Am I the only ID proponent that doesn’t like the phrase “positive case for ID”?

_{Salvador Cordova

August 19, 2013

Intelligent Design, News}

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Probably, with possible exception of Mike Gene.

My good friend and colleague Casey Luskin writes:

ID offers a strong positive argument, based on finding in nature the type of information and complexity that, in our experience, comes from intelligence alone. I will explain this positive argument further in Part B of this article. Those who claim ID is nothing more than a negative argument against evolution are misrepresenting ID. –
ID uses a positive argument based upon finding high levels of complex and specified information.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/08/what_is_the_the075281.html#sthash.D6IZUcb1.dpuf

I rarely disagree with Casey Luskin, and Casey echoes the majority view of ID, and I’m clearly in the minority to disagree with him.

However, “positive argument of ID” in some people’s view would mean: “we see the Designer in action creating designs in the present day, therefore the designs of life in the present were made by the same Designer we see creating designs today.” So by that definition, there isn’t a positive argument for Design. I don’t like that situation, but that’s the hand we’ve been dealt…

We can believe Stonehenge is designed because we see designers today that can make similar structures. If we saw the Designer creating new biological life forms or making planets and stars in the present day, that would be a positive case for ID in biology, but we don’t have such evidence in the present day. The only other ID proponent that seems to share my reluctance to promote ID as having a positive case is Mike Gene.

ID is mostly based on analogy and heavy amounts of negative arguments. Negative means: not by chance, not by law, not by mindless evolution.

But let me make a little nuance. Life’s resemblance to human designs is overwhelming, and in many cases surpassing of human design. That is the argument that can be made. We can also criticize mechanisms of chance, law, physics, and chemistry as being the sole source of the designs in life.

No need to start debates about whether or not ID makes positive arguments, it’s somewhat irrelevant. Purely negative arguments have been used in math, so a purely negative approach is not invalid in and of itself. Assume for the sake of argument that ID makes no positive arguments, does that somehow prove mindless evolution true? No.

NOTES:

1. Stephen Meyer unwittingly described my view of ID:
ID is a quasi scientific historical speculation with strong metaphysical overtones. I posted this just in case there are like-minded ID proponents out there that share mine and Mike Gene’s view.

