A succinct case for Intelligent Design

_{Vincent Torley

May 10, 2015

Intelligent Design}

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Recently, I’ve been reading Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s excellent book, Darwin’s Doubt (Harper One, 2013). Towards the end of the book, I came across a paragraph that struck me as the best case I’ve ever seen for Intelligent Design, in 200 words or less.

“This book has presented four separate scientific critiques demonstrating the inadequacy of the neo-Darwinian mechanism, the mechanism that Dawkins assumes can produce the appearance of design without intelligent guidance. It has shown that the neo-Darwinian mechanism fails to account for the origin of genetic information because: (1) it has no means of efficiently searching combinatorial sequence space for functional genes and proteins and, consequently, (2) it requires unrealistically long waiting times to generate even a single new gene or protein. It has also shown that the mechanism cannot produce new body plans because: (3) early acting mutations, the only kind capable of generating large-scale changes, are also invariably deleterious, and (4) genetic mutations cannot, in any case, generate the epigenetic information necessary to build a body plan.” (pp. 410-411)

For the benefit of readers who may be unfamiliar with the concept of epigenetic information, Dr. Meyer provides a helpful, concise explanation in an earlier chapter:

“In addition to the information stored in individual genes and the information present in the integrated networks of genes and proteins in dGRNs [developmental gene regulatory networks – VJT], animal forms exemplify hierarchical arrangements or layers of information-rich molecules, systems, and structures. For example, developing embryos require epigenetic information in the form of specifically arranged (a) membrane targets and patterns, (b) cytoskeletal arrays, (c) ion channels, and (d) sugar molecules on the exterior of cells (the sugar code)… Much of this information resides in the structure of the maternal egg and is inherited directly from membrane to membrane independently of DNA…

“…This information at a higher structural level in the maternal egg helps to determine the function of both whole networks of genes and proteins (dGRNs) and individual molecules (gene products) at a lower level within a developing animal.” (pp. 364-365)

Finally, in his earlier book, Signature in the Cell, Dr. Meyer provides an in-depth treatment of the difficulties attending the modern scientific view that life arose via an unguided process. Here, the cardinal difficulty, in Meyer’s own words, is that “explaining the origin of life requires – first and foremost – explaining the origin of the information or digital code present in DNA and RNA.” Contemporary naturalistic theories, which rule out Intelligent Design, all “fail to account for the origin of the genetic information necessary to produce the first selfreplicating organism.” Once again, Dr. Meyer’s summary of his case is admirably succinct.

So, here are two questions for my readers.

First, a challenge: can anyone locate an even more succinct (but no less comprehensive) statement of the case for Intelligent Design in the literature?

And for skeptics of Intelligent Design: how would you attempt to rebut Dr. Meyer’s case, in 200 words or less?

