Design inference used in Nobel discovery?

Great post @7, bornagain, I don't see that RDFish has addressed any of it. leodp

I would suggest familiarizing yourself with their work before you really make of a fool of yourself here.

Virgil aka Joe Gallien has always been a fool. And a favorite of the foolish UD crowd. Really. Daniel King

Hi Virgil,

That is your unsupportable opinion, anyway.

You are wrong as always, Virgil Cain. These are not my opinions I've related here; they are the opinions of William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, and Ed Feser. William Dembski and Stephen Meyer are leading authorities in "Intelligent Design" - apparently you've never heard of them, or read what they've written. I would suggest familiarizing yourself with their work before you really make of a fool of yourself here. Oh never mind - it's too late. As for Feser, he is a leading Christian philosopher, who certainly knows more about both ID and Christianity than you ever will. But don't let that stop you from posting. Your parents are probably happy that you're just writing nonsense on an ID forum rather than watching cartoons and playing video games. Cheers, RDFish/AIGuy RDFish

Hi RDFish:

The two leading authors of ID books, Dembski and Meyer, disagree on what the term “intelligent design” means.

That is your unsupportable opinion, anyway.

because it implicitly proposes something with human-like mental abilities,

That is incorrect. Feser needs to get an education on ID. Virgil Cain

Hi RDFish:

ID offers something called “intelligent causation” as an explanation. They fail, however, to say what “intelligent causation” is supposed to mean.

Your willful ignorance is not an argument. The DESIGN has testable entailments and the existence of the DESIGN says there was a designer. And from the evidence we can determine there was a purpose, ie an intent. And from our knowledge of cause and effect relationships we infer the intentional agency was conscious and able to carry out plans. Not that I would expect someone as limited as you are to understand that. Virgil Cain

Hi Andre,

Thanks.

You're welcome!

Not sure why you had to elaborate on the consciousness of a designer,

As I said, that is one important example of how ID "theory" fails to explain what it is this theory is offering to explain all of these phenomena (biological information, the values of the physical constants, and so on). The two leading authors of ID books, Dembski and Meyer, disagree on what the term "intelligent design" means. Contra Meyer, Dembski clearly states that ID can't even conclude, based on the evidence, that this cause was a conscious mind. What, then, is it supposed to be? What is (in Dembski's words) an "impersonal telic force"? It's all just so much hand-waving, relying on people's unstated (and unreflected) religious and anthropomorphic intuitions about human intelligence. This is why good Christian philosophers like Ed Feser think ID is so confused and wrongheaded, because it implicitly proposes something with human-like mental abilities, when there is no evidence (and no theological justification!) for concluding any such thing.

nonetheless thanks.

You're welcome! Cheers, RDFish/AIGuy RDFish

RDFish: The question, then, is what does account for it? I don't think that was Andre's question at all. I think his was more along the line of what is necessary to ensure the continuity of "the complex form and function we see in biological systems" over time? Mung

REC seems upset that ID theorists are actually busy "doing science." Mung

RDFish states:

"ID offers something called “intelligent causation” as an explanation. They fail, however, to say what “intelligent causation” is supposed to mean."

Funny, you, by your own conscious free will, i.e. personal agency, just 'intelligently caused' more functional information to come into existence than has ever been observed being created by unguided processes, (i.e. NS & RM, & Drift etc..), and yet you claim you don't understand what “intelligent causation” is suppose to mean? Unfortunately RDFish is not the only one suffering from such self imposed blindness to something that is as plain as day. IMHO, this denial of 'agent causality', even one's very own personal 'intelligent causation', is the most profound confusion in modern science today. In fact, the fallacious belief that the 'blind causality' of atheists is superior to the 'agent causality' of Theists in terms of explanatory power borders on sheer insanity. Professor J. Budziszewski puts the profound confusion in modern science like this:

A Professor's Journey out of Nihilism: Why I am not an Atheist - University of Wyoming - J. Budziszewski Excerpt page12: "There were two great holes in the argument about the irrelevance of God. The first is that in order to attack free will, I supposed that I understood cause and effect; I supposed causation to be less mysterious than volition. If anything, it is the other way around. I can perceive a logical connection between premises and valid conclusions. I can perceive at least a rational connection between my willing to do something and my doing it. But between the apple and the earth, I can perceive no connection at all. Why does the apple fall? We don't know. "But there is gravity," you say. No, "gravity" is merely the name of the phenomenon, not its explanation. "But there are laws of gravity," you say. No, the "laws" are not its explanation either; they are merely a more precise description of the thing to be explained, which remains as mysterious as before. For just this reason, philosophers of science are shy of the term "laws"; they prefer "lawlike regularities." To call the equations of gravity "laws" and speak of the apple as "obeying" them is to speak as though, like the traffic laws, the "laws" of gravity are addressed to rational agents capable of conforming their wills to the command. This is cheating, because it makes mechanical causality (the more opaque of the two phenomena) seem like volition (the less). In my own way of thinking the cheating was even graver, because I attacked the less opaque in the name of the more. The other hole in my reasoning was cruder. If my imprisonment in a blind causality made my reasoning so unreliable that I couldn't trust my beliefs, then by the same token I shouldn't have trusted my beliefs about imprisonment in a blind causality. But in that case I had no business denying free will in the first place." http://www.undergroundthomist.org/sites/default/files/WhyIAmNotAnAtheist.pdf