Comments

PaV
I’m not sure you’ve thought this through thoroughly enough. What’s at stake here is the plasticity of species. Darwin thought that species were highly, highly malleable. But was he right? I don’t see any evidence that he was.
Well, I don't think it's an expression that maps very well on to the theory of Universal Common Descent. Assuming UCD is true, what we think of as as "species" are essentially what we observe at any given time period - a cross section through the "tree". They are pretty well discrete, except for extremely closely related populations that still sometimes interbreed, or form "ring" species. No one extant "species" - type - of organism will ever evolve into any other "species" - type - of organisms. However if instead we follow a single species backwards longitidinally to the root of the tree, we will, according to the theory, see incremental differences, with perhaps the odd rather important larger step, right back to the UCA. Going in the other direction down the same single lineage we observe evolution - some of it adaptive, some of it drift, but all incremental and no one "species" evolving into another, because "species" is intrinsically a horizontal concept. So lineages are "plastic", rather than "species". However, sometimes what will happen is that a lineage diverges into two, and down one branch, not much adaptation changes - perhaps the population is nearly optimally adapted to a stable environment - whereas down the other, a great deal of adaptation happens. Down the line we have two species, X and Y, both descended from ancestral population XY. But X is much more similar to XY than Y is, so you could, in that sense, say that something that looked more like X than Y evolved into Y. But X did not evolve into Y, XY evolved into both. And both X and Y are equally "evolved" - as measured by molecular clocks. It's just that in X, all selective pressure served to maintain the status quo, whereas for Y, the selective pressure was for adaptation. That's what essentially Darwin proposed, and it's certainly how phylogenetics is understood today.
Even Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s fierce defender, late in Darwin’s life was troubled that breeding still had its limits. 140 years later, it still does. This ‘plasticity’ is the very basis for Darwin’s “Law of Divergence.” Darwin did NOT publish his Origins until Wallace had, independently, come to conclude that such a “Law of Divergence” exists in nature (at least in the Malay Archipelago). If, per Darwin, species are supremely plastic, then one can simply venture back to something close the LCA of cat and dog, and then proceed on to the cat. But your comment about what Darwinism is “NOT”, is simply a head-scratcher. There’s only one diagram in all of the Origins. You have, per Darwin, two to three ‘species’ at the bottom, and, at the top, you have 7 to 8 species, which now, together, form a ‘genera’. If you follow the diagram, you see “one species evolve into other species.” Now, if you find—for whatever reason—the idea of turning a “dog into a cat” objectionable, then, let me just ask you to turn a ‘cat’ into anything else. Can you do it? Can anyone do it? If it cannot be done, then the “Law of Divergence” is highly suspect, then, being the most important basis for Darwinism, the entire theory is ‘highly suspect.’
Well, there isn't really a "Law of Divergence", unless you mean the "law" by which a population, if separated into two without contact, will necessarily diverge, unless one goes rapidly extinct. I'd say that the important things are drift, adaptation, and speciation. Adaptation is essentially a bias on drift, and leads to the optimisation of a population to it environment. Speciation is when a single population diverges into two non-interbreeding (or more rarely interbreeding) populations, leading to two separate gene pools in which both drift and adaptation will occur. This is what we have evidence for. I think it's a mistake to try to understand Darwin's theory using the language he used to express it to his contemporaries. We have a much clearer understanding of what it implies now, and can be much more precise about what the different terms mean. So I'd say that rather than ask for evidence that a dog can evolve into a cat, you need to ask for evidence that both a dog and a cat can be descended from something that looks more like a fish with legs. Or even from something that looks more like a modern fish. And we do have evidence for that. But a modern fish population will not evolve into a cat or a dog, although it may well evolve into something that can walk on land, or even fly.Elizabeth B Liddle_{August 20, 2013
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Elizabeth Liddle:
PaV---The day someone shows that dogs descended from cats is the day that I abandon Darwinism. EL---Darwinian evolution is NOT the theory that some species evolved into other species.
