Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Georgia Tech’s Center for Biologically Inspired Design (CBID)

William Dembski
May 2, 2006
Intelligent Design
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Here’s how it works: we find some amazing system in the biological realm, determine how to reverse engineer it, and then design and build a parallel system to serve our needs. But of course, the original system evolved by blind trial-and-error tinkering (random variation and natural selection). To think that it was actually designed because we had to design its human counterpart is just plain stupid.

For the Georgia Center, go here: http://www.cbid.gatech.edu.

Comments
According to the Darwinism as long as a complex structure/nano-machine/system resides in a life form, the only explanation is the unguided process of the evolution. No matter how complex or improbable the system may look, the only option is to try to explain it with an evolutionary pathway. Brains of evolutionary biologists are hard-coded in this way of reasoning. William Dembski demonstrates an excellent example for this here: http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_isidtestable.htm Dembski: "Suppose I were a super-genius molecular biologist, and I invented some hitherto unknown molecular machine, far more complicated and marvelous than the bacterial flagellum. Suppose further I inserted this machine into a bacterium, set this genetically modified organism free, allowed it to reproduce in the wild,... ...Now let's ask the question, If a Darwinist came upon this bacterium with the novel molecular machine in the wild, would that machine be attributed to design or to natural selection?"Farshad
May 4, 2006
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Don't hold your breath, j.Scott
May 4, 2006
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Marc Weissburg (comment #9): "the real question to me is whether natural laws (evolution) can explain this process without the need to invoke a higher conciousness (a creator or designer). much scientific evidence, experiments etc. indicate it can, and no evidence from science suggests it can’t." Please provide an example of a known, non-teleological process that can create functional complexity. (Anyone else, feel free, too.)j
May 4, 2006
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"There is a very fine line between saying “a designer did it” and saying “it is best explained as being the result of design”, but a line exists, nonetheless."

This is indeed a very fine distinction. The only difference I can see is that the second statement is a little less certain about its conclusion. Similar to the distinction between "a virus caused the disease" and "the disease is best explained as the result of viral activity".

Is there more to it than that?

Mark Frank
May 3, 2006
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Lurker: Is there a problem with dualism? Are you entirely serious about one’s meaning being determined from externals? I have no problem with dualism, however the materialists/naturalists do. I am serious about purpose coming from an external source. Can a tree decide it's goal in life is to become a baseball bat and then set out to do just that? I don't think so. If the laws of physics and chemistry are all we have in this universe then there is no difference between you, me and that tree. How can there be any difference? It seems pretty clear to me that the Darwinists believe that life in general did not come about via intent. If the first life form had no purpose, then so did the next, and the next, and the next, etc. Sure, you and I can create (make up) our own individual purpose, but ultimately there is no purpose for life existing in the first place. Your life is the product of a purposeless process. In other words you're an accident. Of course I'm not a Darwinist so I believe the first life form existed because someone or something wanted it to. You and I are not an accident which means we have a genuine purpose, not a made up purpose.Lurker
May 3, 2006
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Mr. Weissburg, In comment #15 you make the following statements.
ID seems to state that a deliberate, purposeful and intentional process determines properties of animals. this requires an intellegence to direct the course of evolution by specifying, in accordance with its particular desires, what animals will be like.
[...] no experiment or observation can either prove or disprove that a creative intellegence exists.
It is a common misconception among those unfamiliar with ID to think that it postulates a designing intelligence. ID theorists compare and contrast natural phenomena with effects produced by understood, defined intelligent agents and understood natural regularity sans intelligence and try to determine which offers the best causal account of whatever phenomenon is in question. There is a very fine line between saying "a designer did it" and saying "it is best explained as being the result of design", but a line exists, nonetheless.crandaddy
May 3, 2006
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Lurker: Is there a problem with dualism? Are you entirely serious about one's meaning being determined from externals?tinabrewer
May 3, 2006
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Marc,

It is the position you take which would have has us believe that DaVinci designed things, but DaVinci himself was not designed. I think you need to do a bit more research about the [lack of] power of Darwinian mechanisms in generating beneficial change and biological novelty. NS + RM has no creative power. As has been stated before, it's like answering the question "Why are the leaves on the tree?" with "Because the gardener forgot to prune the branches". Rather than make hand-waving statements about numerous experiments confirming "evolution's" power in producing design, let me encourage you to actually study the data in this regard. I think you'll be quite shocked. Familiarize yourself with the deleterious nature of random mutations, CSI (Complex Specified Information) and the 4 Nucleotide digital code enscribed along the spine of the DNA molecule and Irreducible Complexity.

