Stephen Meyer on Bad Biological Designs

"Unintelligent design" is still design - examples of incompetent design, malignant design or stupid design cannot disprove design. But "design" by the Blind Watchmaker of evolution makes far more sense than any so-called "intelligent design."

First, they argue that the suboptimality results from "devolution." What were once optimal designs have degenerated due to the vicissitudes of time and the second law of thermodynamics

blind cave fish must prove then that the eye was suboptimal to begin with, and thus a product of de-evolution.

i mean, since not having eyes in the dark is the optimal solution?

I'm still new at all this science stuff, so can someone explain to me why "devolution" or decay over time doesn't make sense?

I'm still new at all this science stuff, so can someone explain to me why "devolution" or decay over time doesn't make sense?

ignore the term "devolution" because there is no directionality to evolution, no up or down, no step-ladder of achievement. This is the main strawman creationists tend to paint of evolution: that it is like a ladder, ever leading upwards to "us" at the pinnacle. Which of course leads to the infamous line, "if humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys". It doesn't work that way; things evolve not in linear fashion from the simple to the complex, but merely change traits within given populations, and can do so back and forth in many cases, depending on what the given environmental pressures are on any particular population of organisms. An organism might become larger in response to changes in the species of food items available to it, and then again become smaller if those changes reverse themselves. It's not appropriate to think of that kind of change as "decay", now, is it. Both directions of change are advantageous to individuals in populations faced with such challenges.

In short, there is only a net increase in reproductive success of certain phenotypes given a set of environment pressures (physical and biological), or there is drift if no particular pressure exists on a particular phenotype or trait. it is not directional in the sense of necessity of increasing complexity, or even of a specific direction.

Therefore, it makes no sense to speak of changes observed in any given trait within a population as "decayed" as if it has anything to do with entropy, or required a constant input of some fictional "energy" to maintain them, or if somehow one state is "devolved" from the other. There is only change, there is no "de-change" :P

for example, a blind cave fish has not "devolved" in any sense the creationists use the term. instead, there is no selective pressure for acute vision in fish that live in utter darkness, so, since eye development is energetically costly, there is an advantage in disabling these pathways.

It is not the case that once everything had no eyes, then everything had simple eyes, then everything had complex eyes, as the creationists would try to portray the theory of evolution as suggesting. that same population of cave fish, if for some reason the cave roof collapsed, might again evolve acute vision given enough time, and lose it again if an earthquake or something caused their living space to once again be underground.

does that help?

... as an an analogy, let's look at religion...

is protestantism a devolution of catholicism?

it simply doesn't make sense does it? protestantism arose from small groups that disagreed with cahtolocism, and changes arose from there. now there are over 30K sects of protestantism.

or languages:

did latin devolve into french?

does that help to see why the terms "decay" and "devolve" don't make much sense?

First, they argue that the suboptimality results from “devolution.” What were once optimal designs have degenerated due to the vicissitudes of time and the second law of thermodynamics

Mac said: I'm still new at all this science stuff, so can someone explain to me why "devolution" or decay over time doesn't make sense?

Attempting to apply words like "decay" to evolution is a simple category error, really.

We have garbage middens going back all the way to 4000 BC, and the bones of the animals our ancestors ate seem very similar to the ones we have today, so there doesn’t seem to be much room for the “ideal” ancestral animals that obligingly “devolved” in less ideal ones.

So we can't really say whether something is "devolving" or "decaying." A blind fish could be blind simply because he lives in an environment that has no light.

And there isn't such a thing as "bad design" because the blind fish could have been designed that way simply because he lived in an environment without light?

"One of the problems intelligent design proponents face is how to deal with bad biological designs." -from above

So why do ID advocates need to deal with bad biological designs when things that look like "bad" designs can't be proved to be bad (in the same way that you can't prove devolution or decaying species)?

In short, there is only a net increase in reproductive success of certain phenotypes given a set of environment pressures (physical and biological), or there is drift if no particular pressure exists on a particular phenotype or trait. it is not directional in the sense of necessity of increasing complexity, or even of a specific direction.

So we can’t really say whether something is “devolving” or “decaying.” A blind fish could be blind simply because he lives in an environment that has no light.

So why do ID advocates need to deal with bad biological designs when things that look like “bad” designs can’t be proved to be bad (in the same way that you can’t prove devolution or decaying species)?

There is not directionality in the sense of goal-seeking on the part of the evolving population.

yes, to clarify further, i mean in the sense of directionality giving rise to a "higher order", like in the ladder analogy.

devolution by standard creationist/ID usage implies directionality in a sense of order/complexity, hence the word "decay". this is what i was addressing, not the ability to predict how a particular trait will change wrt to particular selective pressures.

it's the implication that somehow evolution has a "positive" and a "negative" direction which of course is refuted by everything we actually see.

Mac said: So we can't really say whether something is "devolving" or "decaying." A blind fish could be blind simply because he lives in an environment that has no light. And there isn't such a thing as "bad design" because the blind fish could have been designed that way simply because he lived in an environment without light?

"One of the problems intelligent design proponents face is how to deal with bad biological designs."

So why do ID advocates need to deal with bad biological designs when things that look like "bad" designs can't be proved to be bad (in the same way that you can't prove devolution or decaying species)?

For the same proposition the other way up, consider the tapeworm. It's a good design: "The designer knows he has achieved perfection, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away".

The tapeworm consists of practically nothing but a digestive and a reproductive tract, the former to provide energy for the latter. It is perfectly "designed" for its environment. But "design" implies purpose.

Why are there tapeworms? I can think of only three answers: one, to make more tapeworms; two, to be a painful and debilitating burden on other organisms; three, no reason at all.

The first answer is consistent with the idea of a blind and mindless process, but all three answers seem to me to be irreconcilable with the idea of a benevolent, omniscient designer. Or, if you like, Creator.

The only consideration that prevents me from concluding from this data that there is no such thing as a Creator is that I would have no hope of understanding the purposes or methods of such an entity, as Darwin pointed out. This, however, does not impel me to an admiration of those purposes or methods, if the tapeworm is a manifestation of them.

One of the problems intelligent design proponents face is how to deal with bad biological designs

It seems like some ID proponents think that ID predicts something about what should be found design-wise (under the assumption that, for example, living things were designed). They are just as wrong as the ID opponents that think that pointing out examples of bad design somehow makes the design "hypothesis" less probable. Neither of the above works - and for the same reason: ID says nothing about the designer.

Hawks said: It seems like some ID proponents think that ID predicts something about what should be found design-wise (under the assumption that, for example, living things were designed). They are just as wrong as the ID opponents that think that pointing out examples of bad design somehow makes the design "hypothesis" less probable. Neither of the above works - and for the same reason: ID says nothing about the designer.

Mac, you're mixing up two arguments. The blind cave fish was not presented as an example of bad design, it was presented as a counter-example to the idea of "devolution." Examples of bad design are the recurrent laryngeal nerve in mammals, the human appendix, the vertebrate eye, the broken primate vitamin C gene, and many more. And these examples are presented to counter the design argument.

Why should ID deal with these questions? Because the entire weight of ID rests upon the idea that things are so well-designed that they had to be made by an intelligent designer. That's what ID means. But if things are not well-designed, then surely ID proponents need to deal with the gaping hole in their logic.

bear with me, maybe a generalized example would help further?

say you have a population of lizards, living on a tropical island (I like the tropics, ok?). the lizards normally feed on a combination of drift insects from a nieghboring island (or mainland), and beetles indigenous to the island they live on.

the island, as can happen in the tropics, is hit hard by a hurricane, and a new lagoon forms in the middle of it, separating the formerly one group of lizards into two.

one group, living on the higher, windward side of the island finds that most of the insects available to eat are flying insects blown in over the sea from a neighboring larger island. The group on the other side of the new lagoon, lives on a much lower part of the island, in the lee of the wind, and most of the insects they eat are beetles that breed right there on the island.

these two groups, now separated by the lagoon, no longer mix to breed with one another.

there is a selective pressure on the "windward" lizard to forage efficiently on the drift insects blown onto the island, and on the "lee" lizards to forage on beetles.

eventually, a slight morphological or behavior difference might occur within a specific individual within the population of windward lizards that makes it easier for them to forage for drift insects. lets say they develop, for sake of argument, a longer middle claw that helps them snag insects slightly better out of mid-air. that individual, being better fed, will likely have more offspring than its neighbors. that trait, if heritable, will then be increased in the population that lizard lives in as its offspring outnumber other lizard offspring that don't have the elongated middle claw. thus, slowly but surely, middle claw length in the windward lizard population will increase...

in the lee lizards, the beetles they eat are often found under the sand... so, without the benefit of having drift insects to feed on when the beetles are under the sand, an individual that can do better at accessing beetles in the sand, will reproduce more successfully. so maybe a lee lizard develops a slightly stronger claw to dig with...

so, eventually, you will see two slightly different looking lizard populations on the island... one with a long middle claw, and the other with strong digging claws.

these will both be slightly different than what the original population of lizards looked or behaved like.

now, where would it make sense to say one population is "evolved more" than the other? which one has "devolved"?

you see? it simply makes no sense to look at it in those terms.

they were all successful, all different, just facing different selective pressures.

ID says nothing about the designer.

then shortened, it says nothing.

example:

how would you go about making and testing a hypothesis that a specific artifact you found was in fact created by a human?

yeah, that's right, you wouldn't be able to even begin to if you had no clue how a human can interact with the environment to begin with, or else, by process of elimination, you had eliminated every other potential source on the planet. How feasible would that be, do you think?

the reason we think an arrowhead we find on the ground was made by a human is because we see humans making them today, and we find them associated with human civilizations, and we know humans are physically capable of making them, etc.

hence, saying that ID doesn't postulate a specific designer is like saying archeology doesn't postulate that humans were involved in the creation of the artifacts they study.

it's a really, really stupid thing to say, basically.

the only reason ID supporters mouth this particular bit of inanity is to make their concept seem "non-religious", but surely you can see that there if you don't identify what the putative designer is, and exactly how it is capable of interacting with the environment, then there simply is no way to even begin to formulate a hypothesis regarding whether or not any given observed organism or part of an organism was, in fact, designed?

this is exactly why all "leaders" of the ID movement eventually pin themselves to having to at least identify which designer they are speaking of.

that said, you find me a non-anthropic designer, study how it operates, and write up a hypothesis and test it, and then get back to me.

frankly, there ARE models to choose from. Hymenopterans birds and beavers come readily to mind...

is your intelligent designer a beaver perchance?

Mac said: So we can’t really say whether something is “devolving” or “decaying.” A blind fish could be blind simply because he lives in an environment that has no light.

So why do ID advocates need to deal with bad biological designs when things that look like “bad” designs can’t be proved to be bad

(in the same way that you can’t prove devolution or decaying species)?

I've always been impressed with Behe's willingness to consider a malevolent designer. I'm deeply curious as to how he reconciles this theologically. The conversations he must have in the confessional must be very interesting.

The conversations he must have in the confessional his head must be very interesting.

meh, pass.

Ichthyic, I very much like the "evo / devo" analogy to language (latin / french) and religion {catholicism / protestantism). I'll be using that in the future.

One of the ID creationists I used to know, John Bracht, had a fourth argument for cases of bad biological design. "If evolution were true," he'd begin, "then you'd expect it to come up with something better than that. So, the panda's thumb / human coccyx / flatfish heads is difficult to explain with design OR evolution." On the one hand, he'd be insisting that evolution couldn't do squat. He wrote a coin-flipping program that proved, in the absence of any gradient, it took about a billion guesses to get a certain number between one and a billion. On the other he'd hold the loftiest expectations of evolution, and take its failure (or, rather, the failure of non-selective processes to generate exact patterns) to meet those expectations as confirmation of his supposition that it was bunk.

Yeah, Bracht used to post on ISCID's Brainstorms (which has turned into John Davison's echo chamber) and played a part in the writing of MESA. He (like Dembski) never did get a good handle on the interaction of randomness and selection and the resultant amplification of probability. IIRC he was a philosophy student, and was in love with the 'evolution in principle can't do this or that' style of argument.

I'll be using that in the future.

ty, let me know how you manage to flesh it out. I've heard the evolution of language arguments before, but I'm afraid a real linguist could do a much better job of fleshing out the details (I seem to vaguely recall the name Argy Stokes as where i first heard it fleshed out, either here or on pharyngula, a couple years back, and it made sense at the time).

RBH said: On the contrary, IDists say a good deal about the designer(s), sometimes explicitly (as in Meyer's attributing benevolence to it(them), and sometimes implicitly, as when they use the analogy of human designers but with greater knowledge and powers than humans. IDists attribute human-like qualities -- intelligence and intentions -- to their designer.

Ichthyic said: ... but surely you can see that there if you don't identify what the putative designer is, and exactly how it is capable of interacting with the environment, then there simply is no way to even begin to formulate a hypothesis regarding whether or not any given observed organism or part of an organism was, in fact, designed?

You're confusing what ID proponents say vs what ID says.

you're fooling yourself if you think those two things are distinguishable.

That was sort of my point…

huh?

explain how that was your point.

Hawks said: You're confusing what ID proponents say vs what ID says. IDists that claim something about the designer and that that ID therefore predicts x (WHATEVER that may be) simply don't understand the theory they are supporting.

IDists that claim something about the designer and that that ID therefore predicts x (WHATEVER that may be) simply don't understand the theory they are supporting.

lol, ok, why don't you explain it then.

...because there is nothing to ID BUT a supposition of a specific designer.

the rest is hogwash.

specified complexity? specified by who?

complexity? measured how?

probability? relevant to what?

it's all bullshit.

Um, Stephen Meyer, Program Director of the Disco 'Tute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture and author of a 600 page book on ID, doesn't understand the theory he's supporting?

evidently not, but he and Johnson do at least understand there isn't even a theory.

:P

"Because the entire weight of ID rests upon the idea that things are so well-designed that they had to be made by an intelligent designer. That’s what ID means. But if things are not well-designed, then surely ID proponents need to deal with the gaping hole in their logic."

Which ID theorist believes that? Meyer argues that the inference to design depends upon specified complexity of information within cells in addition to causal adequacy of intelligent agency to produce such information.

Even if someone designed a sentence with poor grammatical structure, design could still be inferred as the cause because it is still specifically complex and the only known origin of specified complexity (poorly or well designed) is intelligent agency. ID does not need to rely on quality of design in order to establish the inference.

Indeed, ID is posited as an origin theory and not a progression theory. Once the information is present, evolution could very well take place.

Indeed, ID is posited as an origin theory and not a progression theory. Once the information is present, evolution could very well take place.

bullshit.

it's posited as origin and progression.

it depends on who is arguing the side of ID and what venue they are arguing in. often any given ID proponent will argue that selection is insufficient a mechanism to explain variability or complexity of any given trait, so that gives the wash to your definition.

Which ID theorist believes that?

have you actually read Darwin's Black Box?

i'm guessing not.

oh, and why don't YOU define how we get a repeatable measure of "specified complexity" for us eh?

Meyers, Dembski, none of them ever have.

they don't understand the slightest thing about information theory, though I'm sure Dembski at least is trying to cobble something that sounds more plausible as he stumbles along with Marks.

phht.

ID is such a waste of time, seriously.

Even if someone designed a sentence with poor grammatical structure, design could still be inferred as the cause because it is still specifically complex

...and how do you arrive at the hypothesis that a sentence you just read was written by an "intelligent" agency, eh?

what gives you the information to conclude that EXACTLY?

jaflskjfdlaskj afjdlkjflajsld falksdjfljasd

did a monkey write that, or did i write that?

how would you go about testing either hypothesis?

a clotting agent evolved naturally, or was created by an intelligence.

how, exactly, would you go about testing the hypothesis that it was created by an intelligence?

right, you would compare it to what you know about your own ability to interact with the world.

can you see how circular, at best, the argument for ID becomes?

get back to us when you can interview a putative non-anthropic designer, and have them instruct you on how they interact with reality, so we can then form a testable hypothesis about which things might have been affected/created/influenced by said putative designer.

until then...

you're just farting up a storm, along with the rest of the clowns.

Melech wrote:

"Indeed, ID is posited as an origin theory and not a progression theory. Once the information is present, evolution could very well take place."

Great. In that case, ID is clearly contradicted by the evidence. The fossil record gives us a history of life on earth. What it clearly shows is that the simplest organisms arose first and that increasingly more complex forms only arose later. If ID cannot explain this pattern that it cannot be preferred over evolutionary theory, which predicts exactly this pattern.