I'm not sure you've thought this through thoroughly enough. What's at stake here is the plasticity of species. Darwin thought that species were highly, highly malleable. But was he right? I don't see any evidence that he was. Even Thomas Huxley, Darwin's fierce defender, late in Darwin's life was troubled that breeding still had its limits. 140 years later, it still does. This 'plasticity' is the very basis for Darwin's "Law of Divergence." Darwin did NOT publish his Origins until Wallace had, independently, come to conclude that such a "Law of Divergence" exists in nature (at least in the Malay Archipelago). If, per Darwin, species are supremely plastic, then one can simply venture back to something close the LCA of cat and dog, and then proceed on to the cat. But your comment about what Darwinism is "NOT", is simply a head-scratcher. There's only one diagram in all of the Origins. You have, per Darwin, two to three 'species' at the bottom, and, at the top, you have 7 to 8 species, which now, together, form a 'genera'. If you follow the diagram, you see "one species evolve into other species." Now, if you find---for whatever reason---the idea of turning a "dog into a cat" objectionable, then, let me just ask you to turn a 'cat' into anything else. Can you do it? Can anyone do it? If it cannot be done, then the "Law of Divergence" is highly suspect, then, being the most important basis for Darwinism, the entire theory is 'highly suspect.'PaV_{August 20, 2013
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So how can you say one explanation is probabilistically better than another, if you have an incorrect probability for one and no probability at all for the other?
I am sorry but did I use any form of the term "probab..." anywhere in my comment. Has any evolutionary biology study ever used any form of the expression "probab..." anywhere. I would take it up with those authors who do since you seem to believe that use of this technique is invalid.jerry_{August 20, 2013
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Jerry, All intelligent design is is the conclusion that certain phenomena are best explained by an intelligence and not natural processes. The phenomena are few in number and mainly have to do with origins but not all. To come this conclusion, one uses the scientific process and uses the typical tools of science. I am not convinced. First of all, in my (admittedly limited) experience, science doesn't usually claim that explanation A is better than explanation B by reason of probabilistic arguments. Thinking back to my own science education (long ago and I am not a practising scientist), a scientific explanation focusses on a set of observations, and then proposes a mechanism by which the observations can be explained. If the mechanism is sound, the explanation may be valid. However, to gain confidence in the explanation one also need to formulate testable predictions and actually go and check if these are correct. I haven't seen much of that latter step in ID yet, nor have I seen any mechanism proposed to explain how the design explanation actually works. The other problem I have with what you say is that in order to proclaim an explanation better than another one of the basis of probabilistics, one should actually present probabilistic calculations for both explanations and then reject the one that is less likely. We have seen attempts to calculate the probability of certain biological phenomena, but unfortunately these are always based on the assumption that they occurred as an outcome of a random equi-probable process. Under that assumption, indeed many biological features are highly unlikely. However, a random draw process is not the assumption made in evolutionary biology. In other words, the probabilities presented for the evolutionary explanation are invalid because they are not computed correctly. Even more important, I have never seen a probabilistic computation of the design explanation. So how can you say one explanation is probabilistically better than another, if you have an incorrect probability for one and no probability at all for the other? fGfaded_Glory_{August 20, 2013
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All intelligent design is is the conclusion that certain phenomena are best explained by an intelligence and not natural processes. The phenomena are few in number and mainly have to do with origins but not all. To come this conclusion, one uses the scientific process and uses the typical tools of science. The structure and methods of the study/analysis are the same as most other scientific studies/analysis. The only difference is in the conclusions of the analysis or study. An ID person will say where appropriate that the best explanation for the data or findings is an intelligent input. An anti-ID person cannot make such a conclusion. If the best explanation is that the phenomena in question is the result of intelligent activity, then that is science. Whether the approach is called positive or negative is meaningless, it is the structure of the process that counts. Call it what you want but that is science and all most here care about. All the minutiae and nit-picking is just really meaningless to the basic process of fact presentation, analysis and logic.jerry_{August 20, 2013
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Gregory, Your worthless illogical incoherent bloviations aren't worth my time. Your last comment moved to the spam queue. The sort of criticisms that are welcome here are those such as offered by Mark Frank, RDFish, WD400, franklin, Elizabeth Liddle, Gordon Davisson, etc. Gregory just makes a lot of noise.scordova_{August 20, 2013