Dr. Nelson does a very good job of elucidating the sheer insanity that results from denying one's own agent causality in the following article:

Do You Like SETI? Fine, Then Let's Dump Methodological Naturalism - Paul Nelson - September 24, 2014 Excerpt: "Epistemology -- how we know -- and ontology -- what exists -- are both affected by methodological naturalism (MN). If we say, "We cannot know that a mind caused x," laying down an epistemological boundary defined by MN, then our ontology comprising real causes for x won't include minds. MN entails an ontology in which minds are the consequence of physics, and thus, can only be placeholders for a more detailed causal account in which physics is the only (ultimate) actor. You didn't write your email to me. Physics did, and informed you of that event after the fact. "That's crazy," you reply, "I certainly did write my email." Okay, then -- to what does the pronoun "I" in that sentence refer? Your personal agency; your mind. Are you supernatural?,,, You are certainly an intelligent cause, however, and your intelligence does not collapse into physics. (If it does collapse -- i.e., can be reduced without explanatory loss -- we haven't the faintest idea how, which amounts to the same thing.) To explain the effects you bring about in the world -- such as your email, a real pattern -- we must refer to you as a unique agent.,,, some feature of "intelligence" must be irreducible to physics, because otherwise we're back to physics versus physics, and there's nothing for SETI to look for.",,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/09/do_you_like_set090071.html

And although Dr. Nelson alluded to writing an e-mail, (i.e. creating information), to tie his ‘personal agent’ argument into intelligent design, Dr. Nelson’s ‘personal agent’ argument can easily be amended to any action that ‘you’, as a personal agent, freely choose to take:

“You didn’t write your email to me. Physics did, and informed the illusion of you of that event after the fact.” “You didn’t open the door. Physics did, and informed the illusion of you of that event after the fact.” “You didn’t raise your hand. Physics did, and informed the illusion you of that event after the fact.” “You didn’t etc.. etc.. etc… Physics did, and informed the illusion of you of that event after the fact.”

In other words, if 'you' deny your own agent causality then ''you' are committed to saying that composing a sublime poem is as involuntary an activity as having an epileptic fit'.

Human consciousness is much more than mere brain activity, - Mark Vernon - 18 June 2011 However, "If you think the brain is a machine then you are committed to saying that composing a sublime poem is as involuntary an activity as having an epileptic fit." http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jun/17/human-consciousness-brain-activity

Dr. Craig Hazen, in the following video at the 12:26 minute mark, relates how he performed, for an audience full of academics at a college, a ‘miracle’ simply by raising his arm,,

The Intersection of Science and Religion – Craig Hazen, PhD – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xVByFjV0qlE#t=746s

What should be needless to say, if raising your arm is enough to refute your supposedly ‘scientific’ worldview of atheistic materialism/naturalism, then perhaps it is time for you to seriously consider getting a new and better scientific worldview? Moreover, although atheists deny the reality of their own personal agency, none-the-less atheists unwittingly end up 'borrowing' agent causality from Theists and improperly attributing agent causality to inanimate objects. C.S. Lewis humorously put the 'agent causality shell game' that atheists play with themselves like this:

“to say that a stone falls to earth because it’s obeying a law, makes it a man and even a citizen” - CS Lewis

How is it possible that, according to modern science, a rock can have agent causality yet people can't? To say this is confused thinking is to insult confused thinking. In fact, since this is suppose to be 'science' where cause and effect are suppose to be clearly delineated, then it is completely insane to deny the reality of your own agent causality and yet at the same time falsely attribute agent causality to a rock. Moreover, Stephen Talbott points out that it is impossible to describe the complexities of biological life without illegitimately using words that invoke agent causality:

The 'Mental Cell': Let’s Loosen Up Biological Thinking! - Stephen L. Talbott - September 9, 2014 Excerpt: Many biologists are content to dismiss the problem with hand-waving: “When we wield the language of agency, we are speaking metaphorically, and we could just as well, if less conveniently, abandon the metaphors”. Yet no scientist or philosopher has shown how this shift of language could be effected. And the fact of the matter is just obvious: the biologist who is not investigating how the organism achieves something in a well-directed way is not yet doing biology, as opposed to physics or chemistry. Is this in turn just hand-waving? Let the reader inclined to think so take up a challenge: pose a single topic for biological research, doing so in language that avoids all implication of agency, cognition, and purposiveness1. One reason this cannot be done is clear enough: molecular biology — the discipline that was finally going to reduce life unreservedly to mindless mechanism — is now posing its own severe challenges. In this era of Big Data, the message from every side concerns previously unimagined complexity, incessant cross-talk and intertwining pathways, wildly unexpected genomic performances, dynamic conformational changes involving proteins and their cooperative or antagonistic binding partners, pervasive multifunctionality, intricately directed behavior somehow arising from the interaction of countless players in interpenetrating networks, and opposite effects by the same molecules in slightly different contexts. The picture at the molecular level begins to look as lively and organic — and thoughtful — as life itself. http://natureinstitute.org/txt/st/org/comm/ar/2014/mental_cell_23.htm