I have no idea why anyone would want to worship an incompetent designer. I also am at a loss to understand how making such an argument would possibly convince anyone. If god made whales, then God is an idiot. You can worship that god if you want to, but why would you want to? If on the other hand whales evolved, then god is off the hook and you can still worship her all you want.

Oh and trying to pretend that you don't believe that the designer is god, that don't get you nowhere nohow.

stevaroni said: A straw man. What we can provide is a rational explanation for a disabled eye structure, what ID cannot provide for is a rationale for a half-assed design.

Joshua Zelinsky said: I've always been impressed with Behe's willingness to consider a malevolent designer. I'm deeply curious as to how he reconciles this theologically. The conversations he must have in the confessional must be very interesting.

Mac wrote:

"Gotcha. I still don’t get how something (that was first a good design) couldn’t go from complex to simple."

Well of course it could. Indeed, this is exactly what evolutionary theory would predict. If there is sufficient selection pressure, then usually in response to a changing envoirnment, complexity can increase or decrease.

If, on the other hand, species were designed fixed and perfect 6000 years ago, why would they need to change? Didn't god know that there was no light in that cave? Did she give the fish eyes for no reason and then screw them up just for laughs?

The whole point of design is intelligent, intent, purpose and planning. We see absolutely no evidence of this in biological structures. What we see instead is a hodge-podge of co-opted and modified structures that barely function in a certain envirnonment and must either change or die out completely when the environment changes. Any other interpretation of the evidence is mere wishful thinking. Humans can see the hand of god everywhere, but when we look a little closer we find that either we were mistaken, or that god is an idiot.

Ichthyic said: get back to us when you can interview a putative non-anthropic designer, and have them instruct you on how they interact with reality, so we can then form a testable hypothesis about which things might have been affected/created/influenced by said putative designer.

If, on the other hand, species were designed fixed and perfect 6000 years ago, why would they need to change? Didn't god know that there was no light in that cave? Did she give the fish eyes for no reason and then screw them up just for laughs?

Christianity would agree and say that it wasn't the "designer" that messed things up. It could have been a malicious entity (such as the devil or evil spirits, or the effects of evil itself) that is the reason for increase or decrease in complexity.

RBH said: Um, Stephen Meyer, Program Director of the Disco 'Tute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture and author of a 600 page book on ID, doesn't understand the theory he's supporting? Goodness. No wonder ID is in trouble!

I get the impression Behe is of the "hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of man" persuasion, theologically; if it's bad, a bad god dunnit.

Ichthyic said: lol, ok, why don't you explain it then. ...because there is nothing to ID BUT a supposition of a specific designer. the rest is hogwash. specified complexity? specified by who? complexity? measured how? probability? relevant to what? it's all bullshit.

Indeed, ID is posited as an origin theory and not a progression theory. Once the information is present, evolution could very well take place.

Gotcha. I still don’t get how something (that was first a good design) couldn’t go from complex to simple

Christianity (and some monotheistic religions) would say that a supernatural divinity (such as God, or Allah) is a putative non-anthropic designer, and is interviewed through the “special revelation” of scripture. Could the interaction with the Bible or Qur’an create a testable hypothesis?

Mac wrote:

"Christianity would agree and say that it wasn’t the “designer” that messed things up. It could have been a malicious entity (such as the devil or evil spirits, or the effects of evil itself) that is the reason for increase or decrease in complexity."

Great. So it what ways would one be able to distinguish between evolution and the god/satan hypothesis? If everything good and well designed comes from god and everything evil and poorly designed comes from the devil, then could that account for every possible observation? If so, then wouldn't it be completely worthless as an explanation?

And of course, if we follow that line of reasoning to it's logical conclusion, then god only acted originally and the devil continues to operate and god is losing big time. Wouldn't that be an argument for worshiping the devil instead of god? Is that the real puprose of ID, to get people to worship the devil because that would be better than believing in evolution?

Stanton said:

Joshua Zelinsky said: I've always been impressed with Behe's willingness to consider a malevolent designer. I'm deeply curious as to how he reconciles this theologically. The conversations he must have in the confessional must be very interesting.

Behe struck me as the sort of person who would freely admit that the Pope was a shapeshifting pagan witch, given enough money.

I’ve always been impressed with Behe’s willingness to consider a malevolent designer. I’m deeply curious as to how he reconciles this theologically. The conversations he must have in the confessional must be very interesting.

While reading "Signature in the Cell" I nearly burst out laughing wondering how Meyer thinks a "scientist" could determine how designs have "degenerated". Instead of conceiving of the possibility that biological "design" is often "jury-rigged" (Of which of course the most famous example is that of the panda's thumb.) he insists that somehow "perfect" designs were able to "degenerate", as though he was recounting the engineering equivalent of Adam and Eve's fall from grace. But what I didn't find funny was the realization that he truly believes this bulls**t (Just for any creos lurking here, not only did I read Meyer's lamentable mendacious intellectual pornography, but I received a review copy from his publisher for the purpose of writing an Amazon.com review (which of course I did).).

Mac said: Christianity would agree and say that it wasn't the "designer" that messed things up. It could have been a malicious entity (such as the devil or evil spirits, or the effects of evil itself) that is the reason for increase or decrease in complexity.

harold said: Melech said -

Indeed, ID is posited as an origin theory and not a progression theory. Once the information is present, evolution could very well take place.

Wrong. Absolutely not. ID denies evolution. That's that whole point of ID.

RDK said: Ichthyic, I very much like the "evo / devo" analogy to language (latin / french) and religion {catholicism / protestantism). I'll be using that in the future.

Melech said - Indeed, ID is posited as an origin theory and not a progression theory. Once the information is present, evolution could very well take place.

Mac said: Christianity would agree and say that it wasn't the "designer" that messed things up. It could have been a malicious entity (such as the devil or evil spirits, or the effects of evil itself) that is the reason for increase or decrease in complexity.

Hawks said:

harold said: Melech said -

Indeed, ID is posited as an origin theory and not a progression theory. Once the information is present, evolution could very well take place.

Wrong. Absolutely not. ID denies evolution. That's that whole point of ID.

Right. Absolutely. ID does not deny evolution. ID supporters do. Evolution could very well proceed according to ID, assuming that there is information supplied somehow. This requires that evolution does not happen "blindly", however. Even though Dembski keeps on insisting on it, theistic evolution is very much in accordance with ID. So is front-loading.

eric said: Sure, and Satan could've buried dinosaur bones to fool us, too. Such speculations attempt to say why evolution is the best scientific explanation for the empirical evidence. In doing so, they concede that it is. To put it bluntly - you can't claim that Satan made life look evolved without admitting it looks evolved.

Right. Absolutely. ID does not deny evolution. ID supporters do.

Evolution could very well proceed according to ID, assuming that there is information supplied somehow.

This requires that evolution does not happen “blindly”, however.

Even though Dembski keeps on insisting on it, theistic evolution is very much in accordance with ID.

So is front-loading.

Which ID theorist believes that? Meyer argues that the inference to design depends upon specified complexity of information within cells in addition to causal adequacy of intelligent agency to produce such information.

"Intelligent Design" is like Christianity; it comes in so many varieties and it means whatever the person advocating it wants it to mean.

At one extreme is Michael Behe. For him, it is very close (perhaps identical) to theistic evolution: he accepts common descent and puts a limit on what evolution can do, but invokes a designer where (in his opinion) changes occur beyond the "edge of evolution". IOW, it represents a serious (and, for the most part, an intellectually honest) attempt to harmonize facts about the world with their religion.

At the other extreme, ID is a rhetorical tool used to deny the capability of evolution, and therefore support a YE creationism. ("evolution can't do this, evolution can't do that, therefore evolution is false, therefore god did it, in 6 days."). IOW, it's not an attempt to harmonize known facts about the world with their religious views, it is to protect their religous views with whatever will work at the time.

In between there are many intermediate flavors.
In general, the more educated/informed a creationist is about biology, paleontology, geology, chemistry, and physics, the more their version comes to the "Behe" end the spectrum.

As a rule, you won't see any debate in the ID world that attempts to hone it down. In fact, given that they have never put together a formal statement of what ID is (as opposed to what it is not, or what it implies relative to evolution), I think it is pretty clear that they don't ever intend to do this. Because for most people (and I except Behe and others sitting at his end to the spectrum), ID never was about developing an alternative scientific theory to explain the origin of life. Rather, it is an attempt to protect their religious beliefs from the implications of our best understanding of the world. Right now, because "ID" is so vaguely defined, with so many favors, it is difficult to directly attack it. Further, the absence of a narrow definition of ID holds together the creationist coalition.

Making a clear, precisely formulated, and comprehensive statement of ID theory would rapidly cause it's downfall. The creationist coalition that supports the movement will fall apart, and a concrete target will allow real scientists to tear it apart.

Eric Finn said: Evolution can explain and justify the appearance of design, but design can not justify the appearance of things having evolved.

The issue of less-than-perfect design was addressed by Robert C. Newman--it was angels and demons.

Hawks wrote:

"Evolution could very well proceed according to ID, assuming that there is information supplied somehow. This requires that evolution does not happen “blindly”, however."

But evolution does not require any "information input" and there is absolutely no evidnece that any has ever occurred. Requiring that evolution does not "happen blindly" denies that evolution could occur without intelligent intervention. That is the whole point of ID.

So, yes, ID (and ID supporters), deny evolution as currently conceived by mainstream science and in so doing, they ignore all of the evidence. This is not irtellectually honesty as divalent implied, it is merely a transparent attempt to preserve some reason to believe in a diety, albeit one who supposedly claimed that your belief should be based on faith not evidence.

If they were intellectually honest, they would make a "clear, formulated and comprehensive statement" of their theory. As divalent correctly pointed out, they refuse to do so and in fact they know that they cannot. So much for intellectual honesty.

Mark,

Does Newman explain not only the appearance of poor design, but also the appearance of common descent? Does he explain why the demons want us to believe in evolution? Does he explain why should worship the side that is apparently losing?

Mac said: Christianity would agree and say that it wasn't the "designer" that messed things up. It could have been a malicious entity (such as the devil or evil spirits, or the effects of evil itself) that is the reason for increase or decrease in complexity.

First, they argue that the suboptimality results from “devolution.” What were once optimal designs have degenerated due to the vicissitudes of time and the second law of thermodynamics,…

DS said: ... ID supporters ... deny evolution as currently conceived by mainstream science and in so doing, they ignore all of the evidence. This is not intellectually honesty as divalent implied

harold said: But ID is equally useless. They claim not to even know who the designer is. That would be either faithlessness or false witness.

If by evolution you mean descent with modification, then ID creationists most certainly do not deny evolution. They deny only that there could have been "enough" evolution for certain adaptations to have appeared without intervention. That is by no means the same as denying evolution.

Evolution could very well proceed according to ID, assuming that there is information supplied somehow.

congratulations on your embrace of last teusdayism.

Matt Young said: If by evolution you mean descent with modification, then ID creationists most certainly do not deny evolution.

Mac said:

Ichthyic said: get back to us when you can interview a putative non-anthropic designer, and have them instruct you on how they interact with reality, so we can then form a testable hypothesis about which things might have been affected/created/influenced by said putative designer.

Christianity (and some monotheistic religions) would say that a supernatural divinity (such as God, or Allah) is a putative non-anthropic designer, and is interviewed through the "special revelation" of scripture. Could the interaction with the Bible or Qur'an create a testable hypothesis?

At one extreme is Michael Behe. For him, it is very close (perhaps identical) to theistic evolution: he accepts common descent and puts a limit on what evolution can do, but invokes a designer where (in his opinion) changes occur beyond the “edge of evolution”. IOW, it represents a serious (and, for the most part, an intellectually honest) attempt to harmonize facts about the world with their religion.

True for some, not true for others. If you consider the pool people who consider themselves "ID supporters", then it is probably a minority. Yes, the pool of "ID supporters" is probably composed of lots of people who really don't know what ID really is.

... can't be bothered to lift a hand to prevent the Holocaust.

Intelligent Designer forbid! That would deprive us of free will.

divalent wrote:

"For the most part Behe does not ignore the evidence (although he may turn a blind eye to some, and deny the sufficiency of some other), and he does not avoid stating the what some might consider the “inconvenient” implications of his analysis: “Despite some remaining puzzles, there’s no reason to doubt that Darwin had this point right, that all creatures on earth are biological relatives.” - Behe, in the Edge of Evolution."

Agreed. In this he is somewhat less dishonest than many. However, to "turn a blind eye" or to deny the sufficiency" of some mechanism for no other reason than wishful thinking is the very antithesis of the true scientific method.

Ignoring well documented mechanisms such as gene duplication, and cooption is only intellectually honest the first time you do it. After you have been told repeatedly that there is evidence for these mechanisms that you consistently ignore, your honesty should indeed be called into question. Claiming over and over that such and such could not possibly evolve, while at the same time ignoring all of the evidence that it actually did, that is not being intellectually honest either.

Using the vaneer of scientific respectability to fool an unsuspecting public is in many ways even more dishonest than honestly admitting that you have simply chosen to ignore all evidence.

“Intelligent Design” is like Christianity; it comes in so many varieties and it means whatever the person advocating it wants it to mean.

And when these very specific, concrete, heavy-handed legal and political efforts have been made, they didn’t attempt to insert some harmless, nonspecific feel-good words. They attempted to insert the highly specific set of sectarian ideas referred to by their authors as “Intelligent Design”, as expressed in the works of Michael Behe, William Dembski, and the “textbook” Of Pandas and People, among other highly related works, the vast majority of which have some connection to the Howard Ahmanson-funded Discovery Institute. Indeed, these authors originated the term Intelligent Design, and are strongly associated with it. Whatever we may think of ID, it is ethically questionable to hijack the same term and use it to mean something else. It may even be actionable in civil court to do so. One of the most obvious first steps in fighting against the promotion of Intelligent Design is to be familiar with exactly what it claims and means.

Dr. J said: Can they be sued for their great lies about evolution or did Darwin's patent run out on "evolution"?

Intelligent design IS a “nonspecific feel-good word”.

It’s funny you use Of Pandas as an example since it tells us ID is creationism in drag.

harold said: Dr J -

Intelligent design IS a “nonspecific feel-good word”.

A terminology that sounds like a non-specific feel-good word was chosen for deceptive reasons, yes. But if it "doesn't mean anything" then there's nothing to argue against, is there? It certainly couldn't be sectarian, or violate constitutional rights to teach it in taxpayer funded schools. How could something that "means something different to everybody" possibly do that? Judge Jones was wrong, according to your analysis. So were the people who complained. I mean, maybe they could have complained about nonspecific feel-good stuff wasting time in the classroom, but to suggest that it was violating their rights...how silly. But wait...

It’s funny you use Of Pandas as an example since it tells us ID is creationism in drag.

I'm sorry, which is it again? Is it as non-specific feel-good word (actually term), or is it a term that refers to a particular type of disguised creationism? It really can't be both.

Harold, very interesting bit of quote mining. By leaving out the word "concrete" in my post, you just sort of changed its meaning ;-)

ID is - as nmgirl above describes - a way to "defeat" Darwinism and replace it with something christian. How they get to the ends, they don't really care. So ID means one thing when trying to get it into a classroom and another at Sunday school and other religious functions. Lying for Jesus (TM) is not a problem, as well all know.

It is a feel good word because it makes them feel good to not have to think of their "god" as meaningless (or imaginary).

Dr J -

It's clear that we are both "on the same side" here, and I am certainly not trying to defend the wretchedness that is "ID". All I'm trying to do is point out that they have to be pinned down to be defeated.

Perhaps I should give some background. My brother is in a career related to the entertainment business. Back circa 2004 some of his intelligent friends mistakenly thought there was something to "intelligent design". They thought it meant non-science-denying theistic evolution, though. It was precisely by referring to the specific claims of "intelligent design" that I was able to cure them of that illusion.

And believe me, the moment the words "claim that the bacterial flagellum could not have evolved and had to be created by magic or super-powered aliens" came out of my mouth, the cure was instantaneous.

There are specific claims associated with "intelligent design", and it is very useful to understand what those claims are. Because they are written down in books and court records.

phantomreader42 said: So, Hawks, has there ever been a single, coherent, consistent statement that ID has made on ANY subject, that can actually be backed up by evidence?

And if ID is completely unrelated to the claims of ID supporters, how the hell are they supporting ID?