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It is thus no wonder he went away, since the very thing he at first thought he was trying to prove, that ID *is* a natural scientific theory, specifically in biology, he finally realised was philosophically and theologically irresponsible.
Mike never said he thought ID is science, never sought to prove it was science, and said so for years prior to publishing his book. You have a nasty habit of fabricating falsehoods about people's motivations and reasons and ideas.scordova_{August 20, 2013
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Gregory, re. #49:
The important point, however, is this: obviously this implicationism makes IDism properly a ‘science, philosophy, theology/worldview’ topic of conversation and not ‘strictly [natural] scientific.’ Would you be willing to support this appropriate triadic discourse for IDism, Bruce? Take out the implicationism and IDism is a rather empty hypothesis, a wanna-be ‘natural science,’ but with no Discovery Institute due to lack of funding from right-wing evangelicals.
Science is the study of naturally occurring phenomena, including the development of theories which predict and/or explain such phenomena. The stricture embraced by most but certainly not all currently practicing scientists that such explanations must be "naturalistic" is a relatively recent development in the history of science (during the last 100 years or so) and is in no way logically necessary to the practice of science. Furthermore, this stricture, by a priori excluding certain types of explanation, will prevent science from ever reaching the truth about the nature of any phenomena that in fact don't have a naturalistic cause. In other words, what if living systems really are designed? If science is only allowed to propose naturalistic hypotheses, this will never be discovered by science. I am not an Evangelical Christian. I am not a Christian at all, nor a Muslim, nor a Buddhist, nor a follower of any recognized religion. I am, however, a theist. To me, it is obvious beyond question that living things were designed. One has only to be aware of the exquisite elegance of their staggeringly complex engineering to see this. ID is just the attempt to bring scientific rigor to this intuitive truth. Scientific conclusions can have implications beyond the reach of science. Darwinism certainly does, as Dawkins and many others have pointed out. The fact that ID does also does not disqualify it from being a scientific theory.Bruce David_{August 20, 2013
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(cont'd) Please know this folks, regarding Mike Gene. He’s a decent guy in my view too. I ‘met’ him on-line in 2002. At that time, he would not openly profess he was a theist; he just played the typical “ID is neutral” game and stood by the “ID as science” game that Bruce is (and others are) still playing around here and which Luskin is employed by the DI to prolong. But Mike Gene, credit to him for speaking up, finally came around to the conclusion that ID is *not* science and cannot be in the way IDT is currently framed. It is thus no wonder he went away, since the very thing he at first thought he was trying to prove, that ID *is* a natural scientific theory, specifically in biology, he finally realised was philosophically and theologically irresponsible. Most thoughtful theists involved in science, philosophy, theology/worldview discourse have written off IDism as not worth the time to (re-)consider; sheltered as it is by the DI and the mainly-American political-educational oriented IDM. That includes the top science-religion institutions in the English-speaking world, which are flush with ‘practising’ scientists, many of whom were initially willing to give IDT an honest opportunity. They have become disappointed by what happened to the IDM; Expelled Syndrome runs rampant, hyper-anti-Darwinism and even anti-Darwinian evolutionary biology, with no obvious alternative other than unspecified transcendent ‘poofing’ as a ‘mechanism’ for the hypothetical ‘Designing’ process and yet still that obvious ‘pride’ that IDists think they are harbingers of the next greatest ‘natural scientific paradigm shift’ of the 21st century (which will bring theism back to dignity and make materialists and atheists ashamed to believe what they do).
“any theist will have no difficulty in accepting the possibility of a non-human designer [Designer]” – Bruce David