Comments

Carpathian @53
Something is not digital simply because of the terminology we use.
I can see how it might be beneficial/advantageous for materialists to avoid this term, but I think there is a good reason that scientists use this term. Life is based on software, on information coded be the genomic code that controls the organism and tells it how to build new proteins, etc. So, it is not like scientists just picked this word out of the air and made a vacuous comparison, but rather they picked this terminology for the very reason the it strongly resembles and functions as digital information based nanotechnology. But, feel free to withhold your decision on this matter until more is learned. One word of caution though, I wouldn't count on things getting simpler, but rather more complicated - this has been the clear trend over the past 150 years since Darwin, so I doubt time will let you off the hook. As I see it, time is NOT on your side because of the trend.tjguy_{May 12, 2015
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Carpathian:
I see life based on chemistry which we have applied labels to. Something is not digital simply because of the terminology we use.
Are you sure? Two apples plus two apples is four apples. "I see life based on chemistry which we have applied labels to. Two plus two is not four simply because of the terminology we use." Actually, it kind of is, isn't it?Phinehas_{May 12, 2015
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Silver Asiatic:
You’re saying that life does not consist of digital-information based nanotechnology? That has yet to be proven?
I see life based on chemistry which we have applied labels to. Something is not digital simply because of the terminology we use.Carpathian_{May 12, 2015
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Seversky @ 50
Asserting that it is “digital-information based nanotechnology” is begging the question, assuming to be true the thing that has yet to be proven.
You're saying that life does not consist of digital-information based nanotechnology? That has yet to be proven? If so, you clearly couldn't draw a design inference from life if you don't accept that point first.Silver Asiatic_{May 12, 2015
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Sev:
First, if it is just the proposition that an unspecified intelligent agent was responsible for the creation of life on Earth, as I’ve argued before, it is a claim about ‘who’ not an explanation of ‘how’ so it is not in direct competition with the theory of evolution. It is comparing apples and oranges.
If by "evolution," one means that man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind, then we are indeed comparing apples to apples. Or at least apples to not apples.Phinehas_{May 12, 2015
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harry @ 30
If it is the proposition that an “unspecified intelligent agent” was responsible for life on Earth, then it is not a claim about ‘who.’ It is instead precisely a claim about ‘how’: intelligent agency.
No, it is a ‘who’ - an unidentified or unspecified ‘who’, to be sure - but still a ‘who’. It is not a ‘how’ because that would be an explanation of the cause-and-effect chain between the initial cause - the designer - and the final effect - the completed creation. The theory of evolution tried to provide such a chain from the earliest to the latest living things, both by providing an account of the natural processes that are involved and, where possible, observational evidence of at least some links in that chain. ID does none of these things.
Intelligence is known to be a reality and is known to be a causal factor for many phenomena coming into being, most certainly for phenomena exhibiting significant functional complexity and based on digitally stored information
Human intelligence is known to be a reality as are the artefacts we design. As yet, we have no evidence of any other extraterrestrial intelligence equivalent to our own so we have no way of knowing what are the common properties of our own and any other designs. I also think it is misleading to think of information as a property of living organisms or even non-living phenomena. Information is what resides in the models and modeling languages we use to represent the objective reality beyond us. It is no more a property of the external world than redness is a property of the red car I can see in the parking-lot. That car is reflecting electromagnetic radiation of roughly 620-750 nm wavelengths. The ‘redness’ is how that narrow band from the visible spectrum is represented in our internal models. To say that red is a property of the car is to confuse the map with the territory, the model with the thing being modeled. To put it another way, if I call up an image of that car on my computer, that image is created from what is essentially a string of ‘0’s and ‘1’s. That doesn’t mean the car itself is necessarily somehow created from ‘0’s and ‘1’s a la Matrix. Unless, of course, we really are all living in a computer simulation.
In the same way it is legitimate for an archaeologist to determine that an object is an artifact and not something that occurred mindlessly and accidentally without knowing who fashioned the artifact, it is legitimate science to point out the overwhelming indications that life is an artifact, in the sense that it is obviously the result of intelligent agency, primarily due to several facts:
It is legitimate to note the similarities between natural phenomena and human artefacts and technology but that is only arguing that one is analogous to the other. The problem with analogies is the danger of cherry-picking only the similarities which suit your beliefs when they are more properly evaluated by weighing both the similarities and differences.
– it consists of digital-information based nanotechnology the functional complexity of which is light years beyond our own
Asserting that it is “digital-information based nanotechnology” is begging the question, assuming to be true the thing that has yet to be proven.