I'd be particularly curious to hear how you explain phenomena like the flagellar motor assembly via Darwinian mechanisms. Not to mention all the other shuttle vehicles, turbines, pullies, clasps, rotary assemblies, digital code, transcription programs... I should probably stop there... that we find in the cell. Dizzying isn't it? It would be good to hear your views regarding the fossil record and it's discontinuity - the abrupt appearance of novel body plans... something which flies in the face of Darwinian gradualism.

Scott
May 3, 2006
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your original question was whether natural forces can be creative (fulfill a function)without requiring an intellegent designer. this lead to my argument that those animals that are better adapted (fulfill a function better) will survive without intervention from some higher power. nowehere do i suggest that purpose as you define it is sepatate from human intent-only that nature has no other intent; differential survival without further intent is sufficient to result in animals that appear designed conciously. in fact, you identify the fundamental problem-because you have intent and purpose, you assume that evolution (which creates the properties of animals) also has intent. do you really believe that your purpose is defined only by what others expect of you? i think that's sad, and denies one of our most cherished properties-our ability to think and decide. my parents left me lots of instructions-among them that i should try and discover for myself what my purpose is, by learning from and listening to many different sources.Marc Weissburg
May 3, 2006
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"i choose neither 1 nor 2. i can have a purpose even if nature does not." You can believe that if you want, but it goes counter to everything you know to be true. Give me an example of something with a purpose that hasn't been created by intent. A rock serves no purpose until intent is thrust upon it and it becomes a paperweight or a landscape decoration. You are that rock. But where does your intent - your purpose - come from? Since you and your mind are one (unless you’re a dualist) your purpose in life comes from your parents or somebody else external to you. Just like the rock can't assign a purpose to itself, neither can you assign your own purpose. I hope your parents left you instructions. Maybe they intended you to reject Darwinism and support ID or even religion??Lurker
May 3, 2006
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ID seems to state that a deliberate, purposeful and intentional process determines properties of animals. this requires an intellegence to direct the course of evolution by specifying, in accordance with its particular desires, what animals will be like. all of our scientific inquiries indicate this is not necessary to produce animals with their properties as given. the evidence comes from genetics (identifying how genes determine properties), development & biochemistry & physiology (examining how changes in genes, that result in different proceses can alter creatures), evolution, taxonomy & comparative biology (which indicates how different organisms can come to have different properties as a result of natural selection on the processes above). known mechanisms exist that can account for the changes that we see over the history of life, and which are sufficient to explain animal traits as they exist today. countless experiments and observations have verified that these mechanisms exist. no experiment has indicated that they do not. in contrast, no experiment or observation can either prove or disprove that a creative intellegence exists. i do not suggest that it doesn't, but only that natural laws are sufficient to account for what we see in the natural world. i therefore can't believe that evolution is the product of design by an outside and purposeful force.Marc Weissburg
May 3, 2006
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A question for you, Mr. Weissburg: What specifically causes you to reject ID?Patrick
May 3, 2006
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the mind attributes in accordance with what exists-if you see a particular function in nature, then which agent is responsible-the forces that caused the thing to exist or the thing which interprets it? do you create it, or ascribe a name to its function? plants use light energy to turn sunlight into sugar-do you create photosynthesis by defining the chemical reaction? your two choices are the result of an overly reductionist mind set-because your brain must obey the laws of physics, which are natural, then you can have no purpose unless nature has one as well. yet, you fail to explain why this must be so. i choose neither 1 nor 2. i can have a purpose even if nature does not.Marc Weissburg
May 3, 2006
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Marc, Nature can not be creative because creativity is a product of the mind. Since my mind says there are things that look created (with intent/purpose) and things that don't then I have two choices to consider: 1) It's all an illusion. Nothing in nature is done with intent/purpose including anything created by a human mind because humans are just molecules obeying the laws of chemistry and physics just like everything else in the physical world. 2) Some things are created with intent/purpose (like this sentence) and thus nature has purpose 'front loaded' into it from the very beginning. I'll take #2 for $500 please.Lurker
May 3, 2006
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its certainly slow, that's for sure. i don't really see this as a contest, and i wonder why you are disturbed that nature can be creative too? are you suggesting that admiting we can learn something from another source, like nature, diminishes human creativity? doesn't a clever and creative student learn from multiple sources? i always thought that we appreciated the genius of those taking their inspiration from new places; davinci comes to mind.Marc Weissburg
May 3, 2006
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According to Marc a mindless, non-telic, unguided process has more creative power than the human mind - it's just a little slower.Lurker
May 3, 2006
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as long as our goal is to analyze function (how a certain set of properties in animals work to acheive a function) we can understand biological solutions and how they may provide insights into human problems without necessarily being concerned with how they got those properties. so you're right-- this activity of our center has nothing to do with whether we accept evolution (which we do). we approach a research problem by trying to identify biological processes with similar constraints as in human engineered systems and hope to learn from them, which is in fact a design approach. i responded initially to posts suggesting it was a contradiction to use biological solutions in human designs, and also to accept evolution and not ID. evolution does result in functionality--in this respect, the end product is the same as in those who believe in ID; organisms are amazing systems that solve certain problems brilliantly. as long as organisms that do things the best are those that survive, then this process can be both unguided and result in things that look as if someone has designed them. the real question to me is whether natural laws (evolution) can explain this process without the need to invoke a higher conciousness (a creator or designer). much scientific evidence, experiments etc. indicate it can, and no evidence from science suggests it can't. nowhere would i suggest that this means there is no creator.Marc Weissburg