Yes, thank you Bruce, of course. That is exactly the key point, most worth sharing and not hiding. One actually *must* be a theist to accept Intelligent Design Theory (IDT). An atheist cannot technically accept a ‘transcendent Designer’ and yet still be an atheist (which is why David Berlinski is not actually an IDist, just a convenient fellow ‘wedgie’ working for the DI, while it sells his books for him). That’s part of the not-so-hidden apologetic dimension of the IDM, which is easily noted by non- and anti-IDists, though IDists seem to think no one knows this, wink ;) Bruce, I believe in a Creator. But you and the IDM want to call the Creator a mere (engineer’s God) Designer; mainly for school board trials & you’re supposed ‘Design Revolution.’ That’s such a strange situation, if you look at it from an outsider’s perspective, especially if you’ve studied global HPSS! IDism is openly anti-atheistic and in fact IDT ‘scientifically’ discriminates against atheists. This is why it will likely *never* ‘officially’ be taught in American public schools, especially given America’s growing numbers of atheists and non-religious, who have the democratic nation’s law on their side. Well, but that’s just a sociologist of the IDM speaking, which can easily be ignored at this pro-IDT venue. :) Gregory p.s. nice one Elisabeth, asking for a “positive guidance hypothesis”! But as you know, “IDT isn’t about that.” Ya know, it’s usually a ‘strong’ theory, except for weak features like dogmatically not saying (or thinking) anything about where, when, why or how of the ‘Designing’ process occurs in history and nature. ;) p.p.s. sadly, Elisabeth, you seem unequipped for discussing ‘methodological naturalism.’ It’s too bad the thread that I started on MN at TSZ a while back lost over half of its posts during an unintentional crash. Much was written there that would still be helpful for you to understand that ‘science’ is usually not what “natural scientists who haven’t studied HPS believe it is.” Once one realises that there are ‘other sciences’ than just ‘natural sciences’ and thus other ‘methods’ that need not be only ‘naturalistic,’ they can move forward; but until that time, they are usually stuck in/with the ideology of natural scientism and/or MNism, which is where you unfortunately appear still to be. But hey, good luck given that you’ve seen through IDism, as have many of us. p.p.s. the timing has turned out nicely. I've already basically withdrawn from UD. And now 'Timaeus' will partially 'pull back' from UD with his solo Timaeusean-IDism (IDT, maybe, *might* not need to be called 'scientific'). As it is, I've never felt he was one to constructively 'dialogue' with, but rather only one intent to 'debate' with anyone who doubts IDism. He makes this clear with his choice of the words 'internet debating' and will likely blame anyone else but himself for it. As it is, I challenged him to an 'internet debate' in his own name and he refused, showing both Expelled Syndrome and inability to actually defend the IDism of the DI (because his personal IDism is a different solo breed). There's really not much strength in the IDism that Timaeus defends; simple regurgitation of DI-IDists, idolatry of Michael Behe, and a sad unwillingness to recognise IDT for what it actually is: a topic for science, philosophy and theology/worldview conversation and not 'strictly scientific.' But most people, certainly many thoughtful theists who gave IDism an initial try, know that already, while Timaeus just spins rhetoric and edits others' works trying to protest otherwise as an underdog academic. To his credit, Timaeus imho is one of the best posters at UD, even though his skills and talents, yes, even his admitted long-ago scholarship, could obviously have been better used elsewhere.Gregory_{August 20, 2013
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I will probably be pulling back quite a bit myself from internet debating, also for personal reasons. But I’ll keep monitoring UD and from time to time drop in when I think I can say something useful.
I'm sorry to hear this, and indeed the net can be a waste of time. The main reason I participate is that the process of debate has helped me learn and it helps me vet some of the teaching materials I'm trying to develop. I gave up long ago thinking I'd ever convince my opponents I'm right.scordova_{August 20, 2013
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Bruce et al., The issue is not about not listening. I’ve given IDism and the IDM more than its fair share of my attention. It is about the ambitious folly displayed by IDists, who actually think they can trick natural scientists and unsuspecting (mainly fellow evangelical) non-scientists regarding their loudly (and proudly) proclaimed ‘scientific revolution’ in the name of Uppercase Intelligent Design. Lowercase ‘design arguments’ are safe from controversy because they occur in openly theological territory (Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, et al.). But IDT claims to be ‘strictly [natural] scientific,’ which is where the problem arises. I’m not against calling IDT “a quasi scientific historical speculation,” as the OP references. Either way, it has obviously already lost the science demarcation game in most peoples’ eyes/ears/hearts. It seems that Salvador 'unwittingly' sells the IDist farm by saying: "there isn’t a positive argument for Design. I don’t like that situation, but that’s the hand we’ve [IDM] been dealt…" Actually, you chose the cards yourselves (aside for Sal and about 30-40% of UDers, as did your 'creationist' confreres)! Do you notice, folks, the capitalised 'Design' in "there isn't a positive argument for Design"? Likewise, he properly uses lowercase 'design' when speaking about 'human designs.' Well done, Salvador!
“It is the existence of complex, functionally specified information (CFSI) that argues for the existence of a designer [Designer], since the only known cause of CFSI is an intelligent agent [Intelligent Agent].” – Bruce David
