ID Foundations

UD commenter, ayearningforpublius [AYP], has his own blog where he has many interesting posts informed by a lifetime of varied experiences. He is also an advocate for the idea that nature shows compelling observable signs of design, and in “dialog with folks at and surrounding the National Center for Science Education (NCSE)” has encountered a typical challenge, which he noted on in a March 27, 2014 comment in a current OOL thread, i.e.: “Mac: Wrong question, since as a YECist IDiot you cannot conceive of undesigned systems like all life forms have proven to be to the point where evolution is a scientifically acknowledged fact. Show me just one life form that was designed top down, with the evidence, process Read More ›

In my first post I discussed the concept of information, in particular whether information is contained in a physical object by its mere existence.  In this post I would like to consider an additional issue relating to information, namely, the point at which information arises or comes into existence. Information is often closely associated with meaning – meaning that is transmitted from a sender to a receiver.  As a result, some have suggested that information only exists when there is both a sender and a receiver who have a prior agreement about the protocols to encode the information and after there is a successful transmission, receipt and understanding of the information. However, viewing information as existing only after it has been transmitted Read More ›

First of all I want to thank the Uncommon Descent moderators for allowing me to post, with a particular hat tip to StephenB.  As I indicated on a prior thread, I am not sure how often I will take the time to create a new thread, but hopefully I can occasionally post something of interest.  Kudos to gpuccio for a wonderful first thread, relating to the basic definition of “design”.

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Intelligent Design Basics – Information

In this post I want to consider a fundamental aspect of intelligent design theory: the concept of “information”. Read More ›

VJT has recently posted on what kind of cosmos God made, remarking on the Don Johnson bioinformatics lecture. He linked but didn’t embed, so here is the lecture: [vimeo 11314902] And, here is the handout. No comments — go to VJT’s thread. OOPS, something funny there so I open back up comments here. Hope this helps out all concerned. END

Good day, my name is JoeG and I would like to get something out in the open and hopefully have it become fully understood by everyone. For decades I have been debating against evolutionism and for decades I have been told that my position is “anti-evolution.” I found that strange because my position allows for a change in allele frequency over time, i.e. evolution. It also allows for natural selection, ie evolution. Speciation is OK too, i.e. evolution. Offspring are different from their parents meaning my position also allows for descent with modification, i.e. evolution. The whole point of my opponents seems to be a strawman: they want to be able to “refute” my position by showing that allele frequencies Read More ›

This lecture by Dr Stephen Meyer of Discovery Institute, with Q & A may be a good refresher and focus for thought on OoL, HT WK: WK — a useful blog to bookmark and monitor to see trends and issues — gives a helpful bullet point outline, in part: Where, of course, there is only one empirically observed, directly known causal factor capable of causing functionally specific complex organisation and associated information, especially digitally coded functionally specific complex information, design. Clipping some key points: {U/D, Jan 10:} It is also useful to follow a chain of Meyer’s argument to the inference to design: So we see here an inductive inference to best explanation as a method of historical/origins sciences, leading Read More ›

As has been noted, sometimes people come to UD looking for answers to questions about what they have been taught regarding “Evolution”; typically in the context of indoctrination under the Lewontinian ideological a priori materialism that he outlined thusly in his infamous 1997 NYRB article: [T]he problem is to get [the general public] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations [–> note the implicit bias, polarising rhetoric and refusal to address the real alternative posed by design theory, — which was already topical in those days some months after Behe’s first book on Irreducible complexity. Namely, assessing natural (= chance and/or necessity) vs ART-ificial alternative causes on empirically tested reliable signs] of the world, the demons that exist only in their Read More ›