there are no instances of significant functional complexity that are known to have come about mindlessly and accidentally
We observe a great deal of “functional complexity” which was not designed by us nor anyone else as far as we know, so far.
– every instance of significant functional complexity known to us — certainly those based on digitally stored information — are known to have come into being via intelligent agency.
Yes, that intelligent agency being us. We have no persuasive evidence as yet of any other.Seversky_{May 12, 2015
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NetResearchGuy: The problem with EL’s understanding of evolution is that it completely lacks any sort of quantitative basis. See Fisher, Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, Clarendon 1930.Zachriel_{May 11, 2015
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Silver Asiatic @ 45
Good OP by VJT as usual – and good thread following.
Dr Torley doesn’t make any better case - succinct or logorrheic - for Intelligent Design than those that we have seen before. As with all such claims, long or short, it still reduces mostly to attacks on the alleged insufficiency of the theory of evolution to account for the origins and current state of life on Earth, with much less said about an unsubstantiated claim concerning signs of intelligent design in nature - with the putative designer carefully unspecified - and strongly-criticized arguments concerning the improbability of life emerging by unguided natural processes.
I can understand the need to re-write the ID proposal in order to attack it, but why not look at what ID actually says? It’s “the proposition that there is evidence of intelligent design in nature”. In SETI research, the statement, “there is evidence of intelligent communication emanating in space” should not be re-written as “an unspecified agent is communicating”. The proposal is not making a statement about the “who”. It is not a statement that that the agent is “unspecified”. It is making a positive statement about the cause which can be inferred. The question of ‘who’ (an individual or a group of people an unknown being) is a separate question.
If you read my post you will see I dealt with the more limited claim concerning signs of ID in nature in my third paragraph. And it is disingenuous, to put it mildly, to pretend that ID is only concerned with signs of design in nature and has no interest in the nature of the designer. Leading lights in the movement have not been so reticent. William Dembski:
Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory
Philip Johnson:
Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools.
Jonathan Wells:
Father’s [Rev. Moon’s] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.
The Intelligent Design movement is, and always has been, about promoting Christian creationism as the true explanation of origins and it is only the legal decisions that have gone against them which has made them so coy about admitting it. And, yes, both the SETI and ID claims could be stated more precisely by formulating them so as to make it clear that they are not making any inferences about the nature of the intelligent agency in either case. In other words, for whatever reasons it is most certainly unspecified, whether or not that is actually true in the case of ID.
It’s also not a question of “how”. The signal shows evidence of intelligent design. We do not need to know how it was produced or broadcast.
If you want to infer from those alleged signs an explanation of origins then you most certainly do need to know how it was produced.
Second, if ID is held to be a research program whose purpose is to discover evidence of the involvement of unspecified intelligent agents in the emergence and evolution of life on Earth,
See what you did there (as a bolded the text)? Again, it’s “evidence of intelligent design” in nature (not merely in biology).
You’re hairsplitting. ID is not concerned with the appearance of design in nature. It couldn’t care less about finding evidence of design in a volcano or a river or a desert. It’s concerned about finding evidence of design in living things. That’s biology.
Ok, wait a second right there … we found evidence.
No you didn’t. What you found were structures in living things that - in some respects - look like artefacts that human beings design - such as the eye looking a bit like a digital camera. You argued that such structures were too complex to have been produced by natural processes and must therefore, have been designed. Those observations are evidence only of the claim that such things have the appearance of design, not that they were designed.
1. Everybody who said there was no evidence is wrong.
If I say I saw a flying saucer hovering over my house last night is that evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial spacecraft? According to WJM, it is. Even if there is no way to know whether I’m telling the truth or lying. I say that is rubbish, such unverified and unverifiable claims are worthless as evidence. If someone says that the eye resembles a digital camera in some respects I would agree. Is that observation evidence that it was designed? No it’s not.
2. The entire evolutionary claim about blind, unintelligent forces is wrong.
The theory of evolution has for more evidence to support it than does ID.
3. The research project needs to extend out to possible intelligent agents
IF ID wants to make progress as a scientific project then, yes, it does.
Well, we’ve been discussing modern ID theory for about 30 years (maybe less). It has taken this long (in your hypothetical that “we found evidence of design”) just to convince people that there is, indeed, evidence of design in nature. Now, give it another 30 years to convince a majority of the biological community that Darwinism is wrong.
By all means, give it your best shot. I’m not holding my breath, though.
So, I’d just suggest – don’t jump to the conclusion that it’s impossible to understand what designers did before any real research has been done on the question.
