Guest Post, Dr YS: “Intelligent Design and arguments against it”

_{kairosfocus

November 12, 2019

Defending our Civilization, Intelligent Design, rhetoric, specified complexity}

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Dr YS, contribtes thoughts again that are well worth pondering:

>>I’d like to present a summary of the arguments against the design hypothesis that I have come across either as a reader or as an author of a pro-design blog over the past 8 years since I became interested in intelligent design.

The Design Hypothesis

Before we do it, let us first recap on what the design hypothesis really is. It states that some configurations of matter in specific conditions are best explained as caused by purposeful activity of one or more intelligent agents.

The ‘specific conditions’ means that we could not directly observe how these configurations of matter came into being and can only analyse them post-factum.
‘Intelligence’ in this context means the capabilities of foresight, goal-setting, strategy planning and strategy realization. Put simply, it is the capability of using adequate means for a purpose.
The ‘purpose’ corresponds to selecting a goal state from among physically or chemically equivalent states (states with minimal total potential energy). Selection is done on a non-physical basis (pragmatic utility).
- E.g. muckers is a game in which players take turns throwing rings from a distance at a vertically positioned pole on a horizontal playing ground. A player who throws a ring so that it lands at the pole, receives one point. The player getting a maximum score wins. The scoring aside, no matter how you throw a ring or where it lands on the playing field, it ends up in a position where its potential energy is at a minimum value. The ‘meaning’ to each toss that distinguishes a trajectory from among a set of possible trajectories, is assigned by imposing additional (symbolic) constraints specifying the ‘target’ area for a trajectory. The additional constraints are local to the particular physical system (the ring + gravity + the pole).
‘Best’ means the ‘most appropriate’, ‘most parsimonious’ or even ‘characterized by the highest probability’, depending on the context.
‘Design’ means either the process of purposeful activity or an outcome of it.
- E.g. a personal computer is a design whereas pebbles on the beach are most likely not. It is possible that pebbles themselves or their particular arrangements can be a design. However, methodologically, it is best to assume they are not unless we have more observations that can help further refine our design-inferential probabilistic model.

Importantly, not every cause in nature is intelligent. For example, gravity is not an intelligent type of causation whereas creating a deck of Microsoft PowerPoint slides, most probably, is. If we have observations that can throw a reasonable doubt on non-intelligence of gravity, for example, we will further refine our understanding of material reality. In the absence of such observations these doubts are not scientifically justified.

The effects of intelligent and non-intelligent causes are sometimes different also. Analyzing this difference is what Intelligent Design is all about. Based on an analysis of some special class of artifacts we can reliably tell if we are dealing with designs. In other cases, it is not possible to distinguish designs from non-designs post-factum, without additional information.

It is important to distinguish between intelligent and non-intelligent causation because this distinction helps us categorize our knowledge of the material world better and, consequently, propose better scientific explanations. The distinction is well supported empirically and, without it, it is not possible to adequately explain a whole class of observations. For example, treating this text as a random collection of differently colored pixels on the screen is a valid scientific model but I doubt it has any practical use as it adds virtually nothing new to our knowledge of the world.

The design hypothesis can be useful in a lot of contexts, such as archaeology and forensics. It adds a lot of insight when applied to biological systems. It is not generally disputed that the ID methodology is sound. At least, I have never encountered anyone who would seriously question the design detection methodology in relation to forensics, archaeology, medicine or cyber-intrusion detection, for instance. The only area of application where ID faces strong opposition is biology. Science has nothing to do with it.

The scientific agenda of Intelligent Design is non-trivial as the main design hypothesis leads to interesting research questions. Intuitively, when we assume that a particular configuration of matter is intelligently created we can reverse-engineer it and then reuse our findings elsewhere. This is done in bionics, for example. ID can lead to non-trivial testable secondary hypotheses in biology per se, as this article shows.

The design detection methodology is summarized by the following abductive inference:

1. We observe phenomenon Р.

2. Р could be explained if hypothesis Н was true.