Harold, have you read the wedge document on the NCSE website? The emphasis is on the propaganda war, not science and i think it behooves us to be very cognizant of that in our dealings with IDiota. I'm always torn between engaging them (and driving myself insane) or ignoring them and risk losing an inquiring mind that can be educated.

harold said: That's weird. Why do all the "supporters" but you get it wrong?

Here's why - because you have no idea what you're talking about and you're the one who gets it wrong. I'm very familiar with the works of Behe, Dembski, and other DI fellows. They ALL - the works, not the men - deny evolution.

Frankly, you are coming very close to at least ethical violation of respect for intellectual property. I think ID is nonsense, but at least I credit it to those who invented the term, and correctly ascribe the ideas they express to them.

This is NOT what THE WORKS OF Behe, Dembski, Luskin and other DI fellows say. THEY invented and ID and THEY get to tell YOU what ID says.

In short, what you are saying is neither science, nor ID.)

Seriously, who the hell do you think you are, presuming to teach ID to William Dembski?

Theistic evolution is 100% at odds with ID and completely compatible with mainstream science.

As far as I can tell, you want to claim ...

nmgirl -

Yes, I am familiar with the Wedge Document and have been since 1999.

I think there has been some confusion.

Believe me, I am not trying to defend ID in any way. Quite the contrary. I have been arguing vehemently against it for ten years.

Once again, I can't stand ID, I think it's dishonest, I think it's internally illogical, and I certainly, obviously, massively realize that it's propaganda designed at court-proofing creationism and sneaking it into schools.

I am also very familiar with Kitzmiller v. Dover.

All I'm saying is, they've already painted themselves into a corner, they've already made stupid, easily defeated claims, and there's no reason to let them off the hook now.

There's no reason to say, as creationist Hawks here wants us to, that Behe and Dembski got ID all wrong, and the creationists should be allowed to redefine ID and start all over again with a fresh pile of crap. They can come up with more crap, but the old crap is still there.

Until they specifically deny the crap that they have already insisted on, until the DI fires Dembski, there is no reason not to understand what Behe, Dembski, et al, have already tried to argue, and how to easily rebut it.

The confusion here is what the DI intends. Yes, they use the term "intelligent design" because it sounds nebulous and benign. But as you note, when they use it, they mean something quite specific.

Behe did claim that the bacterial flagellum and the vertebrate blood clotting system couldn't have evolved, for example. He did claim that this conclusion was part of "intelligent design". Anyone who denies that this is part of ID is directly contradicting one of the inventors of ID. There's no reason to grant them that pass.

DS said: But evolution does not require any "information input" and there is absolutely no evidnece that any has ever occurred.

If they were intellectually honest, they would make a "clear, formulated and comprehensive statement" of their theory. As divalent correctly pointed out, they refuse to do so and in fact they know that they cannot. So much for intellectual honesty.

Okay Hawks, let's try something new.

Let's say that you have your own conception or interpretation of Intelligent Design. Let's call it the Hawks Interpretation of Intelligent Design (HIID), just for clarity, so that we won't get it confused with the Behe/Dembski/Luskin interpretation of ID.

How does HIID explain the diversity of life on earth? What happened when, and how did it happen?

harold said: There's no reason to say, as creationist Hawks here wants us to...

I wonder if you will ever regret writing that?

Are you guys sure you know who is arguing what here? How about backing off and reading the whole thread again.

harold said: nmgirl - Yes, I am familiar with the Wedge Document and have been since 1999. I think there has been some confusion. Believe me, I am not trying to defend ID in any way. Quite the contrary. I have been arguing vehemently against it for ten years. Once again, I can't stand ID, I think it's dishonest, I think it's internally illogical, and I certainly, obviously, massively realize that it's propaganda designed at court-proofing creationism and sneaking it into schools. I am also very familiar with Kitzmiller v. Dover. All I'm saying is, they've already painted themselves into a corner, they've already made stupid, easily defeated claims, and there's no reason to let them off the hook now. There's no reason to say, as creationist Hawks here wants us to, that Behe and Dembski got ID all wrong, and the creationists should be allowed to redefine ID and start all over again with a fresh pile of crap. They can come up with more crap, but the old crap is still there. Until they specifically deny the crap that they have already insisted on, until the DI fires Dembski, there is no reason not to understand what Behe, Dembski, et al, have already tried to argue, and how to easily rebut it. The confusion here is what the DI intends. Yes, they use the term "intelligent design" because it sounds nebulous and benign. But as you note, when they use it, they mean something quite specific. Behe did claim that the bacterial flagellum and the vertebrate blood clotting system couldn't have evolved, for example. He did claim that this conclusion was part of "intelligent design". Anyone who denies that this is part of ID is directly contradicting one of the inventors of ID. There's no reason to grant them that pass.

Hawks wrote:

"There is actually a constant input of information in evolution. From the environment. Dembski has realised this. A while back at uncommon descent he overcame this “problem” by merely positing a question along the lines of “well, who created the environment, then?”.

Great. So no creator, no intelligence and no other information input is required. That is exactly what evolutionary theory claims. So there really is no such thing as "intelligent design" and no designer, only the environment.

So why does Dembski call it "intelligent design"? Why does he refer to a creator? Why does he claim that such and such is too improbable to have evolved without intelligent input? Why does he think that no evolutionary biologist ever considered that the environment could have been improtant in evolution? Why exactly is his problem with evolutionary theory? Why does he make up so much garbled math to prove something that no one disagrees with? And most importantly, why should anyone care what he thinks if he cannot define or calculate "complex specified information" and refuses to publish anythng in any real journal?

As for where the environment came from, that is irrelevant to evolution. If Dembski has so little faith that he needs an excuse to believe in God, let him believe anything he wants.

Thanks for the input yall, it has got me thinking.

I think ID proponets find it more likely to believe in a designer than evolution because there are examples of intelligence creating complex structures with massive amounts of information. But there aren't any examples of a naturalistic power or force (such as natural selection) capable of creating or improving complex structures with massive amounts of information.

Hawks said: There is actually a constant input of information in evolution. From the environment. Dembski has realised this. A while back at uncommon descent he overcame this "problem" by merely positing a question along the lines of "well, who created the environment, then?".

mac said: I think ID proponets find it more likely to believe in a designer than evolution because there are examples of intelligence creating complex structures with massive amounts of information. But there aren't any examples of a naturalistic power or force (such as natural selection) capable of creating or improving complex structures with massive amounts of information.

mac said: I think ID proponets find it more likely to believe in a designer than evolution because there are examples of intelligence creating complex structures with massive amounts of information. But there aren't any examples of a naturalistic power or force (such as natural selection) capable of creating or improving complex structures with massive amounts of information.

mac said: I think ID proponets find it more likely to believe in a designer than evolution because there are examples of intelligence creating complex structures with massive amounts of information. But there aren't any examples of a naturalistic power or force (such as natural selection) capable of creating or improving complex structures with massive amounts of information.

It seems to me a lot of people are getting tripped up over the difference between Intelligent Design as a "theory" and as an overall strategy. ID is presented as a scientific theory in many venues. Even though all of us here know that the hodgepodge of arguments they bring to the table are universally flawed (specified complexity, the design inference, the resurrected ghost of Paley), some people are suckered by this "sciency" talk and can falsely believe that there is something substantial to ID theory. Therefore, many of the internet exchanges concerning ID focus on these bogus arguments.

But that's only one face of the ID movement, not its entirety. As we learned from the Wedge Document, ID encompasses an entire strategy. ID was created to be a shape-shifter. It's whatever you need it to be at the moment. It was meant to be a way for all the religious creationists to praise Jebus on Sunday and then teach about an unnamed and therefore constitutionally-permissible "intelligent designer" (wink) in schools on Monday. ID is a legal strategy. A political strategy. A fund-raising strategy. It's a multi-front assault on American government and culture. That's why Dembski's and Behe's and Philip Johnson's statements are completely relevant to explaining what ID is. It's not just a pseudo-scientific theory. It is that, but its also other things in different contexts and venues, depending on who's listening.

Meyer reportedly claimed that the inverted vertebrate retina was “a tradeoff that allows the eye to process the vast amount of oxygen it needs in vertebrates” [p.87] (and also see AIG’s argument to this effect).

Can anyone tell me why this is wrong?

Oh no, wait... rtfm.

Mac wrote:

"But there aren’t any examples of a naturalistic power or force (such as natural selection) capable of creating or improving complex structures with massive amounts of information."

Sure there are. In fact, every single biological structure evolved through a process of random muatation and cumulative selection. Dembski has even admitted that the "information" was provided by the environment. To simply claim that this can't happen, despite all of the evidence that it actually did is question begging of the highest degree.

To Oolon Colluphid's list of 96 mistakes, I would also like to add these:

1) Late Ordovician Mass Extinction - may have been the third or fourth most severe in the history of life

2) Late Devonian Mass Extinction - one which saw a rapid contraction of trilobite taxonomic diversity, relegating them to being minor players in the Paleozoic seas until their extinction during the Permian

3) Late Permian Mass Extinction - undoubtedly the worst, resulting in estimates of up to 90% of metazoan species diversity both on land and in the seas

4) Late Triassic Mass Extinction - which allowed the Dinosauria to become the dominant land vertebrates of the Mesozoic

5) Late Cretaceous Mass Extinction - which resulted in the extinction of all dinosaurs, except birds, ammonites, plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, and a substantial portion of other terrrestrial and marine faunas.

There are also at least two others, but these are the ones I recall from memory.

If the Intelligent Designer(s) was(were) so clever, then how come the history of life on Planet Earth was affected not just once, but at least seven times over the last (approximatetly) 550 million years? That's one question which I love to see Meyer try answering and can't even be tackled with given the "hypotheses" he's proposed in "Signature in the Cell".

Hawks said:

phantomreader42 said: So, Hawks, has there ever been a single, coherent, consistent statement that ID has made on ANY subject, that can actually be backed up by evidence?

I can't think of one at the moment.

And if ID is completely unrelated to the claims of ID supporters, how the hell are they supporting ID?

Because, just like the leading figures of the ID movement, they don't understand it? Because they like the wedge they hope it will supply?

I think we can all agree that assumptions are important. Sometimes people make assumptions that are simply wrong (I have seen a few of those in this thread). Sometimes people make assumptions that are invalid. Dembski et all fall into the latter category.

In order for ID to make any sort of prediction, there has to be made some sort of assumption about the designer (ID, famously, doesn't). Some ID people do make some of of these assumptions. Let's say that person A assumes designer D1 having some set capabilites and intentions. Let's say that person B assumes designer D2 having some other set of capabilities and intentions. For the sake of argument, assuming D1 predicts X. Also, assuming D2 predicts ~X. Here, it would seem like ID predicts X and ~X.

Now what? For those who think that Dembski et al are really right when they claim that ID predicts something, tell me why they are right. At the same time, tell me why I would be wrong if I claimed that ID predicts the exact opposite when I make a different assumption regarding the designer. Should we do like harold and simply give them their assumptions because they invented the theory?

RBH said:

You said in your first comment that you are "still new at all this science stuff." That's OK; we were all new to it once upon a time. But some of us have been in it for decades (more than four decades in my own case). Before you make pronouncements like that in the quoted post you'd better learn a whole lot more about it. You merely make yourself appear ignorant otherwise. Ignorance isn't a crime unless it's willful ignorance. Don't be willfully ignorant, please: at least learn something about what you're criticizing.

You're right, I do need to study up on it. Do you know of any good books which point out the evidence for Natural selection as an agent of biolgical change and possibly creation. I admitted that I am ignorant in this subject, but I never want to be "willfully" ignorant. I read Karl Giberson's book "Saving Darwin", and he didn't give any evidence to support his eagerness to support evolution.

harold said: That’s weird. Why do all the “supporters” but you get it wrong?

I’d love to try to answer this question, but first I insist that you provide evidence that you have stopped beating your wife.

Here’s why - because you have no idea what you’re talking about and you’re the one who gets it wrong. I’m very familiar with the works of Behe, Dembski, and other DI fellows. They ALL - the works, not the men - deny evolution.

Have you even considered the possibility that their works are flawed? On a fundamental level?

Frankly, you are coming very close to at least ethical violation of respect for intellectual property. I think ID is nonsense, but at least I credit it to those who invented the term, and correctly ascribe the ideas they express to them.

Wow. Ethical violation. That sounds like a serious charge.

This is NOT what THE WORKS OF Behe, Dembski, Luskin and other DI fellows say. THEY invented and ID and THEY get to tell YOU what ID says.

That almost sounds like an argument from authority.

In short, what you are saying is neither science, nor ID.)

I agree that it’s not science. It’s philosophy - and ID.

Seriously, who the hell do you think you are, presuming to teach ID to William Dembski?

Is that another argument from authority?

Theistic evolution is 100% at odds with ID and completely compatible with mainstream science. Bzzzt.

As far as I can tell, you want to claim …

I’m pretty sure that I’m not claiming anything other that it is in accordance with ID.

You’re right, I do need to study up on it. Do you know of any good books which point out the evidence for Natural selection as an agent of biolgical change and possibly creation.

I admitted that I am ignorant in this subject, but I never want to be “willfully” ignorant.

I read Karl Giberson’s book “Saving Darwin”, and he didn’t give any evidence to support his eagerness to support evolution.

I think we can all agree that assumptions are important. Sometimes people make assumptions that are simply wrong (I have seen a few of those in this thread). Sometimes people make assumptions that are invalid. Dembski et all fall into the latter category.

In order for ID to make any sort of prediction, there has to be made some sort of assumption about the designer (ID, famously, doesn’t).

Some ID people do make some of of these assumptions. Let’s say that person A assumes designer D1 having some set capabilites and intentions. Let’s say that person B assumes designer D2 having some other set of capabilities and intentions. For the sake of argument, assuming D1 predicts X. Also, assuming D2 predicts ~X. Here, it would seem like ID predicts X and ~X.

Now what? For those who think that Dembski et al are really right when they claim that ID predicts something, tell me why they are right.

At the same time, tell me why I would be wrong if I claimed that ID predicts the exact opposite when I make a different assumption regarding the designer.

Should we do like harold and simply give them their assumptions because they invented the theory?

Mac wrote: “But there aren’t any examples of a naturalistic power or force (such as natural selection) capable of creating or improving complex structures with massive amounts of information.”

Paul Burnett said: "Unintelligent design" is still design - examples of incompetent design, malignant design or stupid design cannot disprove design. But "design" by the Blind Watchmaker of evolution makes far more sense than any so-called "intelligent design."

Hawks said: I think we can all agree that assumptions are important. Sometimes people make assumptions that are simply wrong (I have seen a few of those in this thread). Sometimes people make assumptions that are invalid. Dembski et all fall into the latter category. In order for ID to make any sort of prediction, there has to be made some sort of assumption about the designer (ID, famously, doesn't). Some ID people do make some of of these assumptions. Let's say that person A assumes designer D1 having some set capabilites and intentions. Let's say that person B assumes designer D2 having some other set of capabilities and intentions. For the sake of argument, assuming D1 predicts X. Also, assuming D2 predicts ~X. Here, it would seem like ID predicts X and ~X. Now what? For those who think that Dembski et al are really right when they claim that ID predicts something, tell me why they are right. At the same time, tell me why I would be wrong if I claimed that ID predicts the exact opposite when I make a different assumption regarding the designer. Should we do like harold and simply give them their assumptions because they invented the theory?

Is a designer required for the explanation of the formation of individual snowflakes? Yes or no. Edit: I’m making the assumption here that you find snowflakes to be sufficiently complex. If they are not sufficiently complex, could you provide a numerical measurement of the complex specified information of a snowflake relative to that of a biological organism? Thanks in advance.

DS said: Mark, Does Newman explain not only the appearance of poor design, but also the appearance of common descent? Does he explain why the demons want us to believe in evolution? Does he explain why should worship the side that is apparently losing?

Mac wrote:

"Do you know of any good books which point out the evidence for Natural selection as an agent of biolgical change and possibly creation."

Lots of them. there are also literally millions of papers which demonstrate this as well. If you don't want to be willfully ignorant, why are you not already familiar with the scientific literature?

You do know that we can measure selection coefficients in nature and in the laboratory right? You do know that we can detect evidence of selection from DNA sequences right? you do know that Dembski has admitted that information can be supplied by the environment right? You do know that selection acts only on replicating systems so it had nothing to do with "creation" right?

mark,

Thanks for the reply. That's about what I thought. All of these "good design" arguments are completely fallacious because they ignore all of the evidence. They explain nothing and they would only fool the willfully ignorant.

