don't think most religions have a God that performs circus tricks.

Well, certainly not while any of us are looking. We sure hear about the tricks we've missed, though.

Donald M · 15 January 2007

What's so "confusing" about Dembski's comment on this cartoon? Such a ludicrous 'challenge' deserves an equally ludicrous response.

Monado · 15 January 2007

I don't know if this would be allowed in an Intelligent Design lab. I was reading "Uncommon Descent" the other day and when someone who agreed with ID suggested a possible test for an ID mechanism, that was treated as some kind of disloyalty to ID. I'm afraid the cultures are too different for meaningful communication. It was mixed in with the usual insults to the 'other side,' from which I wish we would all just refrain. It's almost impossible to solve a dispute over the 'Net and way to easy to throw insults and relax in a glow of self-satisfaction.

PvM · 15 January 2007

What's so "confusing" about Dembski's comment on this cartoon? Such a ludicrous 'challenge' deserves an equally ludicrous response.

— Donald
So we agree that Dembski's response is 'ludicrous' if not telling about the motivations of ID proponents. Whether or not the original challenge is 'ludicrous' and whether or not it deserved the response Dembski gave are what may be worth discussing here. Q: Is it Dembski's task to respond to ludicrous arguments while avoiding the ones that are much harder to address?

GuyJ · 15 January 2007

Empty cage? I see the invisible pink unicorn in there.

GuyJ · 15 January 2007

Empty cage? I see the Invisible Pink Unicorn in there!

Chris · 15 January 2007

I'm just a layman, but I think I understand that certain people misconstrue the 2nd law of thermodynamics when they don't realize that without it there's nothing to fuel biology. But, what about the whole? I mean, since the 2nd law also fuels stars, galaxies, etc., and if the universe as a whole is a closed system, then, isn't the universe as a whole gradually losing it's capacity to fuel (anything)?

If so, then wouldn't that mean that the universe could not have existed forever, because if it had it would have 'run out of gas' by now? And, would such considerations also apply to a 'multiverse' or, would it be said that such a thing would have laws that don't require fuel to get work done, or, that fuel is somehow (like a perpetual motion machine?) eternally replenished, or...?

If the answer to this is something like the mulitiverse got fuel from prior multiverses, etc., then does the fallacy of infinite regress come into play here? I mean, is it OK to ask where everything came from in the first place?

gbusch · 15 January 2007

Wouldn't it be truly amazing if the FSM appeared?

Rich · 15 January 2007

I think this represents the difference in points of view between scientists and IDiots pretty well.

Even as UD mocks the picture, they cannot begin to conceive of the huge timescales and massive parallelisms associated with biology (and probably abiogenisis). Of course they can't address the joke -- it falls completely outside their worldview.

demallien · 15 January 2007

Well, it's good to see that at least someone is doing some experiments for Intelligent Design. :-) Of course, if Dembski doesn't like this one, he only has to setup his own set of experiments> smrf. bwa hah. bwa hah hah! BwahHah Hah hah Hah. HA HA HAH HA HAH HA HA.

Peter · 15 January 2007

HAHA! This is the best experiment they've had so far.
And as a music theory guy, I'm so glad someone brought up Riemann.

k.e. · 16 January 2007

Bill could always test the efficacy of prayer, that would kill 2 fallacies with one cage....or does Bill lack faith as well?

But yeah Bill, teleportation is the go all you have to do is sneak in after hours and push the teleporter in between the bars.

How about claiming airborne bacteria, after all as a professional arm waver and spin Dr. Docktor.... you would have no trouble justifying it now would you.

Popper's ghost · 16 January 2007

Look at these guy's mocking God... They better hope that God doesn't put something like a Dragon or something in there.

Ooh ooh, that's so scary -- that God might sic "something like a Dragon or something" on us. Looking at the UD comments, the one above is about par. We don't call them idiots for nothing.

Popper's ghost · 16 January 2007

It's almost impossible to solve a dispute over the 'Net

There's a "dispute" over IDiocy in the same way that there's a dispute over whether pi = 3.

Popper's ghost · 16 January 2007

What's so "confusing" about Dembski's comment on this cartoon? Such a ludicrous 'challenge' deserves an equally ludicrous response.