3. Consequently, we have grounds to believe that H is true.

Examples of P:

– the semiotic triple {sign-interpretant-referent}, notably persistent self-reproducing semiotic triple as in biological systems;

– statistically significant levels of functional complexity.

The basis of abduction in relation to P in the biosphere:

– In all observations other than in biological systems, whose origins are in question, P is a correlate of intelligence. No observations exist where P would arise ab initio without intelligent agency.

I specifically stress that the presented reasoning is nowhere near circular.

Having said this, I will now present arguments against ID that I have encountered. I am not intending to ridicule the reasoning of ID opponents. Simply, in my experience, this is the best they can really offer. In the list below, I will put my comments next to each bullet point.

Popular arguments against Intelligent Design

#	Argument against ID	Comment
1	ID is based entirely on Fisherian hypothesis testing. Instead of ruling out any hypothesis entirely, it would have been better to keep all relevant hypotheses on the table because, as we collect observations, different hypotheses can really change their relative importance.	Statistical hypothesis testing is an established practical method of assessing scientific hypotheses. ID-opponents are welcome to come up with a better model, if they wish so.
2	Who designed the Designer? (=Who painted the painter?)	The point of this argument is to demonstrate that ID reasoning is either circular or suffers from infinite regress. Neither is true.
3	What are the properties of the Designer of life?	The Designer of life is intelligent: capable of forethought and planning, decision making and strategy implementation. The scale and grandeur of the design of life suggests that the capabilities of the Designer are matching the task. The Designer of life must have had the linguistic capacity since life is inherently linguistic. The only real problem I can see here is complexity because, by the same argument as presented in this OP, the Designer of life should be very complex (perhaps, infinitely complex). My personal take on this, is that the complexity argument does not apply the way the ID opponents want to use it: our consciousness is simple and yet we create complex artifacts. In any case, we just have no other data than human artifacts and life. Perhaps, the AI singularity, if it happens at all, when it does happen, will provide more data to refine our understanding of the complexity issue.
4	We have insufficient data to classify life with respect to design.	It is the purpose of science to extrapolate our knowledge onto something that has not been observed yet and to make predictions. The workflow is as usual: from observations through analysis to prediction. As more observations become available, predictions are corrected appropriately.
5	How the Designer of life created it?	By instantiating a persistent self-reproducing semiotic core into physicality.
6	I could have done it better. Therefore it is not a design.	An example of flawed reasoning. A poor design is still a design. On the other hand, examples of alleged ‘bad designs’ are simply misunderstandings. People are not taking into consideration the fact that organisms are a result of multicriteria optimization. What appears to be a poor choice is really a compromise between different conflicting objectives.
7	Believing in the design of life is the same as believing that the Earth is flat.	A rhetorical device aimed at discrediting the opponents by association. It has no real scientific value.
8	Information is in your head.	This extreme view denies the objectivity of information processing. It does not take into account the fact that the genetic information translation apparatus installed in all organisms predates humans and is part of objective reality. Questioning the objectivity of information translation phenomenon is equivalent to questioning science itself.
9	A river flowing around stones sends information to and receives information from them.	This view is the opposite extreme. It does not take into account the fact that it is meaningful to speak about information only where there is information translation. Natural phenomena (apart from organisms and human artifacts) do not involve information translation.