Dembski speaks of a ‘transcendent designer’ (“The Design Revolution,” 2004), which most theists would capitalise as ‘Designer’ (i.e. when not trying to cleverly mask their ‘Designer’ behind a ‘strictly [natural] scientific’ theory). You can choose to write small d ‘designer’ if you like, Bruce, but anyone not already indoctrinated by IDism knows what you really mean. This is why it’s a fat chance most or even many people will ever accept IDT as ‘strictly [natural] scientific,’ which is what Luskin and his employers desire.
“Identification of the designer [Designer] is in general within the purview of other (non-scientific) disciplines.” – Bruce David
Which ‘non-scientific’ disciplines do you mean specifically? Those do seem to be much more important than the ‘scientific’ disciplines for the underlying message re: IDism that the IDM wishes on people.
“whatever variety is compatible with that person’s particular beliefs.” – Bruce David
Yes, this is the implicationism that drives the DI’s fundraising campaign. There must be some god/God involved; whichever you personally believe in is fine for the IDM. Implicationism is surely the appropriate word for this feature of IDism. The important point, however, is this: obviously this implicationism makes IDism properly a ‘science, philosophy, theology/worldview’ topic of conversation and not ‘strictly [natural] scientific.’ Would you be willing to support this appropriate triadic discourse for IDism, Bruce? Take out the implicationism and IDism is a rather empty hypothesis, a wanna-be ‘natural science,’ but with no Discovery Institute due to lack of funding from right-wing evangelicals. (cont’d)Gregory_{August 20, 2013
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Timaeus:
I will probably be pulling back quite a bit myself from internet debating, also for personal reasons. But I’ll keep monitoring UD and from time to time drop in when I think I can say something useful.
As a regular reader I'm very sorry to hear this but of course respect your personal decision to reduce your participation. You certainly have a great gift for clear and effective communicaton while you dismantle darwinian and materialist arguments.steveO_{August 20, 2013
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Thanks, Sal, for the information regarding Mike Gene. No, it's not necessary for you to mention I'm trying to get hold of him. If he's decided to keep away from the internet to raise his kids, that's a good decision -- blogging and debating is a bottomless sinkhole for time, and raising kids is more important than persuading strangers that you're right about something. I will probably be pulling back quite a bit myself from internet debating, also for personal reasons. But I'll keep monitoring UD and from time to time drop in when I think I can say something useful.Timaeus_{August 20, 2013
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Timaeus: But now he is invisible.
Something he is glad about.
He didn’t reply to my last note to him (or else he didn’t get it, though I sent it to the appropriate link at what is apparently his latest official site).
I suspect he didn't get it. He posts once every few months here: http://designmatrix.wordpress.com/ I can let him know you're trying to get in touch with him. I have your e-mail, would you like me to pass on your e-mail to him?
From being a name on everybody’s lips about 3-5 years ago, he’s now someone almost no one talks about, probably because they don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. I wish he’d re-enter these discussions. It would be interesting to hear his views on Nagel, ENCODE, Shapiro, etc.
Mike was the best on the internet, I learned so much from him. The main reason we don't hear from him is he made a conscious decision to invest time in his kids as they are growing up. He said so at TelicThoughts a few years ago. I'm glad for him that he's doing this, but I'm sad for us...scordova_{August 19, 2013
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Thanks for the links, Bruce. Yes, I'm up late. I'm running some scripts. Time for bed now though!Elizabeth B Liddle_{August 19, 2013
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Previous post (#43): The links didn't work. I don't know why. Try these: here and hereBruce David_{August 19, 2013
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Hi Elizabeth, Are you in England? Have you been up all night? It's around 3:00 am there now, isn't it? To answer your question (#37), or rather not answer it, I don't know what their null is. I'm not even sure they used any kind of statistical analysis. Again, if you are really interested, you can look at their papers. One of them is here, and another is here.Bruce David_{August 19, 2013
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Mung
So you claim to have an “unguided model” you can rely upon, and that directly contradicts your earlier claim.
No, I claimed that I had an "unguided model" that fits the data fairly well. I didn't say I could "rely on" it - I said precisely the opposite - that all scientific conclusions are provisional. I'm not sure what "earlier claim" you are referring to, but as I didn't make the claim you think I was making, it probably doesn't contradict my earlier one.