As far as angels go, this guy is just making stuff up, and a posteriori at that. I say it was pixies and goblins what done it. Or maybe elves and gnomes. I saw those in a movie once. They must exist because after all, hobbits have been found! Oh what, I shouldn't denigrate the religious beliefs of others? Why not? This guy has slandered all of science with his malicious nonsense.

The simple question remains, why does "good design" have to produce exactly the same results as those expected from common descent? No creationist has an answer for that. At best they try to deny or ignore the evidence.

I read the "Signature in the cell" and thought it was a very good book? what are some of your thoughts on it? anyone? As I am just learning about ID and Evolution, I would love some input to help me understand it all a bit more.

Hawks said: In order for ID to make any sort of prediction, there has to be made some sort of assumption about the designer (ID, famously, doesn’t).

mac said: I think ID proponets find it more likely to believe in a designer than evolution because there are examples of intelligence creating complex structures with massive amounts of information. But there aren't any examples of a naturalistic power or force (such as natural selection) capable of creating or improving complex structures with massive amounts of information.

mark said: Sort of, no, and no. Regarding sub-optimal designs, Newman says that these were done by angels, who, being rather less than God, had to work with the material at hand.

Kevin (aka OgreMkV) said: Hurricanes -- simple, well understood physics compounds to produce what is probably the single most destructive natural force on the Earth.

stevaroni said: Hurricanes are apparently structures don't can't exist in ID physics, because organizing large amounts of matter into patterns without the use of intelligence violates the 2nd law of Thermodynamics.

stevaroni said:

Kevin (aka OgreMkV) said: Hurricanes -- simple, well understood physics compounds to produce what is probably the single most destructive natural force on the Earth.

Hurricanes are apparently structures don't can't exist in ID physics, because organizing large amounts of matter into patterns without the use of intelligence violates the 2nd law of Thermodynamics.

Harold,

Thanks for the book list. I will do my best to check into them.

I was not saying that because Saving Darwin didn't give me the evidence that I was looking for, I don't believe that evolution has any credibility. I was simply showing that the one book that I have read about the subject was not a very good one. (That's why I asked you for some suggestions.)

I still disagree that I am willfully ignorant. I have the desire to understand what I can and am open enough to put fourth questions that I have.

I have never been interested in these arguments until now. They haven't affected my life. I'm interested now, so I will read and become informed.

Kevin (aka OgreMkV) said:

stevaroni said: Hurricanes are apparently structures don't can't exist in ID physics, because organizing large amounts of matter into patterns without the use of intelligence violates the 2nd law of Thermodynamics.

So I have God to blame for the damage to my house, the death of my cat, the destruction of Galveston and New Orleans... well that clears that up.

John said: I read the "Signature in the cell" and thought it was a very good book? what are some of your thoughts on it? anyone? As I am just learning about ID and Evolution, I would love some input to help me understand it all a bit more.

Ichthyic said: Even if someone designed a sentence with poor grammatical structure, design could still be inferred as the cause because it is still specifically complex ...and how do you arrive at the hypothesis that a sentence you just read was written by an "intelligent" agency, eh? what gives you the information to conclude that EXACTLY?

Kevin (aka OgreMkV) said:

stevaroni said: Hurricanes are apparently structures don't can't exist in ID physics, because organizing large amounts of matter into patterns without the use of intelligence violates the 2nd law of Thermodynamics.

So I have God to blame for the damage to my house, the death of my cat, the destruction of Galveston and New Orleans... well that clears that up.

Kevin (aka OgreMkV) said:

stevaroni said: Hurricanes are apparently structures don't can't exist in ID physics, because organizing large amounts of matter into patterns without the use of intelligence violates the 2nd law of Thermodynamics.

So I have God to blame for the damage to my house, the death of my cat, the destruction of Galveston and New Orleans... well that clears that up.

I read the “Signature in the cell” and thought it was a very good book? what are some of your thoughts on it? anyone? As I am just learning about ID and Evolution, I would love some input to help me understand it all a bit more.

Mac -

You are welcome and I apologize if I was wrong about willful ignorance on your part.

You didn't seem to entirely keep up with the replies you got, but a lot of them were at a fairly high level.

If you are actually sincere about learning something, good luck.

Learning about science is hard work for most of us, but well worth it.

Harold I was rather interested in checking out those links for shits and giggles but it appears that they're broken.

Well, I guess my cat had lots of kittens outside of wedlock... with several different males... the little tramp.

Heck, I'm surprised that the fundamentalists didn't want her stoned.

There's an interesting question... why hold man to all these ideals, but not the other animals? Why are other animals allowed to be homosexual, promiscuous, and violent, but man isn't?

You'd think a designer would make all the things that weren't allowed to have free will behave exactly as it would want them to. Why give man bad ideas? (Not that we don't have enough of our own.)

BTW: While I'm asking questions, Hawk... how about a tool that uses ID to predict the changes that would occur in a population of bacteria when exposed to low levels of glucose and citrate.

mac said: I think ID proponets find it more likely to believe in a designer than evolution because there are examples of intelligence creating complex structures with massive amounts of information. But there aren't any examples of a naturalistic power or force (such as natural selection) capable of creating or improving complex structures with massive amounts of information.

RDK -

Apparently they got listed in an abbreviated way when I posted them, and then when I copied them, only the abbreviation copied and pasted.

All the links work in my message to mac on page 4, though, except for the one to the Calculus book (which I apparently did something wrong with). You can find a bunch of good intro calc books on Amazon or B and N, of course.

John said: I read the "Signature in the cell" and thought it was a very good book? what are some of your thoughts on it? anyone? As I am just learning about ID and Evolution, I would love some input to help me understand it all a bit more.

RDK said: Hawks, it would be great if you could answer this FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION ABOUT THE NATURE OF ID THEORY.

Is a designer required for the explanation of the formation of individual snowflakes? Yes or no. Edit: I’m making the assumption here that you find snowflakes to be sufficiently complex. If they are not sufficiently complex, could you provide a numerical measurement of the complex specified information of a snowflake relative to that of a biological organism? Thanks in advance.

It's a simple yes or no question Hawks. The only reason for you not answering is that you don't have an answer.

John Kwok said: Are you interested in playing word games, Hawks?

Nope. Didn't work. Was that comment too long?

Hawks said:

RDK said: Hawks, it would be great if you could answer this FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION ABOUT THE NATURE OF ID THEORY.

Is a designer required for the explanation of the formation of individual snowflakes? Yes or no. Edit: I’m making the assumption here that you find snowflakes to be sufficiently complex. If they are not sufficiently complex, could you provide a numerical measurement of the complex specified information of a snowflake relative to that of a biological organism? Thanks in advance.

It's a simple yes or no question Hawks. The only reason for you not answering is that you don't have an answer.

First of all, I'd just like to state that my replies are held in moderation. So, if they take some time to show up, you know why. Second of all, you guys REALLY need to examine your assumptions. And while you're are it, stop beating your wives. (this is a VERY good hint for why some of the "arguments" I've been presented with here are ...not good). RDK, harold, and others whose names I can't remember at the moment, read through my comments and check those assumptions of yours. REALLY. check. them. I shouldn't have to spell it out for you. When you've finished checking your assumptions, could someone please give me a good reason why ID would predict X rather than ~X. Why would ID predict good design rather than bad design?

When you’ve finished checking your assumptions, could someone please give me a good reason why ID would predict X rather than ~X. Why would ID predict good design rather than bad design?

It’s a simple yes or no question Hawks. The only reason for you not answering is that you don’t have an answer.

blah blah blah

Second of all, you guys REALLY need to examine your assumptions.

When you’ve finished checking your assumptions, could someone please give me a good reason why ID would predict X rather than ~X. Why would ID predict good design rather than bad design?

RDK said: Hawks, if you're not going to answer ID questions then don't pretend like you're defending ID. At this point intelligent design means whatever your particular brand of crackpot pseudo-science is.

Nobody knows what you believe; all you do is post nonsense.

It doesn’t matter what I believe.

And what I post is NOT nonsense.

If you actually went back and checked one of YOUR fundamental assumptions about me, you might actually understand why…

harold said: Precisely what assumptions are we making that we need to examine? Can you list them clearly? This is another question you can't answer, isn't it?

ID, as expressed by those who invented and elaborated it, predicts absolutely NOTHING (or everything, which is the same).

You seem to be coyly building up to some sort of "malevolent or incompetent designer" position (Gnosticism? Satanism? At any rate, it's your own business, as long as you respect the rights of others).

Hawks -

I'm going to make an assumption about you.

I assume that you will continue to post nothing but nonsense and silly word games.

Eventually, the moderators of this site may make the same assumption.

Hawks wrote:

"Why would ID predict good design rather than bad design?"

Because they call it "intelligent" design. Not unintelligent design. Not indistinguishable from natural processes design. Not worse than natural processes design. Not incredibly stupid design.

Look, these are the dudes who claimed that this stuff was too complicated to evolve. These are the guys who claimed that some intelligence and planning was neccessary. Now why in the world would someone who was smart enough to plan and design and implement that design, design something that was poorly designed, inefficient and had all of the hallmarks of common descent? Why design something that was doomed to extinction from the start? Why design something that wasn't even as good as some of your other designs? Was it on the job training? Was it a junior high science project?

It's really simple. If you don't make any assumptions about the identity of the designer, it's methods and it's motivation, then you can say exactly nothing. If you make certain assumptions about the designer, then you must test those assumptions against reality. No one, as far as I know, claims that the designer is incompetent and no one wants to believe that the designer is deceitful. The people who invented the designer called the designer "intelligent", not a little intelligent, not margiinally intelligent, not of limited intelligence, just "intelligent". Why would an intelligent designer choose to design unintellignetly? If you posit a designer, the burden of proof is on you.

And of course, if the designer is really God (you know the one and only Christian God, wink wink), then of course no one would admit that the designer did a poor job, that won't do anything to win converts. That's what most creationists are really all about. They are the ones who are perpetrating this farce. You might want to ask them why they don't expect incompetent design. Oh and don't buy any crap about angels and demons from them either.

And if ID doesn’t do this prediction, why would listing examples of bad design somehow count as evidence against ID?

Come on, Hawks, you can't be that good at accidentally not seeing posts. Refer to my most recent post as an example of why bad design destroys the entire repertoire of intelligent design "reasoning".

Hawks said:

John Kwok said: Are you interested in playing word games, Hawks?

No, but it would nice if someone would argue against MY argument, as opposed to one of their own making... Saying that, this thread has brought me lots of joy. Hey, my last comment went straight through. It wasn't held in moderation. I'll try to repost the comment that was (is) being held, just in case it has been lost. (that comment, I tried to post three times, btw, before I saw the declaration that it was being moderated. If several copies of it shows up at some stage, they were all highly similar, and you needn't read them all)

RDK said: Come on, Hawks, you can't be that good at accidentally not seeing posts. Refer to my most recent post as an example of why bad design destroys the entire repertoire of intelligent design "reasoning".

Because the ID folks spend all their time fawning about how complex and super-cool biology is, and how well it works, and how it’s like a shiny watch.

harold,

I think our friendly neighborhood intellectually-challenged creos need more basic stuff. Recommend that they start off first with the Miller and Levine high school biology text, and then, assuming that they understand that, then proceed with Douglas Futuyma's excellent college introductory textbook on evolutionary biology.

John

John said: I read the "Signature in the cell" and thought it was a very good book? what are some of your thoughts on it? anyone? As I am just learning about ID and Evolution, I would love some input to help me understand it all a bit more.

harold said:

And if ID doesn’t do this prediction, why would listing examples of bad design somehow count as evidence against ID?

Despite coming from another Hawks post, that is a good point. The existence of bad design actually rebuts the existence of a direct designer of features of modern organisms. Technically, ID specifically tries to argue that the designer is the "default" (Dembski's "filter" is about as overt an assertion of this as possible). However, the presence of bad design argues against the fundamental idea of a "designer" as a default.

Hawks said: ID doesn't predict X any more than it predicts ~X. It doesn't predict good design any more than it predicts bad design? And if ID doesn't do this prediction, why would listing examples of bad design somehow count as evidence against ID?

Hawks said: I will give 10 virtual dollars to the person who can identify the faulty assumption. The money can be redeemed in some alternative reality.

John Kwok said: Hawks, Can you provide me with a most cogent, coherent reply explaining how and why you think Intelligent Design cretinism is a better, more powerful (in the sense of explanatory power, and here, at least, I would agree with Meyer's definition, which he soon abuses) theory than modern evolutionary theory in explaining the history, current structure and composition of Earth's biodiversity.

Hawks - if good, bad, nor intermediate design are evidence for or against design, what [i][b]is[/b][/i] the evidence?

Thanks in advance for providing an overtly vague answer that only comments on the form of the question I was asking rather than the question itself.

Hawks said:

John Kwok said: Hawks, Can you provide me with a most cogent, coherent reply explaining how and why you think Intelligent Design cretinism is a better, more powerful (in the sense of explanatory power, and here, at least, I would agree with Meyer's definition, which he soon abuses) theory than modern evolutionary theory in explaining the history, current structure and composition of Earth's biodiversity.

Here's another hint for why your assumptions about me are wrong. The answer to the above question is "no". Take note RDK and harold (and others).

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. It seems to me like the good point I made (according to yourself) doesn’t say what you think it says.

I’m claiming that bad design (or good, or intermediate or whatever) is not an argument against (or for, by extension) ID. You seem to be claiming that it IS an argument agaist ID. Have I got this backwards?

Dan said: The faulty assumption is that Hawks is writing in English. In fact, Hawks seems to be writing in a crypto language of his/her own construction, where statements end in question marks, where the meaning of words shifts depending on the mood of Hawks, where the content of ID is determined by Hawks and no one else, and where Hawks may freely make absurd assumptions, but all other commentators are forced to check their reasonable assumptions.

John Kwok said: Elaborate please, or else I'm going to think of you as a cross between Stephen Colbert and Dennis Miller (and that isn't meant to be a compliment). You're saying "No" to ID or to my question or both:

Meyer apparently said: the inverted vertebrate retina was “a tradeoff that allows the eye to process the vast amount of oxygen it needs in vertebrates”

KP said: Latecomer, so sorry if this ground's been covered but:

Meyer apparently said: the inverted vertebrate retina was “a tradeoff that allows the eye to process the vast amount of oxygen it needs in vertebrates”

Why would the intelligent designer God have to make a trade-off in designing anything???

Hawks said: I'm claiming that bad design (or good, or intermediate or whatever) is not an argument against (or for, by extension) ID. You seem to be claiming that it IS an argument agaist ID. Have I got this backwards?

John_S said: OK, I think I've got it. You're suggesting that the designer doesn't necessarily have to be omniscient or even competent; or perhaps it has some hidden purpose us mere mortals have been incapable of discerning. No? In that case, your argument is perfectly valid: we may have been designed by a fool or someone who has some amazing, inscrutable reason for routing the laryngeal nerve, etc. Will you at least agree with that statement?

Hawks said:

Dan said: The faulty assumption is that Hawks is writing in English. In fact, Hawks seems to be writing in a crypto language of his/her own construction, where statements end in question marks, where the meaning of words shifts depending on the mood of Hawks, where the content of ID is determined by Hawks and no one else, and where Hawks may freely make absurd assumptions, but all other commentators are forced to check their reasonable assumptions.

Not even close. But thanks for participating and adding to the list of people who are fast to jump to conclusions - without having any reason whatsoever for doing so. No money for you, Dan. (note: english is my second language and I am, admittedly, not a very good writer. But you misunderstanding my arguments has little to do with english and much to do with making assumptions up)

I’m claiming that this is what ID says.

KP said: Why would the intelligent designer God have to make a trade-off in designing anything???

Hawks said:

John_S said: OK, I think I've got it. You're suggesting that the designer doesn't necessarily have to be omniscient or even competent; or perhaps it has some hidden purpose us mere mortals have been incapable of discerning. No? In that case, your argument is perfectly valid: we may have been designed by a fool or someone who has some amazing, inscrutable reason for routing the laryngeal nerve, etc. Will you at least agree with that statement?

I'm claiming that this is what ID says.

In that case, your argument is perfectly valid: we may have been designed by a fool or someone who has some amazing, inscrutable reason for routing the laryngeal nerve, etc. Will you at least agree with that statement?

Hawks said:

John_S said: OK, I think I've got it. You're suggesting that the designer doesn't necessarily have to be omniscient or even competent; or perhaps it has some hidden purpose us mere mortals have been incapable of discerning. No? In that case, your argument is perfectly valid: we may have been designed by a fool or someone who has some amazing, inscrutable reason for routing the laryngeal nerve, etc. Will you at least agree with that statement?