10	The cycle of star formation follows an algorithm.	Spotting natural regularity can be formalized as an algorithm. However, regularity itself is NOT an algorithm. An algorithm is a set of coherent instructions that must explicitly be present in memory, read from it and be processed in order for the system to achieve a goal state. In most cases, to achieve a pragmatic purpose an algorithm should be a set of instructions such that the processor eventually stops and produces a result.
11	Everything can be coded with 1 bit.	That one is a best-seller. The answer is, obviously, yes, if you have previously established all the information context for it. It is the establishment of the context that involves all the remaining complexity…
12	The design hypothesis is circular.	Simply wrong. In the above, there is no circularity at all.
13	DNA is not code. The notion of code is ephemeral and subjective.	DNA/RNA carry instructions that are interpreted by the cell in the context of protein synthesis. The genetic code is the set of rules used by living cells to translate information encoded within genetic material (DNA or mRNA sequences) into proteins. Translation is accomplished by the ribosome, which links amino acids in an order specified by messenger RNA (mRNA), using transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules to carry amino acids and to read the mRNA three nucleotides at a time.
14	Replication of crystals and replication of organisms are essentially the same.	A categorical error. They are not the same. Matrix copying (similar to crystal copying) is part of replication of organisms, but it is only part of it. Replication of living things requires a symbolic memory to store genetic instructions, a mechanism of retrieval and interpretation of those instructions together with a mechanism of interpretation of instructions to replicate the interpreter. Nowhere near replication of crystals.
15	Crystallisation is an example of self-organisation.	A categorical error. Organization relates to function, not order. Order is routinely observed in nature as a result of the tendency of system dynamics towards states with minimum total potential energy. This is fundamentally different from organization. Organization involves a non-uniform (irregular) functional whole where function is understood in terms of pragmatic utility. Regular structures like crystals can be used as part of functional systems but, by themselves, neither crystals nor any other naturally occurring regular structures can produce a non-trivial functional whole. Organization imposes specific (e.g. symbolic) constraints on the dynamics of matter in the system. ‘No specific constraints’ means ‘no function’ means ‘no organization’.
16	Everything in nature is self-organized just like sand gets sorted by centrifugal forces on river banks.	The same categorical error as above equating the motion of matter towards states of minimum total potential energy to functional organization that produces pragmatic utility.
17	Semiotics is demagoguery.	Another bestseller argument.
18	Semiotic effects are reducible to the laws of nature.	Including this OP? Are there laws of nature that can predict someone writing this OP?!
19	Abduction is fiction, Charles Peirce’s idiosyncrasy.	Again, a wonderful counter-argument indeed. It misses a whole history of discoveries and scientific advances based on the seminal ideas of Charles Peirce.
20	Lots of vastly different things appeared in ‘every which way’ in the past. Life is just what happened to prevail.	An ‘interesting’ thought. And a very specific one, too.
21	Science knows a single type of intelligence, that is, one correlated with a protein-based body/brain. Consequently, a hypothetical statement about intelligence outside of a protein body/brain is nonsense.	There is a killer counter-example for it, i.e. silicon-based artificial intelligence. The counter-example demonstrates that intelligence can function and multiply outside of protein bodies.
22	— Gravity is all that is necessary for our world to appear. — And where did gravity come from? — M-theory.	A categorical error conflating reality with our mental models of it. It lacks coherence and misses the point of organization completely. This argument is due to Stephen Hawking [paraphrased]. See J. Lennox, “God and Stephen Hawking: Whose design is it anyway?”

