Although Michael Behe, is associated with the concept of irreducible complexity, he now says he prefers to explain ID as “purposeful arrangement of parts”:
A correspondent asked about “specified complexity” and the intelligent design of the eye. I explained why I much prefer the phrase “purposeful arrangement of parts” as a criterion for design — versus irreducible complexity, specified complexity, specified small probability, information, complex specified information, or other phrases.
The critical difference between ID and Darwinian evolution (and all other proposals for unintelligent evolutionary processes) is the involvement of a mind in ID. The philosopher Lydia McGrew once wrote that the basic question of ID boils down to the question of “other minds.” One of Alvin Plantinga’s claims to fame is that he argued fifty years ago in God and Other Minds that (I paraphrase) the perception of the existence of God is the same sort of problem as the perception of the existence of other minds.
Michael Behe, “Recognizing Design by a “Purposeful Arrangement of Parts”” at Evolution News and Science Today (June 10, 2021)
“Purposeful arrangement of parts” is actually much easier for the average person to understand.
Biochemist Michael Behe is the author of Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution/ (1996), The Edge of Evolution, and Darwin Devolves.
Finally !!!
Designed things = purposeful arrangement of parts
I am a mechanical engineer, and this is the definition i finally like. Now even guys like Seversky, JVL & Co. can understand…
Actually, i was using very similar definition in my debates with Darwinists (“Thousands of parts working together for a purpose”)
In my debates, Darwinian clowns very often argued with the following: “look at a snow flake, also appears to be designed (and no designer was needed)”….
Seversky, JVL & Co, … of course, a visual appearance can give you some clues as well, but this is not what is meant by intelligently designed things … Now, you Darwinists have to find examples of things (not made of cells) where thousands of parts working together for a purpose and were not designed)… (we ID people consider cells/biology designed, that is why you have to find another example)
I like this term. IC always seems sort of sideways from the real meaning of the concept.
‘Necessary simultaneity’ is closer to the concept but also too multisyllabic.
How about the Fine Tuning of physics?
(An an example, take the gravitational constant. If it were different by even the tiniest smidgeon, we wouldn’t be here,)
Fine tuning is powerful evidence for Intelligent Design, and it appears to be purposeful.
But I don’t see what parts are being purposely arranged.
/
It sounds like a tautology.
Yes, design involves the purposeful arrangement of parts. We know that because that is what we do. The question is, can we reasonably infer the handiwork of a non-human designer from the apparent but partial similarity to human design of what we would otherwise think of as naturally-occurring phenomena? If we weigh both the similarities and the differences is it a strong or weak inference?
We have examples of mind(of human) that produce a thing after he /she thought to a purpose.
Give us examples when we can observe randomness produce a purposeful thing. :))
Can anyone point to a naturally occurring instance of design, that is the inadvertent arrangement of parts that has an external purpose?
If, not then the assumption of a non-human existing sometime in the past becomes a likely explanation. Richard Dawkins agrees.
I was hoping that this article would make headline on UD.
As Michael Behe explains in his article, all other definitons for Intelligent Design all boil down to the simple concept of the “purposeful arrangement of parts”
The reason I very much like this article is because, in quantum information theory, ‘classical’ sequential information, (such as what is encoded on a computer program and DNA, and which lies at the basis of Dembski’s definition of Complex Specified Information (CSI),), is held to be a subset of quantum ‘positional’ information. i.e. a subset of the “purposeful arrangement of parts’.
Someone might object that a ‘classical’ computer only contains ‘classical’ sequential information, and does not contain any quantum ‘positional’ information. But as Charles Bennett, (who laid the foundation for quantum teleportation and reversible computation), pointed out in the following video, “A classical communications channel is a quantum communication channel with an eavesdropper (maybe only the environment)… A classical computer is a quantum computer handicapped by having eavesdroppers on all its wires.”
