What happened to “Colson Praises PETA”?

_{William Dembski

February 14, 2008

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I deleted this thread because I found the comments offensive. Let’s keep postings and comments germane to ID.

Addendum by DaveScot: For the same reason I deleted the “Sterling Example of Anti-Religionists” thread due to many complaints that it was offensive. I want to extend my apologies for my own vulgar contributions that many found to be offensive. When I find myself among the crude and vulgar I tend to participate at the same level rather than rise above it as I should.

Comments

This hypothesis of coordinated mutations would take place in the context of common descent. And to Jerry: I'm not talking here about ID vs. non-ID. I'm talking about common descent vs. something else, and I'm trying to find out what people think that something else might be.Jack Krebs_{February 22, 2008
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#199 gpuccio Here I am speaking from a purely scientific point of view, in a rigorous ID perspective. I try to stay loyal to my commitment to not letting religious “beliefs” have part in scientific discussions. Ok; I've understood your position and I too agree about. #211 bFast If the designer is able to manipulate the timing of these natural mechanisms, he/she/it could pull off this 18 simultaneous mutations in a way that would cause a scientist viewing it to say “hey, I just witnessed 5 royal flushes in a row!” This is also my thought about. I don't see any problem in the the mere fact that a designer would have chosen to create new biological blueprints by heavily acting on what was already at disposal. After all, let's think about the way designers do act in our world. Most of the advancements do require only minor (but INTELLIGENT) modifications of already existant designs; and in some cases the designer does "create" something by heavily modifying current paradigm, but very rarely by completely discarding the older ones.kairos_{February 22, 2008
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bFast: I suggest that the designer uses a very different model than you describe. Consider the HAR1F gene. It has 18 specific mutations that appear to have had to all happen at once. This is well beyond the scope of natural laws. Yet natural mechanisms exist to cause mutations in organisms. If the designer is able to manipulate the timing of these natural mechanisms, he/she/it could pull off this 18 simultaneous mutations in a way that would cause a scientist viewing it to say “hey, I just witnessed 5 royal flushes in a row!” There is no doubt in my mind that the HAR1F gene would appear highly unlikely if engineered that way. My point is that you cannot show that this is the method that was used to engineer life on earth. After all, even human genetic engineers can build DNA molecules one letter at a time. The life designer that I envision would have the ability to replicate extremely long strands of DNA molecules quasi-instantaneously. I'll go even further. I don't see the need to work directly with actual molecules at all. At least not initially. Why not use a virtual machine that is powerful enough to simulate an entire organism? It would be like a writer composing and revising an article on a computer before printing out a perfect copy. If modern day engineers can use simulations for project design, why must a designer of complex life be forced to manipulate the timing of natural mutation events in order to compose life? Makes no sense to me. As advanced as he is, he should have the ability to use virtual genes to create fully-formed virtual organisms before outputting a fully-formed copy. Heck, he might even be able to do all of this with his mind, depending on how advanced he is.Mapou_{February 21, 2008
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Mapou:
I choose to reject common descent based solely on my conviction that an intelligent designer who is advanced and powerful enough to engineer complex life would not be constrained to use such a low-tech and inefficient mechanism.
Your description of a design event is painfully anthropomorphic:
It makes sense to me that any designer who is advanced enough to design and engineer complex life would not be constrained by primitive human-like engineering methods that involves gene-splicing, insemination and birth.