I would agree but the problem is that the ID movement seems to be carefully and deliberately avoiding even speculation about the nature of the designer. It needs to be more honest.Seversky_{May 11, 2015
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EL: When self-replicators reproduce with heritable variance in reproductive success, variants that reproduce most successfully will become more prevalent. The problem with EL's understanding of evolution is that it completely lacks any sort of quantitative basis. For example, what if all heritable variance was negative (I.e. all mutations are harmful)? Clearly in that case, the evolutionary mechanism would simply have the effect of culling out all mutants, and have no ability to add information to significantly increase complexity. I'm not saying it's true that all mutations are harmful, but it is known to be true that the vast majority are harmful, and that most of the experimentally observed beneficial ones represent context specific loss of information (I.e. Irreversibly breaking an existing gene). Besides that, there is an issue that many phenotypic beneficial mutations would require coordinated genotypic changes. It would take far too much time for these to evolve. As I've said before, for evolution to work, it would have to do countless failed phenotypic experiments, and extant organisms should show evidence of these ongoing experiments (lots of vestigial parts), which we don't see. Most evolutionists claim in response that the genes were already there, and it just requires a few gene expression switches to cause macro mutations. I've never seen an attempt to prove this, or give any experimental evidence to support this. Instead they'll say "well in the past, organisms did things with a lot of generic genes, and became more specialized over time. We don't have the ancestral organisms which had magic powers to change into 20 different body plans with a couple switches to do experiments on." Which brings us to a key aspect of evolutionary theory: all proposed mechanisms are unobservable in the present. Ancestral organisms generated many forms from a common set of genes -- unobservable! Ancestral organisms used simpler proteins -- unobservable! Ancestral proteins could evolve new functions more easily -- unobservable! Ancestral proteins served multiple functions -- unobservable! Information increasing beneficial mutations -- unobservable!NetResearchGuy_{May 11, 2015
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Cross & phoodoo: EL explaining evolutionary theory: “When self-replicators reproduce with heritable variance in reproductive success, variants that reproduce most successfully will become more prevalent” ... [and] not every variant needs to be reproductively more successful than the competition to stand a chance of propagating through the gene pool
Hm, this makes Darwinian evolution MORE successful because even gene variations which reproduce LESS can get passed on. Get it?? See how that strengthens it? By allowing thus that reproduce less to have a better chance at survival.
LOL Evolution predicts that variants that reproduce more successfully are more prevalent. And variants which reproduce less successfully are more prevalent. I guess that's "actual evolutionary theory" which works a lot better than just the regular theory.Silver Asiatic_{May 11, 2015
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Good OP by VJT as usual - and good thread following. Darwin's Doubt is a masterpiece. I read it last year and want to read it again. Meyer has a gift for clarity. With others, however, I think the case for design also includes the fact that design fits best with the evidence. JS @ 2. Nice summary. Casey Luskin's Top 10 is superb. Seversky:
First, if it is just the proposition that an unspecified intelligent agent was responsible for the creation of life on Earth, as I’ve argued before, it is a claim about ‘who’ not an explanation of ‘how’ so it is not in direct competition with the theory of evolution. It is comparing apples and oranges.
I can understand the need to re-write the ID proposal in order to attack it, but why not look at what ID actually says? It's "the proposition that there is evidence of intelligent design in nature". In SETI research, the statement, "there is evidence of intelligent communication emanating in space" should not be re-written as "an unspecified agent is communicating". The proposal is not making a statement about the "who". It is not a statement that that the agent is "unspecified". It is making a positive statement about the cause which can be inferred. The question of 'who' (an individual or a group of people an unknown being) is a separate question. It's also not a question of "how". The signal shows evidence of intelligent design. We do not need to know how it was produced or broadcast. I think you've seen this argument before, so if you just ignore it and continue to re-write the ID proposal in order to attack it as a straw-man, that only strengthens the ID argument.
Second, if ID is held to be a research program whose purpose is to discover evidence of the involvement of unspecified intelligent agents in the emergence and evolution of life on Earth,
See what you did there (as a bolded the text)? Again, it's "evidence of intelligent design" in nature (not merely in biology).
Even if we find such evidence,
Ok, wait a second right there ... we found evidence. Without going any farther, what conclusions are necessarily drawn here? 1. Everybody who said there was no evidence is wrong. 2. The entire evolutionary claim about blind, unintelligent forces is wrong. 3. The research project needs to extend out to possible intelligent agents.
how can we tell whether they created all life or just life on Earth or just seeded the planet it with pre-existing life or just intervened in the course of life that was already present here?