I'm claiming that this is what ID says.

Dan said: This is not one hypothesis, it’s an infinite number of hypotheses. And there’s no evidence to support one hypothesis over any of the others. Indeed, there’s no evidence to support any of them.

Dan -

I call it "Last Thursdayism", but that's just a humorous synonym for Omphalos.

Note that the deity can be either inscrutable ("Zeus did it that way to make it look like evolution and fool you"), or incompetent ("Zeus tried to make it perfect, but his mistakes make it look like evolution")

John_S said: If design flaws were scarce I could believe that, but in 2009 we know enough about engineering and design to see myriad obvious flaws for what they are.

Since when does ID make any such assumptions about the designer, though?

Since when does ID make any such assumptions about the designer, though?

RDK said:

Since when does ID make any such assumptions about the designer, though?

How can ID assume there is a designer but then turn around and say that nobody can say anything about the designer? Saying the designer designed is assuming just as much as saying the designer designed well or poorly.

"devolution" doesn't make sense because natural selection won't allow below-average genotypes to become prominent in their population. Since fitness and adaptation are correlated, suboptimal guys will be selected against-- the more optimal guys just have better chances to eat, don't get eaten and hopefully get laid than the poor suboptimal guy.

I'm not convinced of ID. I saw what looked like a false representation (based upon my limited ID literary experience) and moved to correct it. There are many things on both sides of this debate I do not understand. However, I'm sure I understand the material I've read.

What I do not understand is how an initial amount of information is not needed to start the process of evolution. I've read about RNA world and self-organizational theories but I'm not convinced of either. I have no problem with random mutation changing DNA but in order for that to happen, the DNA has to already exist and have a complete replication system. If DNA is not reproducing, there is no chance for mutation or damaged systems to change the sequence and therefore no chance for change.

Additionally, how is it not legitimate to compare information in cells to the patterns of information produced by intelligence? If known design patterns are present in the information, why not infer design? Or is the rejection of design a result of the claim that we actually know what causes the change in information and therefore we do not need any other hypotheses?

Hawks said:

harold said: Precisely what assumptions are we making that we need to examine? Can you list them clearly? This is another question you can't answer, isn't it?

No, I can answer it. The reason I can't answer some of your other questions is because they don't make sense. They don't make sense because you are making faulty assumptions in them. Of the "stop beating your wife" kind. Do you know what "stop beating your wife" refers to? Come on!!! There is really one assumption you've made wrong. You have made an assumption about me. About me personally.

ID, as expressed by those who invented and elaborated it, predicts absolutely NOTHING (or everything, which is the same).

So, we agree, then??? ID doesn't predict X any more than it predicts ~X. It doesn't predict good design any more than it predicts bad design? And if ID doesn't do this prediction, why would listing examples of bad design somehow count as evidence against ID?

You seem to be coyly building up to some sort of "malevolent or incompetent designer" position (Gnosticism? Satanism? At any rate, it's your own business, as long as you respect the rights of others).

Your ASSUMPTION is wrong. You are all (well, some of you) making a faulty assumption. About me. Personally. I will give 10 virtual dollars to the person who can identify the faulty assumption. The money can be redeemed in some alternative reality.

Hawks wrote:

"If you were omnipotent and extremtly neat and tidy and decided to created life on Earth, there would probably be very few design flaws. Since when does ID make any such assumptions about the designer, though?"

ID makes the assumption that at least one designer exists. ID makes the assumption that at least one designer existed before there was any complex life on earth. ID makes the assumption that there was at least one designer who was intelligent enough to design life on earth, something no human has been intelligent enough to do since. ID assumes that there was at least one designer who was capable enough to actually create life on earth, presumably from non-living material, something which no human has so far been intelligent enough to accomplish, even with ready made examples available for inspection. These things are all inherent assumptions of ID, even the don't ask, don't tell, wink wink type of disingenuous ID.

Now, somehow we are all asked to believe that this supposed intelligent designer, who is demonstrably more intelligent and capable than any human who has ever lived, could be responsible for all of the following, which any fool can see would not be intelligent things to do:

1) Created organisms with a nested hierarchy of genetic similarity, even though they are supposed not actually related by common descent

2) Created organisms with genomes so full of crap that only about 0.8% actually does much of anything

3) Created organsism so imperfectly equiped to handle thier environemt (and apparently lacking the ability to adapt to a changing environment), that over 90% of them have already gone extnct and most of the rest are currently in serious trouble

4) Created organsism with all sorts of broken genes that will never again function, but which function just fine in many other similar species

5) Created organisms with genetic mistakes that increased the probability of death and disease, and gave the organsiims most genetically similar to them the EXACT SAME GENETIC MISTAKES, even though they are nothing alike in morophlogy or habitat

6) Created a fossil record that is exactly what one would expect if descent with modification was true, even though no organisms actually evolved

7) Created organsims with all sorts of vestigial body parts in a pattern that makes perfect sense if descent weth modification is true, but makes no sense whatsoever if all organisms were designed by anyone with even a modicum of intelligence

8) Created organisms that are nothing alike in morphology that nonetheless share fundamentally similar developmental pathways and processes, exactly as predicted by descent with modification

I could go on and on, but you get the picture. No intelligent agent is required to explain the appearance of life on earth and indeed that hypothesis is completely untenable to anyone even remotely familiar with any of the evidence.

Why would someone so much more intelligent and so much more capable than any human who has ever lived create organisms so fundamentally flawed that even a first year graduate student would be failed for making turning them in for credit in Creation 101?

Now you can go on and on about how mere mortals cannot comprehend this or that. Howerver, as already stated, a hypothesis that can explain any observation a posteriori is no hypothesis at all. In regards to ID, the correct response is and always has been: I have no need of that hypothesis.

That's a lovel summary, DS. Thanks!

Hawks wrote:

"Saying that something is designed (it has a high Pr(H,O)) is not the same as saying that we expect any particular design (a high Pr(O,H))."

No, claiming that something is designed is claiming that that is somehow a better hypothesis than that it arose by processes that did not require design. Simply ignoring the possibility of evolution and creating a hand waving argument couched in mathematical terms that calculates nothing and can be applied to nothing and ignores every known biological process is not an argument. Ignoring all of the features of life that are consistent with the theory of evolution and inconsistent wth any rational design hypothesis is not an argument. Claiming that design is what you are left with when, in your ignorance of modern biology, you cannot imagine any other possibility is not an argument. Claiming that if something looks designed it must be designed is not an argument, if everything looks designed to you. Seeing design where none is actually present is not an argument. Claiming that something is designed by an unknown designer by some unknown method for some unknown reason is not an argument. This is why ID has failed to convince anyone familiar with the evidence. If it really make no testable claims, it really makes no argument at all. If it does try to make testable claims, it is falsified by the evidence.

Melech:
"What I do not understand is how an initial amount of information is not needed to start the process of evolution."

It is needed. You're talking about life origins. Scientists don't know how life originated-- yet. However, we do understand how life evolves. That's a different matter. It's like asking you 1) where did you were born; 2)and what have been you doing with your life since then. And science doesn't know 1 yet.

But there's nothing wrong with not knowing things. If everything was already figured out it would be so boring. Research is being done right now and we don't know yet how it will turn out. Maybe we won't in a hundred years. We don't know, but --this is the point: we're moving towards the answer. We don't know the final and ultimate answer but we do know lots of things about it! Positive steps have been taken and scientific knowledge have increased hugely. On the other hand, creationists keep saying the same old arguments (with different words and costumes though) since like two hundred years.

"If known design patterns are present in the information, why not infer design?"

Because there's an alternative explanation "that doesn't require such hypothesis". Besides, that's a false inference: "it looks designed, so it is designed". Really? Maybe not, as we will see. For the moment, all you're allowed to say is "it looks designed, ok now let's figure out why it looks like that, let's see if there's a designer involved or it's something else".

"Or is the rejection of design a result of the claim that we actually know what causes the change in information and therefore we do not need any other hypotheses?"

That's right. We know several mechanisms that lead to evolution, like natural selection and random genetic drift, that describe with mathematical precision how evolution takes place. So if we know how evolution works, why to introduce a God in the explanation, when natural mechanisms seem to do just fine by themselves?

DS, phantomreader42, harold, RDK + some others, perhaps:

You keep on insisting that I defend ID. I have no interest whatsoever in doing that. You have, for some obscure reason, come to the conclusion that I support ID. This conclusion is derived from ... smeg knows, actually. As far as I can tell, you have simply ASSUMED so. Do you think that ANY of you could supply some sort of evidence that I have argued in favor of ID - ever?

When you have finished gathering said evidence, could you please explain how me defending ID is somehow an argument against my claim that ID makes no predictions?

Hawks,

You have made an invalid assumption. Please show exactly where I claimed that you defended ID. In fact, I specifically suggested that you should direct your questions to ID advocates. Now why would I do that if I assumed that you were one?

What you do keep doing is claiming that ID makes no claims about the type of design that one would expect. That is demonstrably false as we have shown. There are definately claims inherent in any rational version of any ID argument. You have not refuted any of my arguments. Your views are not the issue here. Your claims about the lack of claims of ID are. Get over yourself.

If indeed, as you argue, ID makes no claims, then it is truly worthless and can safely be ignored. That position certainly does not make you any friend to ID. If however there are inherent claims, then it is important to identify them and expose them for the lies that they are.

RBH,

Thanks for the kind words.

Besides, that’s a false inference: “it looks designed, so it is designed”. Really? Maybe not, as we will see.

From the books I've read design is not a false inferrence ( neither is it established as fact, mind you). Design is inferred after molecular information is compared with functional design patterns (specified, complex information), which we know can originate from intelligent agents. Obviously, the only thing this establishes is that the information and design patterns are similar or identical in structure and function. The question then becomes: are these patterns resulting from relevantly similar causes (intelligent agency)?

ID may be a valid(coherent) filter but that does not make it a sound(correct) filter. And, as I'm told, there are already working, testable and confirmed hypotheses doing the job rather well.

I think that ID could be best potential used as a causal hypothesis of the origin of information within biological systems. Whatever happens after that first reproductive system is established can be attributed to evolution. If evolution can do what its proponents claim then this does not seem to be an issue. I know that some ID theorists may claim that these two ideas are incompatible but I see no problem. Diverse life exists; ID accounts for its existence and evolution accounts for its diversity.

The only other problem I would have concerns the probabilistic resources of biological systems. I've read about fruit fly mutations but none are either helpful or novel. What studies have been done which show that the frequency of mutations necessary to produce novel changes actually occurs?

Hawks,

Eminent philosopher of science Philip Kitcher regards Intelligent Design creationism as a notable example of "dead science". He thinks it should be viewed as "dead science" since arguments from Design were useful from the 16th to 18th Centuries in the development of modern science. But that is an all too charitable assessment IMHO, especially when Dishonesty Institute mendacious intellectual pornographers like Meyer and Dembski will use every option at thei disposal - including smearing their critics, stating lies, and, in Dembski's case, stealing a video in one notable episode - to make their case to a most gullible, scientifically illerate public. They have consistently refused to play "by the roles" and allowed themselves and their "research" to be subjected via intense scrutiny in peer-reviewed publications, especially scientific journals.

You may view yourself as an opponent of both the Dishonesty Instiute and Intelligent Design creationism. However, your ongoing exercises in semiotics have led many, myself included, to regard you more as someone who is sympathetic to the Dishonesty Institute's breathtakingly inane defense of Intelligent Design and criticism of evolution as valid science.

If I can offer some advice, maybe you ought to think more clearly as to what your intentions are, since we "seem" to have misjudged you. However, I agree with DS's excellent critiques of your absurd, often bizarre, commentary. If you truly regard yourself as an opponent of ID, then you must understand that for DI advocates like Meyer their claims have some logical merit, even if they don't conform at all with the overwhelming "mountain" of data from all the biological sciences that confirms both the fact of evolution and that there is already a valid scientific theory which accounts for "descent with modification".

Melech,

Maybe you can "enlighten" both biologist Wesley Elsbery - one of the founders of Panda's Thumb - and mathematician and computer scientist Jeffrey Shallit, who have written more than a few elegant mathematical and statistical refutations of Dembski's mathematical and statistical "proof" that he claims substantiates the scientific "reality" of Intelligent Design cretinism.

Melech wrote:

"I’ve read about fruit fly mutations but none are either helpful or novel. What studies have been done which show that the frequency of mutations necessary to produce novel changes actually occurs?"

Then you have read wrong. You didn't read that on a creationist web site did you?

The truth is that many mutations that have been documented in fruit flies are beneficial in certain environments. In fact, nearly every time fruit flies are put under strong selection for almost any trait, they almost always respond through random mutation and selection. Examples include: geotaxis; sternopleural bristle number; fertility; fecundity; longeviety; mating preference; etc.

As for novel changes, what changes did you have in mind? What rate would you consider adequate? We have discoverd many minor genetic changes that have undoubtedly been responsible for many of the differences in arthorpod body plans. If these are the types of changes that you are referring to, they obviously occur with sufficient frequency to produce the diversity of arthropod body plans that we see today. This view is consistent with all of the available evidence.

Dembski has admitted that the environment can provide the information that is required for biological systems to evolve. In so doing he has admitted that he has been completely wrong and tht evolutionary biologists have been right. No other sourse of information is needed.

"Seeing design where none is actually present is not an argument."

It's actually one of the hallmarks of schizophrenia.

Intelligent Design is utterly useless as a filter: if it was a valid concept, why has Bill Dembski repeatedly refused to demonstrate how to detect design?

if it was a valid concept, why has Bill Dembski repeatedly refused to demonstrate how to detect design?
Because you could just show him a string of letters in a code he does not know, he would not be able to detect design for however long it took him to decipher the code, if he was even able to do so, and then everyone would cry "look, what an IDiot!" However, patterns can be established after the fact and indeed cryptology does just that. This is a curious objection since Dembski's entire explanation consists of determining and giving examples of the properties that separate complex, specified information from complexity or Shannon information. Also, the demonstration of a filter is not needed to establish it as a valid concept. If it is logically valid then it is valid; though, as I said, it still may not be sound(correct).

As for novel changes, what changes did you have in mind?

I know a novel change has to be different and beneficial to be selected but I'm not exactly sure how to define a novel change if evolution is constantly changing things so I'll define it this way: a beneficial change in genetic structure that if consistently passed on, mutated or co-opted can evolve one species into another. It also has to be such that this process over many millions of years can produce the diversity of life on earth.

Prima facie, that is a daunting task. If anyone has a more accurate definition, my idea is just too ridiculous or puts an unnecessary strain on an explanation, please, speak up. One of the reasons I'm so hesitant to completely jump on the evolutionary bandwagon is that I've never seen any account of mutation and reproduction that can reasonably lay out this type of change in a valid fashion and/or document even the slightest occurrence of it.

Stanton said: Intelligent Design is utterly useless as a filter: if it was a valid concept, why has Bill Dembski repeatedly refused to demonstrate how to detect design?

Melech said: I know a novel change has to be different and beneficial to be selected but I'm not exactly sure how to define a novel change .... I've never seen any account of mutation and reproduction that can reasonably lay out this type of change in a valid fashion and/or document even the slightest occurrence of it.

Melech wrote:

"...a beneficial change in genetic structure that if consistently passed on, mutated or co-opted can evolve one species into another. It also has to be such that this process over many millions of years can produce the diversity of life on earth."

I have already demonstrated that there are lots of beneficial mutations. As for speciation, that does not require any special mutation, all it requires is reproductive isolation and genetic divergence will naturally occur. That is what produces the genetic discontinuities that we call species. As for the diversity of life on earth, that is best explained by changes in regulatory genes such as hox genes. There are indeed a whole class of mutations that are capable of producing different body types, as I have already mentioned.

"...I’ve never seen any account of mutation and reproduction that can reasonably lay out this type of change in a valid fashion and/or document even the slightest occurrence of it."

There are many well documented examples. Your ignorance of them does not mean that they do not exist. Indeed, the nested hierarchy of genetic similarity shown between all known life forms demonstrates conclusively that such mechanisms must exist. I have listed a few above, there are many others.

No one cares if you jump on the evolutionary bandwagon. Just don't fool yourself into thinking that there is no one who understands something just because you don't. It takes a life time of study to understand the basc mechanisms of evolution. Good luck.