Again, food for rich thought. END

Comments

UB, a sobering summary. Objectors need to answer, and also to my 41 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/guest-post-dr-ys-intelligent-design-and-arguments-against-it/#comment-687761 KFkairosfocus_{November 17, 2019
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. With nothing meaningful to say, the ID critics on this thread dragged the bottom of the bucket once again; complaining that ES could not use human-made intelligent artifacts as a marker of design, because (in their words):
…if the only thing that gives rise to P is human intervention, then human intervention must have given rise to P. So living systems (including humans) must have come about through human intervention.
Snappy logic, isn’t it? It was then followed by:
”If something reminds you of things that humans create, then the only reasonable inference is that humans created it. Widening the inference to “intelligent being” is an obvious creationist tactic to include their god in the basket.”
This tag-team of logical insight was provided by Bob and PK in comments #19 and #21. Then in comment #26, their "objections" were gutted and put into proper perspective:

Widening the inference to “intelligent being” is an obvious creationist tactic”
Is it? Perhaps you’ve heard of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. It is a well-known project that searches for unknown intelligence by using an operational definition (of “intelligence”) to produce valid results. Lori Marino PhD (SETI/NASA Virtual Resource Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry into Intelligent Life) explains SETI’s approach to the concept of intelligence: ”There is no consensus on a strict definition of intelligence, and there likely never will be because intelligence is what is known as a fuzzy concept; it lacks well-defined boundaries and contains multiple components.? However, the study of intelligence lies firmly in the domain of empirical science because its features can be operationally defined and its correlates can be quantified and measured.” In the SETI project, intelligence is operationally defined by a specific physical capacity. That physical capacity is “the capacity to transmit a narrow-band radio signal detectable from earth”. This definition is derived from our universal experience that narrow-band radio signals are not produced by natural causes, but are the unambiguous product of intelligence. A clear distinction is therefore made between those things that can be explained by natural unguided causes and those things that are a measurable consequence of intelligent action. SETI explains: ”Narrow-band signals – perhaps only a few Hertz wide or less – are the mark of a purposely built transmitter. Natural cosmic noisemakers, such as pulsars, quasars, and the turbulent, thin interstellar gas of our own Milky Way, do not make radio signals that are this narrow.” This methodology is explicitly endorsed by NASA, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the British Royal Society, and university science departments around the world (you know, all those creationist strongholds). And like SETI, design advocates already have a completely measurable correlate of intelligence to derive an operational definition – that is, the multi-referent symbol system found in language, and also found in protein synthesis – which was not only predicted to exist prior to its discovery, but has been subsequently measured and recorded in the scientific literature (starting about 50 years ago).
You might ask: What was their response to this undeniable, well-documented truth of the matter? Answer: Absolutely nothing, of course. Nothing whatsoever. In comment #38, PK returned without missing a beat, continuing on as if nothing had been said. In other words, he responded to documented reality by simply ignoring it. Then in comment #43, Bob returned to double-down for himself, suggesting that one cannot infer a non-human intelligence unless one first has independent knowledge of that non-human intelligence – again, he merely proceeds as if nothing whatsoever had been said. They both simply ignored the actual reality of the matter. This is standard fare for internet critics on UD and elsewhere. To understand their game in as few words as possible: they don’t care, and it doesn’t matter. The notion that their objections stem from logic and reason is laughable.Upright BiPed_{November 16, 2019
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The following is something that I have written about couple times before, on other threads, which I think is worth is repeating here, again.
The origin of life is like the origin of the universe. It appears to be a singular, non-repeating, highly improbable event which occurred very early in earth’s history. Furthermore, all the clues of how and why it occurred have been lost. But then added to that problem are other problems: how does chemistry create code? What is required to create an autonomously self-replicating system which has the possibility of evolving into something more complex? The naturalist/ materialist then compounds the problem by demanding a priori that the origin of life must be completely natural-- undirected without an intelligent plan or purpose. That seems like it was a miracle… Well, maybe it was. But a completely “naturalistic miracle” seems to be an absurd self-defeating claim for the naturalist/materialist to make. One of my pipe dreams as a real life (now