Stephen Meyer on ID’s Scientific Bona Fides

F/N: Minor correction. I am too used to the median [1/2 life] being used for radioactivity, and overlooked cases where Mean is being used instead. The t1/2 of free neutrons is more like roughly 700 or so than roughly 900 seconds, as the tail pulls the mean. kairosfocus

Petrushka: As CH has just pointed out and implied, you need to acquaint yourself with basic epistemology [what is knowledge, and how do we know, how reliably and accurately; science being of course focussed on what the term means: "KNOWLEDGE" in Latin] and basic logic, with some exposure to worldview analysis. (Cf the introductory notes here.) Logic, in particular is foundational to Mathematics, and both of these disciplines are inextricably intertwined with scientific and other serious forms of intellectual effort. Mathematical logic is also closely related to information theory, which is a key part of the issues over inference to design. (Let us not forget, as I have repeatedly pointed out, that in Info Th, the distinction between intelligent signal and naturally occurring noise -- often captured in the signal to noise ratio - is a key concept. Similarly, experimenters routinely have to distinguish between effects stemming from their intelligent manipulation of variables, and natural scatter and trends or biases. That means that the inference to design, specifically, is deeply embedded in economically vital sciences.) GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Petrushka,

I’m at something of a loss to think of any contribution to knowledge of the physical world that has been made using non-empirical methods.

Well, one thing is inference itself that all knowledge whatsoever depends on, especially knowledge of the physical world, and inference is itself non-empirical. Clive Hayden

Petrushka,

By direct observation I count zero contributions from non-empirical methods.

Making any kind of sense of direct observation is called an inference. The external world is an inferred world, and inference itself is not empirical. Your statement is self-defeating. Clive Hayden

I was googling and I came across this quote from Avicenna and found it hilarious. Enjoy "Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned" Vivid vividbleau

Gaz: I trust your trip will go well, and may Grace be granted your sister in law. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Stephen: Perhaps the saddest thing about what we are seeing is that P is a case where the willful indoctrination in ideological a priori, mind-closing evolutionary materialism and related hyper-modern radical relativist rhetorical mind-mush and amorality that we see in both the school system and in the popular science presentations has worked as intended. The real problem is not the P's of this world, but those who have so deviously, dishonestly neglected their duties of care and have systematically misled them and closed their hearts and minds to correction. I fear, only a great and shattering disaster with long term destructive and humbling consequences will serve to open eyes to the crime against the mind, heart and soul that has been wrought. (And, alas, on my observation of my homeland -- I cannot think of it without pain in my heart -- a generation after the folly of the 1970's should have been plain to all, many will STILL be in denial and resort to every distracting excuse to avoid facing the truth.) But, fears or not, it is our duty to stand against the tide of willful folly and refusal of correction. So, we need to teach the basic first steps in principles and first premises of right reason [these are just notes, not yet worked up specifically for teaching], teach also basic steps in critical thinking, and correct the mess that has been made of origins science education. maybe, too, we should heed the warning of Plato, on reflecting back on the ruin of Athens at the hands of the avant garde materialistic thinkers of the later C5 BC [the era of the Peloponnesian War], and their former pupils:

Ath. . . . [The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as to the bodies which come next in order-earth, and sun, and moon, and stars-they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them-of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only. [In short, evolutionary materialism premised on chance plus necessity acting without intelligent guidance on primordial matter is hardly a new or a primarily "scientific" view!] . . . . [Thus, they hold that t]he Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.- [Relativism, too, is not new.] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might, and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions, these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others, and not in legal subjection to them. [The Laws, Bk X. NB Petrushka, I am not putting in the link for this either, nor have I generally done so; it is a simple web Search away.]

If we are wise, we will heed the ghost of Plato. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

"Thanks in anticipation, Gaz" Have a safe trip Gaz. Vivid vividbleau

UprightBiped (648), Thanks, I appreciate the sentiment. This thread has gone on so long I'm not entirely sure who said what to whom, especially with all these nested comments. I may have mixed up a comment of yours with one of StephenB's - if so, I apologise unreservedly if I suggested you said something you didn't, and any consequential unpleasantness on my part. Also to StephenB, kairosfocus, vividbleau - I'm acutely conscious this thread is going on far longer than is healthy for informed debate and is generating more heat than light. I'll be away a few days on personal stuff (sister in law is unwell) so I'm taking the opportunity to step back a bit and conisder the issues away from "the arena". I'm going to ponder if there isn't so much a problem with the "law" of non-contradiction as there is with the formulation of the issue of what is and what is not contradicted. Therefore, in a spirit of attempted reconciliation, can one of you - or collectively if desired - give me, on my return, a formal statement of the "law" of non-contradiction, referenced from an independent (i.e. not one of us and not someone mired in ID/evolution issues) and reputable, authoritative source, for subsequent consideration? Thanks in anticipation, Gaz Gaz

@683 posted prematurely containing syntactical errors, so I will say it again: "If you had any conception about how far you are from understanding the subject matter that you presume to challenge, you would stop posting and start weeping. My guess is, though, you will likely never understand the gap between where you are and where you need to be and are, therefore, unlikely to ever feel the appropriate level of embarrassment." StephenB

---Petrushka: “I believe the original question dealt with whether evidence trumped common sense with regard to physical phenomena.” Not even close. If you had any conception about how far you are from understanding the subject matter that you presume to challenge, you would stop posting and start weeping. My guess is, though, you will likely never understand the gap between where you are and where you need and therefore, and are, therefore, unlikely to ever feel the appropriate level of embarrassment. StephenB

"I count zero contributions from non-empirical methods." You count. Your counting is not empirical, but interpretation. Science isn't science without interpretation. Interpretation involves principles of right reason. Don't you get it yet? You're arguing in circles. Your statement is self-refuting. CannuckianYankee

"That is empirical data." This is not empirical data that shows that science s the best way to get in touch with physical reality. None of the data you refer to is empirical daa about your claim that science is the best way to get in touch with physical reality. You have referred to empirical data that deal with planetary motions, electricity , electronics , etc, etc, but what is absent is empirical data about the subject in question. As I said your philosophical slip is showing and you dont even know you have it on. Vivid vividbleau

This is not EMPIRICAL evidence this is your opinion. Please provide all of us the EMPIRICAL evidence.

By direct observation I count numerous contributions to knowledge of the physical world from science and from empirical methods. Knowledge of planetary motions, knowledge of electricity and electronics, knowledge of medicine, and so forth. By direct observation I count zero contributions from non-empirical methods. That is empirical data. You feel free to contribute your data. One of the neat things about data is that everyone can contribute. Petrushka

You already admitted that you lost this argument.

I never argued against reason. I argued against common sense and intuition, in those cases where they are contradicted by evidence. And they most certainly are contradicted by quantum phenomena. Petrushka

?I’m at something of a loss to think of any contribution to knowledge of the physical world that has been made using non-empirical methods." This is not EMPIRICAL evidence this is your opinion. Please provode all of us the EMPIRICAL evidence. Vivid vividbleau

Very well please give all of us the EMPIRICAL evidence that science is the best way to get in touch with physical reality.

I'm at something of a loss to think of any contribution to knowledge of the physical world that has been made using non-empirical methods. Petrushka

"I believe the original question dealt with whether evidence trumped common sense with regard to physical phenomena" Straw man alert!!! Strawman alert!!! Stephenb position is that RIGHT RULES OF REASON INFORM EVIDENCE. You already admitted that you lost this argument. How soon you forget. Vivid vividbleau

Petrushka RE 667 KF…"the notion that it could be taken as self evident that science is the best way to get in touch with physical reality…" Petrushka "Certainly it is not self evident. It is supported by mountains of evidence" Petrushka your philosophical slip is showing. What is sad is that you do not even recognize you have one on. You are ignorant of your own pre suppositions and act as if you dont have any since you only base your worldview on "evidence" Vey well please give all of us the EMPIRICAL evidence that science is the best way to get in touch with physical reality. Vivid vividbleau

Who in the name of sense has ever suggested that quantum mechanics was derived from “pure reason?”

I believe the original question dealt with whether evidence trumped common sense with regard to physical phenomena. It seems to me that the only thing accomplished in the discussion is that people talked past each other. Petrushka

---Petrushka: "Nevertheless, [quantum mechanics] it is the result of experiment and observation, not derived from pure reason. Congratulations! You have set all-time record for the number of strawman arguments on a single thread. Who in the name of sense has ever suggested that quantum mechanics was derived from "pure reason?" StephenB

But going back to the explanatory filter, the only reasonable question to put to it is whether an observed phenomenon, such as a mutation, obeys the laws of physics and chemistry. If it does, it passes into natural regularity. It makes no sense to calculate the odds of a "specific" mutation happening, after it happens. That is like calculating the odds of a specific person winning powerball -- after they win -- and saying the game must have been rigged. Dollo's Law, in its current form, says the odds of any specific series of mutations occurring are vanishingly low. Pretty much as Behe would assert. But the history of life indicates the dice or lottery balls aren't rigged. The pattern is that populations do not usually adapt to sudden environmental or ecological changes. The pattern is that populations under stress go extinct. Bacteria are a minor exception because their numbers and rate of reproduction allow unlikely adaptions to be found. As noted by Behe. But slower reproducing populations generally die out. Petrushka

I suggest you pause and read here, here, here and here.

Do you have links to any actual biology? Petrushka

I'm familiar with the explanatory filter. The problem I see is that changes to populations are only specified in retrospect. That is to say, the value of a mutation is determined by its consequences. Petrushka

Petrushka; The more you speak, the more evident it becomes that you are naively enmeshed in the subtle tyranny of an unexamined a priori metaphysics tied to evolutionary materialism, whether or not you are formally committed to materialism or physicalism or naturalism, all of which boil down to different stanzas on the same theme. I suggest you pause and read here, here, here and here. Just the first will suffice to show that evolutionary materialism is inescapably self-referentially incoherent and so necessarily false. G kairosfocus

Petrushka: Remember, you are speaking to a trained scientist, with some knowledge of relevant history and phil. Stop setting up and knocking over strawmen that have long since been addressed step by step in the UD Weak Argument Correctives. At no point do I play at "God of the gaps" reasoning, nor do I ever propose that scientific explorations ought to be based on or controlled by a priori metaphysical speculations. Just the opposite. Have a little look here at the diagrammed representation of the design filter, and the associated remarks on scientific inference and reasoning. Then, kindly remove the forest of strawmen from your mental attic. And yes, with suitable approaches, Q mech gives pretty good empirical results, starting with spectroscopy. But, empirical reliability is known not to be a good criterion of truth, as can be seen from how the now known not to be strictly true Newtonian Dynamics can also give very good results. Today's science trained students could do with a bit of history and phil of sci, and sci in society. That would help immunise from materialistic, secular humanistic and politically "progressive" messianistic ideological and metaphysical agendas imposed by today's various Magisteria, often by exploiting the name of science. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

...the notion that it could be taken as self evident that science is the best way to get in touch with physical reality...

Certainly it is not self evident. It is supported by mountains of evidence. Petrushka

Petrushka: Perhaps you don't know that every post I make here is linked to my briefing notes on this topic, though my handle. In section E of those notes you will find a certain interesting, wider cite, a point by point discussion, and an onward link to the full article. (My posting habits at UD are largely shaped by the days when there was a strict four link budget, s I assume that interested parties can look up the linked and skim the table of contents with internal hot links and I think it is 2- 300 external links onward.) So kindly stop hinting that I am quote mining, and stop cut-pasting standard Darwinist talking points on this devastating case of letting the cat out of the bag that was supposed to have a piglet in it. In fact, the earlier parts of L's remarks make the onward part I commonly cite even worse. Try out the notion that science is the only begetter of truth, which is a philosophical knowledge claim seeking to discredit same. Similarly, the notion that it could be taken as self evident that science is the best way to get in touch with physical reality [all of reality for a materialist] is self-refuting naivety. For starters. In short, yet another ad hominem laced strawman. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

But in none of these cases do we see chaos, but order and principles and patterns, even probabilistic ones.

I have no problem with that general statement. Quantum theory is not only the most nearly perfect theory we have in terms of precision, it is also one of the most useful. It would not be useful if it predicted chaos and macro-sized things popping in and out of existence. Nevertheless, it is the result of experiment and observation, not derived from pure reason. the people I know who have credentials in the subject insist that the most profound implications of quantum theory are found in the math, and cannot be understood intuitively. Petrushka

I messed up the formatting of that, but I guess it's clear enough. Here's the Lewontin article: http://www.drjbloom.com/Public%20files/Lewontin_Review.htm Rather than be an object of your scorn, Lewontin's section on Newton and Laplace should provide some small measure of warning to those who give up too easily on natural causes. Petrushka

F/N: Petrushka: Maybe, you are beginning to get my point on why I take such a dim view of the loose, popular level speaking about acausal phenomena. Once we see that necessary causal conditions are indeed causes, then it becomes increasingly plain that a truly acausal effect would have to come out of nowhere, nothing, and without any pattern, even a probabilistic one. Quantum situations still face issues over energy conservation, though we have the threshold of the energy-time uncertainty as a subtlety. There are all sorts of conservations like baryon number, charge, etc. that constrain particle interactions. (Think about neutron decay.) Yes, there are odd phenomena and paradoxes. Yes, we have to address the "wavicle" issue and particle entanglement etc -- which in my opinion is pointing to that we have not hit on a truly final theory yet. But in none of these cases do we see chaos, but order and principles and patterns, even probabilistic ones. In short, Physics is still possible and done in the quantum era, not magic. kairosfocus

I notice when you quote Lewontin, you never link tothe full article: and never, ever quote his rationale for the statement you consider so damning. In our own intellectual history, the definitive displacement of divine powers by purely material causes has been a relatively recent changeover, and that icon of modern science, Newton, was at the cusp. It is a cliché of intellectual history that Newton attempted to accommodate God by postulating Him as the Prime Mover Who, having established the mechanical laws and set the whole universe in motion, withdrew from further intervention, leaving it to people like Newton to reveal His plan. But what we might call "Newton's Ploy" did not really get him off the hook. He understood that a defect of his system of mechanics was the lack of any equilibrating force that would return the solar system to its regular set of orbits if there were any slight perturbation. He was therefore forced, although reluctantly, to assume that God intervened from time to time to set things right again. It remained for Laplace, a century later, to produce a mechanics that predicted the stability of the planetary orbits, allowing him the hauteur of his famous reply to Napoleon. When the Emperor observed that there was, in the whole of the Mécanique Céleste, no mention of the author of the universe, he replied, "Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis." Petrushka

The simplest known replicator has about 50 nucleotides and evolves. We shall see where this goes. Petrushka

Petrushka: Have you, first, understood how complex a metabolizing entity must be to have in it a self-replicating facility? That is, not only does it produce outputs from available environmental inputs, but it has the capacity to make another like itself. The Von Neuman set to do so is irreducibly complex:

(i) an underlying storable code to record the required information to create not only (a) the primary functional machine [[here, a Turing-type “universal computer”] but also (b) the self-replicating facility; and, that (c) can express step by step finite procedures for using the facility; (ii) a coded blueprint/tape record of such specifications and (explicit or implicit) instructions, together with (iii) a tape reader [[called “the constructor” by von Neumann] that reads and interprets the coded specifications and associated instructions; thus controlling: (iv) position-arm implementing machines with “tool tips” controlled by the tape reader and used to carry out the action-steps for the specified replication (including replication of the constructor itself); backed up by (v) either: (1) a pre-existing reservoir of required parts and energy sources, or (2) associated “metabolic” machines carrying out activities that as a part of their function, can provide required specific materials/parts and forms of energy for the replication facility, by using the generic resources in the surrounding environment.

Also, parts (ii), (iii) and (iv) are each necessary for and together are jointly sufficient to implement a self-replicating machine with an integral von Neumann universal constructor. That is, irreducible complexity, with oodles of digitally coded functionally specific complex information to make the tape with the blueprint. And, until you have a replicator, you cannot toss off just so stories about wonderful incremental improvements by building on replicational errors. No replicator, no evolution. But, the replicator, as seen, is WAAAAY into best explanation is designers territory. Translating: your hoped for tree of life has no root, so it cannot even start on evolutionary materialist premises, from the still warm pond or whatever prebiotic soup du jour. Then, as the conventional timeline puts it, we move from LUCA to top-tier body plans, credibly requiring not he 100 - 1,000 k bits of info we see in primitive unicellular DNA, but 10 - 100 million plus, dozens of times over. And, it has to be embryologically feasible, thus tightly coordinated and integrated. These circumstances, and what we know about origin of codes, algorithms, execution machinery and complex funcitonal organisaiton scream: design. But that is verboten. Why? Lewontin answers honestly:

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [“Billions and Billions of Demons,” NYRB, January 9, 1997.]

in short, a priori imposition of evolutionary materialist ideology. Not science, ideology under the false cover of a lab coat, and assiduously working to close minds, including expelling dissenters ruthlessly. (of course, by the time the red herring, strawman, ad hominem game is finished, the naive will be convinced that the expelled got what they deserved . . . just like in any number of countries in the late, unlamented C20 just past.) Philip Johnson's rebuke to Lewontin is apt:

For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [[Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them "materialists employing science." And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) "give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." . . . . The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses. [Emphasis added.] [The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]

Time to wake up and smell the coffee . . . GEM of TKI kairosfocus

And, on your experience, what is the known source of algorithms?

Evolution is not programmed. It is a result of imperfect replication. The simplest chemical replicators, such as Spiegleman's monster, evolve. You don't even need life to evolve, just replication. ID doesn't require magic, just an unspecified entity havinbg unspecified capabilities, that does unspecified things at unspecified times and places, using unspecified methods for unspecified reasons. But no magic.

As I look at multiverse speculations, premised on unobserved underlying supercosmi, I can only shake my head as they do not seem to realise they have crossed over into uninstructed speculative metaphysics.

I certainly agree that multiverse cosmologies are speculation. They are mathematically consistent with known physice, but still speculation. But regarding "nothing." You have an advance degree in physics, at least according to others on this thread. Using your knowledge of physics, is there any place in the universe that qualifies as "nothing" in the intuitive sense of the word? Is a vacuum nothing in the intuitive sense of the word? Suppose you had a perfect vacuum in a bottle. Is it possible for an electron to tunnel into the bottle, regardless of the properties of the container? From the standpoint of common sense, how would that be different from appearing from nothing? Petrushka

Petrushka: Why is it that every tome, you duck the issue of the quantum of functional information necessary to form the relevant systems and structures we find in life and its major forms? And, on your experience, what is the known source of algorithms? GEM of TKI PS: Your attempted dig at theists [as opposed to design thinkers, the two are not equivalent] fails to understand that theism starts with the point that our contingent cosmos logically necessitates a necessary being as its ground. Such a necessary being has no beginning and so has no cause. In the past materialists hoped the material cosmos would be that being, but the discoveries of cosmology across C20 scuppered that. THAT is why the magic problem holds for materialists who need to pull everything out of nothing for no reason and under no principles of action. As I look at multiverse speculations, premised on unobserved underlying supercosmi, I can only shake my head as they do not seem to realise they have crossed over into uninstructed speculative metaphysics. The proper method for phil is comparative difficulties across live option worldviews, and in that context an intelligent Creator as necessary being makes a lot better sense to most than an unobserved, ad hoc inference to an eternal material cosmos. For a lot of very good reasons. But then, this is a precis of a summary of an into on relevant phil, not science per se. kairosfocus

"Good to hear that ID renounces miracles." Correct ID does not invoke magical miracles but you do. When you think about it to call your position an appeal to miracles gives the term "miracle" a bad name. Vivid vividbleau

It is obvious that we are seeing a deep rooted a priori commitment to “things just happen,” out of nothing, nowhere, with no reason, as this is evidently a needed underpinning for evolutionary materialist metaphysics.

