specified complexity

First, let’s see: And again, here is Crick in his March 19, 1953 letter to his son on his discovery: Notice, how emphatic Crick is: “. . . we believe that the D.N.A. is a code . . . “ Obviously leading scientists agree that DNA reflects coded information that is used in identifiable communication networks in the living cell. (Specifically, machine code that controls protein synthesis in the Ribosome: Zooming out a bit: And looking at the wider metabolic network, we see functionally specific, complex organisation aplenty: So, the presence of FSCO/I, for short (including coded information), should not even be an issue. It is therefore perhaps a back-handed sign of the strength of this point y Quastler: . Read More ›

It has now been over a day since I responded to the above, and though LM has further commented in the thread, he has studiously refused to respond to the corrective. It is therefore appropriate to speak here for record, and in so doing it is necessary to point out the implications of LM’s speaking with disregard to truth he knows or should know, in hopes of profiting from what he said or suggested being taken as true. First, here is Dr Stephen Meyer in a readily accessible seminar, outlining the scientific case that has led him and others to champion the design inference as both legitimately scientific and in any case as a reasonably warranted view: [youtube b7Vf6MvBiz8] Let’s Read More ›

It is time to move on from preliminary logical considerations to key foundational issues relevant to design theory. Of these, the challenge of complexity, information and functionally specific organisation is first and foremost. Hence this post. We live in a technological age, and one that increasingly pivots around information. One in which we are surrounded by trillions of technological entities showing how what we can describe as functionally specific, complex organisation and/or associated information (FSCO/I for short) is a characteristic result and highly reliable indicator of intelligently directed configuration. That is, of design. For simple illustration, we may examine the exploded view of a 6500 C3 baitcasting reel: . . . which shows the characteristic pattern of a network of Read More ›

Rockefeller University researchers

found that part of a DNA repair protein known as 53BP1 fits over the phosphorylated part of H2AX “like a glove,” says Kleiner. This interaction helps bring 53BP1 to the site of DNA damage, where it mediates the repair of double-stranded breaks in DNA by encouraging the repair machinery to glue the two ends back together.

New findings shed light on fundamental process of DNA repair

What are the prospects of a DNA self replicating entity surviving with rapid cumulative DNA mutations until it assembles the DNA repair mechanism – by random stochastic processes? Read More ›

That is, why inferring design on functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information, e.g.: and equally: . . . makes good sense. Now, overnight, UD’s Newsdesk posted on a Space dot com article, Is Our Universe a Fake? The article features “Philosopher Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University.” I think Bostrom’s argument raises a point worth pondering, one oddly parallel to the Boltzmann brain popping up by fluctuation from an underlying sea of quantum chaos argument, as he discusses “richly detailed software simulation[s] of people, including their historical predecessors, by a very technologically advanced civilization”: >>Bostrom is not saying that humanity is living in such a simulation. Rather, his “Simulation Argument” seeks to show Read More ›

Yesterday I watched a re-run of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. There. I said it. I love Star Trek. Notwithstanding the many absurd evolution-based plotlines. In this specific episode, Data referred to a particular characteristic of a newly-developing lifeform as an “emergent property.” I’ve looked into the “emergence” ideas in the past, and the related self-organization hypotheses, and have never been too impressed. But it has been a while, so I thought I’d quickly navigate over to the Wikipedia page on the subject to see what it says. Now I’m a big fan of the general concept behind Wikipedia and it is a very useful tool, if used properly. Yet everyone knows that Wikipedia is a questionable source Read More ›

The captioned comment comes by way of an email, from YM: >>nobody has solved the OOL challenge from an ID perspective either. And they never will until ID proposes the nature of the Designer (AKA God) and the mechanisms used (AKA “poof). >> (In addition, I have received a slander-laced remark from one of the denizens of the circle of hostile sites that confirms on the ground stalking and includes implicit threats. Duly shared with appropriate authorities. This sort of uncivil reaction strongly suggests that this series is having an impact.) The response as headlined indicates that there is now an attempt to shift the burden of warrant to ID regarding OOL. This, we will now address, first pausing to Read More ›