Meyer wrote:
"If an intelligent (and benevolent) agent designed life, then studies of putatively bad designs in life–such as the vertebrate retina and virulent bacteria–should reveal either (a) reasons for the designs that show a hidden functional logic or (b) evidence of decay of originally good designs. (p. 497)

Mr. Hoppe, after showing serious problems with the word "benevolent", writes: "So much for a benevolent designer in Behe’s version of ID." and "A more serious problem for Meyer’s so-called “prediction” is that his two conjectures–hidden functional logic or evidence of decay–do not exhaust the universe of possible design explanations. There are at least three more possibilities: (c) an incompetent designer; (d) design by committee or competing designers; or (e) a whimsical designer ... There’s no reason to exclude those three additional conjectures; they have no less warrant than Meyer’s pair."

I can offer a fourth possibility: A sometimes brilliant and sometimes incompetent designer.

The following sounds like I'm defending Meyer, but I'm not. I'm just reading his words different from Mr. Hoppe is. Meyer wrote "If -- IF -- an intelligent (and benevolent) agent designed life." Unlike Hoppe, I didn't read him as limiting the choices of designer only to intelligent and benevolent. If I'm not mistaken, he's willing to entertain ANY sort of designer. After all, if he could get an evolutionist to admit that something in nature was designed even by a dumbkopf, he's won.

Steveroni, I look forward to your rebuttals to Dembski on the nylon eating case:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/why-scientists-should-not-dismiss-intelligent-design/

and the radioactive fungi case:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/radiation-eating-fungi/

Mark2 said: Steveroni, I look forward to your rebuttals to Dembski on the nylon eating case: http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/why-scientists-should-not-dismiss-intelligent-design/ and the radioactive fungi case: http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/radiation-eating-fungi/

The problem with this argument is that Miller fails to show that the construction/evolution of nylonase from its precursor actually requires CSI at all. As I develop the concept, CSI requires a certain threshold of complexity to be achieved (500 bits, as I argue in my book No Free Lunch). It’s not at all clear that this threshold is achieved here (certainly Miller doesn’t compute the relevant numbers).

— William Dembski

The question naturally arises; whence came this unusual ability? Where in the evolutionary past of fungi are the Chernobyls or other high radiation environments? How will Darwinism explain the development of this surprising trait? Why ON EARTH would fungi need this ability?

— William Dembski

FWIW, Dembski, or one of his buddies, has written about thermal vents here:
google on "thermal vents site:uncommondescent.com"

Mark2 -

So Dembski claims that nylonase in bacteria and radiotropism in fungi could not evolved and had to arise by magical intervention of a designer. Despite massive evidence to the contrary in at least one case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria.

Do you agree with Dembsk on that? Yes or no?

This is ID in a nut shell: Some features in nature are best explained as the product of intelligence. ID can detect this. (Whether or not those methods are flawed is irrelevant for this discussion.)

From a bayesian point of view, ID is a probability argument (a posterior probability, to be more precise). It says that given an observation (O) of something, it was intelligently designed if, for example, it has heaps of CSI(hypothesis H). This is often expressed as Pr(H,O). So, Pr (Intelligent design, CSI=999 bits) is, as Dembski would argue, 1. Pr (intelligent design, CSI=12 bits) is considerably less than 1. Again, forget the fact that CSI hasn’t ever (can’t ever, probably) be measured for anything biological. This doesn’t require you to say anything about the designer more than that it is intelligent (Since, as ID also claims, only intelligence can design certain things).

Where ID supporters such as Dembski and ID opponents go wrong is when they treat ID as a bayesian likelihood argument. (note that in bayesianism, the terms probability and likelihood mean different things). A likelihood argument is one where, given a hypothesis (H), we can expect an observation (O) (often expressed as Pr(O,H)).

Pr(CSI=999 bits, an intelligent designer), or in clear speak, saying that we expect a designer would design something having 999 bits doesn’t work - unless we make an assumption about designer. Neither can we even try to calculate Pr(junk DNA, an intelligent designer). Pr(junk DNA, a super smart designer who doesn’t like a mess) can however, be estimated. But then, that is not a hypothesis that ID makes any sort of claim for. Since ID makes no claim regarding the designer, it CAN’T make likelihood arguments.

ID is most often formulated as a probability argument. If ID tries to do likelihood arguments, it somehow has to justify it’s reasons for why one designer is more likely than any other. How do you do that? ————————– Just to explain further about the difference between probabilities and likelihoods, I offer this: The philosopher Elliott Sober did a very good example to show why a probability does not equal a likelihood: Observation O: there is a noise coming from the attic. Hypothesis H: There are gremlins bowling in the attic. The likelihood (Pr(O,H)) of this argument is very high. After all, if you have gremlins bowling up in the attic, you will probably have noises come from there. It’s probability (Pr(H,O)), however, is very low. It is highly unlikely that the noises emanating from the attic are because of gremlins bowling up there. —————————————————— Saying that something is designed (it has a high Pr(H,O)) is not the same as saying that we expect any particular design (a high Pr(O,H)).

RDK said:

Stanton said: Intelligent Design is utterly useless as a filter: if it was a valid concept, why has Bill Dembski repeatedly refused to demonstrate how to detect design?

It's quite simple, really. Not even Dembski knows what Intelligent Design claims, therefore he could never be successful at demonstrating how to detect design. You see, Hawks has the singular honor of deciding what Intelligent Design claims, despite claiming that he himself does not even support ID. It's a brilliant tactic that I admit I've never seen before.

Hawks said: This is ID in a nut shell: Some features in nature are best explained as the product of intelligence. ID can detect this. (Whether or not those methods are flawed is irrelevant for this discussion.)

Mark2 said: Meyer wrote: "If an intelligent (and benevolent) agent designed life, then studies of putatively bad designs in life–such as the vertebrate retina and virulent bacteria–should reveal either (a) reasons for the designs that show a hidden functional logic or (b) evidence of decay of originally good designs. (p. 497) Mr. Hoppe, after showing serious problems with the word "benevolent", writes: "So much for a benevolent designer in Behe’s version of ID." and "A more serious problem for Meyer’s so-called “prediction” is that his two conjectures–hidden functional logic or evidence of decay–do not exhaust the universe of possible design explanations. There are at least three more possibilities: (c) an incompetent designer; (d) design by committee or competing designers; or (e) a whimsical designer ... There’s no reason to exclude those three additional conjectures; they have no less warrant than Meyer’s pair." I can offer a fourth possibility: A sometimes brilliant and sometimes incompetent designer. The following sounds like I'm defending Meyer, but I'm not. I'm just reading his words different from Mr. Hoppe is. Meyer wrote "If -- IF -- an intelligent (and benevolent) agent designed life." Unlike Hoppe, I didn't read him as limiting the choices of designer only to intelligent and benevolent. If I'm not mistaken, he's willing to entertain ANY sort of designer. After all, if he could get an evolutionist to admit that something in nature was designed even by a dumbkopf, he's won.

Melech,
"From the books I’ve read design is not a false inferrence (...) Obviously, the only thing this establishes is that the information and design patterns are similar or identical in structure and function. The question then becomes: are these patterns resulting from relevantly similar causes (intelligent agency)?"

Exactly. So it is a false inference. Notice how you yourself say "obviously, the only thing this establishes is that the information are similar or identical". That is, it looks designed. Now let's see if it's really designed or we can find a way by which this apparent design could have been produced.

And Darwin did find them indeed.

"ID could be best potential used as a causal hypothesis of the origin of information within biological systems."

Saying "the designer did it" adds no new data to the problem at all. We keep ignoring how life originated even if we say "the designer did it". It's useless. It can't be tested. And it creates a bigger problem: now you have to find evidence for the designer (you can't support it by designs, cause it's circular reasoning, as in "this looks designed, so there's a designer; and since there's a designer, this is designed"). We need hypothesis that really generates something, new data, new research. Ideas that give scientists something to do. Otherwise, hypothesis are useless.

"I’ve never seen any account of mutation and reproduction that can reasonably lay out this type of change in a valid fashion and/or document even the slightest occurrence of it."

Wow. You haven't? Then why do you say "evolution explains diversity"?

Evolutionary novelties. Here you are. "The cecal valves are an evolutionary novelty, a brand new feature not present in the ancestral population and newly evolved in these lizards. That's important. This is more than a simple quantitative change, but is actually an observed qualitative change in a population, the appearance of a new morphological structure."

One species into two. There you go.

A genetic barrier leads to speciation because interbreeding is no more. Yup.

Research like this is published every day. Literally every day.

Now I hope you won't ask for "a dog turning into a cat in a lab". Please don't. I don't want to realize I've been wasting my time here.

ID claims that biological systems are too complex to have evolved. Therefore, organisms did not evolve. Therefore, organisms were designed. Therefore, organisms appear to have been designed.

However, organisms actually appear to have evolved. Therefore, organisms did evolve. Therefore organisms were not designed. Therefore, the illusion of design is not evidence of design.

Regardless of the identity of the designer, it's motivations or it's capabilities, any rational hypothesis must account for the appearance of common descent. If one cannot explain why the designer designed specifically to give the appearance of common descent, then the hypothesis ignores the evidence instead of explaining it. Therefore, that hypothesis is not to be preferred.

See, it isn't just that it is bad design, it's that it's bad in precisely the ways that one would expect to be produced by evolution.

"See, it isn’t just that it is bad design, it’s that it’s bad in precisely the ways that one would expect to be produced by evolution."

In some cases yes, in some no. That's a fact; both creationists and evolutionists must both deal with it.

ziploq wrote:

"In some cases yes, in some no. That’s a fact; both creationists and evolutionists must both deal with it."

Really? Then perhaps you can give one example of a case where an organism does not appear to have evolved. Remember, "it's so complexified" does not constitute such an example.

Do you at least admit that some organisms appear to have evolved? If so, doesn't this alone falsify the design hypothesis? Or did the designer just design humans and leave everything else on it's own? Feel free to refer to my list of eight different hallmarks of common descent. I can provide more as well.

ziploq,

Let me give you a hint, just to save time. The following do not constitute valid examples:

The vertebrate eye

The bacterial flagellum

The bombadier beetle

The vertebrate blood clotting cascade

The vertebrate immune system

The animal mitochondria

The plant chloroplast

ziploq, Mark2, Hawks, whomever...

Can you describe the difference (how we can measure and expected values of said measurements) between an organism that was specifically designed and one that occured via naturalistic methods?

ziploq said: "See, it isn’t just that it is bad design, it’s that it’s bad in precisely the ways that one would expect to be produced by evolution." In some cases yes, in some no. That's a fact; both creationists and evolutionists must both deal with it.

Kevin wrote:

"Can you describe the difference (how we can measure and expected values of said measurements) between an organism that was specifically designed and one that occured via naturalistic methods?"

I believe that Hawks already answered that. In one of his posts he wrote that if an organisms has "heaps" of "specified complexity" then it could not possibly have evolved. Or at least he claimed that Dembski said something like this. We don't want to accuse the guy of being an ID supporter now do we?

"expected values"

hmmm... heaps? Is that larger than a 'bunch'? Is it larger than "pile"? Must be smaller than a "smidgen" and a "pinch".

From UD The problem with this argument is that Miller fails to show that the construction/evolution of nylonase from its precursor actually requires CSI at all.

As I develop the concept, CSI requires a certain threshold of complexity to be achieved (500 bits, as I argue in my book No Free Lunch). It’s not at all clear that this threshold is achieved here (certainly Miller doesn’t compute the relevant numbers).

Nor is it clear that in the evolution of nylonase that anything like pure neo-Darwinism was operating. Instead, we see something much more like what James Shapiro describes as “natural genetic engineering”

Let’s look at nylonase a bit more closely.

Nylonase appears to have arisen from a frame-shift in another protein.

Even so, it seems to be special in certain ways. For example, the DNA sequence that got frame-shifted is a very repetitive sequence. Yet the number of bases repeated is not a multiple of 3 (in this case, 10 bases are probably the repeating unit).

From Wikipedia: A frameshift mutation (also called a framing error or a reading frame shift) is a genetic mutation caused by indels, ie. insertion or deletion of a number of nucleotides that is not evenly divisible by three from a DNA sequence. Due to the triplet nature of gene expression by codons, the insertion or deletion can disrupt the reading frame, or the grouping of the codons, resulting in a completely different translation from the original. The earlier in the sequence the deletion or insertion occurs, the more altered the protein produced is.

Moreover, none of those reading frames gave rise to stop codons. Since the 10-base repeat was translatable in any reading frame without causing any stop codons, the sequence was able to undergo an insertion which could alter the reading frame without prematurely terminating the protein. Actually, the mutation did cause a stop codon; but the stop codon was due not to frame shift but to the sequence introduced by the inserted nucleotide.

There is something very special about the nylonase host gene that isn’t true of most genes in general and gives it much greater evolvability.

As an aside, the function of the original gene (before it mutated into a nylonase) appears unknown (I’d be grateful for any insight here). The original paper suggested that the host gene was unlikely to encode a functional enzyme on account of lacking the amino acids normally found in active enzymes, so maybe it played some structural role that was not critical for the cell (no mention was made whether the host gene was a duplicate).

DS said: Simply ignoring the possibility of evolution and creating a hand waving argument couched in mathematical terms that calculates nothing and can be applied to nothing and ignores every known biological process is not an argument.

Mark2 said: Steveroni, I look forward to your rebuttals to Dembski on the nylon eating case: http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/why-scientists-should-not-dismiss-intelligent-design/ and the radioactive fungi case: http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/radiation-eating-fungi/

Hawks,

Accepted. And thank for being so gracious.

RDK said: I don't know why you didn't just post this in the first place.

You started by saying that "ID is consistent with evolution" (I'll find it if you deny it), which is patently wrong, since all of the claims of ID, however flawed, amount to denials of evolution.

Bad design ultimately argues against the motivations of ID.

Furthermore, most people who believe in the Christian God don't deny evolution, so the designer is really supposed to be the YEC version of the Christian God.

You are correct that you have identified one of many internal flaws within ID - they explicitly claim that they don't know the nature of the designer, yet they implicitly assign an identity to the designer. Actually, we all knew that already.

Hawks wrote:

"So, bad design is not an argument against ID as such, then?"

Yes it is, if you hypothesize an omnipotent and omnicient designer.

Yes it is, if you hypothesize a designer at least as intelligent as the most intelligent human.

Yes it is, if the design is bad in exactly the way one would suppose if evolution were true.

Now of course you can deny all of these things and claim that some unknown designer did something unknown for some unknown reason at some unknown time, but then again, that don't get you nowhere. So once again, there is still a valid argument against ID.

To sum up, if ID makes any claims they are demonstrably false. If ID makes no claims it is demonstrably worthless. False or worthless, take your pick. Those are the only two choices. In no way does it predict or explain anything actually observed in nature.

DS said: Hawks wrote: “Why would ID predict good design rather than bad design?” Because they call it “intelligent” design. Not unintelligent design. Not indistinguishable from natural processes design. Not worse than natural processes design. Not incredibly stupid design. Look, these are the dudes who claimed that this stuff was too complicated to evolve. These are the guys who claimed that some intelligence and planning was neccessary. Now why in the world would someone who was smart enough to plan and design and implement that design, design something that was poorly designed, inefficient and had all of the hallmarks of common descent? Why design something that was doomed to extinction from the start? Why design something that wasn't even as good as some of your other designs? Was it on the job training? Was it a junior high science project?

It's really simple. If you don't make any assumptions about the identity of the designer, it's methods and it's motivation, then you can say exactly nothing.

If you make certain assumptions about the designer, then you must test those assumptions against reality.

No one, as far as I know, claims that the designer is incompetent and no one wants to believe that the designer is deceitful.

Yeah, that stuck out for me, too. Dembski arbitrarily assigns 500 bits (of what?) as the equivalent of Behe's "edge of evolution".

Somehow the nylonase mutation doesn't measure up to Dr. Dr. D's arbitrary standard, so it isn't evolution, or isn't specifically complex enough, or something. Therefore Jesus.

Show your work, Bill. You have a link to Ohno's work right there at the bottom of your screed. How many bits of CSI did it take for nylonase arise? What would 1 bit of CSI look like?

Seriously, I can't believe anyone swallows this stuff. Even if they do love him.

Mark2 said: FWIW, Dembski, or one of his buddies, has written about thermal vents here: google on "thermal vents site:uncommondescent.com"

DS said: False or worthless, take your pick. Those are the only two choices.

Hawks said:

DS said: False or worthless, take your pick. Those are the only two choices.