May 3, 2006
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Marc said "animals come by their properties as a result of evolution". This statement has absolutely nothing to do with what your center undertaking to do. It is no more than a mantra that is more likely to get in the way than anything else. How many times has research stalled because of this kind of thing along with the idea that the extinctions are nothing more than defective product recalls? Your center is doomed if it's members are intent on defending a bankrupt paradigm. I applaud you for recognizing the wonderful design solutions that are to be found in nature. Even if you can't bring yourself to question the validity of Darwinian Dogma, certainly you could only benefit from approaching things from a design perspective. This can't be how you really approach a research problem - "I see this amazing (system, feature, structure, etc.) that is the result of unguided processes". Of course not. You really anthropomorphize (?!) "Natural Selection" as though it was an intelligent designer anyway.jacktone
May 3, 2006
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of course. humans "engineer" things for a particular function based on what they consider to be the constraints of a system. natural selection and evolution result in animals with particular functions because they also are constrained by particular factors (limited energy, materials, certain environments etc). animals that do not perform these functions well will not survive. you use the words "engineer" and "design" to confuse functionality with intent . humans are "intellegent designers"-they have intent. evolution results in animal properties (a design) to fulfill specific functions without intent. because both processes result in a useful function, there is no contradiction in humans designing things based on principles derived from studying nature, while still believing that there is no "designer" in nature.Marc Weissburg
May 3, 2006
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I just read PARASITE REX by Carl Zimmer, and found several examples of parasites so ingeniously designed that scientists have only just started to analyze their tricks. In some cases, we don’t understand them at all. For example, let’s take hookworms. Hookworms live in the intestines, and can travel there by being swallowed as larvae. They can also get in the gut the hard way, by penetrating the skin (e.g. bare feet). They will then burrow into a capillary, swimming through the veins to the heart and lungs. When the host coughs, the larvae are carried up into the throat, where they can then make their way into the digestive tract. The adult hookworm has a mouth with very ugly, sharp teeth, used to tear into the lining of the intestines to feed on either blood or the gut itself. After the intestines are torn up, the blood at the wound site starts to clot, but clotting would prevent the hook worm from feeding. So what does the hookworm do? To quote Carl Zimmer, “The parasite responds with a sophistication biotechnologists can only ape. It releases molecules of its own that are precisely shaped to combine with different factors in the clotting cascade. By neutralizing them, the hookworm keeps the platelets from clumping and allows the blood to keep flowing into its mouth. Once a hookworm finishes feeding at one place, the vessels can recover and clot while the parasite moves on to a fresh bit of intestines. If the hookworm were to use some crude blood-thinner that flooded the intestines, it would turn its hosts into hemophiliacs who would quickly bleed to death and take away the hookworm’s meal. A biotechnology company has isolated these molecules and is now trying to turn them into anti-clotting drugs.” We humans have our very own hookworm species. (I think that dog hookworm larvae can penetrate our skin but cannot find their way into our intestines.) Hookworm infestations cause terrible suffering and saps people of their strength, and can prevent children from developing normally. According to the CDC, about 1/5 of the world’s population is infected with hookworms! Another interesting example of sophisticated design is found in the tiny parasitic flatworms called blood flukes. Blood flukes have a rather complex life cycle, parasitizing snails and then humans, causing terrible diseases and suffering. To quote Carl Zimmer again, “Blood flukes can steal substances out of our own blood to camouflage themselves from the immune system, but no one has figured out how they do it.” He goes on to explain how the discovery might lead to the solving the problem of transplanted organ rejection. Now, both the blood clotting cascade and the immune system are considered by ID theorists to be products of design. So if tiny parasitic creatures are able to “crack” these systems in ways we can barely understand, does that mean there are multiple designers? For more info on parasites, please see www.cdc.gov, or read PARASITE REX by Carl Zimmer. It's quite a disturbing book. Whenever I leave the house now, I gargle with clorox and put on a hazmat suit!Karen
May 3, 2006
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I am involved in this center. Let me clear up some misconceptions. The word "design" focuses on the technological applications. The goal is to understand how organisms may solve a particular challenge in their environment and use these potential solutions to solve similar problems in human-built systems. Velcro is a classic case of biologically inspired design. We attribute no intent to animal designs beyond that required by natural selection; animals solve challenges in order to survive, not because there is an intellegent designer. In that respect, the catty description of our activities is accurate; animals come by their properties as a result of evolution, and this can result in potential solutions that can be reverse engineered in some sense into processes or products that are more efficient, sustainable or smarter than what we can currently achieve. Spider silk has greater tensile strength than almost all of our human-designed composite materials, it is water-proof and constructed at room temperature with organic components. Marine organisms secrete adhesives that have greater bonding strength than any glue we manufacure, and anneal at low temperatures in the presence of water. Plants have nanostructure that prevents water from sticking to their surface-they are self cleaning. Organisms propel themselves differently and more efficiently through the air and underwater than our vehicles, taking advantage of fluid dynamic forces in ways that we do not fully understand (and where our understanding has come primarily from analysis of these biological mechanisms). Plants harvest light with an efficiency at least 10x greater than solar cells. Animals create colored materials that do not fade and contain no toxic metals that are found in nearly all pigments we make. Such principles have been incorporated into the display you may be reading this on. The earth is a 3.8 billion year old laboratory where 99% of the "products" have been recalled in favor of more efficient solutions. This is evolution in action, and we would be foolish not to seek to understand these principles and incorporate them into human-built systems.