I see no reason for the fuss about "ultimate" causation. Evolutionary algorithms would behave the same whether the variation is truly random, or the result of a deterministic pseudo-random software algorithm. The thing about evolution is that change to populations occurs due to consequenses rather than due to antecedents. The source of variation is not very important. Evolution is a learning algorithm. Petrushka

For it is now obvious that evolutionary materialism desperately requires magical miracles

Good to hear that ID renounces miracles. Petrushka

The ear bones/origin of mammals just so story

But like any good story, it comes with pictures. http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&biw=1121&bih=759&q=evolution+mammalian+inner+ear&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= Also, your source didn't even address the evidence from embryonic development. Petrushka

F/N: on skimming back above, found this at 613, with added comments on arrow points: ______________ >> Were the findings of quantum theory, the experimental results, anticipated by philosophy? --> And the relevance of this to the question that we see necessary causal factors at work in say radioactive decay is? --> And the relevance of this to the question as to whether necessary causal factors are causal factors is? Can you find anything in the writings of philosophers — scientific or otherwise — that anticipated the two-slit experiment or entanglement or virtual particles or tunneling or indeterminancy or wave/particle duality? --> Again, utterly irrelevant and willfully distractive. If not, then common sense notions about the properties of matter are subject to revision based on evidence. --> Common sense notions on properties of matter are one thing, the self-evidence of the law of non-contradiction and the relevance of necessary causal factors to correcting the notion that quantum events are acausal is another. --> In short, yet another irrelevancy.>> ______________ It is now quite evident that the rhetoric of distraction and strawmanisation is the main tool in the arsenal of objectors to the self evidence of the law of non-contradiction, and to the principle of causality: that which begins to exist has a cause; which helps answer to why and/or how it comes to be. It is obvious that we are seeing a deep rooted a priori commitment to "things just happen," out of nothing, nowhere, with no reason, as this is evidently a needed underpinning for evolutionary materialist metaphysics. Quantum theory has been trotted out, not because it is a real proof, but because in popularised forms, it can help persuade while wearing a suitable lab coat that gives the aura of prestige that surrounds "Science." But, just who are the real magicians, now? For it is now obvious that evolutionary materialism desperately requires magical miracles, poofery out of nowhere and nothing save primordial matter. Usually, this is disguised under incantatory terms like "emergence," or now quantum phenomena, or the like. kairosfocus

Onlookers: Notice how, that line of objections on cause and on the law of non-contradiction having evidently failed, we see a sudden silencing of that battery of rhetorical guns, without any acknowledgement of the balance on the merits. Observe in particular, that once previously linked sources were cited on just what the law of non-contradiction is about, there was no response. Similarly, up to date, there is no response on the basic point that a necessary causal factor is a causal factor, so even where we have not been able to identify sufficient factors, that does not mean that relevant quantum events such as neutron beta decay, are acausal. Quantum mechanics, contrary to much popular rhetoric, does not provide a bssis for dismissing the concept of causality. Repeat: a truly acausal event would have to happen out of nothing, nowhere, with no constraints, i.e. in an utterly unpredictable, chaotic fashion, with not even a stable probabilistic pattern. Also, so soon as the objectors to the law of non-contradiction open their mouths to give their premises as to what is the case, they have used the law of non-contradiction and have fatally undermined their objections to it. Then, their intent to cite evidence of what is the case per observations to counter the claim by saying that facts exist that contradict the law, hammers home the nails in their rhetorical coffin. So is it ever with truly self-evident, undeniably true propositions. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Petrushka: At this point, the level of your comments, sadly, is descending into that which may be found at Youtube and various Darwinist sites. I am getting a bit tired of serial red herrings and strawmen. The ear bones/origin of mammals just so story, of course fails to account for the origin of the relevant bio-information, and in that failure points to the underlying problem with all major icons. Namely, until there is a sound, observationally anchored account for the origin of bio-information and organisation to give effect to it by undirected chance plus necessity, even if one accepts an evolutionary natural history narrative, the best explanation is that the evolution was intelligently directed. (Indeed, the co-founder of evolutionary theory, Wallace, advocated intelligently directed evolution; using feathers and the associated bird wing as key illustrative cases in point.) It is worth scooping out the just linked on ear bones, though the whole article is helpful reading on how gappy evidence is over-read on the eye of faith's a priori commitment to a materialist account of origins:

. . . Morganucodontids, kuehneotheriids, and haramiyids are considered by evolutionists to be the oldest fossil mammals. They appear in the Upper Triassic and range into the lower Jurassic (with the possible exception of some teeth from the Middle Jurassic). Each of these families is from a distinct subclass (Prototheria, Allotheria, and Theria) of the class Mammalia. (Carroll, 414-415, 627.) Morganucodontids are by far the best known, but they are not believed to be related to any living mammals. (Carroll, 415.) Morganucodontids (about four inches long to tail base) do indeed have a number of mammalian skeletal features, but they also have a fully-functional reptilian jaw joint (quadrate-articular) which distinguishes them from all living mammals. Evolutionists believe that over time the quadrate and articular bones of creatures such as morganucodontids worked their way into the middle ear to become the mammalian incus and malleus. There is, however, no fossil record of this transition. According to Carroll, “It is not yet certain when the malleus and incus became incorporated into the middle ear, but the grooves on the medial surface of the dentary that indicate their position of attachment in early Jurassic mammals are missing in Upper Jurassic genera.” (Carroll, 395.) Likewise, Kemp states, “The exact stage at which the therian ossicles evolved is unknown. Kuehneotherium, the earliest and most primitive therian, must have lacked them, for a groove to house the post-dentary bones is still present on the inner face of the dentary.” (Kemp, 293.) Furthermore, the alleged migration and coordinated transformation of the quadrate and articular bones of the reptilian jaw into the incus and malleus of the mammalian middle ear is believed by evolutionists to have occurred separately in the Protherian (monotremes) and Therian (marsupials and placentals) lineages. Though Kemp suggested in the early 1980's that monotremes did not diverge until the Upper Jurassic, until after the hypothesized incorporation of the quadrate and articular into the middle ear, Carroll (p. 421) explains why this is unlikely. Thus, one finds Kermack and Kermack stating, “Since the Theria and the Atheria [now Protheria] separated from each other before the changes in the middle ear had taken place, these two major groups must have evolved mammalian auditory ossicles independently. This is a most surprising fact” [Emphasis supplied). (Kermack and Kermack, 64.)

To have to project a double, parallel evolution of the ear bones, without adequate direct lines of evidence forming an indisputable tree, is telling. (And, no I am not entering into yet another red herring and strawman debate on ear bones, I am pointing out how the fossils are being consistently given a strained reading.) Second, you have distorted the context of the malaria parasite evidence, which captures more reproductive events in the past 60 or so years than the entire class of mammals on the usual timeline. And, that under severe selection pressure of antimalarial drugs. What the epidemiological studies and their statistical patterns show is that random mutations of the parasite struggle to go beyond a double mutation over all that vast number of reproductive events in an asexual context; the most favourable for fixing mutations. In short, microevolution, on evidence, is no basis for inference to macroevolution of body plans. So, the bottomline after coming on 700 posts is that evolutionary materialism is dominant by a priorism and indoctrination, not inference to best and uncensored explanation. It remains the case that there is no coherent and evidence based evolutionary materialist account of origin of dFSCI in cell based life [~ 100 - 1,000 k bits of coded, algorithmic bio-information and associated co-ordinated machines for implementing it]. There is similarly no coherent and evidence based evolutionary materialist account of the origin of major, embryologically feasible body plans (e.g. the Cambrian life revolution), which requires ~10's of millions of bits of bio-information, dozens of times over. That is, the so-called tree of life has no well-warranted basis for the claimed gradualistic branching to the diverse life forms in the fossil record and today, and it has no root. Evolutionary materialism is institutionally dominant because of eh history of materialistic positivism in science, not because of evidence. Mr Johnson, in rebuking Lewontin, was right:

For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them "materialists employing science." And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) "give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." . . . . The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses. [Emphasis added.] [The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]

It is time to liberate science from ideological captivity to a priori materialism, restoring its integrity. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

You need to look at the recent examination of Malaria parasites on the empirically observed limits of microevolutionary changes through mutations, bearing in mind the number of relevant reproductive events.

I'd really like to blame malaria on deliberate, conscious design, but gosh darn it, the mathematics just doesn't model actual biology. http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/05/behes_dreadful_new_book_a_revi_1.php Petrushka

What you need to explain is the origin of body plans per darwinist assumptions and observable evidence, e.g of chordates.

I assume that means you aren't going to tell me what you think about the series of fossils depicting the evolution of middle ear bones. Petrushka

Gaz, I want you to know something. I have seen you on this board when you have said something...lets just charactorize it as unfortunate wording...in which you have been called out on it. I saw you back off, accept the correction, and acknowledge that things can get a lil punchy in these threads. Such actions are a good sign of character in my book, and although I was not a part of the conversation, I want you to know that I appreciated what you did, and I know others did as well. Cheers. Upright BiPed

GAZ“I have never, ever said that unpredictability was synonymous with acausality – you only need a dictionary to tell you that" Earth to Gaz??? Are you there Gaz? Upright never said that you said unpredictability was synonymous with magic ( acausality). I think you are losing it Gaz understandably so. If I got asbeatup as you have on this thread I would be punch drug as well. Vivid Vivid vividbleau

PS: Not to mention, we observe a sudden vanishing of the barrage of objections on the issue of causality and the issue of the law of contradiction, joined to the usual subject switching to new tangents. kairosfocus

---Gaz to Upright Biped: “I have never, ever said that unpredictability was synonymous with acausality – you only need a dictionary to tell you that. What I said was that some acausal events, such as radioactive decay, are actually investigated in physics using probability – i.e. half-lives of radioactive substances. Upright Biped didn’t accuse you of saying that unpredictability is “synonymous with a-causality.” He was quoting my comment in which I pointed out that you don’t UNDERSTAND the difference, which you obviously do not. So, Upright Biped is obviously innocent of false attribution and you are obviously guilty. Of course, I understand that you have been liberated by those irksome constraints placed on you by the law of non-contradiction, so perhaps you might want to argue that your account of the matter and my account of the matter are both true. StephenB

Petrushka: What you need to explain is the origin of body plans per darwinist assumptions and observable evidence, e.g of chordates. You need to look at the recent examination of Malaria parasites on the empirically observed limits of microevolutionary changes through mutations, bearing in mind the number of relevant reproductive events. Those numbers -- howls and specious objections notwithstanding -- do not bode good for those who imagine that macro changes can be arrived at through accumulation of micro ones. (BTW, any software engineer -- ans DNA is software -- can tell you different. You ate not likely to be successful in getting form a small program to a much larger and more diverse one by micro changes that all have to be functional.) Onlookers, it is plain that we are just seeing recycled just so stories and standard icons that do not show what really has to be explained: origin of life and of body plans, and of the associated tightly integrated, complex, functional, algorithmic, digital information. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Petrushka: I am sneaking a few moments from writing comments on a constitution draft, right now dealing with incredibly archaic state of emergency detention provisions that reek of the days of sail and muskets and presses powered by muscle power. So, when I saw your remarks on reconstructing the natural history, it was at once obvious that your perspective needs some updating too. In forensics history, we reconstruct the past based on testimony, record and signs from traces of the past here in the present. The past itself is of course unobservable. WHEN WE GO UP TO NATURAL HISTORY, WE WERE NOT THERE, NOR ARE THERE ANY GENERALLY ACCEPTABLE RECORDS. So, we study the past of life from traces in its present. We also seek plausible models in light of patterns in the present that support an inference to best explanation on likely processes in the past. One of those patterns we have in the present is indisputably that we have design, and we have patterns that reflect design. So, it is quite reasonable to infer to design in similar objects traceable to the past as we do on the pattern of present ones. For instance, what is the known causal pattern for codes, digital processing systems that use data structures and algorithmic information as well as associate organised executing machinery? Do we have any credible cases where such arose from undirected chance and necessity as opposed to design? Is there any reasonable evidence that the associated digitally coded functionally specific complex information spontaneously arises from undirected chance and necessity? [Remember, Genetic algorithms and the like are anything but cases like that: where does the GA code come from, the algorithm, the halting condition, the fitness function description of the island of function, etc etc?] Besides, the fossils overwhelmingly point to sudden appearances, stasis, and disappearance or continuity into the current6 world. Still. After 150 years, 1/4 million fossil species and millions upon millions of specimens. Of CRD's predicted/hoped for gradually branching tree of life with smoothly varying populations we find nowhere the fainest trace. Worse, the top level [phylum, subphylum, up to several dozens it seems] changes to innovate major body plans are found right at the bottom, in the Cambrian era fossils, in a window on the usual timeline of maybe 10 mn yrs, maybe about 540 MYA. Not what Darwin hoped for -- and what he tried to explain on paucity of the record. The event has not borne out his hopes. The gaps are systematic, real and at the deepest level. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Micro evolutionary shifts of a few bases, within an island of existing function, are utterly irrelevant to the finding of the shores of such islands of function in the configuration space for such organic molecular entities.

That would certainly be a coup for ID, to demonstrate that there is no wiggle room. Looking at the fossil sequence showing that the bones of the middle ear appear to have evolved by gradual changes in the shape of jaw bones, what are your thoughts? Petrushka

Gaz, Misrepresent you? Hell I can hardly follow your train of thought. I apologize if you think I intentionally misrepresented your train of thought. - - - - - - - GAZ: “As far as your comments on cause and effects is concerned, I’m tired of telling you – you just don’t seem to learn – that the classical world we see is completely different to the quamntum world. In the former, cause and effect clearly apply: in the latter, it’s clear that sometimes they don’t.” ... “I’ve answered it several time. I wonder if you are able at all to grasp even the basics of physics.” StephenB: “You have said only that quantum mechanics is different from other realms. Indeed, they are different insofar as they are unpredictable and hard to measure, but those differences do not add up to differences about causality.” GAZ: “...causality is something that happens AT THE CLASSICAL LEVEL, but not necessarily at the QUANTUM LEVEL.” StephenB: “... unpredictability is not synonymous with acausality.” GAZ: “I agree, but that isn’t the issue.” Upright BiPed

Gaz: It has been repeatedly pointed out above that there are two major classes of causal force: necessary and sufficient ones. It has also been pointed out, using cases, that radioactivity is, on empirical evidence, shaped by necessary causal factors. So, it cannot be acausal. Unless you can show that necessary causes are not causes [which will take some doing!], your declarations are simply wrong. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Petrushka: The relevant case of OOL, is one where until a metabolising entity with a self-replicating facility based on digital, algorithmic information and associated co-ordinated implementing machinery were in place, life could not have started. Construct any still warm pond, or vent or comet etc scenario, using up all 10^80 atoms of our cosmos, and give it up to 50 million times the 13.7 BN yrs said to have passed since the singularity. No more than 10^150 Planck time quantum states will have passed for the 10^80 atoms. That is less than 1 in 10^150 of the number of configs for a storage entity holding just 1,000 bits, equivalent to 500 4-state elements. Until you come up with an observed, undirected process of chance and necessity that can trigger a cascade of observed developments that organises the relevant codes, algorithms, and molecular machines to make it work, you still have an empty dismissal of what he evidence is pointing to. YThen, when it comes to novel body plans, you have to come up with a similar blind chance andf necessity scensrio that on obse4evation, can credibly originate upwards of 10 million bits of novel bio information to make new cell types, tissues, organs etc, and associated regulatory and developmental controls to implement the novel architecture. All of which have to be integrated in an embryologically feasible whole that has advantages in a real world niche. Micro evolutionary shifts of a few bases, within an island of existing function, are utterly irrelevant to the finding of the shores of such islands of function in the configuration space for such organic molecular entities. But then, all of this was pointed out in excruciating details above, and was not answered cogently on the merits. So, you are simply recycling already answered objections and already exploded myths and just so Darwinist stories. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

But design theory is about studying observable objects right in front of us, and their patterns thast reflect potential or even credible signs of design.

The issue isn't design; the issue is the history of the objects. We have a theory of how the objects got that way. We do not have a good theory of how life began or any detail regarding the history of life prior to the Cambrian, but we have really good theories of how the diversification of life occurred after the Cambrian. Petrushka

UprightBiped (608), Re: your 608, your 592 DIDN'T give me an answer. In 592 you referred to a previous post wherein you said: “It is not strange if one understands, as you evidently do not, that unpredictability is not synonymous with acausality.” I have never, ever said that unpredictability was synonymous with acausality - you only need a dictionary to tell you that. What I said was that some acausal events, such as radioactive decay, are actually investigated in physics using probability - i.e. half-lives of radioactive substances. Please do not misrepresent me in future. Gaz

Petrushka: Pardon: your own self-evident, directly experienced existence as a minded, intelligent, conscious, presumably en-conscienced creature is a standing refutation to the notion that "purely undirected processes are all that is at work in the cosmos." Similarly,it is simply false that "Science seems to have begun with the metaphor of a clockwork." Modern science began on rthe pemise that the cosmos was the creation of an intelligent and rational Creator, who made it in a way that was intelligible to man. So, science was conceived of by its leading pioneers as "thinking God's [creative and sustaining, ordering and organising] thoughts after him." I have already repeatedly cited Newton's Opticks, Query 31 as a good example of this. So is his General Scholium to Principia. All the way back to Bacon and beyond, that is the pattern. You have been misled on the relevant history. Next, you still seem to be belabouring the strawman notion that the issue in design detection on empirical evidence, is "intervention," with hints of the supernatural in it, judging by the example of catastrophism you cited. [BTW, notice how any number of catastrophes have now crept back in, e.g. explain the Deccan lava flow of is it 1500 miles, and of course there is that proposed meteor that hit the Yucatan, and more.] But design theory is about studying observable objects right in front of us, and their patterns thast reflect potential or even credible signs of design. On the stength of observed known cases of design [cf that class of known examples of intelligent action again], and the challenges of achieving similar outcomes on observation by undirected chance and necessity, we have certain identified signs of design in the natural world. Most notably, as the two videos at the head of this page show, in the dFSCI found in the cell. Also, we have the case of the finetuning of the physics of the cosmos as a whole. So, we have some key cases of patterns in nature that strongly point to design as a better explanation that undirected chance and necessity. Cases that are momentous, if we are to value and have as a goal that science should be . . .

an unfettered (but ethically and intellectually responsible) pursuit of the truth about our world, based on observation, experiment, analysis, and discussion among the informed.

When I come to your question above, I find it inadvertently and sadly illuminating on an evident refusal to make even the slightest acquaintance with the subject matter you wish to comment adversely on:

would you consider money better spent calculating the probabilities of an event happening by chance, or better spent looking for a natural cause?

Have you ever taken the moment to follow the links (or just go to the Weak Argument Correctives, esp. No 29)that would show that a part of the explanatory filter is precisely an assessment of aspects of an entity or phenomenon that are explained on chance and necessity? Have you paused to see that at no point in the explanatory filter method as diagarammed in the first of the two links, is there any need to make a probability calculation? Have you assessed the methodologies used to calculate the functional information in the peer reviewed paper by Durston, Chiu, Abel and Trevors, comparing them with how average information per symbol is routinely calculated in information systems? Have you taken time to value the significance of this as a contribution to the onward development of information theory? As to your example of a virus shifting from one host species to another, it may be quite relevant to be able to reasonably detect that the shift passes a threshold that points to design. As in by terrorists or rogue states. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Falsification of the paradigm espoused throughout the biological sciences is (not only a non-fasifiable assumption made in the face of observable counter-evidence

I gave a rather clear example of a potential falsification. One that is relevant to ID. It's really the only testable proposition that I've seen from the ID community. It really makes no sense to compute the odds against genomes coming together at once. No one in biology thinks that happened. To compute relevant odds you need a specific event, a change to the genome that could not have happened in small steps (microevolution). Petrushka

630,

And just how is it you would falsify the hypothesis that purely undirected processes are all that is at work in the cosmos?

That would seem to be a theological question.

So let me get this correct. Falsification of the paradigm espoused throughout the biological sciences is (not only a non-fasifiable assumption made in the face of observable counter-evidence - as you have made more than evident by your willfull evasion of the issue) but is also now a THEOLOGICAL question? Petrushka, you are making Dr Hunter proud. He's been saying that for ages. "Religion drives science, and it matters". Upright BiPed

Petrushka RE 630 Petrushka the last thing we need from you is a lecture on the history of science. Vivid vividbleau

KF "I hope you can find it in yourself to acknowledge that you overlooked or ignored the specific stipulation — crucial to establishing the credibility of an induction — and managed to contradict yourself in the space of a few words in your reply" Aint going to happen KF. Petrushka has been puking all over him or herself throughout this thread. If you or upright were damned by your own words the both of you would be embarrassed . Petrushka on the other hand is either to dumb or just to dishonest to know or care. Dont forget this is a person that embraces "magic" and is basing his positions on blind faith. For religious people like Petrushka evidence doesnt matter, its all about "blind faith" As I said in 581 "What lessons have we learned so far? 1)That both Gaz and Petrushka embrace irrationality" 2) The second lesson is that, either by comission or omission, neither one of them are truly interested in the truth. Their worldview supercedes evidence. They indeed are blind and as I said to KF incapable of entertaining any evidence that conflicts with their worldview. When people are capable of embracing magic in order to defend their worldview no amount of rational discourse or evidential profferings can offset “beleif in magic” Once one embraces irrationality the game is over as is the enterprise of science. I mean if something can come from nothing ( magic) digitally encoded information just happening is easily doable. 3) Finally the third lesson we can take from all this is that they are intellectually dishonest. Observe th smoke screens, the back tracking , the dodging, the obfuscations as evidenced by their refusal to answer direct questions. Questions that they know will damn themselves if they do. This is not the sign of an intellectually honest person. All this has been on full display today and everyday. Vivid vividbleau

This is a censorship remover issue, not a science stopper one

I've been asked a lot of questions. Perhaps you'll answer one for me. As an administrator responsible for funding research, would you consider money better spent calculating the probabilities of an event happening by chance, or better spent looking for a natural cause? Suppose the event is the crossing over of a virus from one host species to another? Petrushka

Really? And just how is it you would falsify the hypothesis that purely undirected processes are all that is at work in the cosmos?