Well, we've been discussing modern ID theory for about 30 years (maybe less). It has taken this long (in your hypothetical that "we found evidence of design") just to convince people that there is, indeed, evidence of design in nature. Now, give it another 30 years to convince a majority of the biological community that Darwinism is wrong. Then we haven't even started to delineate the possible nature of the designer - what capabilities are needed to either create or seed design. So, I'd just suggest - don't jump to the conclusion that it's impossible to understand what designers did before any real research has been done on the question. I think we'd have to imagine that quite a lot of good ideas would emerge if the scientific community actually put work into researching the ID proposal, under the acceptance that it's primary tenet (there is evidence of design) is correct.Silver Asiatic_{May 11, 2015
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phoodoo
And yet you STILL can’t just answer a very simple and direct question. Do YOU have a strong understanding of evolutionary theory?
Yes, for a non-evolutionary biologist, I think I probably do, phoodoo.Elizabeth Liddle_{May 10, 2015
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Barry:
just because you confidently spew something into a combox does not make it true
Indeed.Elizabeth Liddle_{May 10, 2015
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phoodoo @ 41 Indeed, darwinian evolution is always right, except when it's wrong, but then in hindsight, with the addition of a "consilient sub-theory" it was right all along! Heads I win, Tails, you lose. CheersCross_{May 10, 2015
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Cross, I like when she says this line: ...and this actually makes Darwin’s mechanism even more successful, because not every variant needs to be reproductively more successful than the competition to stand a chance of propagating through the gene pool" Hm, this makes Darwinian evolution MORE successful because even gene variations which reproduce LESS can get passed on. Get it?? See how that strengthens it? By allowing thus that reproduce less to have a better chance at survival. Isn't it perfect. If you have good fitness that is good. if you have bad fitness? Also good! Its strengthens it! Magic! And don't forget, Lizzie has a strong understanding of the theory! Or at least she is very good at identifying those who don't. Perhaps she is like a sports analyst that doesn't know sports?phoodoo_{May 10, 2015
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Elizabeth Liddle @ 35 "There is most certainly a “central core to the theory”" That's good, what is it? “When self-replicators reproduce with heritable variance in reproductive success, variants that reproduce most successfully will become more prevalent”. Sounds simple, does it work? "One major development has been the role of drift – we now know that variants can also become highly prevalent even if they do not contribute to reproductive success, and this actually makes Darwin’s mechanism even more successful, because not every variant needs to be reproductively more successful than the competition to stand a chance of propagating through the gene pool." That would be No, we had to come up with another excuse. "But of course evolutionary theory is now much larger than that, and no longer consists of a single theory, but an entire body of consilient sub-theories," So it really didn't work! "including specific theories about different mechanisms of speciation, the role of horizontal gene transfer as well as longitudinal; mechanisms of variation production; the evolution of evolvability; non-genetic vectors of inheritance; sexual selection; mechanisms of genetic shuffling; etc." Ok, so is this meant to explain evolution or explain away the problems? "But these are elaborations, not contradictions of the core of Darwin’s theory which was the near-syllogism that I have articulated above." Keep the faith Lizzie. CheersCross_{May 10, 2015
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EL:
When self-replicators reproduce with heritable variance in reproductive success, variants that reproduce most successfully will become more prevalent.
You obviously did not follow the link I provided. If you had you would have seen that I demonstrated in the linked post that the formulation of the core theory that you give is hotly disputed by many proponents of evolutionary theory. EL, just because you confidently spew something into a combox does not make it true. Indeed, based on my experience with you, that is reason to conclude at least provisionally that it is false.Barry Arrington_{May 10, 2015
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Barry @19 I think Lizzies answer to you is a perfect example of how she doesn't truly wish to have serious discussions here. When she is cornered on direct questions, she reverts to this typical scrambling of words to just drown out any semblance of an answer. Is this accidental or intentional? If its intentional its an example of trolling behavior. But how can it be accidental, on such a simple point? She has no problem making accusations of people lacking knowledge on a subject (Stephen Meyer) then when asked to defend that comment? “Evolution is an entire body of consilient sub-theories….” wtf? So I really can't go along with William's assumption that Lizzies intentions are honest and admirable. She is just another guerrilla skeptic mouthpiece.phoodoo_{May 10, 2015
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Lizzie 235, And yet you STILL can't just answer a very simple and direct question. Do YOU have a strong understanding of evolutionary theory? If not you, then who? Does this question require five paragraphs of obfuscation and deciding what terms mean? You make an accusation that someone doesn't know what they are talking about, and then in response, you give this convoluted mess about what the theory supposedly is or isn't (its an entire body of consilient sub-theories!). Surely even you realize what a great example this is of your typical obfuscation.phoodoo_{May 10, 2015
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Those who produce more, produce more than those who produce less. Not just true in biology.Mung_{May 10, 2015
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Barry:
As I demonstrated in this post, no one has a strong understanding of evolutionary theory; nor can anyone, in principle, have a strong understanding of evolutionary theory in the sense one can have a strong understanding of the theory of general relativity. Why? Because there is no such theory. There are lots of competing speculations, and the speculators in each camp believe the speculators in all the other camps are wrong. But there is no central core to the theory about which there is general agreement.
This is simply not correct, Barry. There is most certainly a "central core to the theory", and it was articulated by Darwin. I usually write it as something like: "When self-replicators reproduce with heritable variance in reproductive success, variants that reproduce most successfully will become more prevalent". There are other succinct versions, but that gets most of it in, and that's the basic mechanism Darwin proposed for adaptive evolution. One major development has been the role of drift - we now know that variants can also become highly prevalent even if they do not contribute to reproductive success, and this actually makes Darwin's mechanism even more successful, because not every variant needs to be reproductively more successful than the competition to stand a chance of propagating through the gene pool. But of course evolutionary theory is now much larger than that, and no longer consists of a single theory, but an entire body of consilient sub-theories, including specific theories about different mechanisms of speciation, the role of horizontal gene transfer as well as longitudinal; mechanisms of variation production; the evolution of evolvability; non-genetic vectors of inheritance; sexual selection; mechanisms of genetic shuffling; etc. But these are elaborations, not contradictions of the core of Darwin's theory which was the near-syllogism that I have articulated above.Elizabeth Liddle_{May 10, 2015
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Mung:
Does evolutionary theory explain heredity, or does it just assume it (take it for granted)?
Mechanisms of heredity are part of the body of evolutionary theory, yes, and biologists understanding of them is increasing rapidly. Darwin had to take as an observation (not "for granted" - he observed that it happened) of course. Things have moved on since then.Elizabeth Liddle_{May 10, 2015
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Well, I explained one of Meyer's fundamental errors here and there have been many other commentaries on it elsewhere, including TSZ.Elizabeth Liddle_{May 10, 2015
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Does evolutionary theory explain heredity, or does it just assume it (take it for granted)?Mung_{May 10, 2015
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“This book has presented four separate scientific critiques demonstrating the inadequacy of the neo-Darwinian mechanism, the mechanism that Dawkins assumes can produce the appearance of design without intelligent guidance. It has shown that the neo-Darwinian mechanism fails to account for the origin of genetic information because: (1) it has no means of efficiently searching combinatorial sequence space for functional genes and proteins and, consequently, (2) it requires unrealistically long waiting times to generate even a single new gene or protein. It has also shown that the mechanism cannot produce new body plans because: (3) early acting mutations, the only kind capable of generating large-scale changes, are also invariably deleterious, and (4) genetic mutations cannot, in any case, generate the epigenetic information necessary to build a body plan.” (pp. 410-411)
Even if any of these things were true, which I'm not suggesting, it's unclear what makes this a "A succinct case for Intelligent Design". This is because ID, as a theory, doesn't explain the origin of the knowledge that the designer supposedly put in organisms. It just pushes the problem up a level without improving it. Nor would the failure of neo-Darwinsm be an argument for ID.
“In addition to the information stored in individual genes and the information present in the integrated networks of genes and proteins in dGRNs [developmental gene regulatory networks - VJT], animal forms exemplify hierarchical arrangements or layers of information-rich molecules, systems, and structures. For example, developing embryos require epigenetic information in the form of specifically arranged (a) membrane targets and patterns, (b) cytoskeletal arrays, (c) ion channels, and (d) sugar molecules on the exterior of cells (the sugar code)… Much of this information resides in the structure of the maternal egg and is inherited directly from membrane to membrane independently of DNA… “…This information at a higher structural level in the maternal egg helps to determine the function of both whole networks of genes and proteins (dGRNs) and individual molecules (gene products) at a lower level within a developing animal.” (pp. 364-365)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but "maternal eggs" are not actual present until 20 weeks after conception. As such, they would be constructed from raw materials just like the rest of a female human being. This process is controlled by a complex sets of genes. So, again, what is the origin of that knowledge? Saying it was located in one place (a designer) then moved to another (an organism) doesn't actually explain the origin of that knowledge. It's like someone pushing the food around on their plate, and claiming they've ate it. Yet, it's still right there staring them in the face. Furthermore, that assumption that "design" is the best explanation assumes we have not make any progress about designers and knowledge, such as the ability to classify knowledge as explanatory or non-expiatory, etc. It treats "design" as if it is an immutable primitive that we cannot make any progress on. Yet, we have made progress. So, such objections implicitly deny that progress can and has be made. People, which would include human designers, are universal explainers. That is, we can