retired) machine designer is to design a self-replicating machine or automata-- the kind that was first envisioned by mathematician John von Neumann. My vision is not a machine that could replicate itself from already existing parts but a machine-- well actually a system of “symbiotic” machines-- which could replicate themselves from raw material they would find on a rocky planet in some distant star system. One practical advantage of such machines is they could be sent out in advance some far-in-the-distant-future expedition to terraform a suitable planet in another star system preparing it for colonist who might arrive centuries or millennia later. By analogy, that is what the first living cells which originated on the early earth had to do. Even the simplest prokaryote cell is on the sub-cellular level a collection of machines networked together to replicate the whole system. To suggest that somehow the first cell emerged by some fortuitous accident is betray an ignorance how really complex primitive cells are. Try thinking this through on a more macro level, as I have described above, and I think you will begin to appreciate how really daunting the problem is.
https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/is-ool-part-of-darwinian-evolution/#comment-634766 The whole thread by Eric Andersen, is not very long and IMO is worth reading. Notice how quickly our regular interlocutors bailed out of the discussion. But at least some of them weighted in.john_a_designer_{November 16, 2019
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MS & ET, pointless tangent. Kindly stop. KF PS: It is highly significant to see the reactions and rhetorical stunts that evade the absolutely serious issues being posed. Given UD's status as always under extremely hostile scrutiny, you can take it to the bank that YS has hit home hard with his argument.kairosfocus_{November 15, 2019
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You want a retired marine biologist named Sharon to pardon you?ET_{November 15, 2019
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Pardon me. Retired Marine Biologist named Sharon.MatSpirit_{November 15, 2019
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Matspirit:
Don’t forget when you were a Marine Biologist named Sharon.
Only in the minds of willfully ignorant and desperate trolls. :razz:ET_{November 15, 2019
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ET: "The Statue of Liberty was closed on September 11, 2001. It reopened to visitors in August of 2004. In July of 2004 I was given a personal, private tour of the Lady by a Colonel of the NY State Troopers. I got to look out at the hundreds of people looking up and wishing they were me that day. And then there was that meeting with the top General of the Egyptian Army to discuss secure communications from their bases to their satellite. Or going deep inside Saudi Navy headquarters to install encryption on their land to sea missile communications. Or working with Ericsson in Norway on secure comms for the Patriot missile system deployed in the Mideast. Or perhaps those two weeks in Kuwait and Iraq, right there, in the triangle, helping save lives. Don’t get me started on the two tours to Colombia." Don't forget when you were a Marine Biologist named Sharon.MatSpirit_{November 15, 2019
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The problem that is in front of naturalists is gigantic: to explain how the first ever interdependent triple of configurations of matter came into being in the world where this triple was nowhere else to be found. This triple is, the sign (token), the interpretant and the referent. Where did the first ever instruction and a processor that could execute it, come from? Neither the instruction nor the processor has any sense one without the other, and both of them need the middle bit, i.e. the agreed protocol, in order to function together as a unified whole. In the naturalist's kit there are simply no adequate tools for the task. There are not many people amongst ardent internet defenders of naturalism who really understand what the problem is, unfortunately.EugeneS_{November 15, 2019
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A testimonial of a school teacher in Russia (I think the trend is really global). Twenty years ago I would ask my class a question and leave them with books to find an answer to it. I was sure that they would have found it when I returned. Ten years ago the top 5% of the class could not use the book but surfed the internet to find the answer. Now the top 5% of the class cannot even surf the internet but they fail to find it if google does not have a link to it. The problem is, children can no longer use a book even if it is there on the table. They can't find in the book what they are after. The general public are satisfied with really stupid answers to who are we, how did we come about, what is the meaning in life. That is the aftermath of Darwinist rule in society.EugeneS_{November 15, 2019