This working biologist agrees with Talbott’s assessment:

Life, Purpose, Mind: Where the Machine Metaphor Fails - Ann Gauger - June 2011 Excerpt: I'm a working biologist, on bacterial regulation (transcription and translation and protein stability) through signalling molecules, ,,, I can confirm the following points as realities: we lack adequate conceptual categories for what we are seeing in the biological world; with many additional genomes sequenced annually, we have much more data than we know what to do with (and making sense of it has become the current challenge); cells are staggeringly chock full of sophisticated technologies, which are exquisitely integrated; life is not dominated by a single technology, but rather a composite of many; and yet life is more than the sum of its parts; in our work, we biologists use words that imply intentionality, functionality, strategy, and design in biology--we simply cannot avoid them. Furthermore, I suggest that to maintain that all of biology is solely a product of selection and genetic decay and time requires a metaphysical conviction that isn't troubled by the evidence. Alternatively, it could be the view of someone who is unfamiliar with the evidence, for one reason or another. But for those who will consider the evidence that is so obvious throughout biology, I suggest it's high time we moved on. - Matthew http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/life_purpose_mind_where_the_ma046991.html#comment-8858161

Thus RDFish may complain that he does understand what intelligent causation, i.e. agent causality, is suppose to mean, yet it seems as though all of science has no problem whatsoever knowing what agent causality is suppose to mean save for when it comes to rightly attributing that agent causality to people and God instead of to inanimate objects. bornagain

RDFISH Thanks. Not sure why you had to elaborate on the consciousness of a designer, nonetheless thanks. Andre

Hi Andre,

Perhaps you can help me, Zachariel, Alicia, RDFish... How did unguided processes (NS & RM, & Drift)...

First, I do not believe these particular mechanisms, nor any other mechanisms that we currently understand, account for the complex form and function we see in biological systems. The question, then, is what does account for it? ID offers something called "intelligent causation" as an explanation. They fail, however, to say what "intelligent causation" is supposed to mean. Some ID authors, like Stephen Meyer, takes it to mean “conscious, rational deliberation”. Others, like William Dembski, disagree, and explicitly deny that ID implies a conscious mind. According to Dembski, what ID concludes is not a conscious, intentional, deliberative mind at all, but rather merely that there there is teleology involved. Nobody knows - not even Bill Dembski! - what might have been responsible for the origin of biological systems. Perhaps something "teleological" was involved, but that isn't saying very much at all. Saying the cause of living things was "teleological" is similar to Roger Penrose's theory of human intelligence, which posits some sort of "Plantonic realm of logical and mathematical truths" that neurons somehow tap into. They both sound sort of reasonable and as though they would help solve the mystery of life's origins and human thought, respectively. But neither one is currently anywhere close to being a "scientific theory" that we can evaluate against evidence to decide if it's true. Cheers, RDFish/AIGuy RDFish

REC Perhaps you can help me, Zachariel, Alicia, RDFish, Larry Moran. Nick Matzke, Thickpython, KeithS, Piotr, and just about everyone else has not answered my very sincere question, perhaps you could? How did unguided processes (NS & RM, & Drift) create guided processes (Integrity, repairs, controls, & regulation) to prevent unguided processes (NS & RM, & Drift) from happening? I'm hopeful you can help. Regards Andre

Like many headlines, this one answers itself. This article, and the linked ENV piece, are big on bluster and short on content. What was the design inference that the winners used?

They made a design inference; that's what counts. Quality control, information monitoring, error correction systems -- these are phrases rich with design concepts.

That's not using a design inference. That's picking words out of real scientists' work and loading them with extraneous meaning. What a sad and hollow gesture. Learned Hand

REC, perhaps, when you get time apart from your busy schedule of ranting against ID, you would like to cite the actual experimental evidence that shows us exactly how random mutations can possibly build such sophisticated random mutation repair mechanisms? Is it even sane to believe random mutations can create such a thing? Please no 'just so stories' of once upon a time billions of years ago, blah, blah, blah,, just the demonstration of it being done by random mutations, thank you. bornagain

I guess when your illustrious Journal "Biocomplexity" has -0- publications this year, that it is time to latch onto someone else's work. But my, this is quite pathetic. Reminds me of the despised creep in the sports bar claiming he could have called that play, made the catch.....that hes owed the millions of dollars that others have earned through their work and talent. What hypothesis that is specific to ID were these researchers secretly investigating? REC