As well, on the following site entitled “Quantum Information Science”, a site where Charles Bennett himself is on the steering committee,
On that site, they have this illustration showing classical information to be a subset of quantum information
To clearly get their point across, below that illustration they have this caption,
As well, classical information is shown to be a subset of quantum, (i.e. positional, i.e. the ‘purposeful arrangement of parts’), information by the following method.
In the following 2011 paper, “researchers ,,, show that when the bits (in a computer) to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer’s state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that (in quantum information theory) an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer.”
And as if “an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer” was not already provocative enough as far as the debate between Darwinian Evolution and Intelligent Design is concerned, the following study demonstrated that knowledge of a particle’s location and/or position converts information into energy.
Specifically, “they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a “spiral-staircase-like” potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information.”
And as the following 2010 article stated about the preceding experiment, “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,”
This is a very interesting finding since Darwinists use to try to claim, (right here on UD and elsewhere, and although they had, and still have, no evidence that unguided material processes can ever create immaterial information), that the information in life was not physically real but that it was ‘just a metaphor’, and that they could get along just as well without even using the term ‘information’.
In their view, that argued life was just ‘complicated chemistry’. And that life was not really dependent on the presence of information, as ID proponents were arguing.
Hubert P. Yockey himself, (who worked under Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project), had to defend against the Darwinian claim that the term ‘information’, as it is applied to life, is just a synonym, metaphor, or analogy.
So this ‘beautiful’ experimental demonstration from Japanese scientists showing that immaterial information, (information that was gained from knowledge of a particle’s position), had a “thermodynamic content’ was not a minor development as far as the debate between Intelligent Design and Darwinian Evolution is concerned.
In short, the experiment demonstrated that information, although it is immaterial in its fundamental nature, and directly contrary to the materialistic claims of Darwinists, is still very much a physically real entity that has a very real ‘thermodynamic content’, i.e. it has a very real physical effect on material particles!
Moreover, that immaterial information is shown to have a very real ‘thermodynamic content’ now gives us an adequate explanation so as explain how life can possibly be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium with its environment.
The information content that is found to be in a simple one cell bacterium, when working from the thermodynamic perspective, is found to be around 10 to the 12 bits,,,
,,, Which is the equivalent of about 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. ‘In comparison,,, the largest libraries in the world,, have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”
Thus since Bacterial cells are about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells.
And since there are conservatively estimated to be around 30 trillion cells within the average human body,
Then that gives us a rough ballpark estimate of around 300 trillion times 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Or about 300 trillion times the information content contained within the books of all the largest libraries in the world. Needless to say, that is a massive amount of ‘positional’ information, (i.e. the ‘purposeful arrangement of parts’), that is somehow coming into a developing embryo from the outside by some non-material method.
And as the following article states, the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000.
To continue on establishing the physical reality of immaterial information,,,, around 2016, the Maxwell demon thought experiment was extended to build a refrigerator, i.e. to build “a tiny machine powered purely by information, which chilled metal through the power of its knowledge.”
And as the following 2016 article stated, “Running a brain-twisting thought experiment for real shows that information is a physical thing”,,
Moreover, the following 2017 article, (commenting on the fact that “a single-ion engine and three-atom fridge were both experimentally realized for the first time within the past year”) stated that: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,, quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,, Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
Again to repeat that last sentence, “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.,,,”
That statement is simply completely devastating to the materialistic claims of Darwinists who try to claim that immaterial information is not physically real but that the immaterial information in life is just a ‘metaphor’.
Moreover in 2018, “Physicists have experimentally demonstrated an information engine—a device that converts information into work—with an efficiency that exceeds the conventional second law of thermodynamics.”
And just recently, as of May of this year, and as the following article states, (via knowledge of a particle’s position), researchers built a Information engine that achieves “power comparable to molecular machinery in living cells, and speeds comparable to fast-swimming bacteria,”
HUH? “achieving power comparable to molecular machinery in living cells, and speeds comparable to fast-swimming bacteria,”,”???