That would seem to be a theological question. For most of known human history people have assumed that invisible agencies were jiggering with the world. Science seems to have begun with the metaphor of a clockwork, something that could be understood through investigation. It was thought through most of the 18th centuries that interventions in the natural order would be easy to detect. The global flood was an obvious target of investigation. Since then, the quest for evidence of intervention has all but disappeared in most branches of science. To answer your question I would say that Behe has the only satisfactory proposal for finding evidence of intervention. Find a gap that can't be bridged by successive small modifications. Of course that's a re-wording of a statement found in Origin of Species. Petrushka

Petrushka: Let us observe carefully:

KF: Now, can you kindly show us a case where in our observation, such a case [of dFSCI and implementing machinery] came about by undirected chance and mechanical necessity? P: Only one case so far, and that would be life on earth. I will stipulate that I don’t know the actual origin of life. Perhaps if we find other examples we can answer with something better than hypotheses.

I hope you can find it in yourself to acknowledge that you overlooked or ignored the specific stipulation -- crucial to establishing the credibility of an induction -- and managed to contradict yourself in the space of a few words in your reply. The inference form dFSCI to intelligent design, as you know or should know, is based on the routinely observed source of such, and on the related configuration space challenge. It is readily empirically tested, by providing an observed case whereby FSCI and/or its associated organised set of processing machines came about in our observation, by undirected chance and necessity. The implicaitons of the principle and inference are -- as you must know -- potentially revolutionary and trsnsformational for origins science and other fields being stoppered up by the debate on origins science. Not to mention, laying a basis for correcting a longstanding pattern of injustice, abuse and distortions in institutional science and correcting the current indoctrination being conducted in the name of science education and wider science policy. This is a censorship remover issue, not a science stopper one. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

You don’t find it illuminating that enormous strings of meaningful information have bipassed all known causal models of matter and poofed themselves into being inside the living genome?

That would seem to be a thinly disguised assertion that all the biologists who have lived and worked on the mechanisms of evolution are liars.

Oh come now Petrushka, just because you were asked to consider the actual observations related to your position, doesn't mean you should start making crap up. Upright BiPed

Petrushka, "Only one case so far, and that would be life on earth." So assuming your conclusion is your idea of scientific investigation? How brave. "I will stipulate that I don’t know the actual origin of life." More non-stop bravado. "Perhaps if we find other examples we can answer with something better than hypotheses." How many do we not have to find before we wonder what causes the ones we do find? In other words, when does our universal experience with a subject matter become important in investigating it? "My position is that a hypothesis or conjecture that has entailments and suggest lines of research is better than a conjecture that has no entailments and generates no research." Really? And just how is it you would falsify the hypothesis that purely undirected processes are all that is at work in the cosmos? Upright BiPed

You don’t find it illuminating that enormous strings of meaningful information have bipassed all known causal models of matter and poofed themselves into being inside the living genome?

That would seem to be a thinly disguised assertion that all the biologists who have lived and worked on the mechanisms of evolution are liars. Petrushka

Petrushka: You might find here, in light of this context relevant. Observe in particular Fig A.1, the remarks on the illustrated general communication system [notice how its proper function requires organised synchronisation between the transmission subsystem and the reception subsystem, including an agreed set of codes, modulation techniques . . . For D/RNA, the specific lengths of bases from the backbone allows key-lock fitting of three-letter [G/C/A/T - 4 - state], 64 state resulting codons and anticodons . . . and protocols], and the extended description by Connor, leading up to the quantitative discussion. We are speaking here of digitally coded [i.e discrete state, with specific symbols from a code table], algorithmically functional string data structures. As has been well known of since the 1950's. Indeed, here is Crick in his March 19, 1953 letter to his son, Michael:

"Now we believe that the DNA is a code. That is, the order of bases (the letters) makes one gene different from another gene (just as one page of print is different from another)"

This is all plain enough, and has been in essential details for up to 50 - 60 years GEM of TKI kairosfocus

"I have no idea what this means." Disenginuous. "I guess I am a physical realist, in that I believe the universe exists in the absense of perceivers, falling trees make sounds in the absense of anyone to hear them." Trivial and self-serving, but first self-serving. "I don’t find this particulary illuminating." You don't find it illuminating that enormous strings of meaningful information have bipassed all known causal models of matter and poofed themselves into being inside the living genome? "Seems like dorm room bull session material." I deserved that, after all, you already said you had no intention of venturing into topics that were not safe, particularly those evidence-infested plateaus having to do with the truth of our existence on this planet. Upright BiPed

Now, can you kindly show us a case where in our observation, such a case came about by undirected chance and mechanical necessity?

Only one case so far, and that would be life on earth. I will stipulate that I don't know the actual origin of life. Perhaps if we find other examples we can answer with something better than hypotheses. My position is that a hypothesis or conjecture that has entailments and suggest lines of research is better than a conjecture that has no entailments and generates no research. Petrushka

You drew all those conclusions from that little sentence.

No. I drew all thos conclusions from seeing similiar discussions many times. I see nothing wrong with Allen_MacNeill's posts. There are several definitionsof "information." Some are purely formal and deal with the compressibility of strings. What MacNeill seems to be addressing is coded "messages." A string cannot be a coded message unless there is a reader that "understands" or acts based on reading the code.

Can you tell me of any information about the universe which was not first the product of perception?

I have no idea what this means. I guess I am a physical realist, in that I believe the universe exists in the absense of perceivers, falling trees make sounds in the absense of anyone to hear them. I don't find this particulary illuminating. Seems like dorm room bull session material. Petrushka

Not to worry Petrushka, I'm sure you'll engage the issue as least as well as MacNeil: - - - - - - #19 Upright BiPed 04/21/2010 2:52 pm Allen, I appreciate that you see information as a causal force that is not reducible to material/energy. I also appreciate the fact that you see meaningful information as a distinct entity from noise. In previous threads you have made the point that meaningful information must be first perceived in order to exist. It is, in fact, a product of perception. What I do not understand is why you say that a) meaningful information is recorded in DNA (that which is transcribed into function) and b) that meaningful information is necessarily the product of perception, but then you equivocate on the conclusion that the meaningful information recorded within DNA was first the product of perception. - - - - - - Upright BiPed 04/22/2010 8:52 pm Allen McNeil, if you don’t mind, I am still awaiting your clarification at #19 - - - - - - Upright BiPed 04/23/2010 9:12 am Allen MacNeil, if you don’t mind, I am still awaiting your clarification at #19 - - - - - - Upright BiPed 04/24/2010 6:35 am …again Professor MacNeil, it would be great to have your clarification at #19. Thanks. - - - - - - Upright BiPed 04/25/2010 12:09 pm Prof MacNeil, would you be so kind as to clarify your position at post #19 Thanks - - - - - - Upright BiPed 04/26/2010 7:47 am Allen MacNeil, Could you please give a clarification at post #19. It seems to be an important point, and I would like to better understand your position. Thanks - - - - - - - Upright BiPed 04/27/2010 10:59 am Professor MacNeil, Would you please be so kind as to give a clarification at post #19. Thank You. - - - - - - - Upright BiPed 05/01/2010 3:06 pm Allen MacNeil, Would you clarify your position above at #19 please. I have asked several times for this clarification on this thread (as well as others). The need for a clarification emerges from you own statements, and it would seem to be a rather important point within the debate. Consequently, it appears odd that you would avoid making your position clear – or, are you uncertain about your position yourself? Your response would be appreciated. Upright BiPed

Petrushka: It seems that for the moment, you are backing off on the causality issue. Okay. But, unfortunately, only to go out on yet another red herring distractor. To get beyond it, observe that we are speaking of functional string complexity [cf. the 2005 peer-reviewed paper and esp Fig 4 on OSC, RSC and FSC], not the Shannon Metric, which will be a peak for a random or nearly random text string; which your hashing up of a Shakespeare text by XOR with a random string would effectively create, absent preservation and transmission of the blended in string so that the original could be recovered. Notice, how the information in your test case is recoverable, but requires a functional decoding system with the capability to invert the encrypting function. That case, however, is irrelevant, as the real test case is one where we are dealing with known encoded algorithmically functional strings in the cell. That system has: codes [thus symbols and rules for meaningfulness in a context], algorithms, step by step execution through co-ordinated molecular nanomachines. We can show that similar technologies can be created by intelligent designers. We can show that the configuration spaces would swamp out the search capacity of he observed cosmos. So, we have a clear best explanation, absent a priori materialistic censorship: intelligent design. Now, can you kindly show us a case where in our observation, such a case came about by undirected chance and mechanical necessity? In that case, apart from a priori Lewontinian materialism, why then do so many insist that first life and body plan level biodiversity "must have" and did come about by undirected chance plus necessity? Some, even saying that this is as firm a "fact" as gravity -- not the law of gravitation, but gravity -- which we can easily directly observe by dropping a mango. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Petrushka, "Encrypt it by XORing each character with a character generated from the output of a geiger counter (the most nearly random source we know of). The resulting string is indistinguishable from a random string. No test can tell it is not random. No known method exists for decrypting it" Or take a number and write it down on a piece of paper, then burn the paper until it is nothing but ashes....do the ashes contain information?? So... You have to sink into absurdities to stay on the field huh? Great. Upright BiPed

information is an abstraction that requires perception in order to exist

I’ll take a stab at unravelling what this might mean. An encoded string has no meaning absent a reader. The genetic code is arbitrary. The letters and words have no inherent meaning aside from what the cell machinery does with them.

You drew all those conclusions from that little sentence. Golly. If I hadn't seen your style of argumenttation a couple thousand times, I might think you wanted to dismiss the evidence and get right to the verdict. Just for grins, lets go ahead and look consider the observations. Can you tell me of any information about the universe which was not first the product of perception? Here are the pertinent links: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-medium-is-not-the-message/#comment-350342 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-medium-is-not-the-message/#comment-350401 Upright BiPed

I'll try to clarify my previous post with an example. Take any text, Shakespeare for example. Encrypt it by XORing each character with a character generated from the output of a geiger counter (the most nearly random source we know of). The resulting string is indistinguishable from a random string. No test can tell it is not random. No known method exists for decrypting it. Does it contain information? Petrushka

information is an abstraction that requires perception in order to exist

I'll take a stab at unravelling what this might mean. An encoded string has no meaning absent a reader. The genetic code is arbitrary. The letters and words have no inherent meaning aside from what the cell machinery does with them. Petrushka

Now, want to have some real fun? Address my post at 589.

could you provide a link to the statement paraphrased at 589? Petrushka

Petrushka, You are arguing against a ghost. In fact, you are torturing it. Lets make a stipulation: all of the humans on the surface of the planet agree that quantum events are surprising and counterintuitive. Can we now get past this point? However, that does not mean - as has been asserted repeatedly on this thread - that by virtue of being surprising to our intuitions, those events are therefore uncaused. It's a non sequitur. One does not follow the other. Now, want to have some real fun? Address my post at 589. Upright BiPed

Yes, and one of those claims is that there are necessary causal factors that influence the course of events.

Simple question: Were the findings of quantum theory, the experimental results, anticipated by philosophy? Can you find anything in the writings of philosophers -- scientific or otherwise -- that anticipated the two-slit experiment or entanglement or virtual particles or tunneling or indeterminancy or wave/particle duality? If not, then common sense notions about the properties of matter are subject to revision based on evidence. Petrushka

Petrushka: After hundreds of posts and a significant discussion today, can you tell me whether or no a necessary causal factor is or is not a cause? Now, let us look at your last remark: __________________ The usual way of discussing causation in phenomena like radioactive decay is to say there are no local causes and no hidden variables. --> But this loose manner of speaking is manifestly wrong as you are using it, as we know that simply the location of a neutron in or out of the nucleus of a stability-belt atom deeply affects its decay process --> Further we know, even trivially, that a neutron has to be there for it to decay. This is an internal, local and necessary causal factor --> Yet further, on locality, the point is that the presence of a free neutron in a lab on earth and its decay by beta process is not necessarily entangled with events on say the far side of the Andromeda Galaxy. --> That a neutron may come about in a process that entangles it with a complementary particle,and the two may be separated and the beta process in the neutron may resolve something on the other particle, has nothing to do with the facts (1) that the neutron has decayed and (2) that for the neutron decay to happen, you first need a neutron. --> Thus, even trivially, we see a necessary causal factor at work, one that fits with Aristotle's material cause. Another way of looking at it is to ask if some future technology will enable us to predict exactly when a specific atom will decay, and the answer appears to be no. --> This conflates and confuses cause with sufficiency of relevant causal factors. --> Knowing or not knowing and predicting or not predicting the sufficient causal factors that specify that such a decay will happen at a given instant to a given neutron, has nothing to do with whether or not there are necessary causal factors --> This is a red herring distraction and a strawman distortion of what has been pointed out time after time, day after day --> A TRULY ACAUSAL EVENT WOULD COME OUT OF NOWHERE, AND NOTHING, WITHOUT ANY PATTERN WHATSOEVER I am not asserting that quantum theory contradicts philosophical causality, whater that is, --> BY NOW IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT CAUSALITY, A COMMON-SENSE NOTION THAT HAS BEEN ELABORATED AND REFINED THROUGH PHILOSOPHY AND ITS DAUGHTER DISCIPLINE SCIENCE, SOMETHING IS DEEPLY WRONG but that quantum theory contradicts some intuitive assumptions about causality. --> This is an unacknowledged major shift, obviously influenced by the excerpt I presented this morning --> No-one has argued that causality is simple or easy to work out, especially in quantum contexts --> The plain point is that events even at quantum levels are not acausal and thus utterly chaotic If you make claims about what can happen in the physical universe, those claims are subject to verification. --> Yes, and one of those claims is that there are necessary causal factors that influence the course of events. --> I notice how you and Gaz have repeatedly studiously avoided addressing the issue of necessary and sufficient causal factors --> Which distinction has been at the heart of my remarks. _________________ kairosfocus

In other cases, we do not know the specific cause, and/or infer that there is an inherent randomness, e.g the wave function of quantum theory and related phenomena like tunnelling and uncertainty that give rise to say radioactive decay.

The usual way of discussing causation in phenomena like radioactive decay is to say there are no local causes and no hidden variables. Another way of looking at it is to ask if some future technology will enable us to predict exactly when a specific atom will decay, and the answer appears to be no. I am not asserting that quantum theory contradicts philosophical causality, whater that is, but that quantum theory contradicts some intuitive assumptions about causality. If you make claims about what can happen in the physical universe, those claims are subject to verification. Petrushka

P4S: Cause and stochastic phenomena. Often we deal with highly contingent outcomes that display a probabilistic distribution. For instance, the uppermost face of a fair die is a flat distribution, and the sum of a pair of dice shows a sharply peaked distribution. Q: Do such chance-distributed effects occur acausally? A: No. 1 --> As a rule, there must be something there for something to happen, e.g. we saw a die or two dice in action above. 2 --> Further above, unless there was a neutron, there would be no neutron decay, and unless the neutron is in a proper context, it also would not decay, and energy-mass conservation was a key part of that. 3--> This is the first level of necessary causal constraint. 4 --> More broadly, that which begins or can come to an end has something that is at least contemporaneous that is required for it to happen or occur. 5 --> Thus, the contingent necessitates a necessary cause. 6 --> BTW, this is the precise argument that leads to the observation that our credibly contingent observed cosmos necessitates a cause, ultimately in a necessary being. 7 --> Such a necessary being is non-contingent, and has no cause.

(From this and other considerations, we arrive at the inference that the most credible candidate for the cause of our universe is an Intelligent and powerful designer who is a necessary being. That is, we here have a serious -- and arguably cogent [~ inductively compelling] -- argument that points to what looks a lot like: God.)

8 --> Probabilistic situations, plainly, do not evade the necessary causal factors. [And, equally plainly, necessary causal factors are causes.] 9 --> But, this is not sufficient for the event or entity to happen. Correct. 10 --> And, the sufficient factors have to reckon with the stochastic, probabilistic pattern. 11 --> This can come about by inner factors of spontaneity, much like how the Gaussian distribution happens because there is a population of small and fluctuating variants that sum one way now, another the next time around. So, heights of people, lengths of bolts, scores on certain tests etc may follow a bell shaped distribution. 12 --> In other cases,we have accidental intersections of deterministic but uncorrelated processes.

For instance, in the old days my Dad (to do statistical work) used telephone directories as poor man's random number tables: alphabetically sequenced initials of names listed on a page for a wide enough region like a city are uncorrelated with the line codes for telephones . . . e.g. the last four digits in the US style system.

13 --> In other cases, we do not know the specific cause, and/or infer that there is an inherent randomness, e.g the wave function of quantum theory and related phenomena like tunnelling and uncertainty that give rise to say radioactive decay. 14 --> But, we observe that such phenomena are not chaotic and without pattern, but follow patterns and distributions, i.e. they are at minimum influenced by necessary causes. 15 --> We may not be able to predict the individual case, but the population of events is quite orderly. So, it is not acausal, as something is constraining it and giving it that order. 16 --> So, it is fair to speak of probabilistic sufficiency in causation: if something is sufficient for a stochastically distributed outcome, it is a sufficient cause, whether or not we currently know or can identify it. 17 --> That is, order or organisation are hallmarks of cause. And, randomness that follows a definite pattern is therefore not acausal. kairosfocus

PPPS: Wiki, on proof by contradiction:

In logic, proof by contradiction is a form of proof that establishes the truth or validity of a proposition by showing that the proposition being false would imply a contradiction. Since by the law of bivalence a proposition must be either true or false, and its falsity has been shown impossible, the proposition must be true. In other words, to prove by contradiction that P, show that [NOT-P => Contradiction] or its equivalent [NOT-P => (Q AND NOT-Q)] . Then, since [NOT-P] implies a contradiction, conclude P. Proof by contradiction is also known as indirect proof, apagogical argument, reductio ad impossibile. It is a particular kind of the more general form of argument known as reductio ad absurdum.

Onlookers, any person with significant exposure to modern aspects of Mathematics should have been exposed to this proof strategy many times. The point of the strategy is that on denying P, we end in a contradiction. Such must be abandoned as the result is that (Q AND NOT-Q) is necessarily false, and becomes unsafe for the field of reason, as (Q AND NOT-Q) => Anything. That is, a false premise entails true and false conclusions indiscriminately; we lose the reliability of mathematical reasoning. Which is of course foundational to scientific reasoning. This key approach to mathematical reasoning deeply embeds the premise that the Law of Non-Contradiction is undeniably true, on pain of absurdity. kairosfocus

Gaz, I already answered you in 592, and I am not sure how I could be more clear or use less words. I even used your own, and that apparently didn't help. So be it. Upright BiPed

PS: Pardon a bit of a tutorial! PPS: The above issues connect to the complex debates over inference to design in another way, as I discuss here on in my always linked research notes, and here in the beta form IOSE course: the roots of mind, and how mind could credibly be seen as neither determined by mechanical necessity and/or chance, nor isolated in the Kantian [noumenal, phenomenal and things in themselves issues . . . ] and related senses, from external reality. (One of the debates we have had at UD is over the claim that a mind that is non-material must necessarily be isolated from physical material reality. To which the best answers seem to lie in pointing to the implications of possible influence on the course of events that Q-th hints at, and the inference to the design of the cosmos as pointing to the cause of the observed universe lying in an intelligence that is both powerful and prior to matter.) kairosfocus

Gaz Pardon, but you are stalling, as this has been put to you already (and is also found here), complete with onward link to a major discussion of the problems with the current attempts to dismiss it. I extract from the second of these, a brief discussion used by the unhdersigned in an introductory Philosophy course:

. . . logic often has a bad reputation, not only in popular discourse but in serious discussions. As Copi summarises in his Logic [a classic Prentice Hall standard textbook that has been going since something like the 1960's], this often takes the form of complaints about “linear” or “black and white thinking” caused by Aristotelian Logic, especially his three laws of logic: 1. Identity: If a claim, P is true, then it is true: Symbolically, [P => P] = 1. 2. Non-Contradiction: P cannot be both True and False, in the same sense at the same time. [P AND NOT-P] = 0. 3. Excluded Middle: A statement [i.e. "proposition"] is either true or false. [P OR NOT-P] = 1. The root of this problem is a series of misunderstandings. Identity may endure through change; and where change is material, specifying the point of time can resolve ambiguity. Contradictions are distinct from conflicts: “not-white” (as opposed to “black”) is the true contradiction of “white.” Thirdly, white/ not-white is not at all the same as “white”/ “black” – any shade of grey, green or red will do: so, the excluded middle does not force us into “two-value thinking.”