— Donald M, living up to the label 'IDiot'
Being ludicrous, even justifiably ludicrous, does not automatically make a statement non-confusing. By offering an alternative to ID, Dembski seems to be arguing that meeting the challenge wouldn't demonstrate ID, which is the opposite of what he should be arguing -- that's a bit confusing. Or to put it another way, Dembski isn't capable of thinking through the logical implications of his statements -- which is not all that confusing, considering that he's an IDiot.

gengar · 16 January 2007

Even if one assumed the existance of a "God" it is not necessary for the "God" to create creatures out of thin air.

Hey, us experimentalists are only working with what you theory guys give us...

Donald M · 16 January 2007

Pim
So we agree that Dembski's response is 'ludicrous' if not telling about the motivations of ID proponents. Whether or not the original challenge is 'ludicrous' and whether or not it deserved the response Dembski gave are what may be worth discussing here. Q: Is it Dembski's task to respond to ludicrous arguments while avoiding the ones that are much harder to address?
It's not "telling" about anything. You really need to get out more, Pim. This is all meant as a joke...so have a laugh and be done with it.

Randi Mooney · 16 January 2007

If the challenge below were met, would it be evidence for ID or for teleportation?

It depends on what creature appeared - for example if the animal was a fantastically new species, one previously unknown to science then we might be justified in concluding that a new creature had been created just for us. If the creature was a kown or common species we might have assumed that it had been transported in from elsewhere.

Both holy-teleporation and creation would be remarkable events, and strong evidence of both would be sufficient to cause us to doubt "materialism", which the IDers so despise.

I eagerly await the outcome of this exciting experiment.

wamba · 16 January 2007

I don't think most religions have a God that performs circus tricks.

This is much too easy, it would be like taking candy from a baby. I'm going to resist this time.

It was mixed in with the usual insults to the 'other side,' from which I wish we would all just refrain.

(fart noises) Hey, I see that our old pal Prof. Steve Steve is in the news again: Male panda said too fat to have sex

TheBlackCat · 16 January 2007

Even if one assumed the existance of a "God" it is not necessary for the "God" to create creatures out of thin air, nor has it ever been stated in the Bible (for anti-christians) that "God" caused lightning to strike the ground and behold a new creature appeared. (sudden insertion of matter into 3 dimensional space causes an explosion, making it a scientifically inpractical method of creation) Either way, while hypothetically if a "God" exists he might be able to perform such a feat, I don't think most religions have a God that performs circus tricks.

I see, so you are saying God is not omnipotent.

Kristine · 16 January 2007

There is something in there.

It's Schroedinger's cheshire cat! All I see is the smile. (Having a good chuckle, are ya, kitty?)

But it's behind the sign. (Dang Heisenberg uncertainty principles and all!)

GuyeFaux · 16 January 2007

Look at these guy's mocking God... They better hope that God doesn't put something like a Dragon or something in there.

For the moment, dragons, Jesus, the FSMm, bacterial flagella and Cthulu are all equally likely to appear in the cage; which would be positive evidence for ID?

William E Emba · 16 January 2007

It's bizarre seeing Dembski just not get jokes thrown in his general direction, ones that he has quite obviously earned through his own adolescent attempts at humor. Part of the bizarreness is that Dembski himself has proposed in the past a totally worthless thought experiment in all seriousness.

We all remember his thought experiment where we supposed to imagine that aliens came to earth and revealed the secret of how they had been mucking with our ancestor's DNA, and since we can imagine it, we might as well accept it as true! Nothing about the thought experiment where the aliens reveal that Jesus was one of their robots, and they were just testing the gullibility of advanced primate species, so we might as well accept that as true also!

And I haven't seen him criticize the proposed Behe experiment, where lack of appearance of flagella after many generations is supposed to prove evolution couldn't have formed flagella, although somehow it doesn't prove that there is no Intelligent Designer.

I used to believe Dembski was just a scam artist. I'm now veering to the idea that he really is just as crackpot stupid as he appears. He's been surrounding himself with morons for so long that the thinking part of his brain has shrivelled away into nothing.

PvM · 16 January 2007

It's not "telling" about anything. You really need to get out more, Pim. This is all meant as a joke...so have a laugh and be done with it.

