In mid-2021, Jonathan Bartlett wrote this piece at Mind Matters News. Worth repeating:
Widespread confusion about Intelligent Design leads us to address the question: What exactly is it?
Intelligent Design, at its core, says that agency is a distinct causal category in the world. That is, when I code a computer program, write a book, invent a formula, write a poem, etc., I am doing something that is distinctively beyond the operation of pure physics. There is something distinct about the way that causation works for beings with minds compared to how it works for beings without minds. This might sound like an abstract philosophical concept, but it actually has pretty radical (and practical) results.
The business applications of Intelligent Design were put forth by Peter Thiel in his book Zero to One. There, specifically invoking Intelligent Design theory, he demonstrated what sets apart businesses that move markets — they generate new truths that are not algorithmically deducible. Thiel shows that the mind has unique powers which are not reducible to mechanism, and that by focusing our efforts in the direction that our minds are specially built for allows us to create more economic prosperity… More.
My understanding of ID is as follows:
I something is “designed,” then every feature had, has, or could have a functional purpose under greatly varying environmental conditions.
-Q
Yes, agency is crucial, and it is reasonable to examine the question of signs of cause by intelligently directed configuration. The needless but oh so convenient confusion is an intentional result of a dirty agit prop and lawfare campaign tracing to known sources. It is an example of . . . detection of design on reliable signs.
Awareness is the exclusive sign of ID. If an atheist is aware that is a sign of theism .
😉
It’s been 25+ years since the Discovery Institute started the “Center for Science and Culture” and IDers are still trying to define and/or describe “Intelligent Design.” Agency, awareness, functional purpose, blah, blah blah.
It’s truly unbelievable that anyone takes ID seriously……
Semi OT
CD at 4,
It’s truly unbelievable that some people take Evolution seriously.
Relatd
Unlike intelligent design, evolution has a standard definition:
Rule number one in science: Operationally define your terms. “Measurable ” is the key feature of this definition.
Intelligent design doesn’t even come close…….
CD at 7,
You’ve got nothing. At this moment, scientists are working on smaller and smaller components for computer chips and looking for alternatives to current types of memory storage. IBM is selling quantum computers.
Eventually, it is hoped, devices will be designed at atomic scale. I watched a video showing a projection of an atomic scale computer. The prototype device, which does not yet exist, was a cube measuring six inches on a side. A screen on top would lift up.
Origin of Life researchers claim they can reduce a living cell to its chemical components – non-living chemicals. So far, they have been unable to create a cell from these inorganic chemicals. They cannot produce a so-called minimal cell without borrowing components from actual living cells.
Should atomic scale assembly equipment become available, engineers could scan a cell, program in the information to a device called an assembler, and a cell should be the end result. Duplicating a machine with a machine. However, this would be 100% Intelligent Design. There is no evidence that nature, on its own, can do something like this, just an ardent wish.
Relatd
You must have slept through genetics class, assuming you took it. Or even freshman biology:
(https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/cells-can-replicate-their-dna-precisely-6524830/)
And as a point of clarification (for the umpteenth time), do you see any reference to “origin of life” anywhere in the definition of evolution that I provided?
CD at 9,
Oh, I forgot about the never to be crossed – fictional – dividing line between Origin of Life and so-called Evolution. Face it. No first organism, no evolution.
“Oh, I forgot about the never to be crossed – fictional – dividing line between Origin of Life and so-called Evolution.”
Related,
OOL is the Oliphaunt in the room people like CD are scared of. But look at Evolution! they wail and point at bone fragments and incorrect artist renderings.
Andrew
Sorry, gentlemen, I don’t do “Bored of the Rings…..”
“Sorry, gentlemen, I don’t do “Bored of the Rings…..”
CD,
Why not? You’re already living in a fantasy world. ZING 😉
Andrew
CD at 12,
Who deftly dodges whatever he’d rather not respond to…
You just lost -1 playing point.
I’m sorry. I was taking moment of reflection to determine in which of the myriad “fantasy worlds” out there I live. I think Asauber being a little harsh. After all it appears to be the same one in which 99% of the scientists in the world live…..
CD at 15,
Unguided Evolution is fiction. I think I’ll start a bus campaign in London with this message. It’ll run about 3 weeks. 🙂
ChuckyD claims, “it appears to be the same one in which 99% of the scientists in the world live”
Unsurprisingly, it is another false claim.
“99% of the scientists”
Like I said…
Andrew
Count on BA77 to come up with yet one more inapposite study…..
Chuckdarwin @4 etc.