I suggest that the designer uses a very different model than you describe. Consider the HAR1F gene. It has 18 specific mutations that appear to have had to all happen at once. This is well beyond the scope of natural laws. Yet natural mechanisms exist to cause mutations in organisms. If the designer is able to manipulate the timing of these natural mechanisms, he/she/it could pull off this 18 simultaneous mutations in a way that would cause a scientist viewing it to say "hey, I just witnessed 5 royal flushes in a row!"bFast_{February 21, 2008
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Jack Krebs, you said "what would we see - when a new organism comes into existence " Probably something similar to what will appear from the biology laboratories at MIT or other institutions when they modify existing organisms. And since they will essentially be modifying current genomes, you could call it a sort of common descent with modification. Except it will be an intelligence doing the modification. Jack, how hard is this to understand. I know all your attempts is to try paint a supernatural spin on this so you can then tout ID as religious. But give it a rest and just look at the data for a change and keep away from your ideology. You are getting so predictable in your comments.jerry_{February 21, 2008
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Krebs: True, but the topic of at least the last ten or so posts has been common descent. There is nothing about ID that precludes common descent, so I am wondering what alternative hypothesis within an ID framework is offered by those who don’t accept common descent? I can't think of any observation that might indicate beyond a doubt that some creatures were engineered fully formed. Not even the Cambrian explosion or any other biological explosion could be used as evidence in my opinion. I choose to reject common descent based solely on my conviction that an intelligent designer who is advanced and powerful enough to engineer complex life would not be constrained to use such a low-tech and inefficient mechanism.Mapou_{February 21, 2008
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So what do you, or Remine, say to the question of what happens - what woud we see - when a new organism comes into existence if it isn't via common descent?Jack Krebs_{February 21, 2008
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so I am wondering what alternative hypothesis within an ID framework is offered by those who don’t accept common descent
Uncommon Descent (Sorry I couldn't resist...but it is true. Limited common descent, rather than universal. See Walter ReMine's Discontinuity Systematics for one example.)Atom_{February 21, 2008
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True, but the topic of at least the last ten or so posts has been common descent. There is nothing about ID that precludes common descent, so I am wondering what alternative hypothesis within an ID framework is offered by those who don't accept common descent?Jack Krebs_{February 21, 2008
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But whatever the case, if birth is not involved, and the creator is making creatures fully-formed, then the question of what happens in the world during this process - what would see as the creature came into existence - is an important question to ask if an alternative to common descent is to be offered. I do not think that common descent or the lack thereof is essential to the design hypothesis, as I understand it.Mapou_{February 21, 2008
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So my next question is this: supposing that the designer could "engineer fully formed creatures," what would we see when these creatures first appeared in the world? Are they engineered off-site, so to speak, (outside the material world) and then placed in the material world when done? If so it seems we would see the sudden materialization of such creatures. I think this would look to us like creation ex nihilo - special creation. Or would all the assemblage be done in the material world? - here I imagine various particles dis-assembling and then re-assembling to form a new creature, in which case we would see massive violations of known physical laws happening. Or there may be other hypothises - I am interested in what you think. But whatever the case, if birth is not involved, and the creator is making creatures fully-formed, then the question of what happens in the world during this process - what would see as the creature came into existence - is an important question to ask if an alternative to common descent is to be offered.Jack Krebs_{February 21, 2008
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bFast: Therefore, if a designing agent twiddled with genes along the way, causing a human to be born of pre-human parents, both ID and common descent would be true. Thanks for the clear explanation of common descent and its birth requirement. If that's the case, I don't think I can subscribe to common descent. It makes sense to me that any designer who is advanced enough to design and engineer complex life would not be constrained by primitive human-like engineering methods that involves gene-splicing, insemination and birth. There is no reason to suppose that such an advanced designer would not have the ability to engineer fully formed creatures. Using copies ("blueprints" or design specs) of genes that were sucessful in other animals would of course be the way to go. However, this would not be common descent, given the accepted definition of the term.Mapou_{February 21, 2008