Oh but I am having a laugh, although, the joke seems to be mostly on Dembski.

wamba · 16 January 2007

For the moment, dragons, Jesus, the FSMm, bacterial flagella and Cthulu are all equally likely to appear in the cage;

I disagree. I think it is much more likely that a bacterial flagellum would be found in the cage. They actually exist, and it is not too difficult to imagine one sneaking in between the bars.

Glen Davidson · 16 January 2007

In almost every way Christians are materialists. Just not strict materialists.

That's quite true, and Xianity's (along with the "other monotheisms'") "contribution to"/"reflection of" a growing science is that it desacralized the world (and ratified desacralization otherwise effected), and made it something other than an ongoing spiritual phenomenon. In a sense, ID is simply the creation myth and the industrial myth conflated and gone bad. No more, 'let's study life and see how and why it is different' from non-life, instead everything is just engineering and production without question or investigation. Creationist engineers knew the answer the first time they made a CAD design, since they could draw the flagellum in much the same way as they might draw a rotor for an electric motor. The idea that life would in fact be quite unlike human-made motors, circuits, and other industrial and post-industrial productions goes against the materialism of a certain subset of Xians. Evolution just isn't materialistic enough, while it is "too materialistic" in disallowing creationist engineers' their god-like powers to exist well outside of the noise of biological systesm. They have a compartmentalized materialism, one that lets everything we see be just engineering, yet for the engineer/intellect to be divine, to be Behe's Black Box of extreme potency and zero understanding. So yes, it isn't materialism that they're opposed to, since they actually despise anything that is "matter" that isn't explainable by fairly mundane "natural processes" or by engineering. It's their own inability to recognize engineering and intelligence themselves as being natural and somewhat explained, and potentially explainable, phenomena. This goes against their ego and economic beliefs, the sense that they have some magical properties that set them apart from and above "mere materialists". They'd never understand the sacralized world of the ancient religions, then, rather they see any material organization as having to be effected by some outside agent, something beyond the "material world". This leaves non-humans (there might be ranges of animals included with the "special humans", depending on the whim of the IDist) as dead as Descartes' dog. The human mind is somehow beyond the processes of matter, and yet requires the "designer" even more intensely than do all of the engineered little animals and plants. It's the great contradiction in their fictional scenario, since intelligence "has to be designed", yet is a kind of "primitive", the latter according to Sal Cordova. You get both from IDists. It's an odd situation, of course, for on the one hand everything is "just designed", and on the other, the mind is something that isn't "material" in the least. The only resolution is that this is all that IDists know, the old spirit/matter dichotomy that was opposed to the true non-materialism of the pagan world. They're hyper-materialists with respect to anything other than mind, and they're anti-materialists where the mind is concerned, with the strange exception that the mind is nonetheless "designed". I'm sure that some would like to use the "implanted spirit" to get around this especial problem, but in trying to pretend to be scientific, they certainly can't resort to that blatant religious invocation (even though they can't prevent themselves from faulting ordinary life science for being "materialistic" and "atheistic" when it is nothing but the same science applied to biology). Therefore they're stuck with a mechanistic mind that is somehow anything but materialistic. That's only the official position, though, since for them the mind is nothing but Behe's Black Box, something that is "explained by God", yet is itself essentially an ongoing set of "first causes". We're the despised "materialists" only because we don't acknowledge this pluripotent black box (along with the omnipotent Black Box) as a kind of acausal force which orders and controls the world (does this violate SLOT? It's a theological problem that they usually try their best not to discuss (software engineer DaveTard has his answer, that mind violates SLOT, again showing why particularly a self-proclaimed engineer IDist is called "DaveTard")). Glen D http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

Bob King · 16 January 2007

C'mom PvM, it's just a bit of street theater - or would be if the Creator obliged! More seriously, this is typical UD. If people take his post seriously then they're happy as clams. If, on the other hand - as is usually the case (at least outside the hothouse environment of UD) - the post falls flat then it's simply ``a joke.'' This is a very childish attitude indeed. But the underlying - and very serious - reason for the UD-ers posting this type of stuff is to make evolution look silly in the eyes of the faithful. It's a form of dishonesty because it gives the impression that they are attacking a genuine argument. I can imagine Pastors up and down the land telling their flocks of the cage that evolutionsits have set up in their desperate attempts to prove that God deosn't exist. It's all pretty shameful - and shameless - really.