The law of non-contradiction is presented in any number of ways and places, and the standard form as shown is that it forbids the affirmation and denial of the same thing in the same sense and context (place and time); which error is of course usually done implicitly. Exposure of a contradiction to deny the proposition that led to it, is the foundation of the classic form of proof that is at the heart of the major Mathematical advances of the past 200+ years: Proof by contradiction, i.e. reduction of a claim to be falsified to absurdity; the classic one being the demonstration of the incommensurateness of the side of a square and its diagonal. Going right back to Aristotle in Metaphysics, 1011B, we can see how he stitches together the relevant cluster of concepts:

That the most certain of all beliefs is that opposite statements are not both true at the same time, and what follows for those who maintain that they are true, and why these thinkers maintain this, may be regarded as adequately stated. And since the contradiction of a statement cannot be true at the same time of the same thing, it is obvious that contraries cannot apply at the same time to the same thing . . . . Nor indeed can there be any intermediate between contrary statements, but of one thing we must either assert or deny one thing, whatever it may be. This will be plain if we first define truth and falsehood. To say that what is is not, or that what is not is, is false; but to say that what is is, and what is not is not, is true; and therefore also he who says that a thing is or is not will say either what is true or what is false. But neither what is nor what is not is said not to be or to be. Further, an intermediate between contraries will be intermediate either as grey is between black and white, or as "neither man nor horse" is between man and horse.

Anticipating a similar objection on cause-effect, I excerpt:

cause: 1. a. The producer of an effect, result, or consequence. b. The one, such as a person, event, or condition, that is responsible for an action or result. {AmH Dict]

Wiki gives a useful 101 on the problem, and points to the solution inadvertently (we all know where the sympathies of Wiki lie . . . ):

Causality is the relationship between an event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event is a consequence of the first . . . . Though cause and effect are typically related to events, candidates include objects, processes, properties, variables, facts, and states of affairs; characterizing the causal relationship can be the subject of much debate. According to Sowa (2000),[5] up until the twentieth century, three assumptions described by Max Born in 1949 were dominant in the definition of causality: 1. "Causality postulates that there are laws by which the occurrence of an entity B of a certain class depends on the occurrence of an entity A of another class, where the word entity means any physical object, phenomenon, situation, or event. A is called the cause, B the effect. 2. "Antecedence postulates that the cause must be prior to, or at least simultaneous with, the effect. 3. "Contiguity postulates that cause and effect must be in spatial contact or connected by a chain of intermediate things in contact." (Born, 1949, as cited in Sowa, 2000) However, according to Sowa (2000), "relativity and quantum mechanics have forced physicists to abandon these assumptions as exact statements of what happens at the most fundamental levels, but they remain valid at the level of [charitable reading: ordinary, day to day?] human experience."[5] . . . . Causes are often distinguished into two types: Necessary and sufficient.[10] A third type of causation, which requires neither necessity nor sufficiency in and of itself, but which contributes to the effect, is called a "contributory cause."[11] Necessary causes: If x is a necessary cause of y, then the presence of y necessarily implies the presence of x. The presence of x, however, does not imply that y will occur. [Translating: absence of x blocks emergence or occurence of y.] Sufficient causes: If x is a sufficient cause of y, then the presence of x necessarily implies the presence of y. However, another cause z may alternatively cause y. Thus the presence of y does not imply the presence of x. [Translating: once x is there, y will occur, but z may also cause y to occur. Anyone who has had to troubleshoot a complex system will immediately understand.] Contributory causes: A cause may be classified as a "contributory cause," if the presumed cause precedes the effect, and altering the cause alters the effect. It does not require that all those subjects which possess the contributory cause experience the effect. It does not require that all those subjects which are free of the contributory cause be free of the effect. In other words, a contributory cause may be neither necessary nor sufficient but it must be contributory.[12][13] J. L. Mackie argues that usual talk of "cause," in fact refers to INUS conditions (insufficient and non-redundant parts of unnecessary but sufficient causes). For example, a short circuit as a cause for a house burning down. Consider the collection of events: the short circuit, the proximity of flammable material, and the absence of firefighters. Together these are unnecessary but sufficient to the house's destruction (since many other collections of events certainly could have destroyed the house). Within this collection, the short circuit is an insufficient but non-redundant part (since the short circuit by itself would not have caused the fire, but the fire would not have happened without it, everything else being equal). So, the short circuit is an INUS cause of the house burning down . . . . Interpreting causation as a deterministic relation means that if A causes B, then A must always be followed by B. In this sense, war does not cause deaths, nor does smoking cause cancer. As a result, many turn to a notion of probabilistic causation. Informally, A probabilistically causes B if A's occurrence increases the probability of B. This is sometimes interpreted to reflect imperfect knowledge of a deterministic system but other times interpreted to mean that the causal system under study has an inherently chancy nature . . . . Physicists conclude that certain elemental forces: gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetism are the four fundamental forces that cause all other events in the universe. The notion of causality that appears in many different physical theories is hard to interpret in ordinary language. One problem is typified by earth's interaction with the moon. It is inaccurate [comment -- better: loose or imprecise] to say, "the moon exerts a gravitic pull and then the tides rise." In Newtonian mechanics gravity, rather, is a constant observable relationship among masses, and the movement of the tides is an example of that relationship. There are no discrete [better, isolated] events or "pulls" that can be said to precede the rising of tides. [see the problem of strawmansation? an incomplete account with elements driven by the perspective of the observer, can be roughly correct though incomplete . . . ] Interpreting gravity causally is even more complicated in general relativity. Similarly, quantum mechanics is another branch of physics in which the nature of causality is particularly unclear [better: hard to interpret]. For statistical generalization, causality has further implications due to its intimate connection with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

In Wiki's discussion of causality in Physics, this is elaborated and somewhat ameliorated:

In modern physics, the notion of causality had to be clarified. [note: not, abandoned] The insights of the theory of special relativity confirmed the assumption of causality, but they made the meaning of the word "simultaneous" observer-dependent[6]. Consequently, the relativistic principle of causality says that the cause must precede its effect according to all inertial observers. This is equivalent to the statement that the cause and its effect are separated by a timelike interval, and the effect belongs to the future of its cause. Special relativity has shown that it is not only impossible to influence the past, it is also impossible to influence distant objects with signals that travel faster than the speed of light. In the theory of general relativity, the concept of causality is generalized in the most straightforward way: the effect must belong to the future light cone of its cause, even if the spacetime is curved. New subtleties must be taken into account when we investigate causality in quantum mechanics and relativistic quantum field theory in particular. [accounting for and elucidating subtleties is not equivalent to abandoning a key concept] In quantum field theory, causality is closely related to the principle of locality. A careful analysis of the phenomena [sic] is needed, and the exact outcome depends on the interpretation of quantum mechanics chosen [i.e. Q-Th is a work in progress . . . . ]: this is especially the case of the experiments involving quantum entanglement that require Bell's Theorem [denial of hidden variables, i.e what is measured here will affect an entangled particle elsewhere "instantly" . . . and given relativity, what does "instantly" mean esp where we are in the relativistic or FTL regimes? Does measuring a photon on earth "instantly" affect its entangled partner at Sirius? How? Is there a hint of a different domain in which the particles are still in close contact, i.e. a sub-space? Dragging in concepts from traditional Theism, could this be connected to the concept of God as being everywhere and everywhen, i.e there is a domain of Eternity that sits at the north pole of space-time, so that all times and locations are immediate to it? Would such a zone provide a short cut from one point to another, i.e a super wormhole nexus??? Just to provoke, even as Columbus' evidence of bodies washed up in Ireland was it, pointed to something out there reasonably close in, never mind the debates over his far too small estimate for the circumference of the world relative to the findings from Eratosthenes on [cf. here in the IOSE course] i.e. are there hints that the many puzzles of our current view of the cosmos suggest that we are looking at the discovery of a new world here? At least, we should not allow a dominant paradigm to blind us to conceptual possibilities . . . ] for their implications to be fully understood. Despite these subtleties, causality remains an important and valid concept in physical theories. For example, the notion that events can be ordered into causes and effects is necessary to prevent causality paradoxes such as the grandfather paradox, which asks what happens if a time-traveler kills his own grandfather before he ever meets the time-traveler's grandmother.

The Second Law of course establishes "time's arrow," as it is fundamentally about the irreversible increase across time of the non-availability of energy to do work. So, we have a fundamental principle of ever increasing disorder at molecular level. Relativity of course raises the issue of what simultaneous means, and we see that he answer has to be drawn up by moving from the neighbourhood of an event: a local inertial frame will see the causal succession -- at most simultaneity, and other more remote IFRs will concur. When the quantum issue is injected, issues of entanglement [such that measurements of related objects at remote points seem to "instantaneously" mutually affect one another] and the issues over uncertainty and wave-particle duality impose subtleties and conflicting views across differing interpretations. So, there are subtleties and debates, but what shines through is precisely what I have emphasised. Namely, that events and entities in physics are not a-causal: things do not happen out of nothing, nowhere, with no pattern. And, necessary constraints are causal factors. Cause may be subtle in Physics, and issues are connected to the most troubling contemporary theory [and recall, we must never conflate or naively equate theory at any time and the actual truth about reality: empirical reliability so far is inevitably provisional], but fundamentally if we dismiss causality willy-nilly, physics collapses. Causality is fundamental to physical reasoning, just as it is to other serious ways to reason about the course of our world. Similarly, basic principles of right reasoning are foundational to Physics and other ways to look at and think accurately and carefully about our world. And, yet again, after another day has passed, the objectors to the design inference are still unable to provide an observationally based counter to the inference to design from the dFSCI in the cell. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

UprightBiped, Thanks for your 589 but I wasn't aware of the earlier exchange with McNeil and we've enough going on here to occupy me in the short time available to me. If you want to reacst it in terms of the discussion here then fine. Before going any further with discussions on the "law of non-contradiction", can one of you (StephenB, kairosfocus, etc.) give me a formal statement of what the law says. Not your interpretation, please - a formal statement preferably with a reference to an accepted philosophical work that provides some background. I want to make sure I know precisely what you guys are saying. Gaz

"Again, I am taking bets and giving odds that neither Petrushka or Gas will provide examples of the very demands they are insisting on" I predict two things. 1) You wont get any takers :) 2) They will not directly answer your questions. Vivid vividbleau

---Petrushka: "In the quantum world there is a finite probability that a rabbit could materialize. The odds could be computed, in fact I believe the odds for equivalent events have been computed. There is also a finite probability that a stage magician, having hidden a rabbit in his hat, will find it has vanished to regions unknown. ---"I fail to see how this connects to formal logic or rules of reason." Meaning no disrespect, but it isn't polite to stall. I will ask the question again by emphasizing only the key points with capital letters and editing out everything else. You have stated that UNTIL WE PRESENT YOU WITH EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY, you will continue to hold that a magician could, in principle, PULL A RABBIT THAT ISN'T THERE out of a hat. You have established this evidential standard on the grounds that the law of non-contradiction IS NOT REALLY A "LAW." Please tell us plainly, then, using YOUR SPECIFIED STANDARDS for verification, WHAT KIND OF EVIDENCE WOULD YOU ACCEPT THAT WOULD CONVINCE YOU THAT YOU ARE WRONG--that is, what kind of evidence would, in your judgment CONFIRM THE LAW OF NON-CONTRADICTION. Please be SPECIFIC. (Again, I am taking bets and giving odds that neither Petrushka or Gas will provide examples of the very demands they are insisting on.) StephenB

Petrushka, "No, it means that at the quantum level, evidence can contradict our expectations of how physical objects behave." Surprising our expectations does not provide evidence that events happen without causes. - - - - - - It now seems like Gaz has passed on my question in #589. Perhaps he will return to later. In the meantime, care to give us your thoughts? Upright BiPed

"No, it means that at the quantum level, evidence can contradict our expectations of how physical objects behave." Ok, granted. Then why all the objections to rational sensibilities? They may be counterintuitive; which simply means that they operate under conditions, which we currently don't have a handle on. It doesn't mean that they defy a logical explanation. And if we do find an explanation that fits with our logic, (which I believe KF has already provided) then Gaz's argument is falsified. The law of non-contradiction still stands. So I don't see how anyone would resort to the dismissal of common logic when faced with phenomena that don't appear to fit within that logic. It sounds rather counterproductive to me. Appearances can be deceiving. Expectations are one thing - abandoning logic is another. CannuckianYankee

Quantum phenomenon are counterintuitive. This means that they don’t obey the laws of logic.

No, it means that at the quantum level, evidence can contradict our expectations of how physical objects behave. Petrushka

Being spatially distributed is of course a wave-like property. As is undergoing interference [and superposition]. kairosfocus

correction: phenomena CannuckianYankee

How Evidence for Quantum phenomenon Contradicts the Law of Non-Contradiction 101: INT. PHYSICS CLASSROOM - DAY A TEACHER discusses quantum phenomenon before a class of STUDENTS behind desks. TEACHER Quantum phenomenon are counterintuitive. This means that they don't obey the laws of logic. One of the primary laws of logic is the law of Non-contradiction; which forms the basis for any evidential argument. Since quantum phenomenon are counterintuitive, and show that certain things can be two places at one time according to evidence, which must be interpreted according to laws of logic; quantum phenomenon contract the law of Non-Contradiction. Are you getting it so far, class? STUDENT No, now I'm completely confused. TEACHER Excellent. Now you understand quantum phenomenon, but I doubt if you'll understand much else. CannuckianYankee

Stephen: No rabbit and no hat is right: everything, from nothing. As soon as the claim was made that evidence would count for one claim as against its opposite, they are assuming and using implicitly the very first principles of right reason they object to. Indeed, so soon as they affirm or imply that something IS an actual state of affairs. The reductio is getting tighter and tighter. G kairosfocus

Until we present you with evidence to the contrary, you hold that a magician could, in principle, pull a rabbit out of the hat that isn’t there.

In the quantum world there is a finite probability that a rabbit could materialize. The odds could be computed, in fact I believe the odds for equivalent events have been computed. There is also a finite probability that a stage magician, having hidden a rabbit in his hat, will find it has vanished to regions unknown. I fail to see how this connects to formal logic or rules of reason. Petrushka

I wrote that too hurriedly. It should read, ...they actually believe there is no rabbit in the hat before the magician pulls it out." StephenB

---vividbleau: “They actually believe there is no rabbit before the magician pulls it out of the hat!!! Is it any wonder that any amount of evidence one produces does nothing to change their mind?” ---Gaz: "You’ve produced nothing in the way of evidence. Not a jot. All we’ve had from you is constant references to some laws of right reason that don’t apparently, differ from ordinary reason, but which include some laws that don’t stand up to evidence." Gaz, bless your lovable little heart, this is just too precious. Until we present you with evidence to the contrary, you hold that a magician could, in principle, pull a rabbit out of the hat that isn't there. You contend, after all, that there is no "law" of non-contradiction that would rule out the possibility. Inasmuch as you have claimed that you could only be persuaded otherwise if we provide EVIDENCE, and inasmuch as you labor under the illusion that evidence informs reason's principles rather than the other way around, please tell us plainly what kind of evidence would convince you that you are wrong. Please be specific. (I am taking bets and giving odds that Gaz will not even approach this question). Petrushka, please feel free to weigh in. StephenB

Gaz, "The problem has come because – for reasons I have yet to fathom – IDists are unable to accept that the quantum world is different to the classical world." Rest assured, IDist know as well as you that quantum events can be different than classical physical events, we are well versed in the fact that counter-intuitive events are a part of the physical world. To tell you the truth, we also breathe air and bury our dead just like you. The issue is simple. You are demonstrably wrong, and I will allow your own words to illustrate it:

“It is not strange if one understands, as you evidently do not, that unpredictability is not synonymous with acausality.”

I agree, but that isn’t the issue.

Yes Gaz, it is. Now will you address my last post. Upright BiPed

"Nonsense. If the law is shown to be wrong then it isn’t a law. Full stop." Not only have you not shown the LNC to be wrong you used the law to claim acausal quantum phenomena contradicted the law. Quit whining it doesnt serve you well. Vivid vividbleau

vividbleau (586), "In order to claim acausaul quantum phenomena contradicts the LNC you must use the LNC to make the claim." Nonsense. If the law is shown to be wrong then it isn't a law. Full stop. Gaz

Vivid, Thank you, too kind. - - - - - - - - Gaz, Cornell Biology Prof Allan McNeil was recently on this forum to deride IDist with his usual pleasantries. He agreed that the specific sequencing of nucleotides in DNA which are transcribed by the cell's machinery contain "meaningful information". He also agreed that "meaningful information" is necessarily the product of perception. By this it was meant that there are no particles of information contained among the orbits of matter, instead, information is an abstraction that requires perception in order to exist. May I ask, how do you agree/disagree with any of these observations? Upright BiPed

Upright (578), "If this conversation was about tires or washing machines Gaz (and Petrushka) would have affirmed the obvious long ago." At last, an IDist appears to be on the verge of some understanding. If it was about tires and washing machines we would have been talking about the classical world and none of us would have had any disagreements. The problem has come because - for reasons I have yet to fathom - IDists are unable to accept that the quantum world is different to the classical world. Even kairosfocus, who I'm told is a professional physicist, seems unabel to grasp this, and poor StephenB doesn't have a chance with it. I'm not talking tires and washing machines, nor the planet Jupiter - that's the entire point. I'm talking superposition, virtual particles, spontaneous pair generation, wavefunctions etc. where the physics is completely different and acausal effects happen and particles can exist in several states at least until collapse of the wavefunction. So far no-one here - repeat, NO-ONE here - has come up with any evidence to the contrary. Gaz

vividbleau (576), "Dont, virtually every materialist that frequent this board espouse , based on quantum theory, something can come from nothing. That the LNC has been shown to have been invalidated." Not just quantum theory - evidence of quantum phenomena. Gaz

"Of course I have. If it’s a law it holds true in all cases. One contrary example of acausal quantum phenomena means it isn’t a law." Thanks for agreeing with me “If there is no LNC you have no way to assert that the evidence that quantum phenomena have no cause eliminates the contrary.” Furthermore you have just confirmed StephenB's position that the right principles of reasons inform science. In order to claim acausaul quantum phenomena contradicts the LNC you must use the LNC to make the claim. It is not the evidence that contradicts the LNC it is what is deduced from the evidence ,the LNC that informs you that the contrary has been falsified. Case closed. Vivid vividbleau

vividbleau (568), "When one believes in magic no amount of evidence can do anything to convince them about anything." Sounds like a definition of miracles and faith to me. "They actually believe there is no rabbit before the magician pulls it out of the hat!!! Is it any wonder that any amount of evidence one produces does nothing to change their mind?" You've produced nothing in the way of evidence. Not a jot. All we've had from you is constant references to some laws of right reason that don't apparently, differ from ordinary reason, but which include some laws that don't stand up to evidence. Gaz

The evidence does not say that the contrary state of affairs is false that is the evidence DOES NOT say that one particle DOES NOT pass through two slits simultaneously.

If you know what that means, and why it's important to this discussion, you win. Petrushka

Vivid: A wavicle: it has properties of both, manifested depending on circumstances. (Even the classical point particle is a mathematical abstraction . . . a cricket ball shrunk down till it can go no more.) G PS: Guess how the Shamrock became the symbol of Christian Ireland? kairosfocus

vividbleau (559), "If there is no LNC you have no way to assert that the evidence that quantum phenomena have no cause eliminates the contrary." Of course I have. If it's a law it holds true in all cases. One contrary example of acausal quantum phenomena means it isn't a law. Gaz

RE 578 Upright I want to start off by saying I very much appreciate all the things you bring to this forum.I have learned so much from your postings and appreciate your defense in the cause of truth. Upright you are correct, in away all this is boring and I am sure everyone is sick and tired of reading my questions to Gaz and Petrushka over and over again. You are correct even though boring I think it is quite illustrative. What lessons have we learned so far? 1)That both Gaz and Petrushka embrace irrationality. Now this is of particular interest to me and hopefully those honest seekers of truth that lurk on this board that may be fence sitters. It is of particular interest to me because of some of the points you made in 578. We Christian ID'sts (IDiots) are portrayed as irrational and anti science. Petrushka and Gaz bring these stereotypes to this forum so it is important to expose this mischaracterization in all its glory. By doing so we show that contrary to the stereotypes it is the Christian ID'sts ( IDiots) that are rational, the defenders of rationality and the defenders of science. It is Petrushka, gaz and their ilk that are irrational, anti scientific and the IDiots. The irony is delicious. 2) The second lesson is that, either by comission or omission, neither one of them are truly interested in the truth. Their worldview supercedes evidence. They indeed are blind and as I said to KF incapable of entertaining any evidence that conflicts with their worldview. When people are capable of embracing magic in order to defend their worldview no amount of rational discourse or evidential profferings can offset "beleif in magic" Once one embraces irrationality the game is over as is the enterprise of science. I mean if something can come from nothing ( magic) digitally encoded information just happening is easily doable. 3) Finally the third lesson we can take from all this is that they are intellectually dishonest. Observe th smoke screens, the back tracking , the dodging, the obfuscations as evidenced by their refusal to answer direct questions. Questions that they know will damn themselves if they do. This is not the sign of an intellectually honest person. All that to say that I am going to press on with this and not be diverted. Besides I am bored this weekend and have a lot of time on my hands. Vivid vividbleau

kairosfocus (554), "While SB is correct that breakdowns in understanding and accepting basic principles of reasoning are a key part of what has gone wrong, the tactic of ever increasing tangents has now reached the extent of someone wanting to debate W-Bosons as intermediates in beta decay of neutrons [when these pass by in about 10^-25 s, and are very intermediate indeed], which distracts from the main point on that already tangential matter: there is abundant reason to see that such processes are not acausal. Such a tactic of increasing degrees of distractive tangentiality needs to stop." Well, if you can't come up with a causal model for beta decay, all you had to do was SAY so.... Gaz

"Starting at post 465, I have maintained that it is possible, in principle, for evidence to contradict statements about the properties of objects based on intuition." In 566 you moved from "intuition" to "axioms of logic". You listed these "axioms" and stated these axioms you listed can be falsified by evidence. I asked for the evidence that falsified them. As evidence of that falsification you gave me the doulble slit experiment. I responded "The evidence shows that we have one particle passing through two slits simultaneously. The evidence does not say that the contrary state of affairs is false that is the evidence DOES NOT say that one particle DOES NOT pass through two slits simultaneously." So dont give me this crap that your comments only applied to intuition. Vivid vividbleau

CY, Hitchens would most assuredly deny cause. Dawkins refuses to debate it as a means to deny it, and PZ plays with crackers and stomps his adolescent feet. In the end, they all have already denied it. They all know that Life operates from semiotic content contained in an information carrier. They all also know that chemistry cannot create meaning. Whats a materialist to affirm if those are the facts? Nothing. Denial is the only game in town. I agree with Vivid that this has been a most interesting thread to watch. Petruska was simple. He/she (like many others) will simply refuse to engage the issues, call it a mystery, point to research, and stick his/her head back in the sand. He/she said exactly that. Of course, as a defense that is somewhat boring, but it is illustrative. Gas on the other hand is a fighter. He is standing there wobbling, nose is broken, one eye is shut and the other is cut, blood running down his chin - and he still has his gloves up, swinging at what he can't even see. He can't stand it that (ehgads!) a Christian IDist uses logic and reason to deprive him of the ability to make sense out of his own position. And let's be honest, that is the motivation. If this conversation was about tires or washing machines Gaz (and Petrushka) would have affirmed the obvious long ago. Upright BiPed

You are now saying evidence cannot falsify propositions of formal logic?