That finding should literally make a Darwinist’s head spin.
As ENV understated the implications of the preceding finding, “the best minds in science and engineering are trying to approach the capabilities of bacteria. That might suggest some thoughts about the origin of the target they are trying to reach.”
LOL “might suggest some thoughts about the origin of the target they are trying to reach.” 🙂
That they would compare their achievement to the power of a bacterial flagellum in particular is also interesting since Dr. Michael Behe originally based his entire concept of ‘irreducible complexity’, in large measure, using the bacterial flagellum itself as a primary example for ‘irreducible complexity’.
Here is another article that further solidifies the claim that the bacterial flagellum itself is based upon quantum principles and is not based upon ‘classical’ principles as would be presupposed within the reductive materialistic framework of Darwinian evolution.
Here are a few more notes along that line that further solidifies the claim that molecular machines are based on quantum information principles, not on classical principles as would be presupposed within the framework of Darwinian materialism.
in the following article subtitled ‘how bio-molecular machines can generate nontrivial quantum states’, the authors state that entanglement can be maintained even in the presence of very intense noise,
And in the following article, the authors even go on to state that ‘this reverses the previous orthodoxy, which held that quantum effects could not exist in biological systems because of the amount of noise in these systems’,,, Environmental noise here drives a persistent and cyclic generation of new entanglement.
In fact, besides molecular machines, quantum principles are now found to be at play “in a wide range of important biomolecules”
In the following 2015 paper entitled, “Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules” it was found that “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” and the researchers further commented that “finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,
To drive this point home, this follow up 2018 article stated that “There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,,”
Even DNA itself does not belong to the world of classical mechanics but instead belongs to the world of quantum mechanics.
In the following video, at the 22:20 minute mark, Dr Rieper shows why the high temperatures of biological systems do not prevent DNA from having quantum entanglement and then at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper goes on to remark that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it.
To point out the obvious, the fact that “practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it” fits hand in glove with Bennett and company’s prior claim that “Classical Information is a subset of Quantum information”
That quantum coherence and/or quantum entanglement, contrary to what was believed to be possible in molecular biology just a few short years ago, is now found to be ubiquitous within molecular biology is of no small importance.
What is so devastating to the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution, with the finding pervasive quantum coherence and/or quantum entanglement, (and/or quantum information), within molecular biology, is that quantum coherence and/or quantum entanglement is a non-local, beyond space and time, effect that requires a beyond space and time cause in order to explain its existence.
As the following paper entitled “Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory” clearly stated the situation with quantum non-locality, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
It is also important to realize that quantum information is physically conserved. As the following article states, “In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed.”
The implication of finding ‘non-local’, (beyond space and time), and ‘conserved’, (cannot be created nor destroyed), quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious.
That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article, “the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
So again, these recent experimental findings that prove that quantum information is ubiquitous within molecular biology are of no small importance.
In short, Christian Theists can now appeal directly to empirical evidence to support their belief in the physical reality of an immaterial soul that is capable of living past the death of our material, temporal, bodies.
Verse:
Again, BA77 brings the house down with his evidence and argument.
My only minor quibble is probably a semantic one, where you say this establishes the “physical reality” of “immaterial information.” Perhaps you’re saying the same thing as this: “it is undeniable via experimentation that immaterial information affects physical phenomena in quantifiable, repeatable (thermodynamic) ways?”