Glen Davidson · 16 January 2007

I used to believe Dembski was just a scam artist. I'm now veering to the idea that he really is just as crackpot stupid as he appears. He's been surrounding himself with morons for so long that the thinking part of his brain has shrivelled away into nothing.

Yes, I think that he learned enough jargon, and the basics, in his many years of schooling that he first sounds as if he is reasonably intelligent, just mistaken in the particulars. But he gets such fundamental issues wrong, like what "complexity" is, and doing science by supposedly eliminating chance and regularity to arrive at design, that it is hard not to think that he's at best a lightweight, whose turn to magic and metaphysics was in compensation for his lack of really "getting it". There's little question that he resorts to scam practices (most of all, leaving alone the many questions he can't begin to address), but that may be as much a psychological defense as it is an outright scam. I don't think that Dembski is capable of doing much more than flogging flim-flam. Glen D http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

PvM · 16 January 2007

C'mom PvM, it's just a bit of street theater - or would be if the Creator obliged! More seriously, this is typical UD. If people take his post seriously then they're happy as clams. If, on the other hand - as is usually the case (at least outside the hothouse environment of UD) - the post falls flat then it's simply "a joke."

— Bob King
Which explains why most of ID is simply "a joke"...

DCramer · 16 January 2007

I'm not that impressed. You can flip it by saying, "Lets put an animal in the cage and wait for it to evolve".

DCramer · 16 January 2007

I'm not that impressed. You can flip it by saying, "Lets put an animal in the cage and wait for it to evolve".

PvM · 16 January 2007

I'm not that impressed. You can flip it by saying, "Lets put an animal in the cage and wait for it to evolve".

Now that would be a true miracle since an animal needs to at least reproduce for it to 'evolve'... It does not hurt having a group of animals as well. But remember, evolution is not insisting on 'miracles'

Steviepinhead · 16 January 2007

PvM: any way to shrink the photo of the cage? Yesterday the over-wide photo, which insists on posting at the bottom of all the sidebar links, was just awkward--and rather disrespectful to all the other posts that got pushed much further down the page.

Today, the over-wide post is covering up the sidebar, making it difficult to access the recent comments and other links.

Pretty please (and this is an issue for you posters generally--please check the "fit" of images on the page before just blithely posting away)...

Glen Davidson · 16 January 2007

I'm not that impressed. You can flip it by saying, "Lets put an animal in the cage and wait for it to evolve".

Has it occurred to you that evolution has tests? Had it none, flipping it would have a kind of logic, but flipping the joke that ID is makes no sense with respect to a sound, testable scientific model. The cage the attempt to provide ID with some sort of test, which, though a joke, comes reasonably close to the kinds of tests that one can imagine for ID, there being no good ones (yes, for intellectually honest ID there were good ones, but intellectually honest ID was falsified long ago, mainly by showing that evolutionary processes happened instead of "design"). Glen D http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

stevaroni · 16 January 2007

DCramer writes... I'm not that impressed. You can flip it by saying, "Lets put an animal in the cage and wait for it to evolve".

But that's just the point! People have done just that! For generatrions, researches (hell, for that that matter, biology grad students) have put various orginisms in cages of various descriptions, fiddled with their environments and - lo and behold - the species did evolve. Granted, these tend to be small, fast-breeding organisms (because evolution is a numbers game and you have to go through large numbers of organisms and generations), but still it actually happens and you can actually watch it happen! Hardly "unimpressive".

Liz Craig · 16 January 2007

Say, isn't that Hannibal Lecter's cage?

JohnS · 16 January 2007

Somehow Bill missed the point that 'another creature' would be new to the earth, not just one of the known kinds moving without explanation.

Being dense is a pretty poor debating strategy, but maybe not for his intended audience.

Keith Douglas · 16 January 2007

Many Christians (particularly Republicans) are materialists in the economic sense, i.e. they view pursuit of profit and goods as one of the most important goals of life. This version is better called cupidity, to avoid confusing it with materialism in the metaphysical sense, viz., the assertion that everything is matter. Christians are not materialists in this sense, since souls, including the Christian god, are held not to be matter.