New UD commenter ayearningforpublius has put up a comment on the implications of facial recognition, several times. I think it significant enough as a case of FSCO/I and the challenge of addressing its origin, to headline it. But first, let’s put up the vid clip he links: Now, his remarks: _________________ >> The following scenario is familiar to most of us, particularly as we grow older: We walk into a crowded and noisy room full of mostly strangers and unfamiliar heads bobbing up and down. Then off to the side and slightly behind we hear and recognize a familiar voice … we turn our head searching for that old friend we know is there, and after a short search … Read More ›

On Christmas Day, WJM put the following hypothetical conversation in a comment. Since he has not headlined it himself, as promised yesterday, I now do so: Typical debate with an anti-ID advocate: ID advocate: There are certain things that exist that are best explained by intelligent design. Anti-ID advocate: Whoa! Hold up there, fella. “Explained”, in science, means “caused by”. Intelligent design doesn’t by itself “cause” anything. ID advocate: What I meant is that teleology is required to generate certain things, like a functioning battleship. It can’t come about by chance. Anti-ID advocate: What do you mean “by chance”? “By” means to cause. Are you claiming that chance causes things to happen? ID advocate: Of course not. Chance, design and Read More ›

In the OK thread, in comment 50, ID objector Mark Frank has finally laid out the root of ever so many of the objections to the design inference filter. Unsurprisingly, it is a worldview based controlling a priori of materialism: [re EA] #38 [MF, in 50:] I see “chance” as usually meaning to “unpredictable” or “no known explanation”. The unknown explanations may be deterministic elements or genuinely random uncaused events which we just don’t know about. It can also includes things that happen as the result of intelligence – but as a materialist I believe intelligence to be a blend of the determined and random so for me that is not a third type of explanation. But, just what what Read More ›

Christmas is early this year. Here are the famous Feynman Lectures on Physics (Vol II is forthcoming) hosted for free by Caltech. A useful point of reference for one and all. Just for fun, note here on on entropy, irreversibility and the rise of disorder: Where does irreversibility come from? It does not come from Newton’s laws . . . . We already know . . .  that the entropy is always increasing. If we have a hot thing and a cold thing, the heat goes from hot to cold. So the law of entropy is one such law . . . . Suppose we have a box with a barrier in the middle. On one side is neon (“black” Read More ›

Yesterday, News put up a post on the mysterious origins of the moon, invoking a classic song on being caught between the Moon and New York City. (Niwrad added a post here on the multiverse that is also worth seeing. Kindly bear in mind this earlier ID Foundations post on fine tuning.) Mahuna aptly comments: “As the number of steps increases, the likelihood of a particular sequence decreases.” OK, so Earth is not merely “very improbable”. It’s very VERY very improbable. I don’t see this as a problem for Earth, which I think we can prove actually exists. I do see it causing a problem for all those “Earth 2″ exo-planets, of which we can subtract 99% (or something) based Read More ›

For some little while now, RDF/AIGuy has been advocating a strong AI claim here at UD.  In an exchange in the ongoing is ID fatally flawed thread, he has said: 222: Computers are of course not conscious. Computers of course can be creative, and computers are of course intelligent agents. Now before you blow a gasket, please try and understand that we are not arguing here about what computers can or cannot do, or do or do not experience. We agree about all of that. The reason we disagree is simply because we are using different definitions for the terms “creative” and “intelligent agents” . . . This seems a little over the top, and I commented; but before we Read More ›

HT, ENV. Let’s Embed, from here:   Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.   And, let us discuss. END

Sometimes, it is necessary to shine a spotlight on behaviour that is beyond the pale of reasonable civil discourse. Especially if, after repeated attempts to call for correction, we see instead the blog owner — here, EL of TSZ — and others insistently pretending that such falls within the circle of reasonable freedom of expression. Here, then, are relevant excerpts from davehooke in his post: Sure, ID proponents are passionate about the tenets of their faith . . . As Kierkegaard noted, there is always an unbridgeable emptiness for the theist, the “leap of faith.” So no matter how much reason one applies to religion, religious belief is at heart irrational. Those who attempt to trowel reason over the gap Read More ›