And if it is the case that you can tell unguided from guided by these models, then it is not the case that you have no “intelligent guidance model,” for if your “not-guided” models do not exclude intelligent guidance, what good are they?
They are strongly predictive. That's the only test a scientific hypothesis has to meet really. For instance, we have predictive models that tell us what will happen if we drop a piece of sodium into a basin of water. It nearly always does. That doesn't rule out the possibility that someone designed sodium that way, or even that someone personally intervenes and makes it happen this way on this occasion, but it does mean that we have a good predictive model of why it happens that does not require the invocation of an intelligent agent.
And you say these models are calibrated based upon data. And then you claim to validate the data against these models. Am I the only one to see the inherent circularity?
No, you don't validate the data against the models. Models are always fitted to data, not the other way round. If you did it the other way round as well, it would be circular, as you say. So you are not the only one to see it. Models have to move, not data.
And we can show that unguided models such as drift models, and adaptive models fit those data quite well
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that these models were intelligently designed. So maybe they in fact demonstrate intelligent guidance when compared to data.
Of course the models are intelligently designed. But they are also intelligently rejected if they are a poor fit to the data.
How do you know they don’t? How were they calibrated?
By fitting them to the data. Here's a simple example: If we have a hypothesis that smoking causes lung cancer, we can propose a model in which the amount of smoking predicts the probability of cancer. That means that if we plot number of cigarettes smoked per day against numbers of people who get lung cancer will get a plot that can be fitted by a line with a positive slope. It won't be a perfect fit, but we can plot the best-fit line - we calibrate the line. This means that we can estimate the probability that you will get lung cancer on the basis of how many cigarettes you smoke. We can also make the model more complex by adding in other factors, such as your age, how long you've smoked for, maybe some genetics, and we get an increasingly good prediction. But the parameters of the model are adjusted so as to optimally fit the data - leave the smallest "residuals". And if those predictions are good - have small confidence intervals - we have a useful model that fits the data well. We can do the same with phylogenies - we can propose a tree structure (as we proposed a linear relationship) and then fit the tree model that best fits the data. If the best-fitting tree is still a poor fit, we may have to consider non-tree models. But tree models tend to fit very well, at least to morphological data, supporting the theory of Universal Common Descent. They don't fit so well to genetic data, so the model requires elaboration if it is to be consistent with UCD - it needs another factor. So we look for one and find it - HGT. That's a new hypothesis and requires testing. It is tested and it works, and allows us to fit a bushy tree. If it didn't, we'd have to reconsider UCD. So then comes the question of where the variance comes from, and why we see some kinds of variation and not others. That in itself requires explanation - perhaps guidance? But perhaps optimal variance mechanisms themselves are evolvable. etc. At no point can we rule out guidance, but without a positive guidance hypothesis, nor can we rule it in. However, with a positive guidance hypothesis, we could. Does the putative designer intervene continuously, or only at crucial steps? How would we test alternative intervention hypotheses? If I was an IDer, that's what I'd be interested in investigating.Elizabeth B Liddle_{August 19, 2013
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Speaking of Mike Gene, what is he up to these days? He used to be a highly visible personality in these debates. He was a regular on the old ASA list for a time, and a regular on Telic Thoughts, and he used to keep up a blog site of his own, on which he posted frequently. He was a pleasant debater because he avoided ad hominems and could give and take points, and he tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade others to adopt his gentle internet manners. It was hard to dislike the guy. But now he is invisible. He didn't reply to my last note to him (or else he didn't get it, though I sent it to the appropriate link at what is apparently his latest official site). From being a name on everybody's lips about 3-5 years ago, he's now someone almost no one talks about, probably because they don't know where he is or what he's doing. I wish he'd re-enter these discussions. It would be interesting to hear his views on Nagel, ENCODE, Shapiro, etc.Timaeus_{August 19, 2013
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Mung:
What data are you referring to that one can derive from one unguided system (which we cannot, by your own admission, really know is unguided) that we can then compare to as a guide to tell us that some other system “fits the data” of an unguided system?