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One of the so-called icons of irreducible complexity (IC) is the bacterium flagellum. However, there other perhaps even better examples of IC. In my opinion, prokaryote DNA replication is a far more daunting problem for the Darwinist. However, instead of one molecular machine, like the flagellum, you have several interacting machines acting in a coordinated manner. This still fits Behe’s definition of IC as being “a single system which is composed of several interacting parts, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to cease functioning.” For example, to start replication in prokaryote DNA you need an initiation enzyme which creates a replication bubble where another enzyme called helicase attaches itself and begins, like a zipper, to unbind the two complimentary strands of DNA double helix. Another enzyme called primase creates another starting point (a primer) on both of the separated strands known as the 5’ and 3’ or leading and lagging strands. DNA polymerase III uses this primer-- actually a short strand of RNA-- and adds the complementary nucleobases (A to T, T to A, C to G, G to C) to the single parent strand. In a nutshell, helicase divides one double stranded DNA helix into two single “parent” or template stands to which complimentary nucleotides are added by pol III and the result is two identical double stranded DNA helixes. Of course, it is somewhat more complicated than that. (Please watch the first video below.) For example, as helicase unbinds the two strands of the double helix, which are wrapped around each other to begin with, there is a tendency for tangling to occur as a result of the process. Another enzyme called gyrase (or topoisomerase II) is needed to prevent this tangling from occurring. Another problem is that the bases for the lagging strand must added discontinuously which results in short segments know as Okazaki fragments. These fragments must eventually be joined back together by an enzyme known as ligase. (We could also discuss error correction which is another part of the replication process.) Here are a few videos which describe the process in more detail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3v04spjnEg&t=2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bePPQpoVUpM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ha9nppnwOc While it’s true that the flagellum is irreducibly complex it is not essential for life itself. There are a number of single celled organism that exist without flagella. However, life cannot exist without DNA replication (nor transcription, translation etc.) Furthermore, with DNA replication the Darwinist cannot kick the can down the road any further. DNA replication in prokaryotes is as far as you can go and then you are confronted with the proverbial chicken or egg problem. DNA is necessary to create the proteins which are used in its own replication. For example, the helicase which is absolutely essential for DNA replication is specified in the DNA code which it replicates. How did that even get started? Maybe one of our know-it-all interlocutors can tell us. The problem with the Darwinian approach is not scientific; it is philosophical. The people committed to this approach believe in it because they believe that natural causes are the ultimate explanation for their existence. However, science has not proven such a world view to be true. (That’s not something science can do.) So ironically, whatever they believe, they believe it by faith.john_a_designer_{November 15, 2019
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From a different and well forgotten thread: The best arguments against ID are delivered by evolutionary biologists working in the Institute for Protein Design. ... Our flat earth theory is quickly gaining supporters around the globe. I think I must have said that already a while ago, but a lot of our problems are to do with a lack of classical education. I have live journal friends who sometimes smile at something I, as an engineer, put forward as a question. University education should really include heavy philosophy stuff even for engineering students, if we really want them to start thinking. Many of our opponents' philosophical conundrums which as they think give them reason to dismiss design are like childish pranks compared to questions that great minds of the past were dealing with. Miller, Dawkins, and others are just poor philosophers and are only popular because the overall level of classical education globally is miserable. Answers for those who are looking for them are already out there in the Scripture and in the Ecclesiastical Tradition (particularly, in the writings of the fathers). Can people like Dawkins or Hawking say anything new?! Gravity out of M-theory... Pathetic.EugeneS_{November 15, 2019
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Astronomy? Read "the Privileged Planet"- astronomy is in ID's arsenal, too.ET_{November 15, 2019
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@Pater: don't forget astronomy. That's def one they could have used. :-PDerekDiMarco_{November 15, 2019
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Umm, physics, chemistry, and biology all provide evidence for and support Intelligent Design.ET_{November 15, 2019
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@DerekDiMarco #105 Derek said "Pater, there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in the creationists’ philosophy." Indeed. Like physics, chemistry, biology, archaeology, paleontology, .....Pater Kimbridge_{November 15, 2019
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Derek, In USSR every scientific publication even in particle physics needed to quote the decisions of the previous Communist Party Congress. It does not mean that it is the Marxist ideology that got us first into space.EugeneS_{November 15, 2019