create explanatory theories about how the world works designed to solve specific problems, which we then test for errors. That is the growth of explanatory knowledge. However, when human beings find themselves in a vitamin-c deficient environment, their cells to not "fix" the broken gene that allows us to synthesize vitamin-c? Why? Because, noting in our cells contains an explanatory theory about how genes result in synthesizing vitamin-c, which allows us to survive in vitamin-c deficient environments. If your gene were to be fixed under those conditions, it would be because you were a geneticist who possessed the explanatory knowledge of how specific genes could be modified to repair our ability to synthesize vitamin-c. We can say the same about a tiger. When introduced into an environment in which its coat makes it stand out more, instead of less, it does not change the shape and color of its stripes. Nor would this be inherited if for some reason it did. This is because nothing in the tiger knows what stripes are for in an explanatory sense. So, how would any such mechanism know how having slightly more or less stripes would improve its food supply? In addition, how would it have known how to synthesize pigments and to secrete them into its fur in just the right way to create strips with a design that did allow it to better into its environment? All of this would be explanatory knowledge, which much greater reach. Rather, the knowledge in organisms is non-explanatory. It's what we call a useful rules of thumb, which solve problem in absence of an explanation. As such, it has limited reach. For example, imagine if I found myself stranded on an island. While trying to pick a coconut, I accidentally drop it and it opens on a rock. The bare knowledge that dropping a coconut from that tree to a rock will open it non-explanatory knowledge. I did not propose that dropping the coconut would open it. In fact, I wasn't even trying to solve that problem at all. However, I can use explanations about physics, inertia, mass, etc to invert the process and hit a coconut with a rock on the ground, rather than bringing all coconuts to that same tree and dropping each one on the same rock to open them. And I could use the same explanation beyond coconuts to use rocks defend myself against attacking animals by striking their skulls. Or beyond rocks by using cannon balls or an anchor, etc. Explanatory knowledge has much grater reach. However, the knowledge in a tiger's genes that produces its stripes is non-explanatory in nature. It does nor contain the explanatory knowledge that would provide enough reach to blend into a vast number of other environments, thus improving its food supply, etc. IOW, it's not that we failed to consider design. Rather, the arguments presented failed to consider progress that we've made about designers, knowledge, etc. It grossly underestimates the role that knowledge plays.Popperian_{May 10, 2015
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Seversky @22,
First, if it is just the proposition that an unspecified intelligent agent was responsible for the creation of life on Earth, ... it is a claim about ‘who’ not an explanation of ‘how’
If it is the proposition that an "unspecified intelligent agent" was responsible for life on Earth, then it is not a claim about 'who.' It is instead precisely a claim about 'how': intelligent agency. Intelligence is known to be a reality and is known to be a causal factor for many phenomena coming into being, most certainly for phenomena exhibiting significant functional complexity and based on digitally stored information. In the same way it is legitimate for an archaeologist to determine that an object is an artifact and not something that occurred mindlessly and accidentally without knowing who fashioned the artifact, it is legitimate science to point out the overwhelming indications that life is an artifact, in the sense that it is obviously the result of intelligent agency, primarily due to several facts: -- it consists of digital-information based nanotechnology the functional complexity of which is light years beyond our own -- there are no instances of significant functional complexity that are known to have come about mindlessly and accidentally -- every instance of significant functional complexity known to us -- certainly those based on digitally stored information -- are known to have come into being via intelligent agency.harry_{May 10, 2015
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Mung:
Carpathian: 1) Organisms mutate without any specific goal in mind. Mung: Given that most organisms have no mind, this is a real yawner.

Carpathian: 2) Not all mutated organisms survive to reproduce. Mung: That not all organisms survive is a fact.

Carpathian: 3) Those that do may have an advantage over other members of their populations. Mung: May have an advantage?
Looks like we're in agreement.Carpathian_{May 10, 2015
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1) Organisms mutate without any specific goal in mind. Given that most organisms have no mind, this is a real yawner. 2) Not all mutated organisms survive to reproduce. That not all organisms survive is a fact. 3) Those that do may have an advantage over other members of their populations. May have an advantage? This isn't evolutionary theory you're giving us. No wonder people think Stephen Meyer is weak on evolutionary theory.Mung_{May 10, 2015
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@Carpathian Your 1) is where the rubber meets the road and empirical evidence for it continues to fail to impress. Lenski? YawnRexTugwell_{May 10, 2015
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Barry Arrington:
But there is no central core to the theory about which there is general agreement.
The central core of evolutionary theory is: 1) Organisms mutate without any specific goal in mind. 2) Not all mutated organisms survive to reproduce. 3) Those that do may have an advantage over other members of their populations.Carpathian_{May 10, 2015
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