Glen D: The seeming oxymoron of "idealist mechanism" is nothing new - one could claim that there is strains of that in Leibniz, and certainly in Hegel.

Glen Davidson · 16 January 2007

The seeming oxymoron of "idealist mechanism" is nothing new - one could claim that there is strains of that in Leibniz, and certainly in Hegel.

Yes, I'm aware of that, especially with Schelling, Hegel, etc. (perhaps Kant in a way, though he denied being an idealist). Which is why the old IDists might expect a mechanism with God or whatever else might have "made life". But it cannot be an explicit part of the present crop's "scientific hypothesis", for, as Hegel proved with his Encyclopedia, those things don't really work out as predicted (IDists predict nothing, of course, in order to avoid the fate of Hegel's Encyclopedia). Glen D http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

Tuomo Hämäläinen · 16 January 2007

I think the test would be better if in sign is something like
"This cage was empty, and ID is going to summon dragon/unicorn/other mythical beast in it."

It would be kind of thing, which ID is claimed to do:
Create whole new "animaltype"/"created kind"... without evolution.("Uncommon descent" is not antievolution. :) )

Kenny · 16 January 2007

"Christians are not materialists in this sense, since souls, including the Christian god, are held not to be matter."
Well no The bible stress's the point that JC was the physical manifestation of God and that he went bodily up to heaven. Catholics make a point that JC's body blood and ghost physical enters the church during the sacrament.

jon livesey · 16 January 2007

"The bible stress's the point that JC was the physical manifestation of God and that he went bodily up to heaven."

That's true, but early Christians did have a lot of trouble with exactly what kind of physical manifestation it was. Was Jesus in his own body, with all the physical excretions and sensations that implied? Was Jesus a totally supernatural being who just looked human to onlookers? Was Jesus a supernatural being who inhabited the physical body of another, in which case what happened to the spirit of the unfortunate who had his physical body hijacked? And then Jesus and God - were they two persons of the same essence, or persons of different essence?

Wars were fought over this stuff, and in the end they got the Trinity, which says, in effect "You're all correct".

MarkP · 16 January 2007

I'm not that impressed. You can flip it by saying, "Lets put an animal in the cage and wait for it to evolve".
Gee, a criticism of evolution based on ignorance...What are the odds?

Christophe Thill · 17 January 2007

Hey, I know that cage! It's the "Uncommon Descent" website! Only, usually it's full of poop-flinging monkeys. On the picture, they don't seem to be there. What happened? Are the comments on the site closed?

Donald M · 17 January 2007

Pim
But remember, evolution is not insisting on 'miracles'
Neither is Intelligent Design.

Darth Robo · 17 January 2007

Explain HOW the designer did it then, Donald.

You can't, can you, Donald?

Quack.

DCramer · 17 January 2007

"Stevaroni writes- People have done just that! For generatrions, researches (hell, for that that matter, biology grad students) have put various orginisms in cages of various descriptions, fiddled with their environments and - lo and behold - the species did evolve">

All that shows is someone messing with something's environment causing it to adapt, not evolve. Unless there was some experiment where someone took anything and caused it to be some different species, I'm still not impressed.

DCramer · 17 January 2007

Regardless if you believe ID or evolution you still have to believe in miracles. Both THEORIES require you to believe in them. Either God spoke everything into existance or life somehow won the lottery 50 tillion times.

Darth Robo · 17 January 2007

DCramer

One important distinction: ID says "Goddidit" (with no evidence of design).

Science says: "We don't know - yet. Let's see what other evidence comes up."

And ONCE life appeared (we don't know how yet), THAT'S when evolution took over. Evolution doesn't need to explain abiogenesis. Maybe Goddidit through evolution? Why not?

"I'm still not impressed."

Likewise.

PvM · 17 January 2007

Donald M 'argues that'

But remember, evolution is not insisting on 'miracles'

Neither is Intelligent Design. Please explain how ID explains the bacterial flagella? Poof?... Remember that ID requires that something cannot be explained by natural regularity/chance processes. Like Sal running away when the Haldane discussion became too hot, I wonder if Donald can 'stand the heat'.

stevaroni · 17 January 2007

DCramer retorts... All that shows is someone messing with something's environment causing it to adapt, not evolve.