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to Pannenburg: if universal common descent is bogus, and special creation out of thin air is also. what are your thoughts about how the different groups of biologically related organisms came out? A related second question: what are yuor thoughts about what taxonomic level or organisms are biologically related? That is, if organisms within a species are related but different species are not, then there are hundreds of thousands of groups whose origin needs to be accounted for in whatever way you propose in answer to my first question. On the other hand, if you think that all organisms within a phyla are biologically related, then you have much fewer "coming into existence" events to account for. What are your thoughts on these two questions?Jack Krebs_{February 21, 2008
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In regards to the discussion of ID and theodicy. Here is an article by Jay Richards on Intelligent Design and evil. http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo4/IDrichards.php EnjoyPannenbergOmega_{February 21, 2008
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Personally, I think Universal Common Descent is bogus. Special Creation of organisms out of thin air too though. Obviously there are groups of organisms that are related and have undergone evolutionary change. I would even go so far as to say that something is guiding an organism's development at the *species level. To say that we all come from a single cell in the primordial past is hard for me to believe. * I finally received my copy of Uncommon Dissent. In the chapter by Michael J. Denton, he describes how Marcel-Paul Schützenberger did not believe Darwinism could account for the biological adaption of organisms.PannenbergOmega_{February 21, 2008
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kairos: In my heart, I am at present more for non graduality. But my point is that we really don't know for certain. Indeed, I am convinced that the refinement of scientific knowledge will give us more clues. Here I am speaking from a purely scientific point of view, in a rigorous ID perspective. I try to stay loyal to my commitment to not letting religious "beliefs" have part in scientific discussions. But yes, I agree with you that I am often surprised of how christian scientists, including theistic evolutionists, whatever they are, and including people I deeply admire and respect, like Behe, seem to have so great a difficulty in conceiving God's interventions in nature, while they should be accustomed to believe in explicit miracles. For me, I prefer to believe that everything is a miracle, and that God's will and intelligence have a perfectly elegant and simple way of "communicating" with physical reality. Again, I insist that it's not so different from what we are doing any minute, if we believe that we have soiritual souls which interact with reality through our bodies (as, if I am not wrong, christians usually believe). About non graduality, my idea is that there are very strong arguments for it. First of all, the lack of missing links. Whatever darwinists may say, missing links are just that: missing. And there are indeed billions and billions of missing links, as an ID book states in its title. Because, if we believe that the transitions are really gradual, then you need a lot of transitional states, really a lot. And we have no evidence of them, neither in the fossil record, nor in the surviving genomes we can study. It is absolutely true that species appear to be organized in disctinct and separate entities, and not in a continuum. In other words, species are a quantum entity. The second argument is chronological, and again it comes from fossils. It is, obviously, the cambrian explosion (and other similar explosions, like the one which preceded the cambrian). We must remember that the cambrian explosion is really an explosion, it is not a metaphor. Such a number of new complex body plans appearing practically out of the blue. And nobody knows how sudden that was. We can just restrict the period to 20-30 million years, if one is a darwinist trying to defend his own credibility, or 2-3 million years, if one is a more relaistic and unbiased person, but for what we know, it could have been 2-3 days or less. We really don't know. However, it is certainly a stunning and unexplained phenomenon.gpuccio_{February 21, 2008
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#196 gpuccio then I would not speak, for the origin of biological information, of miracles (if not in the sense that everything is a miracle), or “creation”, at least in a specific sense, but just of the “natural” expression of the Divine Intelligence in Its creation. That's correct but then you wrote: So, if some of these events were not at all gradual, was the implementation made on the existing “hardware” (common descent), or just by “recompiling”, as you say, and existing, modified “software” (common design)? I really don’t know. I think we should admit how that at present we have no clue of how those things happened. Don't you think that these cases would anyway be non-gradual? In other way, wouldn't big steps in the evolution of genomic information be regarded as mere miracles? After all the possibility that God can do (visible) miracles is what Christians have been accepted for 2000 years.kairos_{February 21, 2008