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Bob Surely there is more that just one paper. I thought you would know what it takes to falsify a general statement.EugeneS_{November 15, 2019
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Derek:
Sure, biologists publish like 1300 research papers every day, because they’re unscientific atheist losers.
And not one supports the claims of blind watchmaker evolution. You must be proud to be an equivocating coward.ET_{November 15, 2019
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Bob: "There doesn’t seem to be any science being done to advance a research agenda to explain intelligent design." Sure, biologists publish like 1300 research papers every day, because they're unscientific atheist losers. Real Science is writing repetitive manifestoes and bible verses.DerekDiMarco_{November 15, 2019
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BO'H: It seems you are still in ignorance on the actual publication record. Pardon a chunck, which is up to 3 years ago, it was pointelss to keep going:
BIBLIOGRAPHIC AND ANNOTATED LIST OF PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS SUPPORTING INTELLIGENT DESIGN UPDATED MARCH, 2017 PART I: INTRODUCTION While intelligent design (ID) research is a new scientific field, recent years have been a period of encouraging growth, producing a strong record of peer-reviewed scientific publications. In 2011, the ID movement counted its 50th peer-reviewed scientific paper and new publications continue to appear. As of 2015, the peer-reviewed scientific publication count had reached 90. Many of these papers are recent, published since 2004, when Discovery Institute senior fellow Stephen Meyer published a groundbreaking paper advocating ID in the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. There are multiple hubs of ID-related research. Biologic Institute, led by molecular biologist Doug Axe, is "developing and testing the scientific case for intelligent design in biology." Biologic conducts laboratory and theoretical research on the origin and role of information in biology, the fine-tuning of the universe for life, and methods of detecting design in nature. Another ID research group is the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, founded by senior Discovery Institute fellow William Dembski along with Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University. Their lab has attracted graduate-student researchers and published multiple peer-reviewed articles in technical science and engineering journals showing that computer programming ”points to the need for an ultimate information source qua intelligent designer." Other pro-ID scientists around the world are publishing peer-reviewed pro-ID scientific papers. These include biologist Ralph Seelke at the University of Wisconsin Superior, Wolf-Ekkehard Lonnig who recently retired from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Germany, and Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe. These and other labs and researchers have published their work in a variety of appropriate technical venues, including peer-reviewed scientific journals, peer-reviewed scientific books (some published by mainstream university presses), trade-press books, peer-edited scientific anthologies, peer-edited scientific conference proceedings and peer-reviewed philosophy of science journals and books. These papers have appeared in scientific journals such as Protein Science, Journal of Molecular Biology, Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, Complexity, Quarterly Review of Biology, Cell Biology International, Physics Essays, Rivista di Biologia / Biology Forum, Physics of Life Reviews, Quarterly Review of Biology, Journal of Bacteriology , Annual Review of Genetics, and many others. At the same time, pro-ID scientists have presented their research at conferences worldwide in fields such as genetics, biochemistry, engineering, and computer science. Collectively, this body of research is converging on a consensus: complex biological features cannot arise by unguided Darwinian mechanisms, but require an intelligent cause. Despite ID’s publication record, we note parenthetically that recognition in peer-reviewed literature is not an absolute requirement to demonstrate an idea’s scientific merit. Darwin’s own theory of evolution was first published in a book for a general and scientific audience -- his Origin of Species -- not in a peer-reviewed paper. Nonetheless, ID’s peer-reviewed publication record shows that it deserves -- and is receiving -- serious consideration by the scientific community. The purpose of ID’s budding research program is thus to engage open-minded scientists and thoughtful laypersons with credible, persuasive, peer-reviewed, empirical data supporting intelligent design. And this is happening. ID has already gained the kind of scientific recognition you would expect from a young (and vastly underfunded) but promising scientific field . . .
KFkairosfocus_{November 15, 2019
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Bob O'H:
But if you only have one paper (which is a commentary) from over a decade ago and no follow-up, your sciencing has failed.
Your opinion is meaningless and your side doesn't even have that, loser.ET_{November 15, 2019
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Reapers:
Those who have truly done great deeds don’t feel the need to tell others.
Except when called out by a pathological liar and lowlife coward, as I was. Why don't you TRY to follow along? That seems to be a problem with you. Apologies kairosfocus. But I had to set the record straight.ET_{November 15, 2019