I can't parse this question. So I'll try to explain what I meant anyway. Data, are, as you know, what are given. For example living organisms; fossils; genetic data; morphological data; environmental data. And they are collected from the field, as well as from the lab where the data also may include factors that have been experimentally manipulated. So those are the data I am referring to. And we can show that unguided models such as drift models, and adaptive models fit those data quite well But we cannot show that those data were not the result of intelligent guidance without an intelligent guidance model to test. The best we could do is to show that there there are data that are not well explained by the model.Elizabeth B Liddle_{August 19, 2013
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So what is their null?Elizabeth B Liddle_{August 19, 2013
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Elizabeth, re. #33:
But what is it that you think that Axe and Gauger are actually researching? What hypothesis are they testing?
Well, they have recently published a couple of papers describing their research testing the hypothesis that new proteins can evolve via mutation and selection from existing ones within the time available during earth's existence (4.5 B years). If you want more details, here is their Website: Biologic InstituteBruce David_{August 19, 2013
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Mung
But we can compare this one system we can’t prove is unguided to this other system we can’t prove is unguided, and say that it fits the data quite well that one or other of the two, or maybe even both, fit the data for an “unguided system” quite well. Which was what I said @14. How about you actually look at the screen instead of rolling your eyes?
Elizabeth B Liddle_{August 19, 2013
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OK, Bruce, I agree that you could start researching in a different area, if you decided that there wasn't any point looking for natural causes for a certain phenomenon. But what is it that you think that Axe and Gauger are actually researching? What hypothesis are they testing?Elizabeth B Liddle_{August 19, 2013
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Elizabeth Liddle:
We cannot prove that the system is “unguided” – what we can show is that is that unguided systems seem to fit the data quite well.
Oh good grief. Science cant' prove any system is unguided. But we can compare this one system we can't prove is unguided to this other system we can't prove is unguided, and say that it fits the data quite well that one or other of the two, or maybe even both, fit the data for an "unguided system" quite well. Rubbish. I see you've still not recovered from your addleheadedness.
Addleheadedness is an adjective that describes a person who is stupid and lacks common sense. It refers a person who has addle, confused or muddled brain. This name may also be used on a person who is foolish, illogical or silly.
Mung_{August 19, 2013
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Elizabeth, re #26:
And I agree, that philosophically some scientists may be naturalists – i.e. “philosophical naturalists” – but, as you say, as scientists, all they have to be is “methodological naturalists” – because scientific methodology is predicated on the assumption that natural phenomena have findable i.e. natural causes.
They don't "have to be". There are practicing scientists who accept that it can be shown on the basis of scientific evidence that some phenomena are best explained as the result of the action of an intelligent agent, for example, Douglas Axe, Ann Gauger, Michael Behe, and many others. They don't look for natural causes for that which is to them obviously designed, but they continue to do science, often performing experiments that would not have been performed by someone who rejected design as a possibility for natural phenomena.Bruce David_{August 19, 2013
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Bruce, you seem to have missed out an important aspect of your proposition. What a 'result of ID would look like. How could we detect or measure it?Alan Fox_{August 19, 2013
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Alan Fox:
Does anyone have a hypothesis of ‘Intelligent Design’ that we could test or falsify?
Yes. The above quoted sentence was generated by a non-intelligence.Mung_{August 19, 2013
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@ Bruce David The problem for science is it can only consider observable phenomena. 'Design' appears to deal in imaginary causes though they still should have observable effects, if ID is true.Alan Fox_{August 19, 2013
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Elizabeth, re. #21:
And ID, being capable of explaining anything, cannot be falsfied.
Your use of the word, "falsified" obscures the issue. Any claim that a particular phenomenon is the result of ID can be negated in one of two ways---either show that it is not complex, ie. that the probability that it could have arisen naturally is greater than the universal probability bound (1/10^150) or that it is not capable of functional specification.Bruce David_{August 19, 2013
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