Starting at post 465, I have maintained that it is possible, in principle, for evidence to contradict statements about the properties of objects based on intuition. As a matter of history, quantum theory has modified our intuitive ideas about what matter is, and what its properites are. Petrushka

RE 572 "Somehow I doubt it." Dont, virtually every materialist that frequent this board espouse , based on quantum theory, something can come from nothing. That the LNC has been shown to have been invalidated. Vivid vividbleau

"I have no idea what you are getting at. The only thing I've claimed is that Quantum theory challenges many intuitive ideas about the properties of matter. It says nothing about propositions of formal logic." Really???? Petrushka in 556 you wrote Statements like: “Objects cannot simultaneously exist and not exist” or “Objects cannot move from one place to another without passing through the intervening space” or “All effects must have a cause” or “Nothing can come from nothing” or “Objects seen in the mirror are closer than they appear” are statements derived from experience. They make risky axioms, because they can be falsified by evidence." Your claim is that these 'risky" axioms can be falsified by evidence. In 558 I wrote "Then by all means falsify them!!!" In 560 you wrote "The intuitive understanding of “thing” does not allow it to pass through two slits simultaneously. Start with that one." As per your request I started with that one in 564 "Petrushka forget about the particular axiom. Lets get to the evidence. The evidence shows that we have one particle passing through two slits simultaneously. The evidence does not say that the contrary state of affairs is false that is the evidence DOES NOT say that one particle DOES NOT pass through two slits simultaneously." After all this you are now saying you have no idea what I am getting at? You are now saying evidence cannot falsify propositions of formal logic? KF is correct "So, who is being a magician now?" Vivid vividbleau

CY, based on SB's experience with many materialists at UD, a lot. It is not just two or two dozen. G kairosfocus

Petrushka: So soon as quantum theory starts to observe [not just look, but SEE], infer on evidence and make rational and even Mathematical arguments, it is using first principles of right reasoning. And when we look at a Young's double slit electron experiment, we are seeing that whatever an electron is, it is NOT a particle [think tiny, hard cricket ball] or a wave [think Surf's up!] that our mathematical models are in effect talking about, but something else. I have always loved the "wavicle" term. (BTW, the classical point-particle is an impossibility, i.e. it has infinite density, but then, infinite poles in the Laplacian complex plane are key in frequency and transient response analysis. Waves, too are idealisations -- the continuum assumption implied in waves of water, sound, in strings etc is counter-factual. But, searching over by where the street-light is often helps us drunks out, never mind the real-real world over there in the dark.) So, I again draw your attention to the point that we are here looking at a mystery, and may well be playing at epicycles etc. A single electron at a time at the emitter, a wave at the two slits, and a particle again at the screen? Worse, if you do something to tell which slit it goes through, the wave collapses and the interference pattern goes away. Sounds a lot like Padraig being asked about the coherence of the triune concept of God, and answering by stooping to pick up a shamrock: is this one or three? If one, why the three evenly sized leaflets, if three why the single stem? And it is both, but not in the same sense, at the same time! GEM of TKI kairosfocus

What I wonder in all of this: is this the typical position of materialists, to deny right reason? Or is it just these two? Does PZ Meyers, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens etc. deny the law of non-contradiction? Somehow I doubt it. CannuckianYankee

So, who is being a magician now? kairosfocus

Petrushka forget about the particular axiom.</blockquote. OK by me, but I was going to say that intuitively, an object can't be in two places at the same time. I have no idea what you are getting at. The only thing I've claimed is that Quantum theory challenges many intuitive ideas about the properties of matter. It says nothing about propositions of formal logic.

Petrushka

RE 566 Thanks KF. I especially liked this observation "Therefore, those who accuse us of circularity or infinity are doing worse than being circular or infinite: they are appealing to what they seek to oppose; THEY ARE BEING SELF-CONTRADICTORY, AS WELL AS ARBITRARY!" Of course this is aptly being demonstrated as we speak for all eyes to see. Vivid vividbleau

KF "Similarly, we notice how the same objectors, after over 500 comments, are unable to address the patent facts of the presence of a digitally coded, functionally and specifically organised,algorithmic information processing entity and associated reams of information in the living cell" KF they are not capable of doing so because they embrace irrationality Think about it if they can hold to the position that something can come from nothing then the presence of digitally coded algorithmic information just happening is child play. When one believes in magic no amount of evidence can do anything to convince them about anything. They actually believe there is no rabbit before the magician pulls it out of the hat!!! Is it any wonder that any amount of evidence one produces does nothing to change their mind? Vivid vividbleau

F/N: One of the issues above is that "cause" in the a priori materialist mindset has come to often mean something like forced or determined or made. That is, they will only see causal influence in the context of sufficiency or even outright mechanical determination, e.g. they think random events that follow stochastic, probabilistic patterns that are indeterminate on outcome on a given "roll" are uncaused. (And, of course, they would reduce mind to chance and necessity acting on brain tissue, in the end.) This is an error, on multiple dimensions. 1 --> Reduction of mind to forces of chance and necessity ends up undermining the credibility of reason itself; becoming self-referentially incoherent. (This has been brought up before and linked on.) 2 --> As has been shown, there are necessary causal factors, absence of which can block an effect. (Think of the fire triangle and fire fighting.) 3 --> Sufficient causal factors are of course not necessary, i.e there is more than one way to end up with a skinned cat[-fish]. 4 --> There may even be contributory factors that affect but are neither necessary nor sufficient. 5 --> That we do not know the causal factors at work, or cannot see how they give rise to an effect does not mean they are not real. And more . . . kairosfocus

PS: I had forgotten this link on the primacy of the laws of thought, and addressing objections to them. Vivid will appreciate this excerpt:

Antagonism to the laws of thought is sure and incontrovertible proof that one is erring in one’s thinking. How might such antagonism be systematically justified without appeal to those very laws? One couldn’t claim to be generalizing or adducing it from experience, for this would appeal to the law of generalization or the principle of adduction, which are themselves based on the laws of thought. One couldn’t claim to be drawing some sort of syllogistic or other deductive conclusion, for the same reason. Such antagonism can only be based on arbitrary assertion, without any conceivable rational support. Arguments like this in favor of the laws of thought are claimed by their opponents to be ‘circular’ or ‘infinitely regressive’ – i.e. arbitrary. But to point to the fallacy of circularity or infinite regress is to appeal to the need to ground one’s beliefs in experience or reasoning – which is precisely the message of the laws of thought. Therefore, those who accuse us of circularity or infinity are doing worse than being circular or infinite: they are appealing to what they seek to oppose; they are being self-contradictory, as well as arbitrary! . . . . The laws of thought are not circular or infinite – they are just consistent with themselves. It is their opponents who are engaged in fallacy – the failure to think reflexively, and realize the implications of what they are saying on what they are saying. To deny all claims to knowledge is to deny that very claim too – it is to be self-inconsistent. One logically must look back and check out whether one is self-consistent; that is not circularity, but wise reflection. The laws of thought are not based on any particular argument, but are the very basis of all reasoning processes, including all argumentation. This is not an arbitrary starting point; it is an insight based on observation of all reasoning acts, an admission of what evidently carries conviction for us all. These laws cannot be disregarded or discarded, simply because they are so universal. That these laws do not lead to any paradox adds to their force of conviction; but that too is just an application of their universality. They encapsulate what we naturally find convincing in practice, provided we are not dishonestly seeking to pretend otherwise in theory.

kairosfocus

mullerpr: None of the principles of right reason can be proven. They are self evident and are either accepted or rejected as such with the understanding that if they are not true, there is no reason to talk to anybody about anything. Thus, we either choose to be rational and accept those principles or we choose not to be rational and reject them. One important aspect of "realism" [in the formal sense] is the notion that [A] we have rational minds, [B] we live in a rational universe, and [C] there is a correspondence between the two. In like fashion, the ordering of the universe is understood to be synchronized with the laws of mathematics such that the investigator can think or do science with the confidence that there is something to be known and that the faculty for knowing is reliable [not perfect]. If there is no correspondence between the knower and the thing to be known, then all so-called knowledge is an illusion and any attempt at rational discourse is impossible. Since there can be no correspondence without minds, denying the existence of the mind will immediately place one in intellectual quicksand. If the investigator doesn't have a mind to know, or if the object of the investigation doesn't contain anything to be known, or if there are no non-negotiable rational starting points by which the mind can begin the investigation, all discourse and truth seeking would be a total waste of time. Deniers of reason's principles do not understand this, which is why rational discourse is impossible with them. Consider the following questions: On Metaphysics: Is it rational to think that the planet Jupiter can both exist and not exist? Is it rational to think that the universe could come into being without a cause? Is it rational to think the quantum events, however counterintuitive they may be, are exempt from the law of causality or that they can operate without some guiding law to regulate their behavior? In keeping with that point, does not evidence need to be interpreted? Similarly, do not reason's first principles, the laws of logic and the laws of mathematics inform evidence and not the other way around. On Design: Is it rational to think that wind, air, water, and time can produce a perfect sand model of a 1963 Corvette Sting Ray? Is it rational to think that a tornado can faithfully mimic the behavior of a burglar? Is it rational to argue against the law of non-contradiction while [unwittingly] using it to make the argument. [Indeed, is it even possible to THINK without assuming the law of non-contradiction?] Obviously, the answer to all these questions should be clear. Nevertheless, those who challenge the law of non-contraction and the law of causality do not just get one or two of these questions wrong, they get all of them wrong. That is not a coincidence. In fact, they cannot reason in the abstract because they have rejected reason's principles. It has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with the choice that they have made. For personal reasons, whatever the circumstances, they have chosen to be irrational Thus, it is impossible to have a rational discussion with an irrational person as this thead makes clear. In that context, I am not really speaking to them because I suspect it may be too late to rescue them from their own folly. On the contrary, I am speaking to those onlookers whose minds have not yet been turned to mush and who may have some motivation either to become rational or return to rationality. StephenB

"Ok we have to particles passing through two slits simultaneously.What axiom does this evidence falsify?" Petrushka forget about the particular axiom. Lets get to the evidence. The evidence shows that we have one particle passing through two slits simultaneously. The evidence does not say that the contrary state of affairs is false that is the evidence DOES NOT say that one particle DOES NOT pass through two slits simultaneously. Vivid vividbleau

And . . . the red herring pulls away, heading for the ad hominem-soaked strawman to be set alight . . . (Isn't it time to seriously address the implications of finding a digital, code-bearing, algorithmically functional, complex information system in the heart of the cell . . . ? Which, FYI Petrushka, is the actual "on track" issue, cf original post by watching the Meyer video again . . . "What best explains information in DNA inside the cell . . . " and ""is Intelligent Design scientific . . . " [in the context where Lewontinian a priori materialism tries to reduce knowledge and rationality to "science" understood materialistically, thus ending in inescapable self-referential incoherence and repeated examples of reductio ad absurdum]. Cf my 101 here. ) _________ F/N 1 --> Of course to try to refute the law of non-contradiction ends in self-referential incoherence so soon as you find yourself saying the first claim that you hold to be true [as in, denying by implication that it is false]. Cf, 556:

Statements like . . . are [i.e. as opposed to "are not"] statements derived from experience . . .

F/N 2 --> BTW as well, there are self-evident worldview level foundational truths which are prior to science and Mathematics and are in fact in many cases foundational to such; of which the law of non-contradiction is one. (It's not that LNC is just one of 17 axioms of Boolean Algebra.) GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Correction we have one particle. Vivid vividbleau

"Start with that one." Ok we have to particles passing through two slits simultaneously.What axiom does this evidence falsify? Vivid vividbleau

Then by all means falsify them!!!

All of these statements, except the last, have required radical adjustments to the definition of thing and nothing. The intuitive understanding of "thing" does not allow it to pass through two slits simultaneously. Start with that one. Petrushka

Gaz RE 552 Gaz I am sure Petrushka appreciates your help, God know he (she) needs it. However we have unfinshed business ourselves. Rather than helping Petushka how about dealing with my post to you in 533? Gaz "To be clear, it means that there is no law of non-contradiction. In other words, there is no such law to contradict" Great we are making progress. If there is no LNC you have no way to assert that the evidence that quantum phenomena have no cause eliminates the contrary. Vivid vividbleau

"are statements derived from experience. They make risky axioms, because they can be falsified by evidence." Then by all means falsify them!!! I keep asking you to do so but you never do. All you do is to keep making the claim as if no one notices that you have failed to back up your repeated mantra. I will make it easy for you I wont even dispute whatever evidence you put forth!!! Vivid vividbleau

Can this be settled by everyone exposing their position in regards to realism? I can see an anti-realist arguing that if there were no minds(observers) then there were no axioms, but the realist position is in my mind stronger, that will say that regardless of minds observing, the axioms will still be "constants" controlling algorithms / reality. mullerpr

Trying to get this discussion back on track: Statements like: "Objects cannot simultaneously exist and not exist" or "Objects cannot move from one place to another without passing through the intervening space" or "All effects must have a cause" or "Nothing can come from nothing" or "Objects seen in the mirror are closer than they appear" are statements derived from experience. They make risky axioms, because they can be falsified by evidence. The possibility that statements derived from common experience might not be true under all conditions does not falsify any proposition of formal logic. It merely reminds us to be careful with our assumptions. Petrushka

Why state the obvious? My question is did these axioms just poof into our minds or were they derived by reasoning? By definition, axioms are statements that cannnot be duduced. By definition, they are "stipulated to be true for the purpose of a chain of reasoning." The phrase "poof into existence" is not useful to the discussion. Axioms are statements derived from experience, or which appear to be self-evident.

Petrushka

PS: Onlookers, recall that the easiest way to rhetorically deal with a key and inconvenient issue is to distract attention. Such distraction by irrelevancy is therefore the main internal defence mechanism, and a major tool of the debater's dark art. This is why I keep calling our attention back to the issue in the original post [the theme of Signature in the Cell and the related warrant for the inference on best explanation to design as the best explanation for its digital information system as shown in the DNA-RNA-Ribosome-Enzyme etc system], and pointing out the fact that many tangential issues in this thread have in significant part served as distractors. While SB is correct that breakdowns in understanding and accepting basic principles of reasoning are a key part of what has gone wrong, the tactic of ever increasing tangents has now reached the extent of someone wanting to debate W-Bosons as intermediates in beta decay of neutrons [when these pass by in about 10^-25 s, and are very intermediate indeed], which distracts from the main point on that already tangential matter: there is abundant reason to see that such processes are not acausal. Such a tactic of increasing degrees of distractive tangentiality needs to stop. kairosfocus

Onlookers: See how a reductio ad absurdum works? The so-called law of non-contradiction is first a law of reality: distinct things are distinct, not confused and chaotic. What is, is, and what is not is not. So, when you stand by the side of the street, the car rushing towards you is not both there and not there. When we speak of it, we ought not to pretend that it is and is not there in the same sense and time. Indeed, as Vivid pointed out, when one tries to deny and dismiss the law, one is actually using it. For, one is trying to provide argument and evidence that contradicts it [shows it to be an is not], so that one should reject the distinction between an is and an is-not. So, confusedly, one ends up in asserting an is and an is-not, contradicting what one tries to assert by how one asserts it. Self-refuting absurdity, in short. That is, once we understand it, the law of non-contradiction is seen as not only actually true but necessarily true. It is self-evident. Of course, Quantum Mechanics has been asserted as a way of dismissing it, and the associated law that that which begins to happen or may be stopped, has a cause. In so doing, the very language used to assert claims puts the proponents in the uncomfortable position of asserting ises and is-nots to try to deny the sharp distinction and opposition between the two. As touching causal factors, it is plain that these advocates refuse to acknowledge -- and then use loaded language to dismiss instead of providing warrant -- the significance of the two classes of causal factors identified: sufficient ones (it is sufficient for a fire to come to be or be sustained, that we have heat, oxidiser and fuel) and necessary ones (absent any of the three and a fire will either not come to be or will go out). At the quantum level, I have particularly used the case of the neutron, which is stabilised in the atom, but decays through a beta process with a half life of ~ 886 s outside the nucleus. Thus we see two necessary conditions in action affecting a key probabilistic quantum event: (1) trivially, we need a neutron to have neutron decay, (2) the neutron must be in an environment where it is not stabilised, for it to decay [i.e. once we are in the stability belt, we do not normally see beta decay of neutrons, and where we do see beta decay in unstable nuclides, the half life varies considerably from the free neutron value]. As well, the reliable free neutron decay rate shown by the half-life [and underlying decay constant] and the definite pattern of a beta decay process, show that other causal factors are at work within the neutron as it decays. We may not know the sufficient set of factors that cause a particular neutron to decay at a particular moment, but we know enough to know that the decay is not acausal. One factor is of course availability of mass to be converted into energy releasing the 511 keV to form a beta particle. (NB:On some details, the neutron has a rest mass higher than that of the proton, with energy equivalent of about 1 MeV. Also, within a family of nuclides with the same nucleon number [A], the one that has the local minimum mass deficit relative to imagined isolated nucleons will be stabilised because there will not be available mass from the release of energy by decay to form the beta and the electron antineutrino. [I omit the intermediate particle.] Thus, we see E = m*c^2 and energy conservation as yet another causal constraint. This constraint also explains the reason why isolated protons do not normally undergo decay by positron emission [i.e. positive electron beta decay] as, on energy-mass conservation, the energy input to achieve this decay and form the new particles has to be paid for in readily available borrowed energy "cash.") Also, on the bare logic of cause, we know that there have to be sufficient factors present when a neutron decays, i.e. if there were not, it simply would not decay. This is self-evidently true, as opposed to being an empty tautological play on words. The uncertainty limits may block us from ascertaining details, but unless there is a sufficient set of causal factors present, the event simply would not happen. (Of course, we can have sufficient sets that are in excess of the precise, bare minimum necessary and sufficient set.) Similarly, we notice how the same objectors, after over 500 comments, are unable to address the patent facts of the presence of a digitally coded, functionally and specifically organised,algorithmic information processing entity and associated reams of information in the living cell. We know that such digitally coded functionally specific complex information has one routinely observed cause, and we know that undirected chance and necessity on the gamut of the observed cosmos, would not be able to even give a noticeable scratch on the surface of he sea of possible configurations. So, we have extremely good warrant to infer that the living cell exhibits clear signs of design. Further to this, we also observe that the cosmos in which we find ourselves and other C-chemistry cell based life forms, is exquisitely fine-tuned in ways that facilitate habitable zones for such life. So, it is further credible that the cosmos was shaped by a powerful, intelligent and skilled designer who intended to create life. This chain of inferences is premised on empirically observed reality, and the projection form the patterns of the observed present to the roots of that present in the past based on inference to the best explanation, in light of known causal patterns. The root problem, plainly, is that his sits ill with the present dominant Lewontinian a priori materialist school of thought that dominates in institutional science, and in many other relevant areas. But to see the way that defenders of the status quo are now in deep reduction to absurdity on even basic logic, tells us much about the real balance on the evidence and on basic principles of good reasoning. Evolutionary materialism is a dying school of thought, drying up from its roots. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

vividbleau (550), "Why state the obvious? My question is did these axioms just poof into our minds or were they derived by reasoning?" They were taken as underivable statements of the obvious based on our experiences of the classical world. As maths and logic tools, therefore, they are useful in the classical world. Unfortunately they don't all survive after our experiences with the quantum world, as axioms, but that doesn't stop them being useful in the classical world. Gaz

StephenB (548), "Gaz, you wife has great taste." Well, she did marry me! Take that as proof or disproof as you see fit! Gaz

"The word axiom can have any of several meanings:" Why state the obvious? My question is did these axioms just poof into our minds or were they derived by reasoning? Vivid vividbleau

I see these axioms just poofed into our minds and were not derived by reasoning? Is this your position?