Um, we have a word for permanent adaptation driven through environmental stimulus and subsequent natural selection. It's called "evolution"

Unless there was some experiment where someone took anything and caused it to be some different species, I'm still not impressed.

Be impressed. It's been documented about 17 times so far. Um, remind me again, how many times has ID documented a design feature so far?

stevaroni · 17 January 2007

DCramer writes... ... Both THEORIES require you to believe in them.

Yeah, but only one of them has 150 years of evidence - much of it gathered from "hostile witnesses" - on the table backing it up. Actually, ony one of them has any evidence on the table at all. Gee, I, um, wonder why that would be?

GuyeFaux · 17 January 2007

Either God spoke everything into existance or life somehow won the lottery 50 tillion times.

So we have a false duality, followed by the old evolution = random chance idiocy. FYI, the ToE has not much to do with random chance. In reality, natural selection is the opposite of random chance.

DCramer · 17 January 2007

Darth Robo
I think it is very easy to believe both THEORIES. If you really want to believe in God it's not hard to find evidence for design in the universe. However if you don't want to believe in an all powerful Supreme Designer it's not to hard to theorize Him away. What I like to see is someone who believes in ID try to disprove ID in there own mind or an evolutionist trying to disprove evolution. I mean really try without inserting your own beliefs into it. But that is incredibly hard to do.

GuyeFaux · 17 January 2007

I think it is very easy to believe both THEORIES.

You're conflating scientific theories and colloquial theories. Please learn the difference.

If you really want to believe in God it's not hard to find evidence for design in the universe.

Yeah, if "it looks designed" is evidence.

What I like to see is someone who believes in ID try to disprove ID in there own mind or an evolutionist trying to disprove evolution. I mean really try without inserting your own beliefs into it. But that is incredibly hard to do.

Hard for ID, not hard for evolution. Evolution has survived many potentially falsifying tests.

DCramer · 17 January 2007

Stevaroni-

When and where? That would be impressive news.

Daniel Morgan · 17 January 2007

You really couldn't pay for more entertainment -- given the serious with which these dolts take themselves.

DCramer · 17 January 2007

GuyeFaux-

I wasn't conflating a scientific theory with the colloquial use of the word, or at least not trying to. I was trying to express that both theories have supporting facts and both have holes. Both have stood up to tests.

gwangung · 17 January 2007

I think it is very easy to believe both THEORIES

I do not think the word means what you think it means.

Science, to a great extent, has specialty vocabulary, and it's a great help to learn it. Baseball players, managers and fans pretty much roll their eyes up when outsiders talk about "points" and so forth.

GuyeFaux · 17 January 2007

I was trying to express that both theories have supporting facts and both have holes. Both have stood up to tests.

No. Evolution could have been but was not falsified in thousands of tests over the decades. ID has not. The theory of ID has no holes in it because it does not have any substance. Insofar as evolution has holes, they're only gaps in our understanding of it; there is no evidence which contradicts the ToE fundamentally. To suggest that ID and the ToE are on equal footing, you need to do better than "it looks designed" and "evolution can't explain X." You didn't state these explicitly, but I suspect this is where your beliefs about ID and the ToE come from.

Richard Simons · 17 January 2007

. . . both theories have supporting facts and both have holes. Both have stood up to tests.
I must confess I have never seen a fact that supports ID. All I have seen has been long-refuted criticisms of the theory of evolution, which even if true would not have supported ID. I am unaware of any test that could refute ID, never mind any test that it has withstood. Perhaps you could elaborate? In the meantime, I will continue to say that, as there is no test that could possibly refute ID, it is not a scientific theory.

Popper's ghost · 17 January 2007

I'm not that impressed. You can flip it by saying, "Lets put an animal in the cage and wait for it to evolve".

I know I'm talking to an empty head, but ... the only one impressed by this was Dembski; impressed enough to put it on his website along with an incredibly stupid -- or, as PvM politely called it, "confusing" -- response. According to Dembski, Behe is all wet; if the flagellum is IC, that doesn't prove that it was intelligently designed, it might have been teleported into place. (Do try to remember that, if you argue with such nonsense, you aren't arguing with me, you are arguing with Dembski.)