Unsupported assertions. How’s this in response:
It’s been 160+ years since the Darwin proposed his theory and Darwinists are still trying to find legitimate examples that don’t fall apart on further investigation.” Random mutations, natural selection, and the god’s-of the gaps arguments of MUSTA, MIGHTA, and EMERGED blah blah blah.
It’s truly unbelievable that anyone still takes a failed, racist theory that justified European colonialism seriously.
And there are so many cases where Darwinism has been falsified:
– The presumption of over 100 supposedly useless “vestigial” organs such as the thyroid (an other ductless glands): useless vestiges of random, undirected evolution.
– The presumption that 98.8% of our genome is “junk DNA,” now called “non-coding DNA,” as additional examples of vestiges of random, undirected evolution by Susumu Ohno, the originator of the term.
And discovered in 2019: “Small proteins also promise to revise the current understanding of the genome. Many appear to be encoded in stretches of DNA—and RNA—that were not thought to help build proteins of any sort.”
https://www.science.org/content/article/new-universe-miniproteins-upending-cell-biology-and-genetics
– The skeletal remains of extinct animals called dinosaurs supposedly lived roughly 65-250 million years ago were ALL supposedly petrified artifacts without any possibility for organic matter to survive. This was PREDICTED by Darwinism. It’s also failed, but Darwinists are grimly hanging on to the unscientific possibility that 100+ million years of background radiation miraculously allowed organic bone, stretchy connective tissue, and even red blood cells to survive (in Chile, a recent find of Ichthyosaurus remains included preserved soft tissue in strata dated to 130-140 million years ago).
What an embarrassment to science!
-Q
Those 99% that said we will be under water since 1960?
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions/
Sandy @21,
Yabbut that doesn’t count because at that time, it MIGHTA turned out that way after all!
In fact, this exact prediction MUSTA turned out to be right on the money in at least one of the universes in the MULTIVERSE. Same goes for Darwinism.
Besides, 99% of scientists aren’t making any such predictions. They’re too busy with other research.
But isn’t there a Tweet that shows a really old guy on campus wearing a jacket over a T-shirt that has “99%” printed on it? I bet it was that guy’s prediction. 😉
-Q
Querius/20
“And there are so many cases where Darwinism has been falsified…”
One of the problems with this blog, as I pointed out in my very first comment @4, is IDers’ consistent failure to define terms. Use of the term “Darwinism” is problematic. If by the term “Darwinism” you mean natural selection, then none of the examples you provide falsifies “Darwinism.” Let’s look at two of the examples you provided.
I have been loosely following Mary Sweitzer’s T. Rex find in Montana because it is somewhat in my backyard. The find is consistent with the range within which dinosaurs lived (68 MYA), the sole issues being (1) if the soft tissue found is in fact dinosaur tissue (it is) and (2) how it was preserved. Sweitzer provided an answer in a paper published by the Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biology ten years ago–an answer that has contributed immensely to the nascent field of paleoproteomics. You can find a simplified description of her research at https://www.livescience.com/41537-t-rex-soft-tissue.html
You claim that:
Again, by failing to explain exactly what you mean by “Darwinism,” or provide a citation to this “prediction,” it’s impossible to confirm this prediction. But, as I said, the larger point is that Sweitzer’s research does not falsify natural selection.
The same is true for the protein study to which you link. It simply identifies a role for micro-proteins in muscle function which appears to be a new discovery. However, it does not challenge natural selection in any way.
Finally, by continued use of the term “Darwinism,” you obfuscate and/ignore the advances made in evolutionary biology for 70+ years. As I have pointed out a number of times before, biologists have known for decades that there are additional mechanisms involved in evolution such as genetic drift, gene flow, non-random mating, horizonal gene transfer, etc. And, who knows, maybe even epigenetics will pan out over time.
In any event, your comment epitomizes the observation in my original post @4 that ID cannot even define itself, let alone stand as a scientific theory. Every time someone on this blog challenges ID, the ID crowd closes ranks and goes into what I call the “rag on Darwin and Darwinism” mode. Accuse Darwin of being a racist, or worse yet, an atheist. Do anything to avoid dealing with natural selection.
I believe I saw a post a few days back from PM1 telling you guys to elevate and clean up your game. The best advice I’ve seen on this blog since I can’t remember when….