I guess the information is entirely immaterial(and an alien to this universe) but to work in this world it needs an material foundation(a software needs a cd ,thumb drive ,hdd otherwise it couldn’t run …in this world . )
Sev, purposeful, functional arrangement or configuration, detectable when it is at a level of complexity that blind chance and mechanical necessity are utterly unlikely to account for same. Where, attempted reduction to accidental analogy fails. A is A, itself i/l/o core characteristics. Relevant cases of known design show said characteristics, which help to characterise them. When other things we did not happen to see being formed exhibit the same pattern of characteristics that warrants inference that they too are designed. And note, blind chance and mechanical necessity do not per observation create languages, symbol systems, string data codes of high complexity expressing algorithms, as well as associated execution machinery. That is what is being brushed aside fallaciously. KF
seversky @4
Salem hypothesis… yes, i heard of it…
“This hypothesis does not address whether engineers tend to be creationists (the converse); however, it has been speculated that engineering predisposes people to a creation-science view.”
let me repeat that one:
“it has been speculated that engineering predisposes people to a creation-science view”
sure…. BECAUSE WE ENGINEERS KNOW WHAT IT TAKES TO MAKE THINGS WORKING… and then, there are the other guys – biologists (natural science graduates) with their crazy absurd theory, biologists – WHO NEVER MADE ANYTHING … biologists, with their crazy absurd claims and belief-based ‘evidence’ – give it enough time, and fully autonomous, self-navigating flying systems will self-design, with no help from engineers, no knowledge of math or physics is needed …and this is being taught in 21st century schools!!!!
So lets close all technical universities around the world, and lets teach biology … Biologists should teach engineers how to design an autonomous self-navigating flying system …can’t wait…
Don’t forget, the self-replicating part!
i posted the following before, but let me repeat it…
most people (including scientists) don’t realize it, but in biology, there are multiple layers of design (Purposeful Arrangement Of Parts)
lets take for example, a hummingbird ..
Layer #1:
the design of the humming itself – the shape of the body, the shape / geometry of the wings, bird’s weight, the frequency of wing flapping etc … in other words, lots of sophisticated design features need to be met so the hummingbird flies as it flies including the hovering-ability.
Layer #2:
the design of hummingbird’s fully automated self-assembly process (biologists call it – a development). All assembly-steps need to have the right order, there are no workers who assembly a hummingbird piece by piece, also, there are no parts / materials suppliers, everything is made/developed IN A FULLY AUTOMATED process. This is an engineering SCI-FI !!!!
Layer #3:
The chemical-design of the materials the hummingbird’s body is made of. All high-tech materials, perfectly designed and adjusted to fulfill its function. What is remarkable, all these sophisticated materials, some of it very lightweight and strong, are developed at species’s body temperature, no fire of thousands of degrees is needed. 21st century material-engineers can only wonder…
Layer #4:
the design of automated maintenance / repair processes. When you look at any species, almost everything gets repaired. Broken bones, eye’s cornea, the skin,, even DNA molecule gets repaired… I am sure that a biologist could provide a very long list of what else gets repaired.
(i am sure that there are many other layers of species’ design … feel free to add to mine…)
Anyway, all above requires thousands of purposefully arranged parts …
:)) One of the most difficult thing to do is to formulate a simple truth. You made it. Congratulation!
You have to give them a few billion of years. Time and patience are required. Hahahaha!
and, i almost forgot:
layer#5
The design of various defense systems, e.g. immune system.
The latest research – the following was published few days ago:
“Another language found in Life: Immune signaling”
““Cells have evolved an immune response code, or language,” said senior author Alexander Hoffmann, the Thomas M. Asher Professor of Microbiology and director of the Institute for Quantitative and Computational Biosciences at UCLA. “We have identified some words in that language, and we know these words are important because of what happens when they are misused. Now we need to understand the meaning of the words, and we are making rapid progress. It’s as exciting as when archaeologists discovered the Rosetta stone and could begin to read Egyptian hieroglyphs.””