Henry J · 17 January 2007

Re "The theory of ID has no holes in it because it does not have any substance."

Yeah, it's hard to falsify something that doesn't say anything.

Henry

DCramer · 18 January 2007

It's funny, you go to an ID dominate webpage and say something like evolution is the way to go and ID is full of holes and has no facts all you get is sarcasm and claims that it has been proven time and time again. You go to an Evolution dominate webpage and say the reverse and you get the same thing, sarcasm and claims that it's been proven. Maybe you guys aren't so different after all.

stevaroni · 18 January 2007

Stevaroni- When and where? That would be impressive news.

Dcramer; I wrote you a nice note yesterday with plenty of details and lots of "go here" links, but when I went to post it, I got rerouted to a screen which said, essentially "too many links, your post will be held for review" OK, I understand the problem, without some mechanism like that, people would spam these boards with zillions of links to Viagra and horny cheerleaders. But this has happened several times now, and it's irritating that after spending considerable time writing a detailed post they fall into these black holes and they never come back out. Anyhow. Here's the one-link short answer. Start here http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

stevaroni · 18 January 2007

DCramer opines... It's funny, ... you get the same thing, sarcasm and claims that (evolution's) been proven. Maybe you guys aren't so different

No, that's not the case at all. You're getting sarcasm on this thread because you insist on equating the level of detail and available information backing the theory of evolution and the "theory" of ID. You're getting sarcasm because you insist on equating boxes of fossils, reams of DNA and your own body full of vestigial organs with a pseudoscientific religious idea, because you want things to be different than they are. You're getting sarcasm because there's only so much you can say to someone when you're standing in the middle of a field with them and they continue to insist that the sky is not blue and the grass is not green because the Good Book says so. But there are other threads on this blog, threads that are devoted to the real question of "What kind of evidence have you really got?" Check out the current posts "Axe (2004) and the evolution of enzyme function" or "Logarithmic Gap Costs Decrease Alignment Accuracy" in the current top page Hardly an attempt to evade the issue. Or go deep for articles about DNA, archeology and physics that are so detailed they'd put Steven Hawking to sleep. There are actual facts here. That's the currency of science, and there's plenty to go around. If you had actually cared, a short cruise through the site would have told you that. That's what happens here when people get into a real dialogue. Their opinions are tolerated and their questions are answered. That sort of thing simply never happens on ID sites because questions aren't tolerated in the first place (see "The Sad state of Intelligent Design: Or why it shuns 'peer review'" for a documented example of what happens to people who go onto an ID website and ask a question) Nothing even close to that has happened to you here. But "They're both theories, so they're both equal so I'm not impressed" reveals a state of mind that doesn't really care about the answer, so the people who post here - many of whom work in fields that actually use the genetics, physics and information theory that ID proponents insist is just imaginary - get tired of arguing with those who aren't actually listening anyhow.

Richard Simons · 18 January 2007

DCramer:
It's funny, you go to an ID dominate webpage and say something like evolution is the way to go and ID is full of holes and has no facts all you get is sarcasm and claims that it has been proven time and time again. You go to an Evolution dominate webpage and say the reverse and you get the same thing, sarcasm and claims that it's been proven. Maybe you guys aren't so different after all.
Richard Simons
I must confess I have never seen a fact that supports ID. All I have seen has been long-refuted criticisms of the theory of evolution, which even if true would not have supported ID. I am unaware of any test that could refute ID, never mind any test that it has withstood. Perhaps you could elaborate?
It's funny, a creationist or ID supporter comes to an evolution website, you ask them a question like that, and they never answer (note: no sarcasm, no claim it's all been proven, just a question that is always ignored).

dcramer1@nd.edu · 18 January 2007

Stevaroni-

Thank you. I will check it out. I would give you my e-mail so that you could send me those other links but I did that on a different site and I'm still getting angry e-mails from strangers. In retrospect I realize that was really stupid to do but I never thought it would cause me so much trouble. I'm planning on reading a book by Lee Strobel titled Case for Creator tonight. Someone on an ID page recommended it. I will check out the link you gave me shortly after that.
Thanks

Raging Bee · 18 January 2007

Both have stood up to tests.