CD @23
What, in your opinion, is a good definition of “natural selection”?
https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s12052-009-0128-1
CD @25
According to the definition you referred to, natural selection is a non-random process. Eric Anderson, in a discussion with you, argues eloquently that this is not true:
Eric Anderson [quoted from an earlier discussion with CD]
Origenes/26
Maybe Mr. Anderson (who I understand is a lawyer) should read the link I provided………
Chuckdarwin @23,
As I’ve mentioned to you before, to understand the profound difference between Darwinism and modern evolutionary processes, go and buy this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-2-0-Breaking-Deadlock-Between/dp/1944648755/
In it, you’ll find that random mutation is by far the weakest evolutionary mechanism out of the six listed. According to his book, Evolution 2.0, Perry Marshall claims there are five, maybe six ways that a genome can change. The weakest one is random mutation.
1. Transposition
2. Horizontal gene transfer
3. Epigenetics
4. Symbiogenesis
5. Genome duplication
6. Random mutation (maybe, rarely)
As I’ve also mentioned before:
And as I also brought to your attention . . .
As to your other objections from the pathetic Darwin fundamentalist rationalizations, let me again state that Darwinism can explain ANYTHING but has successfully predicted NOTHING.
It seems like there’s not a week that goes by without some new discovery that asserts will rewrite what’s commonly accepted as fact in academia. Of course, it’s never allowed to do so by the high priests of Darwin.
As such, Darwinism simply reduced to the level of a fundamentalist religion with a foundation in racism and European colonialism. Have you ever read Darwin’s The Descent of Man? I suppose not, but you can start reading it here for free:
https://archive.org/details/descentman00darwgoog/page/n4/mode/2up
I hope you become disgusted with it.
-Q
CD @27
Let’s have a quick look at your paper:
“Directional”? How so? It all depends on the environment during that period, right? Let’s look again at what Eric Anderson has to say about that:
Even the guys who wrote the paper seem to have a subconscious understanding that it is all randomness:
Yes, of course. So why the talk about natural selection not being random? What “directionality”?
Well, yes, “could be.” Chance and randomness.
Well, let’s get real, that cannot be a really big factor, otherwise, there would only be bacteria.
No careful reflection is required. It is a blind random process without foresight.
Origenes @29,
From your description, it seems like the paper that Chuckdarwin has been brandishing is simply a case of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy:
https://fallacyinlogic.com/texas-sharpshooter-fallacy/
-Q
ID is not a science, it’s logic applied to a small set of findings by science.
ID accepts 99.9999% of science’s conclusions. But not all because some are not proven and most likely due to agency not the forces of physics.
ID is science +
this is 100% accepted by ID
Nothing new. It’s the science of genetics which ID endorses.
ID agrees completely.
So what’s the issue. The usual nonsense from an anti ID commenter.
yes it does.
ID says certain findings have no natural explanation and are best explained by the agency of an intelligence. The modern world is full of such examples.
Aside: ID completely accepts the concept of natural selection and several other of Darwin’s ideas. As I said above, ID endorses genetics as a valid science and genetics includes many of Darwin’s ideas.
Genetics is not Evolution. Nothing that ChuckDarwin said is not accepted by ID. Sorry to inform him of that. He is misinformed.
Let’s Go Finches
Much ado about nothing. All been discussed before.
I’m not sure where your confusion lies. Gregory defines “directionality.” It simply means towards fitness. I can’t define it any better.
Anderson is incorrect when he characterizes the environment as “just another random factor.” The environment to which NS responds comprises a number of interactive variables which are highly predictable and highly stable for thousands, if not millions, of years. Take one easy example, dinosaurs. The clade Dinosauria existed from 245 MYA to 66 MYA until the Chicxulub impact. Dinosaurs existed in relative homeostasis for 180 million years. Their environment changed very little during that time. But for the Chicxulub impact, who knows how much longer they would have survived.
The environmental conditions which elicit fitness are so stable they are labeled ecoregions or ecozones. e.g. equatorial zones, temperate zones, boreal zones, sub-artic and artic zones, etc. Biologists can predict with great accuracy what phenotypes NS will select based on a given zone. You wouldn’t predict (or find) snow leopards in the Amazonian rain forest nor iguanas in Antartica, at least not for long. If the NS –environment relationship was completely random, as Anderson claims, no such predictions would be possible and it’s doubtful that evolution would have resulted in the first instance.
Finally, no one is saying that NS shows “foresight.” Quite the opposite. As Gregory points out in the passage that you quote, NS works in the “here and now.” But it certainly doesn’t work randomly–phenotypical expression responds to the environment in a highly predictable fashion.
ChuckDarwin has become an ID proponent.
Everything he says is consistent with ID. Welcome aboard Chuck.