“Immune cells in the body constantly assess their environment and coordinate their defense functions by using words — or signaling codons, in scientific parlance — to tell the cell’s nucleus which genes to turn on in response to invaders like pathogenic bacteria and viruses. Each signaling codon consists of several successive actions of a DNA binding protein that, when combined, elicit the proper gene activation, in much the same way that successive electrical signals through a telephone wire combine to produce the words of a conversation.”
https://evolutionnews.org/2021/06/another-language-found-in-life-immune-signaling/
so how much design-evidence do Darwinists need to finally accept that life was designed? How many cell’s communication languages need to be found? The cell is a product of unguided process… really ? This is a 21st century scientific consensus? Are all Darwinian scientists escaped from a mental hospital? Or what is going on? The Darwinian evo theory looks more and more like a huge conspiracy …
On the one hand Darwinian scientists do a great job to discover all these sophisticated things inside the cell, on the other hand, they look like clowns pretending and accepting this is a result of unguided error-trial process …
PS: another cell’s language (sugars) is here, from a mainstream paper:
“Move over, DNA. Life’s other code is more subtle and far more powerful”
“Sugary handshakes aren’t just involved in baby-making. It turns out that every type of cell in our bodies has a unique sugar coating. And whenever anything interacts with a cell, it must recognise that sugar code and use the appropriate secret handshake. It happens when bacteria and viruses infect us, when a growing brain cell feels its way past its neighbours, and when our stem cells receive the marching orders that will define what type of tissue they will develop into.
let me repeat the following:
“And whenever anything interacts with a cell, it must recognise that sugar code and use the appropriate secret handshake. ”
In other words, “that anything” needs to know a secret password … (Darwinists believe in miracles)
full article:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24132230-300-move-over-dna-lifes-other-code-is-more-subtle-and-far-more-powerful/#ixzz6yOzq5y9Z
“Designed things = purposeful arrangement of parts”
Yes, this is definitely a tautology.
And a deliberate attempt by Behe to make it seem that we are observing Purpose or Intent.
It’s as sneaky as “specified complexity”
Purpose can only be inferred, not observed. It would be more correct to call it a “Functional arrangement of parts”. Function can be observed, and function can exist without purpose or intent. To substantiate an inference of purpose from an observation of function, you need either provenance, or a direct conversation with the designer.
Again, Pater, all one has to do is step up and demonstrate that what Behe calls a purposeful arrangement of parts actually arose via blind and mindless processes. That is without purpose. After all that was Darwin’s entire point. And yet that point remains unresolved.
He goes on to say:
So have at it. The closer people look the better ID looks
Pater @20 …. you must be a biologist – natural science graduate ….
Like your comment that has been written by … itself when your cat walked on keyboard hunting a butterfly without purpose or intent .Right? Right!
@Sandy
No…. more like how gravity functions to bring hydrogen together to make stars where none existed before. And lava flow functions to build islands where none existed before. And hydrogen and oxygen burning functions to make water that didn’t exist before. And running water functions to carve rock and form the caves that your ancestors used as dwellings.
Maybe you need to read more than one book, Sandy.
@Martin_r #22
Nope. Engineer. Which is why I find it best to listen to the consensus of biologists when it comes to our origin.
Pater Kimbridge:
They don’t have any idea. Nothing testable, anyway. They don’t even know what determines biological form.
:))) I don’t think you are engineer because you equate “lava flow” with cell complexity.
Regarding whether Behe’s “purposeful arrangement of parts” is tautologous – I don’t think so. It’s a head scratcher though. I looked at the phrase and it looked like a tautology. But then when I thought of the flagellum what did I see in my mind’s eye? “A purposeful arrangement of parts”. What can I say?
Generally speaking, a real tautology looks ridiculous when it’s recognized. If something looks tautologous but still seems meaningful there’s usually a subtle or implied equivocation in operation somewhere. And not all equivocations are deliberate.
The word “design” implies purpose in the sense of volition. But it references an agent. In “purposeful arrangement of parts” “purposeful” refers not to the agent but to the parts. They coordinate to serve a purpose. One legitimate definition of purpose is “something’s reason for being.” I think we’ve largely moved to the term “function” not because “purpose” is wrong but because it is ambiguous.
However, “functional arrangement of parts” has its own problems. That just sounds like something that works.