The word axiom can have any of several meanings:

(Mathematics) a generally accepted proposition or principle, sanctioned by experience; maxim 2. a universally established principle or law that is not a necessary truth the axioms of politics 3. (Philosophy / Logic) a self-evident statement 4. (Philosophy / Logic) (Mathematics) Logic maths a statement or formula that is stipulated to be true for the purpose of a chain of reasoning: the foundation of a formal deductive system Compare assumption [4]

Petrushka

---Gaz: "Strangely, that’s my wife’s favourite song (the Dean Martin version, not your lyrics though!)" Gaz, you wife has great taste. It was one of the premiere songs of all time, even with my mischievous embellishments! StephenB

"Might be my lat post on this thread,...You can play word games with this" In other words I am getting my butt kicked and I want it to stop so I will blame it on "word games" Vivid vividbleau

"I see these axioms just poofed into our minds and were not derived by reasoning? Is this your position?" Oh I forgot I should say "is this your sources position" Vivid vividbleau

"My sources say the law of non contradiction is an axiom, and is neither verifiable nor falsifiable." Your sources!!! LOL You gettin help somewhere eh Petrushka? "If it is an axiom, it is not a deduction." I see these axioms just poofed into our minds and were not derived by reasoning? Is this your position? Vivid vividbleau

Might be my lat post on this thread, but one of the cornerstones of quantum theory is that the existence of particles at a specific time and place is statistical, so a statement that a particle can exist and not exist at the same time is not a violation of LNC. You can play word games with this, but the simple fact is that the quantum world contradicts many intuitions. In the world we perceive, existence of things is not statistical. Petrushka

My sources say the law of non contradiction is an axiom, and is neither verifiable nor falsifiable. If it is an axiom, it is not a deduction. Petrushka

"Going one step further, the assertions that everything has a cause, and nothing can come from nothing are based on experience and intuition. They are not provably true. They could conceivably be falsified by evidence" Then by all means falsify the LNC with your evidence without using the LNC. Vivid vividbleau

"I’ve already given the only answer possible. Evidence cannot invalidate logic, but evidence can certainly invalidate logical deductions arising from invalid assumptions." Petrushka the LNC IS a logical deduction.So let me ask you again are you saying that if the evidence contradicts the law of non contradiction then the LNC has been contradicted? Vivid Vivid vividbleau

Going one step further, the assertions that everything has a cause, and nothing can come from nothing are based on experience and intuition. They are not provably true. They could conceivably be falsified by evidence. Petrushka

I've already given the only answer possible. Evidence cannot invalidate logic, but evidence can certainly invalidate logical deductions arising from invalid assumptions. Petrushka

"Give me an example of evidence that would contradict LNC. A hypothetical." Petrushka please see my post 527. Please answer mmy question. Vivid vividbleau

Give me an example of evidence that would contradict LNC. A hypothetical. Petrushka

RE 535 How about answering my question? Vivid vividbleau

To be clear here are you saying that if the evidence contradicts the law of non contradiction then the LNC has been contradicted?

The "law" of non-contradiction appears to be a feature of formal logic. Any statement in logic that starts with axioms is only as valid as its axioms. If you start by assuming that an object cannot move from one location to another without passing through the intervening space, then you will have a problem with explaining how many electronic devices work. Alternately, you must be careful how you define object. The problem isn't with logic; it is with assumptions about objects and properties of objects. Petrushka

"To be clear, it means that there is no law of non-contradiction. In other words, there is no such law to contradict." To be clear, here you use the LNC as proof that there is no LNC. Vivid vividbleau

"To be clear, it means that there is no law of non-contradiction. In other words, there is no such law to contradict." Great we are making progress. If there is no LNC you have no way to assert that the evidence that quantum phenomena have no cause eliminates the contrary. Vivid vividbleau

StephenB (530), Strangely, that's my wife's favourite song (the Dean Martin version, not your lyrics though!) Gaz

kairosfocus (526), "PS: To further underscore: for an event to be uncaused, it would have to have neither necessary nor sufficient causal factors, i.e. it would have to come out of nothing [so, no neutrons to decay!], and nowhere [neither in nor out of the atomic nuclei]. This cat ain’t even there, much less being superposed dead and alive!" This is just more irrelevant waffle. It doesn't matter how the neutrons got here, it could well have been by causal effects. The point is that you still haven't come up with a causal model, mechanism or any evidence for one. Which is very disappointing because I thought you, uniquely here, may be able to have a stab at it. Why not try, using W bosons for example? Gaz

To Acipenser, Petrushka, and Gaz: Goodbye, Let our hearts call it a day But before you walk away I sincerely want to say... I wish you bluebirds in the Spring To give your heart a song to sing And then a kiss, But more than this,I wish you rationality! And in July a lemonade To cool you in some leafy glade I wish you health, And more than wealth, I wish you rationality! StephenB

vividbleau (527), "To be clear here are you saying that if the evidence contradicts the law of non contradiction then the LNC has been contradicted?" To be clear, it means that there is no law of non-contradiction. In other words, there is no such law to contradict. Gaz

vividbleau (523), "Ok so you are in agreement with Stephen that the rules of reason inform the evidence?" I'm not sure what he really means by it. I'm afraid StephenB's prose and his thinking are rather opaque at times. If he means that the "rules of reason" are inflexible and inviolate, then no because he comes up with rules that clearly aren't valid for all events (e.g. causality and non-contradiction). But if he means that we analyse the evidence using reason, without being slaves to it and recognising that the evidence may reveal some of that reasoning to be invalid, then yes. Gaz

"The “law” of non-contradiction cannot invalidate experimental evidence of counter intuitive events, such as quantum tunnelling, and particles producing interference patterns with themselves" To be clear here are you saying that if the evidence contradicts the law of non contradiction then the LNC has been contradicted? Vivid vividbleau

PS: To further underscore: for an event to be uncaused, it would have to have neither necessary nor sufficient causal factors, i.e. it would have to come out of nothing [so, no neutrons to decay!], and nowhere [neither in nor out of the atomic nuclei]. This cat ain't even there, much less being superposed dead and alive! kairosfocus

The "law" of non-contradiction cannot invalidate experimental evidence of counter intuitive events, such as quantum tunnelling, and particles producing interference patterns with themselves. Petrushka

kairosfocus (521), "I have already pointed out for the case of the neutron, on empirical evidence, that necessary causal factors are at work," But yet again you present no evidence. Nor do you present a model, no mechanism. Let's cut to the chase: instead of parrotting all the time that there are "necessary causal factors", give us evidence, a model, a mechanism. Otherwise you are just blowing hot air. Gaz

"No, the difference between StephenB’s position and mine is, as explained in 519, that the law of causality means that the quantum effects that appear uncaused are in fact caused." Ok so you are in agreement with Stephen that the rules of reason inform the evidence? Vivid vividbleau

vividbleau (520), No, the difference between StephenB's position and mine is, as explained in 519, that the law of causality means that the quantum effects that appear uncaused are in fact caused. The onus is on him - and you, if you hold the same line - to provide us with the evidence that they are indeed caused. And I do mean evidence, not another warmed-over repetition of the same failed arguments that causality is a law therefore the events must be caused - I mean good, solid evidence. If you can't do that, I'll settle for a good model that can be tested. Gaz

Gaz: You are still refusing to acknowledge a basic fact of causality: there are two flavours, sufficient and necessary causal factors. (Reflect on the fire triangle, which BTW is the same example used by Copi in his well known (and excellent) Logic.) Acausal events would have to come out of nowhere, and nothing, utterly chaotically. I have already pointed out for the case of the neutron, on empirical evidence, that necessary causal factors are at work, and the very fact that free neutron decay follows a definite pattern with a definite half life indicates that it is not acausal. You can lead the horse to the water . . . And all of this still is tangential tothe unmet challenge to provide credible empirically observed cases of digitally coded, functionally specific complex information arising by undirected chance + necessity. We already know such are routinely caused by intelligent agents. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

"I say the evidence suggests that there are quantum phenomena that are uncaused. Therefore his law of right reason is not a law, it is false." So how would you present the evidence that certain quantum phenomena are uncaused without reason informing the evidence which is Stephens position? Vivid vividbleau

vividbleau (516), "Furthermore I notice you have yet to answer my chellenge to you which is to present evidence without using right rules of reason. If you cannot then Stephens position that reason informs evidence stands and you are shown to be cluless once again." I'm not entirely sure what you are getting at. "Evidence" can be "presented" as raw data, without having been analysed at all. Now, if we analyse the data we will of course use reason and mathematical tools in that analysis. But if the data suggests that the reasoning is wrong then, as Petrushka points out, the axioms have been incorrectky formulated. StephenB has tried to assert that there is a "law of right reason" that says everything must be caused. I say the evidence suggests that there are quantum phenomena that are uncaused. Therefore his law of right reason is not a law, it is false. Similarly for the law of non-contradiction: StephenB claims that there is a law of right reason that says a thing cannot exist and not exist at the same time. I say that the evidence of quantum superposition renders that alleged law false. I don't mind if someone comes up with evidence, or even models, to suggest acausal quantum events are actually caused, but if someone claims that there must be a causal mechanism because some trumped-up law says so - and I don't care who trumped it up - then they need to produce the evidence. Gaz

---"I’m not sure what you are getting at." You are kidding, right. I'll break it down for you: Darwinist proposition---evidence can invalidate the law of non contradiction ID correction--evidence cannot invalidate the law of non-contradiction because reasons's rules, such as the law of non-contradition, inform evidence; evidence does not inform reason's rules. Thus, evidence cannot change reason's rules, it can only be interpreted in the light of reason's rules. Misguided Darwinist objection--but that isn't true, evidence does inform reason's rules. Indeed, evidence from quantum mechanics has shown that the law of non-contradiction is not really a law at all. Consider the thought experiment involving Schroeder's cat, which indicates that interpreting the evidence obtained by observing quantum events will show that a cat can be both dead and alive at the same time. Thus, the so-called "law" which states that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time, admits of at least one exception and cannot, therefore, be a non-negotiable principle of right reason. ID correction--The thought experiment involving Shroeder's cat was conceived to show that one can use the principle of non-contradiction to test the worth and reasonableness of some schools of quantum mechanics If, in applying the principles of a given school [such as the Copenhagen school], the researcher concludes that the cat was both dead and alive, the law of non contradiction, which rules such a state of affairs is logically impossible, will show that the principles which created that wrong impression are false and ought to be abandoned. Thus, anyone who tries to use the example of Shroeders cat to invalidate the law of non-contradiction is barking up the wrong tree and does, in fact, have it almost backwards. Schroeder was not challenging the law of non-contradiction. Quite the contrary, he understood that it was a valid and non-negotiable principle of right reason. So much so, he explicitly used it to make his point knowing that any argument or proposition that fails its test ought not to be taken seriously. ---"A lot of early quantum theorists were disturbed by the implications of their own work, but history and experimentation has largely confirmed the most distrubing parts." What does a theorist being "disturbed" have to do with the fact that quantum evidence cannot invalidate the law of non-contradiction. What, specifically do you think was confirmed? As already indicated, a lot of things that were allegedly confirmed in the minds of Darwinists, were not confirmed at all. StephenB

StephenB (512), "To try and turn that around to make it appear that he was appealing to a cat that was both dead and alive in order to challenge the same law that he was appealing to is, well, you have heard the word before—irrational." Oh, for Pete's sake, OF COURSE I wasn't claiming the cat could be both dead and alive. I was trying to use the thought experiment - which I thought would be familiar to everyone - to illustrate superposition and the fact that a particle can be in two states (existing and not-existing, if you like) depending on whether or not the radioactive nucleus had emitted the particle. There was never any intention to claim a cat could really be both dead and alive: if the experiment was reduced to reality, the wavefunction of the emitted particle would collapse when it was detected by the Geiger counter, not when the observer looked in the box. Gaz

"Nope, I’ve given you the evidence, you’ve totally failed to come up with any plausible mechanism for a cause or even cited anyone else who’s proposed one." What evidence? Do you mean this evidence? "What is it about the Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment that YOU do not understand? Do you not understand that it concerns a superposition of two states, one where a particle has been emitted from a nucleus and one where no such particle has been emitted?” If you are appealing to this as evidence Stephen has already demostrated how clueless you are. Furthermore I notice you have yet to answer my chellenge to you which is to present evidence without using right rules of reason. If you cannot then Stephens position that reason informs evidence stands and you are shown to be cluless once again. How about it Gaz put up or shut up. Vivid vividbleau

kairosfocus (508), I'm disappointed in you. Amidst the mass of your waffle, I really hoped we were getting somewhere but you seemed to back off. I'm going to ignore the waffle and home in on the one issue, the one you raise of free neutron decay. I wrote: "Turning the issue back to you, when neutron are isolated how do you predict when and how a particular neutron will decay?" You claim it's still causal but giev no causal mechanism or even propose one. Why not? Gaz

StephenB (499), "My primary concern is rationality because rationality is the vehicle by which we arrive at truth. Your primary concern is irrationality because you would prefer not to arrive at the destination that truth will take you." Again, your bias and projection shows. I don't particularly care where the "destination" is, we just need to follow the evidence wherever it leads. "Thus, in an attempt to support your irrational world view and to deny the phenomenon of design even when it is obviously present you assert the most ridiclous propositions imaginable" Nope - no-one denies the phenomenon of design when it is "obviously" present. What is contested is the false claims that biologival organisms have been designed, which is far from "obvious" and not supported by evidnece at all. Your total failure to use the tools claimed by ID, such as explanatory filters, attests to that. "such as the claim that sand, wind, water, and time can build beautiful perfectly formed sand models of a Corvette Sting Ray, or the ambitious hope that a natural cause, such as a tornado, cannot be distinguished from intelligent causes, such as a burglar." You were the one who set up those scenarios, bizarre though they were. What they achieved remains a mystery. "Indeed, in order to blur the distinction between the two, you were reduced to claiming that a tornado, like a burglar, could possibly run off with the stolen jewelry." No, I just wasn't playing your silly little game. Of course a tornado can "run off" with a piece of jewellery, the same as it can "run off" with a house. However, the collateral damage widespread around it give the game away for it being a tornado as opposed to a burglar. Where on earth do you think these ridiculous scenarios get you? "As an encore, you will no doubt inform us that the tornado is equally likely to visit a pawn shop and hock the merchandise." Whatever. "You missed the context again. The point is not that theists never believe that quantum events are uncaused but rather that an atheist is more likely than a theist to believe it because it serves his biased world view." Oh, twaddle. That's you projecting again. Have you done a sample of theist scientists? "If ideology can influence judgment about causality, the the evidence is not, as you often claim, speaking for itself." The evidence speaks for itself, the question is if the investigator is listening to what it says or if its preconceived ideas drown it out. As in your case. "In any case, there are no theists who believe, as you do, that the universe was an uncaused quantum event. If they thought the universe was uncaused, it is obvious they wouldn’t be theists. [That, by the way, was a logical deduction which you may not accept since it was based on the law of non-contradiction]" At last an interesting question. Actually, there is no reason why a theist couldn't accept the universe was uncaused, but thought that a deity had a hand in its subseuqnet unfolding. Don't forget that not all theists are Christians like you. "The illogical proposition that quantum events are uncaused is not based on evidence but is rather a function of materialist ideology." Nope, I've given you the evidence, you've totally failed to come up with any plausible mechanism for a cause or even cited anyone else who's proposed one. "Until I make the equivalent claim that natural forces can build a perfect sand model of a Corvette Sting Ray or that a tornado can faithfully mimic the activities of a burglar, I don’t think it will be MY bias that muddies the debate waters." I think you underestimate yourself. Gaz

Thus, Schrödinger was USING THE LAW OF NON-CONTRADICTION TO TEST THE WORTHINESS AND REASONABLENESS OF VARIOUS SCHOOLS OF QUANTUM MECHANICS.

I'm not sure what you are getting at. A lot of early quantum theorists were disturbed by the implications of their own work, but history and experimentation has largely confirmed the most distrubing parts. Petrushka

---Gaz: "What is it about the Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment that YOU do not understand? Do you not understand that it concerns a superposition of two states, one where a particle has been emitted from a nucleus and one where no such particle has been emitted?" It is not I who doesn't understand the thought experiment of Schrodinger's cat. From Wikipedia's anti-ID website: "Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-alive cats as a serious possibility; quite the reverse, the paradox is a classic reductio ad absurdum. The thought experiment serves to illustrate the bizarreness of quantum mechanics and the mathematics necessary to describe quantum states. Intended as a critique of just the Copenhagen interpretation (the prevailing orthodoxy in 1935), the Schrödinger cat thought experiment remains a topical touchstone for all interpretations of quantum mechanics. How each interpretation deals with Schrödinger's cat is often used as a way of illustrating and comparing each interpretation's particular features, strengths, and weaknesses." For those Darwinists who do not understand the meaning of "reductio ad absurdum" [that would seem to be all of them] it is a way of using the law of non-contradiction to prove that a given proposition is ridiculous. Thus, Schrödinger was USING THE LAW OF NON-CONTRADICTION TO TEST THE WORTHINESS AND REASONABLENESS OF VARIOUS SCHOOLS OF QUANTUM MECHANICS. To try and turn that around to make it appear that he was appealing to a cat that was both dead and alive in order to challenge the same law that he was appealing to is, well, you have heard the word before---irrational. StephenB

PPS: Note, I advert to an intelligent extra-cosmic creator as a potential cosmic cause, in the specific context of the fine tuned complexity of our observed cosmos. kairosfocus

PS: I should underscore that I am pointing out that the presence of necessary factors is a causal constraint, and that the presence of a stable statistical pattern giving rise to a definite, measurable half life also points to a causal pattern. In the latter case, we have an underlying distribution of possible outcomes and an activation pattern, here with tunnelling involved [after all this is an energy process]. Tunnelling of course follows a definite pattern. Using Wiki's handy 101:

Quantum tunnelling refers to the quantum mechanical phenomenon where a particle "passes through" some sort of barrier which has higher energy than the particle. Classically, this type of event is impossible and observations of quantum tunnelling are part of the body of experimental evidence that backs quantum mechanical theory and the particle-wave duality of matter. Quantum tunnelling is an evanescent wave coupling effect that occurs in the context of quantum mechanics. Other names for this effect are Wave-mechanical tunnelling, Quantum-mechanical tunnelling and the Tunnel effect . . . . By 1928, George Gamow had solved the theory of the alpha decay of a nucleus via tunnelling. In classical mechanics, the particle is confined to the nucleus because of the high energy requirement to escape the very strong potential. Under this system, it takes an enormous amount of energy to pull apart the nucleus. In quantum mechanics, however, there is a probability the particle can tunnel through the potential and escape. Gamow solved a model potential for the nucleus and derived a relationship between the half-life of the particle and the energy of the emission. Alpha decay via tunnelling was also solved concurrently by Ronald Gurney and Edward Condon[1][2][3]. Shortly thereafter, both groups considered whether particles could also tunnel into the nucleus. After attending a seminar by Gamow, Max Born recognized the generality of quantum-mechanical tunnelling. He realized that the tunnelling phenomenon was not restricted to nuclear physics, but was a general result of quantum mechanics that applies to many different systems. Today the theory of tunnelling is even applied to the early cosmology of the universe . . . . For these effects to occur there must be a situation where a thin region of "medium type 2" is sandwiched between two regions of "medium type 1", and the properties of these media have to be such that the wave equation has "traveling-wave" solutions in medium type 1, but "real exponential solutions" (rising and falling) in medium type 2. In optics, medium type 1 might be glass, medium type 2 might be a vacuum. In quantum mechanics, in connection with motion of a particle, medium type 1 is a region of space where the particle's total energy is greater than its potential energy, medium type 2 is a region of space (known as the "barrier") where the particle's total energy is less than its potential energy. If conditions are right, amplitude from a traveling wave, incident on medium type 2 from medium type 1, can "leak through" medium type 2 and emerge as a traveling wave in the second region of medium type 1 on the far side. If the second region of medium type 1 is not present, then the traveling wave incident on medium type 2 is totally reflected, although it does penetrate into medium type 2 to some extent. Depending on the wave equation being used, the leaked amplitude is interpreted physically as traveling energy or as a traveling particle, and, numerically, the ratio of the square of the leaked amplitude to the square of the incident amplitude gives the proportion of incident energy transmitted out the far side, or (in the case of the Schrödinger equation) the probability that the particle "tunnels" through the barrier. The scale on which these "tunnelling-like phenomena" occur depends on the wavelength of the traveling wave. For electrons, the thickness of "medium type 2" (called in this context "the tunnelling barrier") is typically a few nanometres; for alpha-particles tunnelling out of a nucleus, the thickness is much less; for the analogous phenomenon involving light, the thickness is much greater.