ID most certainly did NOT stand up to any of the tests it met at the Dover trial. If you're really interested in an honest debate of evolution vs. ID, you can prove it by reading Judge Jones' decision in the Dover trial and starting the discussion from there.

Glen Davidson · 18 January 2007

I thought the following an interesting and useful criticism of the theological position of the IDists:

Allah Does Not Need to Make a Design in Order to Create It must be appreciated that Allah, the Lord of the heavens and Earth, has no need of making a design in order to create. Allah is free of all such imperfections. The perfection in Allah's creations may be expressed in such terms as "a perfection as if designed," but that is all. It is sufficient for Allah to say "Be!" in order for any object or event to come into being as He wishes.

Yes, it's the egregious Harun Yahya, and the rest is here: http://www.harunyahya.com/new_releases/news/intelligent_design.php

Glen Davidson · 18 January 2007

continuing from above:

I don't think he's saying anything in that article that we haven't, and I know that Xian IDists won't listen to him, but he's closer to the traditional monotheistic position than are the IDist yahoos. I should also point out that he violates his own prohibitions against saying "God designed" or "Allah designed", yet surely that isn't surprising with Harun Yahya.

So of course we've pointed out how deranged God as engineer is, both practically and theologically, but I hope that Harun can shame the dolts in a way that we cannot, as the Muslims hold to a God above the sad little incompetent engineer worshipped by Dembski and Behe.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

David B. Benson · 18 January 2007

moderators: Are you going to allow the fictitious 'Dr. M&M' to bloviate on every thread.

Shenanigans!

stevaroni · 18 January 2007

Doc Martin's back! Conclusive proof however can be found for Creation Science here: In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God John 1:1.

Fine. I'll accept that, but seeing how the original version of this experiment was poorly documented (17 words) waddaya say we run the experiment again and take better notes this time. Could you, um, tell me how to go about that? Do I need a God-O-Meter, or a Divine Word-A-Stat or what? Where do I look for a pound of "Word 'O God"? Is it always delivered in written word, or do I have to find a burning bush transcriber? (But I want to get some fresh stuff, the only W'OG I ever see on the shelf is old production, and it's kind of got that whole poorly-stored and dried-out-in-the-desert thing going, and that makes it a little eratic, like old wiring) So, I'm more than willing to run the experiment, where do I start?

Richard Simons · 18 January 2007

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God John 1:1.
What on Earth does this mean? Is this a hangover from the days when words were thought to be magical in themselves, as seen in remnants like "hocus-pocus" and "abracadabra"? So DNA is a language that actually contains a grammar is it? Perhaps you'd care to give us a description of that grammar? Or do you just mean something like "This sequence of three bases means plug amino acid A into the protein, this other sequence means stop"?

David B. Benson · 18 January 2007

Yes, there is a 'Dr. Michael Martin' in CSR @ NIH. However, his c.v. says nothing about any degree from Yale.

Shenanigans on the imposter!

Popper's ghost · 19 January 2007

DNA is a language that conforms to Chomsky's Hierarchy

DNA is a molecule, not a language. If you think that DNA can be interpreted as a formal language, please provide the transformation rules of that language. Can you even tell us what the Chomsky type of this language is? There are only four, so it shouldn't be hard.

I'm sure not many people knew that, but what this implies is an intelligent design of some sort.

The real Dr. Martin would surely know how stupid this claim is. Every formal language conforms to the Chomsky hierarchy, including randomly generated ones.

Popper's ghost · 19 January 2007

Now, there is the possibility that language evolved. However, the possibility of language evolving is not possible

One must marvel at the levels of stupidity that the creo-trolls manage to achieve.

Popper's ghost · 19 January 2007

Maybe you guys aren't so different after all.

Maybe you're too stupid to make distinctions.

AC · 19 January 2007

It is sufficient for Allah to say "Be!" in order for any object or event to come into being as He wishes.

— Harun Yahya

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God John 1:1.

— Doc Martin
Why isn't that verse the end of your comment? Why must you proceed to attack science with pseudoscience in the name of religion? Why not just reject science in its name and be done?

David B. Benson · 19 January 2007

AC --- Comment #156384 seems to anwer your question...