Not so. With all due respect, EL’s error here is a case of failure to think through the inductive logic of abductive inference to best explanation on a tested, reliable sign. (And indeed the statistics of Type I/II error extend that to cases of known percentage reliability, especially when multiple aspects or signs are involved that each have reasonable reliability: the odds of several reasonably independent tests, n, all being wrong in the same way [1 – p] fall away rather quickly. For simplicity, say odds of being right, p, are the same; the probability of n tests all being wrong the same way would be like (1 – p)^n. This is BTW the basis for correcting Hume’s error on Read More ›

One of the key diversions made by objectors to a design inference on empirically tested, reliable markers of design as causal factor, is to try to switch topics and debate about the designer. Often, this then bleeds over into assertions or suggestions on “god of the gaps” fallacies and even accusations of ID being “Creationism in a cheap tuxedo” artificially constructed to try to evade a US Supreme Court ruling of 1987 on banning the teaching of Creationism in schools. Okay, first, the series so far: Let’s discuss: >> Elizabeth Liddle: I do not think the ID case holds up. I think it is undermined by [want of . . . ???] any evidence for the putative designer . . Read More ›

Sometimes, one of the most telling issues in a debate is the point the other side utterly refuses to take up. The one it tries to pretend is just not there. Even, as it hastens off to a red herring dragged away to strawman caricatures laced with loaded accusations or insinuations and set alight to cloud, poison, confuse and utterly polarise the atmosphere; frustrating the process of seeking truth through reasoned civil discussion. That is why I think it is a strong indication that we are on to something serious when my clipping and citing Paley’s watch example in full form — not the common strawman tactic caricature —  led to an insistent attempt to deflect discussion into accusations of Read More ›

Further for record* on the case for a designer: EL, here: >> . . . What undermines the “case for design” chiefly, is that there isn’t a case for a designer. If current models are inadequate (and actually all [the?] models are), and indeed we do not yet have good OoL models, that does not in itself make a case for design. It merely makes a case for “our current models are inadequate”. Even if it could be shown that some observed feature has no possible evolutionary pathway, that wouldn’t make the case for design. What might would be some evidence of a design process, or fabrication process, or some observable force that moved, say, strands of DNA into novel Read More ›

In a current UD thread, Mung clips and comments: >> OT: Over at TSZ, fossils of reason occasionally appear, quite by accident. Elizabeth Liddle: I do not think the ID case holds up. I think it is undermined by any evidence for the putative designer – no hypothesis about what the designer was trying to do, how she was doing it, what her capacities were, etc. Mung: The ID case does not hold up because it is undermined by any evidence for the designer. Classic.>> I added: >> identification of an empirically detectable, reliable sign of intelligently directed configuration — thus of a design process — is a strong sign of a designer back of that process. Further, designs typically Read More ›

Andre just asked me: can you please embed a flowchart of how communication works for [XXXX] … You know the one that goes like this input encoder medium decoder output. I don’t think [XXXX] understands the problems such a system has with accidental processes nor does he understand IC. Please KF. With a little bit of luck a light bulb might go on for him. I don’t know how to embed an image in a comment here at UD, which — for cause — is quite restrictive as a WP blog. Here is my slightly expanded version of the classic diagram used by Shannon (a version of what I usually used in the classroom, sometimes with modulator/demodulator rather than encoder/decoder*): Read More ›

A few days back, sparc objected: How often have we seen this very thread before? I am not interested in fishing but even I realize that I’ve seen the Abu 6500 C3 reel before (according to Google it appears 42 times on this site). Just opening another thread will not bring the stillborn FSCO/I to life. Didn’t you read what WE had to say about it? And what about Dembski, Meyer, Behe, Marks et al.? Do you think they even consider FSCO/I? FSCO/I just dead and never lived. The substance of this is of course that I have repeatedly used an exploded view of the Abu 6500 C3 reel: . . . as an apt, concrete example of the hard, Read More ›

A current rhetorical tack of objections to the design inference has two facets: (a) suggesting or implying that by moving research focus to Active Information needle in haystack search-challenge linked Specified Complexity has been “dispensed with” [thus,too, related concepts such as FSCO/I]; and (b) setting out to dismiss Active Information, now considered in isolation. Both of these rhetorical gambits are in error. However, just because a rhetorical assertion or strategy is erroneous does not mean that it is unpersuasive; especially for those inclined that way in the first place. So, there is a necessity for a corrective. First, let us observe how Marks and Dembski began their 2010 paper, in its abstract: Needle-in-the-haystack problems look for small targets in large Read More ›