(I adverted to this above also.) When these ideas are extended to cosmology, the usual idea is that the cosmos is an expanded singularity that happened on a statistical pattern, a vacuum fluctuation now of 13.7 BY duration once it has expanded. Of course, immediately we see an inference to an underlying unobserved energy-material-temporal cosmos. And, on observing the evident fine-tuning of our cosmos that facilitates c-chemistry cell based intelligent life, that becomes a highly significant issue. For, we now have a projected "cosmos bread factory" that is capable of baking a distribution of sub-cosmi that includes those habitable for the sort of life we are discussing. Thus, we have promoted the fine-tuning challenge and the informaiton-genration issue to one level higher. [That is we see the point on active information at work . . . once we have functional complex organisation and associated information, informationally passive unintelligent chance-necessity random walk type processes as a rule face insuperable search space challenges. There is no free lunch and active informaiton is best explained on an intelligent source. But a deeper issue lurks. We are now several levels deep into unobservables [deep past, singularities and claimed fluctuations, underlying supercosmos etc . . .], in a context of worldview grounding. This is not science, it is metaphysics or first philosophy. Indeed, we are now delving on the issue that he existience of a credibly contingent observed cosmos entails -- logically necessitates -- an underlying necessary being as its best explanation. So, candidates for necessary being now sit for job interviews to be creator or Creator . . . The proper method for that sort of fundamental issue is comparative difficulties across live options [as I linked on earlier this morning], and so it is arbitrary and censoring to try to exclude an Intelligent Creator a priori as an explanatory option. kairosfocus

Oops, 507. kairosfocus

Onlookers: It is increasingly clear that a basic problem we are facing is that many objectors to the design inference are committed to an a priori, Lewontinian evolutionary materaialist scientism, which serves as a quasi-religious ideology. In addition, they are often evidently quite ill-instructed in (a) the easily enough accessible limitations of scientific methods as methods of arriving at truth, (b) wider issues in epistemology and associated logic of warrant for knowledge or truth claims, (c) the nature of causality and its importance to not only science but general reasoning, (d) underlying worldview options and comparative difficulties analysis. This of course reflects major gaps in current science education, for students in primary or secondary school, for those trained to teach science, for those trained to become practitioners, and for many of their professors. (Unfortunately, too often there is an attitude of dismissive contempt towards such issues and reasoning as well. I have actually seen articles and books on this topic, where even eminent scientists write to dismiss empirically and historically well warranted philosophical constraints on scientific knowledge. This is sad.) One hopes that something like this basic "101" on philosophical methods and issues will help such. Now, too, we should observe how consistently the objectors to the inference to design have managed to avoid addressing the import of the observed FSCI in the cell, in the context of the only observed, directly known source of such (intelligence) and the associated issue that undirected forces and factors of chance and necessity would run out the resources of the observed cosmos long before scratching the surface of the sea of possible configs, i.e. the islands of function are hopelessly isolated in a vast sea of non-function for random search strategies across the config space to have a hope of success. Having underscored that, I note again how often my remarks and those of other design thinkers in this thread have been strawmannised and dismissed, or outright diverted from. I add a few corrective observations: 1] Petrushka, 503: Explain the operation of a transistor without reference to discrete energy states. More recent devices, found everywhere, require explicit use of quantum tunneling. Fails to obse4rve that I have pointed out explicitly that device physics is explored, characteristic curves or nomograms and equivalent circuit models are constructed, and design of circuits and systems as a rule is on the latter, not the quantum analysis. In the particular context of the 1960's my Millman-Halkias points to h-parameter ckt analysis [the parameters being presented as hfe etc, but underneath based on partial differential equation analysis in a sort of linearisation around operating points] and I think as well hybrid-pi analysis [which allows significant high frequency effects to come in]. Such circuit analyses, instantly familiar to those who have done electronics design, and as I have already noted, work in terms of two-port networks, with input and output networks incorporating a controlled fictitious generator [a controlled current source is common]. Thus we see how known false ["simplified"] models are often highly useful in ranges of validity, and more to the point, a vivid demonstration on how accuracy of prediction of observable outcomes is not at all a good warrant for inferring the truth of explanatory or modelling constructs. So, the bottomline is plain: scientific methods do not warrant the ultimate truth of theories and other explanatory or modelling constructs. This, I also showed more directly in terms of the underlying implication logic. 2] P, 505: Is there some implementation of electronics that doesn’t require devices? Strawman. As was explicitly pointed out, device physics is got out of the way as soon as possible, and the nomograms and equivalent ckt models are substituted. (Today's computer models such as Electronics Workbench are sophisticated versions of this, with maybe 40 parameters to model a transistor, last I checked.) Again, let us also not forget that a strawman is actually a subspecies of red herring: its purpose is distractive [and it often works to support a mischaracterisation of those whose thought is being caricatured, thence supports demonisation and denigration and bigoted dismissal], so cf my opening remarks in this post. 3] Gaz, 507: I generally agree with your thinking (minor quibble about protons being largely the same as neutrons but never mind I see what you’re saying) It is worth noting a point of agreement. I am quite aware of the distinction in quark compositon of p and n, but am pointing out that in the nucleus, they function as in effect nucleons of extremely comparable characteristics; with n providing additional strong force glue to hold nuclei together in the face of mounting electrostatic repulsion aqs p-no mounts. 4] 505, What you have actually shown is that there is a factor that maintains stability of neutrons when in stable nuclei. Yes? Precisely, and that means that there is a causal constraint at work: on more or less direct observation of atomic stability vs neutron decay when free, something in the interactions in the nucleus is stabilising the neutron complement of the atom. This means, on logic of cause, that radioactive decay of neutrons -- a beta decay process -- is not acausal. We may not know the sufficient factors that WILL cause decay once they are met, but we do know necessary factors the absence of which constrains decay. [Absence of being "free" constrains decay of he neutron complement of atoms, stabilising the elements in the famous belt of stability running up to Pb.] This further means that a classic radioactive decay is not acausal. 5] 505, Turning the issue back to you, when neutron are isolated how do you predict when and how a particular neutron will decay? First, I do not have to be able to do that for the relevant purposes of showing that causal factors are at work. That is, I am again underscoring that we have two different logical classes of causal factors: necessary ones and sufficient ones. When sufficient factors are present an effect WILL happen and/or be sustained (e.g. oxidiser, plus fuel plus heat for a fire). When one or more necessary factors are ABSENT or removed, an effect CANNOT happen or cannot be sustained. (E.g. we fight a fire by breaking the fire triangle, removing at least one leg: e.g. smother it to lock out oxidiser. BTW, this is also directly connected to some aspects of metabolism and life, which uses controlled oxidation . . . ) In the case of a population of free neutrons, we know some necessary factors, e.g they must be free. We do not know the specific sufficient factors, and observe a stochastic pattern, where spontaneous decay occurs such that half the population will be decayed in about 15 minutes. Such a regularity in even the spontaneous process is itself an order amidst apparent chaos -- a common enough pattern in quantum behaviour, statistical mechanics and related solid state or vacuum physics [think of space charge regions and the similarity between valves and FETs]. So, our lack of knowledge of the sufficient factors involved in the decay of a particular entity at a given time -- and I freely accept that position- momentum and energy - time uncertainty point to a fundamental lock-out on our ability to know them -- is irrelevant to the point that we have sufficient information to warrant the conclusion that it is not acausal. An acausal event would have to come out of nowhere, from nothing, with no constraints whatsoever. It would be a mark of chaos, not cosmos; and, there would be no stable statistical pattern. They physical situation we have analysed is exactly not such an acausal phenomenon. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

kairosfocus (499), Congratulations on getting the 500th entry. I generally agree with your thinking (minor quibble about protons being largely the same as neutrons but never mind I see what you're saying) until this: "o6 –> That is, I am here showing from a concrete example that causal factors are at work that influence beta decay processes for neutrons." What you have actually shown is that there is a factor that maintains stability of neutrons when in stable nuclei. Yes? Turning the issue back to you, when neutron are isolated how do you predict when and how a particular neutron will decay? Gaz

---Petrushka: "Thus, in an attempt to support your irrational world view." ---"Quantum theory is hardly irrational." I have never said that quantum theory is irrational or anything even close to that. Please read for context and comprehension. What is irrational is the mindless attempt to trash logical principles in the name of evidence, especially from those who proudly admit that they are ignorant of those principles. StephenB

PPS: Of course device physics is often predicated on quantum, solid state physics and vacuum physics.

Is there some implementation of electronics that doesn't require devices? Petrushka

Thus, in an attempt to support your irrational world view

Quantum theory is hardly irrational. What some people don't like about it is that much of it is counterintuitive. Reason is still reason, even if the axioms and assumptions don't conform to your intuitive understanding of the world, the understanding based on rather crude and limited human senses. Petrushka

Moreover, on my applied physics work experience, I would be very surprised that (apart from probably some sensors) a significant part of the design of the actual circuits and systems used to operate the computers and other electronic devices used in the Moon Shot were based on actual Quantum theory.

Explain the operation of a transistor without reference to discrete energy states. More recent devices, found everywhere, require explicit use of quantum tunneling. Petrushka

PPS: Of course device physics is often predicated on quantum, solid state physics and vacuum physics. kairosfocus

PS: Do I need to further explicitly point out that when the proton number of a nucleus changes, the nucleus is that of a different atom? kairosfocus

Re Gaz, 493: I noted, on whether or not a neutron is in a nucleus, and what happens when it is outside:

“That is a causal factor, and it is associated with the beta decay instability of neutrons outside the nucleus [~ 900 s t1/2], which is of course a case of instability that is plainly contextually influenced: atoms do not last 15 minutes on average. (Last I checked protons were completely stable, and yet n and p are very closely similar.)”

The highlighted makes it plain that I spoke of neutrons within vs outside the nucleus. Now, you seem to imagine my onward reference to atoms is "garbled." This is astonishing, as the main constituents of atomic nucleii are of course neutrons and protons. My point should have been obvious to anyone who was not looking for a fault to try to dismiss the qualifications of a dispised design thinker. Let's pause and draw out the logic as I would with students who need a bit of spoon feeding: 1 --> N and p are of course very similar bosons, and as just described under certain circumstances, with a 15 min t1/2, extranuclear neutrons undergo beta decay to yield protons. 2 --> Beta decay, of course is a quantum-relevant radio-decay phenomenon. 3 --> Now, were this process wholly internal to the neutron and acausal otherwise [i.e. that one has a neutron to have neutron decay is a trivially necessary causal factor], then its location in or out of a nucleus would make no difference. 4 --> So, on that hypothesis, we would expect that neutrons in atomic nucleii (where,in effect they augment the strong force without adding to the destabilising electrostatic repulsions) would also undergo beta decay, t1/2 about 900s or 15 minutes. {And I am leaving off specific discussion of mesons as exchange force particles, which is related to the stability of atomic nucleii.] 5 --> General atomic instability would follow, as all atoms beyond H-1 have neutrons in their nucleii. So, there would be no belt of stability. 6 --> That is, I am here showing from a concrete example that causal factors are at work that influence beta decay processes for neutrons. 7 --> That is there is no general acausality in quantum mechanics. (And cf my remarks earlier on "wavicles" and our lab scale based maps, concepts and models -- waves, particles etc -- that let us peer into the quantum world.) 8 --> Moreover, this is specifically on the random process of radioactive decay; which was cited above as a case of acausal process. 9 --> In that context, I draw attention to the often overlooked point that necessary causal factors are causal factors. ___________ GEM of TKI kairosfocus

--Gaz: "Thank you for finally getting to the nub of it. Your concern is, essentially, a religious one – and that is what drives your preconceptions about nature." My primary concern is rationality because rationality is the vehicle by which we arrive at truth. Your primary concern is irrationality because you would prefer not to arrive at the destination that truth will take you. Thus, in an attempt to support your irrational world view and to deny the phenomenon of design even when it is obviously present, you assert the most ridiclous propositions imaginable, such as the claim that sand, wind, water, and time can build beautiful perfectly formed sand models of a Corvette Sting Ray, or the ambitious hope that a natural cause, such as a tornado, cannot be distinguished from intelligent causes, such as a burglar. Indeed, in order to blur the distinction between the two, you were reduced to claiming that a tornado, like a burglar, could possibly run off with the stolen jewelry. As an encore, you will no doubt inform us that the tornado is equally likely to visit a pawn shop and hock the merchandise. If evidence could speak for itself, there would be no such disputes [about the causality of quantum events]. Thus, when I ask you why you believe that quantum events are uncaused, you simply answer, “because the evidence says so.” It says that to atheists, but it does not say that to theists.” ---I disagree. "There are plenty of theist scientists who say the same as me, i.e. that certain quantum events appear uncaused. You are projecting your own views on to others now." You missed the context again. The point is not that theists never believe that quantum events are uncaused but rather that an atheist is more likely than a theist to believe it because it serves his biased world view. If ideology can influence judgment about causality, the the evidence is not, as you often claim, speaking for itself. In any case, there are no theists who believe, as you do, that the universe was an uncaused quantum event. If they thought the universe was uncaused, it is obvious they wouldn't be theists. [That, by the way, was a logical deduction which you may not accept since it was based on the law of non-contradiction] The illogical proposition that quantum events are uncaused is not based on evidence but is rather a function of materialist ideology. ---"No, I’m afraid not. the real answer, of course, is that it is your own bias that requires a cause to everything as a matter of principle, not evidence." Until I make the equivalent claim that natural forces can build a perfect sand model of a Corvette Sting Ray or that a tornado can faithfully mimic the activities of a burglar, I don't think it will be MY bias that muddies the debate waters. StephenB

Petrushka: Perhaps, you have a problem translating: “I’ wuk, but i’ wuk no mean i’ TRUUUE- true- true . . . ” [It means: It works, but that it works does not mean it is true.] I actually pointed out the logic of theories (T) being inferences to best explanation, and the point that, on abduction, we infer from initial observations (O1) to theoretical (explanatory) constructs, then we infer predictions and test them against further observations (O2), per Newton's remarks in Opticks, 31. I then pointed out the logic; perhaps a simple symbolisation will help:

T => O1, on inference to best explanation. T => O2, on prediction. But, (O1 + O2) =/=> T, affirming the consequent. ____________________ So: O1, O2 empirically support T, but do not establish it as true in the sense of corresponding to reality. (Science is in the end a faith-venture, i.e we walk by faith.)

Now, in fact the Ptolemaic system had a little corner of history in the Caribbean: using it, Columbus predicted an eclipse in Jamaica, and thereby obtained help from the Amerindians when he was marooned there for a year. That is, the theory was capable of making good enough predictions for many things. Also, by the time that Newtonian dynamics was used to design the rockets and trajectories used for the Moon shot, it was strictly known that it had been falsified, decades previously for the worlds of the very large and the very small. Moreover, on my applied physics work experience, I would be very surprised that (apart from probably some sensors) a significant part of the design of the actual circuits and systems used to operate the computers and other electronic devices used in the Moon Shot were based on actual Quantum theory. What is used in practice is equivalent circuit models that reduce amplifiers to controlled generators with input networks and loads. RTL and TTL logic would have in the main been based on saturated bipolar junction transistor amplifier calculations, and maybe up to something like a Hybrid-Pi model for really high frequency stuff. Beyond that, system design is really block diagram algebra, with differential equations transferred over to a complex frequency domain form, via Laplace or even Fourier Transforms (for comms work). Dynasar is old so maybe there was some mucking around with difference equations and primitive digital filters. Software is an even higher level of abstraction, with language elements being more important than electronic circuits, Fortran and punch cards being king. All of these focus on models that are strictly known false ["simplified"] but are validated for relevant ranges, much as Newtonian Gravitation is valid in the scope of the solar system with the minor exception of precession of Mercury's orbit. As for sensors and devices, the rule of thumb is get the device physics squared away, generate characteristic curves and back of the envelope models, then use nomographs and models. In short, you only succeeded in underscoring how useful known false models and "so-far" empirically reliable but not confirmed true theories are. Most of what I did above, was to highlight that science is incapable of warranting theories as true beyond possibility of correction, including Quantum theory. In that context, I simply pointed out that wave-particle duality {"wavicles") means that the actual unified quantum phenomenon or object, e.g an electron is something that is beyond what we know and understand from the lab scale. So, when we see position-momentum or energy-time uncertainty, or superposition effects,w e should remember that we are operating much like the blind men with the elephant: we have partial models that work well enough to give us desired results. But our methods are incapable of guaranteeing that we have the truth; i.e. a little epistemic humility will go a long way. When we bring to bear complex number math, we need to realise that this immediately takes us beyond the observable world into a model world. That is why I asked you to show me a physically realised case of i = Sq Rt (-1). In fact to gain a physically observable result, we have to do some sort of translation, often by estimating magnitudes or real parts or coefficients. I need hardly remind the onlooker that Quantum Physics calculations brim over with complex number quantities. Similarly, I observed on Schroedinger's cat that we never observe the superposed state. Observation makes the wave collapse. Going beyond that, I highlighted both the electron beam double slit experiment and the case of neutron extra-nuclear instability with t1/2 15 mins, to show how known quantum processes do in fact reflect causal constraints. I again underscore that a necessary causal factor is a causal factor, something that we are prone to forget; maybe save when we have a fire to fight and do so by trying to cut off access to air etc. And of course as I pointed out repeatedly here, origins science theories seek to reconstruct a remote unobserved and unobservable past by projecting from patterns in the present to explain various observations. One of the relevant causal patterns in the current observable time is: design by intelligences. Indeed, it is the only factor observed to cause digital, coded, algorithmically specific and functional complex information. So, when we see the same class of sysrtems in cell based life forms, we have good reason to consider this as a candidate factor; absent Lewontinain a priori censorship on our inference to best explanation, int eh name of so-called "methodological naturalism.". That candidacy is strengthened when we observe that the configuration spaces associated with the relevant entities are such that the observed universe acting across its lifespan does not have adequate search resources to scratch the surface of the space. So, we have a reason why we do not see undirected forces of chance and necessity spontaneously originating such systems. And, being familiar with intelligences, we know that imagination, knowledge, and creativity allow us to routinely bridge to deeply isolated islands of relevant function when we work with such systems. So, we can see that quantum theory is not a credible case of a-causal events, and that we still have but one observationally verified causal pattern for the origin of FSCI: intelligence. (Remember, the fossil moulds pushed forward a few days ago act by natural forces to replicate the shape information, they do not originate it. A 1963 Corvette Stingray in sand is still best explained by art, not undirected chance + necessity. And, one thing we do not try to explain it bay is the notion that it popped up out of nowhere, from nothing, by poofery. It began to exist and depends on other things to being existence, so it may go out of existence. So, as a contingent being it has a particular cause.) GEM of TKI kairosfocus

StephenB: “It is not strange if one understands, as you evidently do not, that unpredictability is not synonymous with acausality.” Gaz: "I agree, but that isn’t the issue." ...thud Upright BiPed

StephenB (491), "It is not the case nor could it be the case that superposition invalidates the law of non-contradiction. Again, it seems evident that you do not understand your own claims even at the most basic level. Quantum superposition speaks to the subject of how something exists, where it exists, or in what form it exists—not WHETHER it exists. What is it about a thing existing in this or that state as opposed to existing and not existing at the same time that you do not understand?" What is it about the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment that YOU do not understand? Do you not understand that it concerns a superposition of two states, one where a particle has been emitted from a nucleus and one where no such particle has been emitted? "It is not strange if one understands, as you evidently do not, that unpredictability is not synonymous with acausality." I agree, but that isn't the issue. "It certainly follows that an expanding universe was smaller before it became larger, so I appreciate that penetrating insight. However, I am not so clear about how you know that the beginning of the universe was a quantum event." I don't, it's a model. But you miss the point: when the universe was small, i.e. at the quantum level, then quantum physics applied to it. "It appears that your reasoning is going something like this: I want a causeless universe, however there is no credible way of making that astounding claim without first asserting that quantum events are uncaused and then characterizing the beginning of the universe as a quantum event, hoping that no one will know that I am building speculation on speculation. Is that about it?" No! How many times do I have to say it? I don't give a flying f*** whether or not there are uncaused events - I'd rather there weren't - all I'm saying, all I've EVER said, is that the evidence suggests there are. It's you, not me, that wants a set piece to how the universe began: you want a Creator. "Obviously, your assessment about my curiosity is incorrect. I wish we knew the causal conditions for quantum events so that atheists would stop militating against reason by claiming that there are none. In any case, it is not necessary to know precisely how something was caused to know that it was caused." Your lack of curiosity is apparent for all to see, as well as your religious bias. It's not a case of knowing "precisely" how something was caused, you have absolutely no idea whatsoever, not even the inkling of an idea, and aren't bothered to put in the effort to find out what your own hypothesis (such as it is) might lead to. "At the same time, this is a hilarious development. On the one hand, you complain that I have no model to support my contention that quantum events are cause. On the other hand, you just finished asserting as fact, and offering no explanatory mechanism, that the universe appeared as causeless event." A fair point. A Nobel would come my way if I could.But check Victor Stenger on wiki if you want a model, I'm too bored dealing with you to go into it. "Again, that is obviously not the case. The lack of a model cannot explain your unwillingness to accept quantum causality. It is without a supporting model of your own, after all, that you boldly claim that the universe began as a causeless quantum event." As above. Gaz