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bFast: In general, I agree with most of what you say. As I am completely open minded about common descent, in the sense that I tentatively accept it, but am well ready to evaluate all the evidence, pro and con, I would like to add a few words about the theoretical frame of the problem: 1) Creation and creationism. I may agree with your discourse about the different meanings of creationism. The only meaning of creationism which cannot be allowed, in my opinion, in a scientific discourse, is the one which proceeds from sacred scriptures as "authority" at the scientific level. That's exactly what ID is not. (I am not criticizing those who accept that position, only saying that it is not a purely "scientific" position, while ID is). But, obviously, contemplating some form of "creation" as a possible explanation of what we observe is, in principle, perfectly scientific. And yet, I don't think that the concept of "divine intervention" and "creation" are completely the same: that can be true only if we are speaking of "occasional divine intervention". In that case, the concept is not easily distinguishable form some form of "miracle" or, if you want, "small creation". But there is another possibility. If natural laws, not only those that we know, but higher ones which we still have to discover, and natural just the same, allow for divine intervention, possibly "continuous" divine intervention, exactly as they allow for continuous human intervention (free will, the constant interaction of a spiritual principle with phenomena), then I would not speak, for the origin of biological information, of miracles (if not in the sense that everything is a miracle), or "creation", at least in a specific sense, but just of the "natural" expression of the Divine Intelligence in Its creation. 2) Regarding the implementation of biological information, I don't necessarily believe it had to be gradual. We have no idea of how the genetic change happened, but many evidences are partially against graduality. Whatever the possible mechanism, we have to consider the possibility that speciation, at its higher level (appearance of phyla), may have been a special phenomenon, and required a special mechanism. The same can be said for OOL, which at present is more easily conceived as rather sudden. So, if some of these events were not at all gradual, was the implementation made on the existing "hardware" (common descent), or just by "recompiling", as you say, and existing, modified "software" (common design)? I really don't know. I think we should admit how that at present we have no clue of how those things happened. And any model we try, we should not forget OOL: what happened at OOL, indeed, can have happened afterwards.gpuccio_{February 20, 2008
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Jack Krebs, "There is no one birth that separates the members of the pre-hominds from the first hominds." True enough. It is really hard to say that a particular mutation pushed humanoids over the line to become human. However, whether naturally caused or agent inspired, each mutation had to have happened in one individual. That individual had to mate with the pre-mutated pre-humans. Some of its offspring would have the mutation, and the mutation would eventually fix in the population. As such, common descent requires that the line between species be extremely fuzzy as you follow your ancestry back.bFast_{February 20, 2008
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Clarification - when I said "I agree with most of what bfast says" I was referring to post 191 above, not post 192 (which came in as I was writing my post.)Jack Krebs_{February 20, 2008
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I agree with most of what bfast says, but I'd like to make one important clarification. bfast writes,
Therefore, if a designing agent twiddled with genes along the way, causing a human to be born of pre-human parents, both ID and common descent would be true.
There is no one birth that separates the members of the pre-hominds from the first hominds. Speciation is a gradual process, and it is only when we look from a distance, so to speak, at individuals separated by many generations do we see distinct enough differences to conclude that individual A is a different species than individual Z. There is no one individual K or M or P that marks some type of objective dividing line between two species. With that said, I agree that one can, as Behe does, accept common descent and accept this gradual change as the generations go by but believe that the genetic changes (some or all) are caused by an intelligent force other than purely natural forces. I think bfast is correct in saying that there is no conflict between this ID hypothesis and common descent. And last -a minor point: Bfast writes, "my mother’s mother’s mother… was a pre-human of some sort." Let's be clear that we are talking about someplace in the order 300,000 generations here.Jack Krebs_{February 20, 2008
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Jack Krebs:
I would be interested to hear what those who don’t accept common descent have to say about this: is special creation the alternative hypothesis, or are there other hypotheses that I am not aware of?
Though I hold to common descent, I have watched this chatter for a long time. An alternative term used for such an event is "Common Design". They hypothesis, if I understand, is that the great designer modifies the original sorce code to create something new, then uses the modified source to "recompile" a new creature. I think that this is an attempt to explain why there is much DNA code in common, but it is also an attempt to avoid the disgusting term "creation". That said, any act of agency is realistically a creation event. I know that this line of reasoning would lead to a validation of the view that ID is creationism. Let me just speak to this obvious line of reasoning before having it raised, if that's ok. Classic creationism is an attempt to confirm a holy text (usually the Bible) within science. ID, weather of the common descent or of the common design variety, does not begin with, or in fact nicely fit, any holy texts. As such, I am happy to consider ID to be "small c creationism", but it is WILDLY different than the "fundamentally religious" "large C" Creationism that it is accused of being.bFast_{February 20, 2008
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Mapou,
Would it be correct to say that all modern computers are descended from Babbage’s analytical engine and, as a result, can be said to have a common ancestor?