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EugeneS @ 95 - (don't worry, this is nothing to do with beavers) But if you only have one paper (which is a commentary) from over a decade ago and no follow-up, your sciencing has failed. There isn't a research programme - no hypotheses are being tested, no experiments are being done, no theory is being developed. There doesn't seem to be any science being done to advance a research agenda to explain intelligent design.Bob O'H_{November 15, 2019
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F/N: a distraction above is Beaver didit. The design inference is that twerdun. That is, on evidence, design as process is the best explanation. Whodunit is an onward question and it is irrelevant to focal purposes to go off on red herring tangents over Beavers, Amerindians with stone axes and the like. That opened up strawman caricatures, ad hominems and atmosphere poisoning. Fallacious, a trifecta of fallacies. KFkairosfocus_{November 15, 2019
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RP, BTW, a silly put-down like that shows first that you do not understand the significance of history, and in a context where credibility kills have been attempted, such a summary is appropriate. The notion that in today's age of agit prop lynch mobs a dignified silence is a good response is dead, killed by the lawfare of kangaroo courts and linked media circuses . . . as we have seen so many times in recent years and currently . . . driven by dishonest quacks posing as journalists and bought and paid for "experts" playing at Alinksky's version of Hitler's tactics of big lies, turnabout accusations, scapegoating, piling on, guilt by oft-repeated accusation, strawman caricature twisting,locking out material but inconvenient factors, sheer rudeness, outright gaslighting and the like. Though I do note Paul's famous I feel like a fool to be forced to stoop to listing accomplishments and sacrifices. Fools who attack the man and deliberately poison the well and the atmosphere. The well we just may all have to drink from. Years ago I outlined the tactical pattern: distractive red herrings dragged away to strawman caricatures soaked in ad hominems and set alight to cloud, poison, confuse and polarise the atmosphere, to frustrate sound discussion that goes towards inconvenient and unwelcome truth. Where, we know whose native language is lies and what an out of control hellish blaze can be set by a spark of deceit or accusation. So, just stop. KFkairosfocus_{November 15, 2019
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PK, 103:
Hydrogen + gravity forms stars without any guidance. Stars form heavier elements without any planning. Atoms form molecules which form organic molecules, even in intersteller space, without any planning. Any time a subunit forms, it has the potential to combine with other subunits to form a larger unit higher up on a hierarchy. Sure, life is more complex and take more time to form, but the principle of hierarchies forming in nature is pretty ubiquitous.
A capital example of argument by ideologically loaded assertion that ignores highly relevant and accessible context. Here, the astonishing fine tuning of the cosmology required to sustain a cosmos that forms stars etc and sets up C-Chemistry, aqueous medium terrestrial planet cell based life. Further, it ignores the information-rich complex coherent organisation required for such life and the only empirically warranted causal source for such FSCO/I, intelligently directed configuration. Where, the config space challenge set by a string of just 500 - 1,000 y/n choices overwhelms the blind search resources of the sol system up to the observed cosmos, by way of making a blind search maximally unlikely to find shorelines of function for hill climbing because the search to space ratio impliues effectively, negligible search. Where, as search is a sample from a set, the space of possible searches for n bits is 2^n in scale, an exponentially harder search challenge so the search for a golden search is far harder. The FSCO/I challenge is real and will not go away; where Newton was right to say that in explaining what we did not directly observe we are only warranted to explain on causal factors seen to produce the like effect. I challenge you to read and respond to, say, Luke Barnes, here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1112.4647.pdf Just for starters. If something was impressive enough to catch and hold the attention of a Hoyle (just for one), that should give pause before making breezy assertions as I just highlighted. KFkairosfocus_{November 15, 2019
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ET and EG, also RP, kindly cut back on insults and vulgarities [EG & RP, I am looking at you]. I have little time to monitor-- this being a most inconvenient week -- but will take steps to deal with what I find. And no, I do not accept immoral equivalency and derived demands. Just stop, now. KFkairosfocus_{November 15, 2019
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Those who have truly done great deeds don’t feel the need to tell others.
Hahaha!! That’s going to leave a mark. :)Ed George_{November 14, 2019
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Those who have truly done great deeds don’t feel the need to tell others.Reapers Plague_{November 14, 2019
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