I would actually say that it's merely worthless. It is quite possible to make assumptions regarding a designer so that ID appears "true". You could, for example, (1) make assumptions simply because the match your observations or (2) randomly make assumptions and hope that "something sticks". In both of these cases, you could get "true" ID predictions. In both cases, they are also worthless. It seems to me like no one minds the fact that ID seemingly allows anyone to just make up whatever assumptions they want to regarding the designer, without any justification whatsoever ("science"-wise). Your assumption is just as valid as mine as anyone else's. Since this seems to be allowed, we end up in the situation where, effectively, ID predicts everything. In other words, it does not matter whether or not ID "predictions" happen to be correct or not - they are still worthless.

DS said: Dembski has admitted that the environment can provide the information that is required for biological systems to evolve. In so doing he has admitted that he has been completely wrong and tht evolutionary biologists have been right. No other sourse of information is needed.

You started by saying that “ID is consistent with evolution” (I’ll find it if you deny it), which is patently wrong, since all of the claims of ID, however flawed, amount to denials of evolution.

No, I am not in the habit of lying. Here, however, I could perhaps rightly be accused of engaging in word games (non-intentional, mind you. Perhaps we should call it word salad).

ID IS consistent with any observation

and any evoluionary explanation could also be accounted for by ID. Once you allow for any kind of designer (including omnipotent ones), you can’t even say that individual point mutations weren’t designed.(Note: Dembski would obviously say that while such mutations MIGHT be designed, his concept of CSI would not be able to detect it. If such a mutation was designed, CSI would return a false negative)

RBH,

I think that's right. I think it was some publication by Dembski, probably with Marks. There was a post on it here at the Thumb a month or two ago. To me, he seemed to concede the entire argument to evolution, without even realizing it. Sorry I don't recall the details, but I'm sure some less senior PTers will chime in with better recollections. I seem to have old timers disease.

RBH said:

DS said: Dembski has admitted that the environment can provide the information that is required for biological systems to evolve. In so doing he has admitted that he has been completely wrong and tht evolutionary biologists have been right. No other sourse of information is needed.

I'm having a senior moment. Is that concession in his 'search' papers with Marks? If not, where is it, please.

There is no acknowledgement in this particular paper that Nature follows any rules we can learn and incorporate into our models.

IOW, blind to the obvious, as usual.

deliberately ignorant of all those that have actually already made models based on extrinsic natural information input.

what else is new?

I think what DS meant to say is:

Dembski has [de-facto] admitted that the environment can provide the information that is required

It's exactly what i would expect his conclusion to be after working with Marks for as long as he has.

just because he hasn't said it explicitly, and really can't (you really can't be an honest ID supporter), doesn't mean it really isn't there.

harold said: In fact, ID posits (completely falsely, but this is, however, what it posits) that biological organisms have various traits like "complex specified information" and "irreducible complexity", and that because of these traits, it is impossible for organisms to have evolved.

Therefore, by definition, ID cannot be compatible with the appearance of evolution. If life evolved, it can't have "CSI", or "IR", and the central premise of ID - that living organisms have these traits - is false. As is, indeed, the case.

I never thought about it this way before, but in fact, ID does put an inherent limitation on the "designer", one that Omphalos does not. The "designer" of ID is mandated to create organisms with with "CSI" or "IR"; that's the very central claim of ID. If the "designer" does not have this constraint, then ID merely collapses into Omphalos.

I think Mike is right. I can't find anything about information and the environment in the September 9 thread about the Dembski and Marks paper. I know there was a thread about it somewhere, but apparently that one isn't it.

In any event, whether Dembski admits it or not, a changing environnment does indeed provide information in some sense. Mutations also provide information and selection provides information. Ther is also information in the results of all of the above when combined. This is in fact what population geneticists do, they reconstruct past events based on the information present in the genome.

Notice that it does not take intelligence to create information, it only takes intelligence to recognize and interpret information.

DS said: I think Mike is right. I can't find anything about information and the environment in the September 9 thread about the Dembski and Marks paper. I know there was a thread about it somewhere, but apparently that one isn't it. In any event, whether Dembski admits it or not, a changing environnment does indeed provide information in some sense. Mutations also provide information and selection provides information. Ther is also information in the results of all of the above when combined. This is in fact what population geneticists do, they reconstruct past events based on the information present in the genome. Notice that it does not take intelligence to create information, it only takes intelligence to recognize and interpret information.

Yes, the environment is pumping in information; so where did that information come from? ScienceBlogs resents the very question. But what’s the alternative? Simply to say, “Oh, it’s just there.” The Law of Conservation of Information, despite ScienceBlog’s caricatures, provides cogent grounds for thinking that the information had to come from somewhere, i.e., from an information source.

The Law of Conservation of Information, despite ScienceBlog’s caricatures, provides cogent grounds for thinking that the information had to come from somewhere, i.e., from an information source.

— William Dembski

Thanks Hawks.

Dembski wrote:

"Yes, the environment is pumping in information; so where did that information come from?"

Well, I guess the real questiion is where did the environment come from. If Dembski wants to claim that it was creatd or designed "in the beginning", that's fine. But then of course his ideas have no bearing whatsoever on biological evolution.

What he was trying to do was to show that information is required for evolution to occur and that the only source of that information had to be a designer. Well, once the environment exists, there is a source of information and therefore no need for a designer.

Since no real biologist has ever, or ever would, claim that evolution could occur in the absence of an environment, Dembski has just conceded that everything that evolutionary biology claims can indeed be true. No complexity is too specified to present a problem. Gee, do ya think!

So if he wants to claim that God, (er I mean the designer), created the big bang, fine no problem, let him argue with the physicists. If he wants to claim that God manipulates the environment every step of the way in order to use evolution to accomplish his inscrutable goals, then there are big problems. Least of all, the problem that there is absolutely no evidence for any planning or foresight or goal in evolution and no evidence of any supernatural intervention in the environment. Once again, we have no need of that hypothesis.

"We need hypothesis that really generates something, new data, new research. Ideas that give scientists something to do. Otherwise, hypothesis are useless."

I think that ID can potentially help in research. For example, if we recognize design patterns in nature (as is the intent of ID) which are similar to the ones we utilize then we can hypothesize what parts are needed and what functions are performed. This allows us to further hypothesize the existence of a previously unobserved but necessary/usually present parts, systems, and/or function(s). Then if the design patterns in nature have the potential to improve or advance our own, we can incorporate those advancements and further the utility, accuracy, and/or function(s) of our own design patterns. Of course, this is only possible if ID is actually true.

"Now I hope you won’t ask for “a dog turning into a cat in a lab”. Please don’t. I don’t want to realize I’ve been wasting my time here."

Ha, of course I will not ask for that. Such a request is ludicrous. You've been very helpful, I appreciate it.

(DS kinda just addressed this.)
On a related note, I see Hawks defending the information being introduced by the environment and this claim's effects on ID. What ID can do in this situation is expand to the realm of cosmology and posit that the universe was produced by a designer and therefore all present information is part of the "program." Computers can generate new information through algorithms because all the information necessary to do so is programmed into the computer by the program writer (aka designer). An ID proponent will claim that the universe is a relevantly similar occurrence. A designer made it with information and that information could potentially perform evolution per the intent of the designer. This makes evolution not the product of an undirected process (the darwinian evolution that IDists vehmently denounce) but rather very much the product of an intentional design pattern. By applying ID to cosmology (this can be done with the work of Dr. Jay Richards), the ID proponent could possibly claim that evolution is compatible with ID. When design is detected, ID could use this expansion to cosmology to get around arguments against design detection by claiming "well, it was designed to operate that way; naturalistic explanations are simply inadequate to produce this effect."

I'm not saying that this is correct or even that an ID proponent would argue this, but it is a possibility and one of the only ways I see to make ID compatible with evolution.

This strong proscriptive claim, that natural causes can only transmit CSI but never originate it, I call the Law of Conservation of Information. Immediate corollaries of the proposed law are the following: 1. The specified complexity in a closed system of natural causes remains constant or decreases.

2. The specified complexity cannot be generated spontaneously, originate endogenously or organize itself (as these terms are used in origins-of-life research).

3. The specified complexity in a closed system of natural causes either has been in the system eternally or was at some point added exogenously (implying that the system, though now closed, was not always closed).

4. In particular any closed system of natural causes that is also of finite duration received whatever specified complexity it contains before it became a closed system.

Stanton said: Also, please don't kid yourself into thinking that you're the first person to realize that Intelligent Design...

Melech said: On a related note, I see Hawks defending the information being introduced by the environment and this claim's effects on ID.

Hawks said:

Melech said: On a related note, I see Hawks defending the information being introduced by the environment and this claim's effects on ID.

It seems like you can always count on me defending ID.

Stevaroni, a few Q's on your assessment of Dembski's theory. Perhaps I'm not understanding correctly or need a bit more explanation.

Concerning #1How is the u-235 specifically complex information? It may be complex but how could it be specified since it has no function. If it indeed has no function, it is not CSI and the analogy you present is false.

Concerning #2 If you say that the environment can transfer information to organisms then you are claiming anything different than Dembski. He only claims that the environment cannot spontaneously generate CSI nor does CSI self-organize.

Concerning #3 How is earth not a closed system of natural causes? If it is not a closed system of natural causes then it is an open system. If you do think it is an open system, then what non-natural causes are in play?

stevaroni said: So, ultimately, Bill scores 0-for-4 with his Laws of Conservation of Information. No wonder he never publishes in the scientific press. If a simple engineer can spot the flaws in his work, imagine what a real mathematician could do to him.

Melech wrote:

"A designer made it with information and that information could potentially perform evolution per the intent of the designer. This makes evolution not the product of an undirected process (the darwinian evolution that IDists vehmently denounce) but rather very much the product of an intentional design pattern."

This is exactly wrong. If the environment can contriburte information, then all that is required for evolution to occur is the presence of an environment, any environment. This does NOT determine the purpose or goal of evolution. This does NOT determine the outcome of evolution. This provides no endpoint, plan or purpose for evolution. Given any environment, evolution is simply what happens. Given a changing environment, evolution is what continues to happen.

Information does not "perform" evolution. Evolution is a contingent process. It is contingent on the environment and on how the environment changes. It is contingent on random events such as mutations, extinctions, natural disasters, etc. It is contingent on previous mutations, selection pressures and adaptations. It is contingent on the evolution of reproduction and evolvability. It is contingent on lots of things that are not determined solely by the environment.

This is why I argued that the origin of an environment did not constrain evolution. Given the presence of an environment, just about anything could potentially evolve, some things being more likely than others. For example, the existence of earth and the earth environment did not make the evolution of humans inevitable. Indeed, it was a most unlikely occurrance, even given the exact environment in which it did occur.

In other words, given that the environment can provide information, there is no necessity for a designer in order to explain any given outcome of evolution, nor is there any evidence that for that hypothesis. That is why ID remains useless, even if God, (er I mean the designer), created the universe.

Melech said: Stevaroni, a few Q's on your assessment of Dembski's theory. Perhaps I'm not understanding correctly or need a bit more explanation. Concerning #1How is the u-235 specifically complex information? It may be complex but how could it be specified since it has no function. If it indeed has no function, it is not CSI and the analogy you present is false.

Concerning #2 If you say that the environment can transfer information to organisms then you are claiming anything different than Dembski. He only claims that the environment cannot spontaneously generate CSI nor does CSI self-organize.

Concerning #3 How is earth not a closed system of natural causes? If it is not a closed system of natural causes then it is an open system. If you do think it is an open system, then what non-natural causes are in play?

RDK said: Then why do you make specifically pro-ID statements?

Hawks said:

RDK said: Then why do you make specifically pro-ID statements?

I don't know. Care to enlighten me? You could start by point out where I have done so.

DS, thats an interesting argument. I'll chew on that for a bit.

Stevaroni,
OK, so the specified complexity of the initial state is zero. I’m OK with that.It certainly ends up with quite a bit of information...
Besides, how do you know if it has function? It might function perfectly well in God’s pinball machine. More depressingly, a big ball of pure U235 would probably make a particularly fine core for an atomic bomb.

Mere information is not what Dembski is looking for here. He's not even looking for complex information. Dembski is talking about complex, specified information.

Potential uses are not functions. The sphere, the remains, and the gas do not have any function; they are not arranged in a way that utilizes a pre-existent convention or code to produce a specific effect. Certainly there is complexity in that there is improbability; however, none of these things pass the "specificity" part of the CSI filter. We can test functionality of information. If I change the sequence of a part of DNA responsible for protein function, that DNA will no longer cause functional proteins to be made. If I change a verb in a sentence to an adverb "The horse ran slowly" to "The horse slowly" It has become functionless, though still complex.
These types of changes leave us with complexity but still no complex, specified information.

So you say that the earth is a closed system(I'm not completely positive that is the case). I just pressed that part because I want to know what you actually thought. If the system in question is closed then evolution is in a tight spot because that system cannot generate any more complex specified information than that with which it began.

This is very significant. First of all, this means that in the case of the environment transferring information, there is no problem there since the claim states that no new CSI can be generated even though more information carrying capacity is added (X+Y has more carrying capacity but not additional or different function). I'm not sure every way that it pertains to ID but if ID claims that DNA is CSI then to that means that all CSI in biological systems is either the result of an initially open and now closed system or the result of a system that is yet open. I dont think a proponent of evolution wants either case to be true.

These are just a few things off the top of my head. I've got finals to study for right now. Let me know what ya think!

Well, folks, I'm afraid that I won't be able to participate any more in this thread. I'm off on holiday and will most likely not have any Internet access for 8-9 days. If you have anything more to discuss with me, please do so here anyway since I'll definitely read through any new comments on this thread when I return.

Thanks a lot. It's been a hoot.

H.H. said: It's a multi-front assault on American government and culture.

Melech said: Stevaroni, a few Q's on your assessment of Dembski's theory. Perhaps I'm not understanding correctly or need a bit more explanation. Concerning #1How is the u-235 specifically complex information? It may be complex but how could it be specified since it has no function. If it indeed has no function, it is not CSI and the analogy you present is false.

Concerning #2 If you say that the environment can transfer information to organisms then you are claiming anything different than Dembski. He only claims that the environment cannot spontaneously generate CSI nor does CSI self-organize.

Concerning #3 How is earth not a closed system of natural causes? If it is not a closed system of natural causes then it is an open system. If you do think it is an open system, then what non-natural causes are in play?

Mike Elzinga said:

The Law of Conservation of Information, despite ScienceBlog’s caricatures, provides cogent grounds for thinking that the information had to come from somewhere, i.e., from an information source.

— William Dembski

Well, there we have it; there are no laws of physics, no conservation of energy, no second law of thermodynamics, no falling into potential wells and emitting excess energy in the process, no natural selection, no rules we can learn that can be incorporated into our models of Nature. However, there is Dembski’s “conservation of information” and an “information source” somewhere. This is the clear mark of pseudo-science when an individual, seeking to be acknowledged as the “Isaac Newton of Information Theory”, declares how Nature works without actually going out and looking. By the way; whenever anything comes from a source, that thing is not conserved.

Melech said: Stevaroni, a few Q's on your assessment of Dembski's theory. Perhaps I'm not understanding correctly or need a bit more explanation. Concerning #1How is the u-235 specifically complex information? It may be complex but how could it be specified since it has no function. If it indeed has no function, it is not CSI and the analogy you present is false.

Concerning #2 If you say that the environment can transfer information to organisms then you are claiming anything different than Dembski. He only claims that the environment cannot spontaneously generate CSI nor does CSI self-organize.

Concerning #3 How is earth not a closed system of natural causes? If it is not a closed system of natural causes then it is an open system. If you do think it is an open system, then what non-natural causes are in play?

Melech said: Mere information is not what Dembski is looking for here. He's not even looking for complex information. Dembski is talking about complex, specified information. Potential uses are not functions. The sphere, the remains, and the gas do not have any function; they are not arranged in a way that utilizes a pre-existent convention or code to produce a specific effect. Certainly there is complexity in that there is improbability; however, none of these things pass the "specificity" part of the CSI filter. We can test functionality of information. If I change the sequence of a part of DNA responsible for protein function, that DNA will no longer cause functional proteins to be made.

If I change a verb in a sentence to an adverb "The horse ran slowly" to "The horse slowly" It has become functionless, though still complex. These types of changes leave us with complexity but still no complex, specified information.

Dembski has claimed that measuring CSI might give false negatives for identifying design, but NEVER false positives. His explanatory filter can only detect things that are definitely designed (well, so he claims, anyway) .I.e. if something has heaps of CSI (i.e. more than 500 bits), then it was designed. If if has less CSI, then it might not have been designed. Notice the wording. Less than 500 bits could mean evolution or design (or something else completely).