So you're basically reverse engineering things that weren't engineered. Oooooooooooooooooookay. Whatever! :roll: -ds Marc Weissburg
May 3, 2006
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I think PZ Myers should find it assbackwards that the smartest, most evolved species on the planet has to look to lower, less evolved species in order to learn something about design. It's kinda like a college professor asking a 1st grader how to design a car.Lurker
May 2, 2006
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In a search for truth one must follow the evidence wherever it leads. If, given the evidence from various areas of science and philosophical reasoning, the best possible explanation is design...then that is the explanation that should be accepted no matter how it makes anyone "feel". Professionals who study this are the ones who are truly searching for truth. They consider all the possibilities and accept the best of all possible explanations, without ruling out possible explanations because of a materialistic or naturalistic bias.Franz Bernstein
May 2, 2006
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Of course the idea of looking at nature for design solutions is not new, but an institute of higher learning actually studying the design in nature sure smacks of heresy! Where's P.Z. on this? He ought to be calling for all of their heads! Not to mention the denial of tenure of anyone who is up for it down there.jacktone
May 2, 2006
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What if they're unable to design a human counterpart for some of these things (if our current level of technology would render it impossible that is)? Do you think they'd still feel the same way>?IDEA_AASU
May 2, 2006
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Not only that, but it's clearly a move by the Religious Right to inject religion in science labs. Yes, since the word "design" clearly means "creationism", just like "critical analysis" mean "creationism".Mats
May 2, 2006
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