No, computers are not the offspring of other computers. They are not born. Common descent requires being born. Let me suggest two definitions: "Common descent", as Jack Krebs described, is the understanding that my mother's mother's mother... was a pre-human of some sort, and that that person/animal's mother's mother's mother... was a fish. "Universal Common Descent" extends beyond this. UCD says that if I had complete historical records I could trace my lineage back to the the first self-replicating molecule that started it all. Consider, however, that if the first self-replicating molecular structure was the product of a designer, a simple blue-green algae-like organism, we would still have universal common descent. That organism would then be the first self-replicating molecular structure that started it all. Now, within common descent remains significant room for a designer to act as genetic agent. Consider that humans have taken genes from one organism and put them into another, producing interesting offspring, glow-in-the-dark rabbits and such. These glow-in-the-dark rabbits have some genes in them that are received via human-induced horizontal gene transfer. However, they still were the offspring of a rabbit. Therefore, if a designing agent twiddled with genes along the way, causing a human to be born of pre-human parents, both ID and common descent would be true.bFast_{February 20, 2008
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Jack Krebs, you said "Such an event would have to be a supernatural event" No, only a design event. Otherwise you have to believe in fairy tales on how tens of thousands of magical things just happened to the DNA so that birds could fly and have unique oxygen transport systems with four chambered hearts and be warm blooded. And then not really getting much different than that in the next 150 million years. Darwinian processes do not create complexity or novelty but just narrow gene pools so how diid bats get their wings and sonar? How did humans become so different so quickly? How did insects get their wings? How did eyes just appear out of no where in the Cambrian Explosion? And where did mammals come from? Lots of fairy tales of magical massive DNA reorganizations. Jack, there is no credible theory to handle these changes, only wild a** speculation. It is a mystery. As more genomes get mapped and understood we will see either clear paths to all this complexity and novelty or bottle necks that could not be overcome by any naturalistic methods. I am betting on the latter. That is where all the current evidence is pointing.jerry_{February 20, 2008
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Jack Krebs: do you believe that human beings have a biological relationship with pre-hominids, as well as with earlier mammals, through an unbroken string of parent-child relationships? No I don't. Thanks for asking and for explaining the meaning of the word as used by Darwinists. Having said that, I do believe that the designer of homo sapiens very likely reused some of the existing genes of other animals such as primates. I mean, why redesign the wheel? In that sense, I could say that humans are related to animals. 'Descent' has too much historical and emotional baggage attached to it, in my opinion. It's probably not a safe word to use anymore.Mapou_{February 20, 2008
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Clarence writes, after agreeing with DaveScot (as I do) that the evidence strongly supports common descent:
Unless the ID movement gets to grips with this issue, and accepts that common descent is the best explanation of the evidence, it risks always being associated with creationism.
As far as I know, the alternative to common descent involves some new kind of organism, individually or in groups, somehow immediately coming into existence. Such an event would have to be a supernatural event: special creation is the only alternative I have ever heard anyone offer to common descent. I would be interested to hear what those who don't accept common descent have to say about this: is special creation the alternative hypothesis, or are there other hypotheses that I am not aware of?Jack Krebs_{February 20, 2008
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to Mapou: do you believe that human beings have a biological relationship with pre-hominids, as well as with earlier mammals, through an unbroken string of parent-child relationships? That is what common descent means in evolutionary science.Jack Krebs_{February 20, 2008
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-----Jerry: "By the way, several people at ASA consider Behe a TE." Yes, this is a good example of how the undefined word causes untold confusion. When Christians push darwinism, we should call them Christian Darwinists, and reserve theistic evolution for someone like Behe.StephenB_{February 20, 2008
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By the way, several people at ASA consider Behe a TE.jerry_{February 20, 2008
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Clarence, What do you mean by creationism? What do you mean by common descent? There are several definitions of each so before you can make any observations about them, you have to define them.jerry_{February 20, 2008
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