Showing how something evolved, even on a mutation by mutation basis, does not count as evidence against ID either. Dembski could (and probably would) happily argue that any information gained while doing so must have come from something intelligent somehow sometime.

You are saying that ID required the designer to create CSI (a Pr(O,H) statement). What ID does claim is that it can detect CSI (a Pr(H,O) statement).

Melech said... Mere information is not what Dembski is looking for here. He’s not even looking for complex information. Dembski is talking about complex, specified information.

If I change the sequence of a part of DNA responsible for protein function, that DNA will no longer cause functional proteins to be made.

So you say that the earth is a closed system(I’m not completely positive that is the case). I just pressed that part because I want to know what you actually thought.

Concerning #3 How is earth not a closed system of natural causes? If it is not a closed system of natural causes then it is an open system. If you do think it is an open system, then what non-natural causes are in play?

If the system in question is closed then evolution is in a tight spot because that system cannot generate any more complex specified information than that with which it began.

This is very significant. First of all, this means that in the case of the environment transferring information, there is no problem there since the claim states that no new CSI can be generated even though more information carrying capacity is added

(X+Y has more carrying capacity but not additional or different function).

I’m not sure every way that it pertains to ID...

.. but if ID claims that DNA is CSI then to that means that all CSI in biological systems is either the result of an initially open and now closed system or the result of a system that is yet open. I don't think a proponent of evolution wants either case to be true.

Melech wrote:

"If I change the sequence of a part of DNA responsible for protein function, that DNA will no longer cause functional proteins to be made."

Really? Who told you that?

The actual facts are as follows:

Nearly one third of all nucleotide subsitiutions will not result in an amino acid subsitiution. In other owrds, not only will a functional protein be made, but the exact same protein will be made.

Many nucleotde substitutions, perhaps most, will result in amino acid subsytitutions which do not alter the function of the protein under the conditions which it normally functions in.

Many, if not most, nucleotide subsitutions in regions of genes outside of the protein coding region, (that includes up to 90% of most eukaryotic genes), will not cause any change to the protein or even to the regulation of gene expression for that protein.

See maltech, creationists love to pretend that there is only one nucleotide sequence that will produce any given protein. That is demonstrably false as anyone with even a passing familiarity with molecular biology is aware. Of course, they then go on to use this assumption to calculate the probability that this one particular sequence could arise by chance. Now you don't have to be genius to realize that, since their first assumption is dead wrong, the fact that all of their other assumptions are dead wrong is prettly much irrelevant.

Melech,

Also, as SWT coirrectly points out, some random changes to genes actually produce proteins that function better, or sometimes entirely new functions. There is an increase in information, by any reasonable definition.

And of course there is information in the absolute and relative frequencies of different types of mutations. There is also information in the frequencies of the various alleles at various times. There is even information in the distribution of these alleles in populations and species.

Please notice that all of this information is produced by random mutations and interactions with the environment. No intelligence is required in order for the informattion to be produces, however lot of intelligence is required in order to interpret the information. That is where real scientists come in. Somehow Dembski has never seemed to even try to understand this, being apparently more concerned with where the information comes from than actually interpreting it.

Melech making stuff up: “If I change the sequence of a part of DNA responsible for protein function, that DNA will no longer cause functional proteins to be made.”

I'm sure you will all be pleased to know that Stephen C. Meyer is WORLD MAGAZINE’s "Person of the Year" -
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/stephen-c-meyer-world-magazines-person-of-the-year/

Of course, this would be a bit more meaningful if World Magazine was a science magazine - but World Magazine is a “Christian news magazine,” with a declared perspective of conservative evangelical Protestantism. Its mission statement is “To report, interpret, and illustrate the news…from a perspective committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God.”

This award from a Biblical literalist magazine illustrates one more time the connection between intelligent design creationism and religion.

I've entered a comment at Uncommon Dissent but have a sneaking suspicion they won't print it.

Have they given up on the whole "ID isn't religion thing" or can they just not understand how this makes them look like religious fanatics? Seriously, how stupid are these people?

RDK said:

Hawks said:

Melech said: On a related note, I see Hawks defending the information being introduced by the environment and this claim's effects on ID.

It seems like you can always count on me defending ID.

Then why do you make specifically pro-ID statements? We've seen this a million times before. Some evolution denier comes here pretending to be the "neutral observer" who says he is aligned with neither side, but every single time, without fail, they end up outing themselves as ID supporters. Time to come out of the closet Hawks.

H.H. said: I know Hawks from his participation at the Skeptic Friends Network website. I can vouch that he is neither friendly to ID nor a stealth ID advocate. I can see why suspicions ran in that direction, and perhaps he could have done more to steer the discussion back on track. But whatever his faults, lying about his position on ID is not one of them.

Paul Burnett said: ...Stephen C. Meyer is WORLD MAGAZINE’s "Person of the Year" - http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/stephen-c-meyer-world-magazines-person-of-the-year/ ...World Magazine is a “Christian news magazine,” with a declared perspective of conservative evangelical Protestantism. Its mission statement is “To report, interpret, and illustrate the news…from a perspective committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God.” This award from a Biblical literalist magazine illustrates one more time the connection between intelligent design creationism and religion. I've entered a comment at Uncommon Dissent but have a sneaking suspicion they won't print it.

Paul Burnett said: Bill Dembski did not moderate my comment - they printed it! And the firestorm has started... Anybody want to jump in and help?

Paul Burnett said:

Paul Burnett said: ...Stephen C. Meyer is WORLD MAGAZINE’s "Person of the Year" - http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/stephen-c-meyer-world-magazines-person-of-the-year/ ...World Magazine is a “Christian news magazine,” with a declared perspective of conservative evangelical Protestantism. Its mission statement is “To report, interpret, and illustrate the news…from a perspective committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God.” This award from a Biblical literalist magazine illustrates one more time the connection between intelligent design creationism and religion. I've entered a comment at Uncommon Dissent but have a sneaking suspicion they won't print it.

Bill Dembski did not moderate my comment - they printed it! And the firestorm has started... Anybody want to jump in and help?

stevaroni said:

Melech said... Mere information is not what Dembski is looking for here. He’s not even looking for complex information. Dembski is talking about complex, specified information.

He may want to only talk about complex, specified, information, but he doesn't. .... How do I determine “specified” information? Don't just wave your hands and talk about “function”, tell me how to do the actual test, a subject Dembski avoids like a plague-covered leper selling magazine subscriptions.

Well, I know when I'm ridiculously outmatched....At this stage, replies to the few objections for which I have an answer would still be overshadowed by my lack of knowledge.

Those of you who have raised objections to my comments have also increased my doubts concerning the arguments of Dembski and Meyer. I dont know how to go about measuring exact amount of CSI in a system. I dont know the intricacies of DNA mutation or reproduction. One of you said it takes a long time to properly understand the biological systems within cells and that is increasingly apparent. Maybe some ID guy has an answer, maybe he doesn't. Either way, I'm going to ask.

I really appreciate the discussion and now I have a host of questions for ID advocates to answer. Thanks for the correction and insight guys!

Melech, don't feel too bad: NOBODY knows how to measure the CSI in anything, because it has no usable definition.

Hawks said:

harold said: That's weird. Why do all the "supporters" but you get it wrong?

I'd love to try to answer this question, but first I insist that you provide evidence that you have stopped beating your wife.

Here's why - because you have no idea what you're talking about and you're the one who gets it wrong. I'm very familiar with the works of Behe, Dembski, and other DI fellows. They ALL - the works, not the men - deny evolution.

Have you even considered the possibility that their works are flawed? On a fundamental level?

Frankly, you are coming very close to at least ethical violation of respect for intellectual property. I think ID is nonsense, but at least I credit it to those who invented the term, and correctly ascribe the ideas they express to them.

Wow. Ethical violation. That sounds like a serious charge.

This is NOT what THE WORKS OF Behe, Dembski, Luskin and other DI fellows say. THEY invented and ID and THEY get to tell YOU what ID says.

That almost sounds like an argument from authority.

In short, what you are saying is neither science, nor ID.)

I agree that it's not science. It's philosophy - and ID.

Seriously, who the hell do you think you are, presuming to teach ID to William Dembski?

Is that another argument from authority?

Theistic evolution is 100% at odds with ID and completely compatible with mainstream science.

Bzzzt.

As far as I can tell, you want to claim ...

I'm pretty sure that I'm not claiming anything other that it is in accordance with ID.

Is a designer required for the explanation of the formation of individual snowflakes? Yes or no. Edit: I’m making the assumption here that you find snowflakes to be sufficiently complex. If they are not sufficiently complex, could you provide a numerical measurement of the functionally complex specified information of a snowflake relative to that of a biological organism? Thanks in advance.

Melech said: I dont know how to go about measuring exact amount of CSI in a system.

Melech wrote:

"Well, I know when I’m ridiculously outmatched."

Finally, an honest seeker after truth. You know, it never ceases to amaze me how most creationists never seem to come to this conclusion. No matter how many facts you provide, no matter how many references you cite, they somehow seem to think that "I don't believe it" constitutes an appropriate response.

Look Melech, it isn't you versus us here. If you really are looking for answers, we will be happy to try to provide them. What you should not do however, is come in here claiming that the ID crowd is right and defying us to disprove them. As long as you are really interested in answers, you'll be just fine.

"I really appreciate the discussion and now I have a host of questions for ID advocates to answer."

Great. Just don't take their word for anything. No matter how good it sounds, it's probably an outright lie, if not at least a distortion. You might want to start with these questions:

What is the definition of CSI? Has that definition changed at all over time? How do you calculate CSI, what is the equation, what are the units, how do you calculate variance? Why isn't this equation published in any real scientific journal? What is the CSI of a human, a fruit fly, a bacteria? How do you set the limit for what CSI natural processes can produce? If you don't have an intimate knowledge of evolutionary theory, how can you possibly know all of the mechanisms by which evolution can produce CSI?

Please feel free to come back and tell us what they say. We would be very interested to know how they answer these questions. Oh and don't be surprised if you are banned from most ID sites. They really aren't interested in answering questions such as these. Feel free to compare that to the treatment you have received here.

Good luck.

John Kwok said: Dembski no longer is involved in the day-to-day operations of that website, nor has he in at least two or three years

Melech said: Well, I know when I'm ridiculously outmatched....At this stage, replies to the few objections for which I have an answer would still be overshadowed by my lack of knowledge.

Paul Burnett said:

John Kwok said: Dembski no longer is involved in the day-to-day operations of that website, nor has he in at least two or three years

You didn't go to the Uncommon Descent website article, did you? William Dembski is the name of the author of that particular topic. I'm pretty sure it's the same guy. (grin) Check out the author of http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/stephen-c-meyer-world-magazines-person-of-the-year/ - Dembski's on UD every once in a while.

The problem with CSI is that, whether it be measuring it or determining whether something you cannot mesure is increasing or decreasing, there are actually two kinds of CSI:

Complex Specified Information (CSI(1)), and complex Specifying Information (CSI(2)).

Complex Specified Information is called "Specified" because it is ..uh.. specified... by a Specifier, for his/her/its purposes. Once inserted, by some means, into an organism, it becomes

Complex Specifying Information, which causes the system that it specifies to come into being and to function as the Specifier wanted, but in the final analysis bay come from we-know-not-where without affecting its various virtues.

CSI(1) and CSI(2) are only the same entity if the CSI(1) implanted in an organism will never change. If it can change, and if the resulting CSI(2) can in some cases continue to construct and operate the organism (perhaps just as well, perhaps slightly worse, perhaps slightly better) than its earlier version, then the resulting CSI(2) is now in charge of the fate of the organism and its descendents.

Dembski asserts that natural causes cannot increase CSI(1), but this is tautological: CSI(1) is specified by a designer; the organism (and the surrounding natural environment) are not a Designer, and consequently cannot create CSI(1).

However, natural causes have been conclusively demonstrated to be capable of increasing CSI(2) in natural systems.

In principle, therefore, the Designer need only have designed (and constructed, let us never forget) a single replicating organism in order for the entire history of life to have occurred as we observe it.

For those of you interested in a general discussion of Stephen C. Meyer’s ideas in his newest book as well as clips from a recent talk by him, check out the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_li[…]8F6FD329822E

Oops, sorry, that should read:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=078B8F6FD329822E

harold said: What this amounts to is a claim that Dembski and other DI fellows state that they can detect design in some circumstances, but that they have not detected it yet, and may never detect it, and that everything currently “looks evolved” (but could have been designed by an Omphalos type inscrutable or incompetent-in-just-the-right-way designer). This is a mischarcterization of Dembski’s claims and behavior. He repeatedly claims that his work detects positive evidence against evolution. All of his works are characterized in that way.

He probably would, and this is you conceding to me that I am right, and to some degree contradicting what you said above.

But if you claim that “information gained must have come from something intelligent” then you are going beyond Omphalos into science denial.

However, Dembski does not behave this way. He does not go around saying “I concede that everything discovered so far could have evolved but maybe some day I will find some CSI”.

I guess you call that “them getting their own theory wrong”. Well, I disagree. ID is not a theory. It is a set of illogical anti-evolutionary claims. Yes, if you subtract those claims, nothing is left but Omphalos, but they why would anyone use the term “ID”?

“Intelligent Design” refers to a pattern of evolution denial, not to a sincere philosophical position. We gain little by treating it as the latter.

RBH said:

H.H. said: I know Hawks from his participation at the Skeptic Friends Network website. I can vouch that he is neither friendly to ID nor a stealth ID advocate. I can see why suspicions ran in that direction, and perhaps he could have done more to steer the discussion back on track. But whatever his faults, lying about his position on ID is not one of them.

You may have noticed that I've posted twice to urge people to read comments carefully. :)

386sx said: Well, sorry but I have to disagree with your claim. If, as they say, "The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.", then nothing is in accordance with ID because they invalidate ID themselves before they even get past defining it, because natural selection is not an undirected process. They can't even get out of the gate before screwing the whole damn thing up. Maybe they would make some progress if they would get rid of idiotic weasel words like "undirected process". (Yeah, I know... ain't going to happen.)

Hawks wrote:

"To be fair to the ID crowd, what that mean by an undirected process is one that doesn’t plan ahead."

Great. Now all you need to do is give one example of something that displays some evidence of planning or foresight. Just one example where some thought had to go into something in anticipation of some potential future. Anything? Anything at all? No. Thought not.

What we do see however is lots of things that show no evidence whatsoever of any planning or foresight. What we see is lots of examples of historical contingency and constraint due to the limitations of natural selection. What we do see is that ninety percent of the species that have ever lived have already gone extinct and more follow every day, precisely because they could not cope with a rapidly changing environment. Now just a little foresight and planning would have been enough to overcome this, but we don't see that anywhere. Too bad for "design". Either the designer is an incompetent boob who couldn't be bothered to plan past next Tuesday, or she doesn't exist at all. take your pick. Either way, no god is to be found behind the facade of design.

Hawks wrote:

"I noticed - VERY early on. Personally, I can’t see why any suspicions ran that way early on,"

Well people around these parts have very sensitive detectors because of all the deceitful creationists who show up here. There are bound to be a few false positives now and then. Please notice that I was not among those who questioned your sincerity.

Now, as to why the suspicion. Perhaps if you would spend as much time explaining why creationists are wrong as you do trying to explain what they think, people would have a clearer understanding of your position. I do wonder why you presume to know what creationists really think, but you do seem to be fairly knowledgeable on the subject, for whatever reason.

Anyway, playing devils's advocate can get you all kinds of grief. You gotta be real brave to play that game.

DS said: Now, as to why the suspicion. Perhaps if you would spend as much time explaining why creationists are wrong as you do trying to explain what they think, people would have a clearer understanding of your position. I do wonder why you presume to know what creationists really think, but you do seem to be fairly knowledgeable on the subject, for whatever reason.

DS said: Hawks wrote: "I noticed - VERY early on. Personally, I can’t see why any suspicions ran that way early on," Well people around these parts have very sensitive detectors because of all the deceitful creationists who show up here. There are bound to be a few false positives now and then. Please notice that I was not among those who questioned your sincerity. Now, as to why the suspicion. Perhaps if you would spend as much time explaining why creationists are wrong as you do trying to explain what they think, people would have a clearer understanding of your position. I do wonder why you presume to know what creationists really think, but you do seem to be fairly knowledgeable on the subject, for whatever reason. Anyway, playing devils's advocate can get you all kinds of grief. You gotta be real brave to play that game.