Gaz, "No, I’m afraid not. the real answer, of course, is that it is your own bias that requires a cause to everything as a matter of principle, not evidence." This is such a preposterous claim. Even Methodical Naturalism claims to look for "natural causes" as the basis for scientific inquiry. How does MN infer this? Hint: it's based on right reason - everything that comes into being has a cause. You're leaving behind the principles, which even dictate your own assumed scientific methodology, when you claim that not all events require a cause. There are many phenomenon in nature, which at first appear counterintuitive. The best of scientists looked for a cause, and didn't resort to unreasonable suggestions that they must not have been caused. I.e., they didn't abandon the principle of causation simply because they couldn't determine a cause. Such intuition led to answers. Your position will lead to absolutely nothing that can be verified. Verification in science requires the assumption of causality. It isn't simply an assumed POV, but a principle upon which all science is predicated. In short, your position contradicts your own scientific methodology. CannuckianYankee

kairosfocus mate (488), Your message seems rather garbled, but if you want to condense it to something comprehensible I'll give it a go. I caught this though: "I strongly suggest that you treat calculation devices and models as models not reality itself" I agree entirely, and said tghe same to StephenB at 473. Gaz

kairosfocus (478), "Go look up what happens under certain conditions to RA decay rates, remembering that there are several more exotic mechanisms as well beyond the classic alpha, beta gamma, including e.g. k-capture (the most notorious variable rate case, up to 1 – 4% IIRC); try out Be-7." Indeed, but as you are aware these -including the electron capture mechanism of Be-7 - are rather more rare than the main three. In any case, that isn't my point - I don't and never have claimed that all quaantum events appear uncaused, just that there are some that do. As you know you only need one contrary event to repudiate something as a "law". "The fact of composition in nucleons implies composite effects and causal factors, e.g. what makes a nucleon a proton vs. a neutron." We know this - proton is two up quarks and a down quark, neutron is two down quarks and an up quark. "That is a causal factor, and it is associated with the beta decay instability of neutrons outside the nucleus [~ 900 s t1/2], which is of course a case of instability that is plainly contextually influenced: atoms do not last 15 minutes on average. (Last I checked protons were completely stable, and yet n and p are very closely similar.)" I think you are very confused; StephenB said you were a professional physicist, I'd be interested to know what discipline because it doesn't seem to be nuclear. Your post here is wrong: neutrons are stable within a normal, stable nucleus. Atoms (I presume you actually mean "nuclei", NOT atoms) are stable, even with neutrons, unless they happen to be radioactive isotopes. The largest stable nucleus is lead-208, with 126 neutrons: according to you it shouldn't last more than a few minutes, but actually lead-208 will, if left undisturbed, survive for the life of the universe. "I repeat, there are any number of relevant causal factors and related laws for quantum events. Things are not happening nowhere, from nothing with no reason. Otherwise we would be seeing a chaos not a cosmos." And yet despite your and StephenB's posts, neither of you have come up with any plausible models for such causal factors. Gaz

StephenB (477), "You now acknowledge that evidence must be interpreted but all your arguments are based on the earlier assumption that the evidence speaks for itself. Just reread your posts in this session alone. Do you not see this? Evidence does not speak for itself" Which is why I said it needs to be interpreted. What I disagree with is your requirement that the evidence must fit your preconceived ideas. "which is thy kairosfocus, a professional physicist" Really? What is his discipline? "has explained that quantum events are caused while the atheist physcists that inform your perspective insist that they are not." Thank you for finally getting to the nub of it. Your concern is, essentially, a religious one - and that is what drives your preconceptions about nature. " If evidence could speak for itself, there would be no such disputes. Thus, when I ask you why you believe that quantum events are uncaused, you simply answer, “because the evidence says so.” It says that to atheists, but it does not say that to theists." I disagree. There are plenty of theist scientists who say the same as me, i.e. that certain quantum events appear uncaused. You are projecting your own views on to others now. "The illogical proposition that quantum events are uncaused is not based on evidence but is rather a function of materialist ideology." No, I'm afraid not. the real answer, of course, is that it is your own bias that requires a cause to everything as a matter of principle, not evidence. Gaz

---Gaz: "It is neither logical nor reasonable to claim that there is a “law” that something can be and not be at the same time, when in fact that may well be the case in quantum phenomena such as superposition." It is not the case nor could it be the case that superposition invalidates the law of non-contradiction. Again, it seems evident that you do not understand your own claims even at the most basic level. Quantum superposition speaks to the subject of how something exists, where it exists, or in what form it exists---not WHETHER it exists. What is it about a thing existing in this or that state as opposed to existing and not existing at the same time that you do not understand? I understand the math well enough to know three things: quantum events are unpredictable, quantum events are counterintuitive, and we don’t know why. ---"A strange statement from one who claims they must have a cause." It is not strange if one understands, as you evidently do not, that unpredictability is not synonymous with acausality. ---"Indeed, but if that is what happened [the beginning of the universe] then it would have been a quantum event." You are of course aware that the universe was very small – quantum size – in the earliest fractions of a second after the Big Bang?" It certainly follows that an expanding universe was smaller before it became larger, so I appreciate that penetrating insight. However, I am not so clear about how you know that the beginning of the universe was a quantum event. It appears that your reasoning is going something like this: I want a causeless universe, however there is no credible way of making that astounding claim without first asserting that quantum events are uncaused and then characterizing the beginning of the universe as a quantum event, hoping that no one will know that I am building speculation on speculation. Is that about it? ---Gaz: "Despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever for them, you have no model for them, nor has anyone else. And I suspect you have not the slightest curiosity about it either." Obviously, your assessment about my curiosity is incorrect. I wish we knew the causal conditions for quantum events so that atheists would stop militating against reason by claiming that there are none. In any case, it is not necessary to know precisely how something was caused to know that it was caused. At the same time, this is a hilarious development. On the one hand, you complain that I have no model to support my contention that quantum events are cause. On the other hand, you just finished asserting as fact, and offering no explanatory mechanism, that the universe appeared as causeless event. ---"Oh, I am! It would be GREAT [if quantum events were caused]. Entirely new physics! I salivate at the prospect! No, the reason is that there is not a shred of evidence for it, nor even any model. When you come up with one I’ll look again." Again, that is obviously not the case. The lack of a model cannot explain your unwillingness to accept quantum causality. It is without a supporting model of your own, after all, that you boldly claim that the universe began as a causeless quantum event. StephenB

Regarding epicycles: One could form an adequate predictive model of the solar system using epicycles -- one that would conform to observations of the planets' apparent motions, but without Newton's mechanics, one could not build space ships. Quantum theory is much more than a convenient mathematical fiction. It is the model of reality that enables and supports just about every technology found in industry and commerce. Without it microcomputers would be impossible, as would every device that relies on solid-state electronics. Petrushka

So, I strongly suggest that you treat calculation devices and models as models not reality itself.

Just as long as you acknowledge that the models generated by quantum theory form the basis of all modern electronics, and that no experiment has ever found disconfirming evidence. It's reasonable to assert that you can't really follow arguments in quantum theory without advanced mathematics. It's quite another to assert the theory is disconnected from reality. Petrushka

Gaz: Your latest side-track is of course to be set in context that your side still has yet to provide good observational evidence that digitally coded, functionally specific complex information can originate -- per observation -- on undirected chance plus necessity, with particular reference to origin of cell based life using just such digitally coded functionally specific complex information to implement self-replicating automata. Having noted this yet again . . . Do, tell me, do we ever actually observe a "superposed" quantum state? (Or, does not the act of observation collapse the wave function, i.e. we find Schrodinger's cat alive or dead but not both. [What does a superposed live/dead state look like?]) Similarly, in a Young's doble slit electron beam experiment, we find a pattern of dots -- particle action -- distributed in accord with a wave phenomenon, interference, and that even when the beam rate is low enough that one particle at a time would be going. But to see the pattern we have to fire enough electrons to see a pattern. Last I checked, with this and other experiments, our actual observations are still Lab scale, and on lab equipment. We infer to unobserveds and unobservables, so we must first acknowledge that and differentiate our observations from our inferences on the unobserved, and from the truth of the world as it actually is, in part beyond our capacity to observe. Wiki has a useful basic 101 summary:

Quantum superposition refers to the quantum mechanical property which states that all particles exist in not one state but all possible states at once. Due to this property, to completely describe a particle one must include a description of every possible state and the probability of the particle being in that state. Since the Schrödinger equation is linear, taking into account all possible states will be a linear combination of each solution. This mathematical rule is known as the superposition principle . . . . The principle of superposition states that if the world can be in any configuration, any possible arrangement of particles or fields, and if the world could also be in another configuration, then the world can also be in a state which is a superposition of the two, where the amount of each configuration that is in the superposition is specified by a complex number.

Note first how some states are possible and otehrs are obviously not, u8nder the circumstances. All of this reflects: csausality and necessary conditions. Seems to me further that the real issue is that we are really dealing with "wavicles" and with statistical distributions further constrained by uncertainty. That is, we are trying to use lab scale concepts and models to save the phenomena, ending up pretty much in the position of Ptolemaic astronomers about 450 years ago. Y'know: cycles, epicycles, and epicycles on epicycles . . . vs. waves, particles and superposed wavicles in all possible states at once. (And while I am at it could you kindly show me the physically observable state denoted by i or j, i.e. sq rt(-1)? Useful mathematical construct and I can show you the rotation operator interpretation, and use s = sigma + j* omega to interpret system responses on differential equations routinely, i.e. I use exponential complex number form as readily as the next man, but I realise this is a clue that we are in a mathematical rather than strictly physical domain here. So, do not get too close to conflating such with physical reality. Differential equations capture interesting aspects of reality but they are not equal to that reality.) So, I strongly suggest that you treat calculation devices and models as models not reality itself. "Particle" does not strictly apply to quantum phenomena, nor really does "wave." Something else -- what, we know not and on the uncertainty principle may not be able to find out -- is going on, but Q-Theory is the best map we can come up with so far that is more or less [I sometimes suspect more of less than more] comprehensible and can give useful results. "I' wuk, but i' wuk no mean i' TRUUUE- true- true . . . " (Remember, again, scientific methods of warrant are strictly incapable of indisputable demonstration of truth, but may help us discover truth; formally there is a giant exercise in affirming he consequent when we reason from Theory to predicted or explained observations, and then say such observations support the theory . . . SO FAR. When it comes to the unobservables, we should be very careful not to be overly dogmatic. Save the phenomena and pass the quanta . . . ) GEM of TKI kairosfocus

"I suppose you have some specific argument in mind, but physics seem to say otherwise." LOL Thanks Petrushka for confirming Stephens position that reasons rules inform evidence. Now how about Gaz? Vivid vividbleau

The evidence is that we have no evidence of superposition of states.

I suppose you have some specific argument in mind, but physics seem to say otherwise. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10894533 Petrushka

"No, I think the onus is on you to give evidence supporting such an extreme claim." The evidence is that we have no evidence of superposition of states. All the evidence that we have shows that two things cannot be in the same place at the same time in the same relationship. Do you have evidence to the contrary? If so give it and do so without using the rules of right reason and prove Stephen B wrong about reasons rules informing evidence. Vivid vividbleau

---kairosfocus: "Stephen, my point is that even quantum physics has laws and what happens is happening somewhere, under certain conditions. It is not happening nowhere, willy-nilly, with no constraints. That is why I just gave neutron decay when free from a nucleus as a case in point. That we do not know the sufficient causal factors and on uncertainty may not be able to learn them, does not mean that events are happening without causal patterns." Right you are. Well said. Indeed, I used the words "unknown laws" @477, which coincidentally appeared at about the same time as your post. Design thinkers must confront materialist atheists both at the physical and metapysical level. As a physicist who is also trained in philosophy, you understand better than most the extent to which one-sided materialist indoctrination compromises a researchers capacity to intepret facts in evidence according to reason's rules. StephenB

Gaz Vivid's point is to ask you to provide a refutation without using principles of right reason. (The trick being that to accept the possibility of a refutation is to concede non-contradiction.) Your turnabout rhetorical tactic strongly suggests that you realise he is highlighting that such principles are self-evident. Reductio ad absurdum, yet again for ideological materialism in a lab coat . . . GEM of TKI PS: Onlookers, here is my 101 on self evident first principles that form a cluster of warranted credible truths safe for use in comparative testing of worldviews. What is going on is yet another way that evolutionary materialism -- while trumpeting its scientific and logical/reasonableness bona fides [cf Lewontin as already cited], reduces to self-referentially incoherent irrationality on closer inspection. (as also already posted upthread. Thread is getting way too long now, loads sloooow . . . ) kairosfocus

StephenB (477), "So is logic. The laws of logic are no less compelling than the laws of mathematics. Yet, you say the rules of logic can be abandoned in the name of evidence even though the rules of math cannot. That is neither logical nor reasonable." It is neither logical nor reasonable to claim that there is a "law" that something can be and not be at the same time, when in fact that may well be the case in quantum phenomena such as superposition. "Also, you need to know that mathematics alone cannot track down causes, much less can mathematics alone determine acausality. That is why I chuckle when you ask me to “do the math.” I makes me wonder if you are doing the math." Meaningless. "I understand the math well enough to know three things: quantum events are unpredictable, quantum events are counterintuitive, and we don’t know why." A strange statement from one who claims they must have a cause. "Your claim is that there is no why on the grounds that quantum events are counterintuitive. That is not reasonable." Text garbled here? "But, of course, you are changing your story again. For rhetorical purposes, you say that acausality is unusual with respect to quantum events. On the other hand, you extend acausality to almost every other context, insisting that not only quantum particles are acausal but that even the universe itself, could have just popped into existence." Indeed, but if that is what happened then it would have been a quantum event. You are of course aware that the universe was very small - quantum size - in the earliest fractions of a second after the Big Bang? "So, for you, the so-called quantum “exception” is not really an exception at all. It simply serves as a rhetorical dodge, seemingly rational excuse for rejecting causality on all the other important fronts, including the explanation of life and mind." No. I'm not looking to reject causality, I quite like it as I've told you before - my life is easier with it. I would prefer the quantum universe was that way too, it would be easier to understand. But it is what it is. "The cause, yet unknown, would be that there are lawful conditions that make that phenomenon happen consistently. It is interesting that you tell me that the macro world is totally different than the micro world and yet you use an example from the macro world to make your case." Only because that is all you seem to understand. "Of course I have an explanation. Causal conditions that have not yet been discovered give rise to the event." Despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever for them, you have no model for them, nor has anyone else. And I suspect you have not the slightest curiosity about it either. "On the other hand, it is your claim that evidence can influence the rules of reason, so you should be able to tell us what kinds of evidence would make them rules rather than mere ideas. The reason you don’t know [or can't even conceive of the possibility] is because evidence doesn’t influence those rules." No. It's because no matter what evidence there is, we won't be able to see everywhere in the universe for all time to tell if it's violated or not. "What is interesting about all this, though, is the fact that you are open to past surprises when they challenge classical physics and causality, but you are not open to future surprises that would explain quantum causality." Oh, I am! It would be GREAT. Entirely new physics! I salivate at the prospect! No, the reason is that there is not a shred of evidence for it, nor even any model. When you come up with one I'll look again. Gaz

vividbleau (480), "I claim there is no superposition of states. Gaz refute my claim without using the principles of right reason." No, I think the onus is on you to give evidence supporting such an extreme claim. Gaz

StephenB "You reject my explanation that reason’s rules inform evidence and insist, to the contrary, that evidence informs reasons rules" I have pointed out already on a previous post why this is the case however I have a challenge for Gaz. Gaz claims the evidence shows a superposition of states. I claim there is no superposition of states. Gaz refute my claim without using the principles of right reason. If you cannot you cannot reject Stephens explanation that reasons rules inform evidence. Vivid vividbleau

PS: Stephen, my point is that even quantum physics has laws and what happens is happening somewhere, under certain conditions. It is not happening nowhere, willy-nilly, with no constraints. That is why I just gave neutron decay when free from a nucleus as a case in point. That we do not know the sufficient causal factors and on uncertainty may not be able to learn them, does not mean that events are happening without causal patterns. Similarly, on several decades of observation, it is commonly held that the observed cosmos began in a singularity some 13.7 BYA, but that does not at all entail or support that that is acausal, a something that for no apparent reason happened out of nowhere; nor is this event any justification to seek to overthrow first principles of reason on which the whole process of science itself sits. In short, someone is either badly misinformed on the nature of the logic of cause-effect, or is using "blind 'em with science" tactics. kairosfocus

Gaz: Go look up what happens under certain conditions to RA decay rates, remembering that there are several more exotic mechanisms as well beyond the classic alpha, beta gamma, including e.g. k-capture (the most notorious variable rate case, up to 1 - 4% IIRC); try out Be-7. The fact of composition in nucleons implies composite effects and causal factors, e.g. what makes a nucleon a proton vs. a neutron. That is a causal factor, and it is associated with the beta decay instability of neutrons outside the nucleus [~ 900 s t1/2], which is of course a case of instability that is plainly contextually influenced: atoms do not last 15 minutes on average. (Last I checked protons were completely stable, and yet n and p are very closely similar.) Again, you need to address necessary not just sufficient causal factors. I repeat, there are any number of relevant causal factors and related laws for quantum events. Things are not happening nowhere, from nothing with no reason. Otherwise we would be seeing a chaos not a cosmos. And, back on topic, your side have yet to show a case on credible observation where we see the origin of digitally coded, algorithmically active functionally specific, complex [500 - 1,000 or more bits] information arising by undirected chance plus necessity. That is what has to be explained for the origin of life on evolutionary materialistic premises, and it is what has to be accounted for if the claimed origin of 10's++ millions of bits worth of dFSCI in complex novel body plans that have to be embryologically feasible is also to be adequately explained. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

---Gaz: "No. Mathematics is basically a tool thaat utilises certain rules." So is logic. The laws of logic are no less compelling than the laws of mathematics. Yet, you say the rules of logic can be abandoned in the name of evidence even though the rules of math cannot. That is neither logical nor reasonable. Also, you need to know that mathematics alone cannot track down causes, much less can mathematics alone determine acausality. That is why I chuckle when you ask me to "do the math." I makes me wonder if you are doing the math. ---"Fine, but if you really want to understand this stuff then soomer or later you are going to have to get down to the math, otherwwise you are just blowing hot air." I understand the math well enough to know three things: quantum events are unpredictable, quantum events are counterintuitive, and we don't know why. Your claim is that there is no why on the grounds that quantum events are counterintuitive. That is not reasonable. However, you also say that new evidence may someday show that acausality could apply in other realms. Can causality be violated in one context, two contexts, or unlimited contexts? ---"And the answer is …. ta da! I don’t know. Depends what the evidence shows. My suspicion is that it will only be an issue for certain quantum phenomena, because the really weird stuff seems to happen at the very micro energy levels where Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle means odd effects happen. Once you scale up to classical and cosmological energy levels then Heisenberg doesn’t come into play. Only my thought, though." But, of course, you are changing your story again. For rhetorical purposes, you say that acausality is unusual with respect to quantum events. On the other hand, you extend acausality to almost every other context, insisting that not only quantum particles are acausal but that even the universe itself, could have just popped into existence. So, for you, the so-called quantum "exception" is not really an exception at all. It simply serves as a rhetorical dodge, seemingly rational excuse for rejecting causality on all the other important fronts, including the explanation of life and mind. ---"Alright: here’s why I assume no causal conditions for why a sspecific radioactive particle decays at a particular time(and by the way: it would be FANTASTIC if someone came up with a causal explanation, there would be whole new areas of physics). Two identical particles, one next to another, one decays, the other never does in the history of the universe, despite the fact that they are in exactly the same quantum state and physical environment. That’s a bit like two cars sat on the same railway track next to each other, a freight train come along at speed but only one is smashed up and the other isn’t. What would the cause be?" The cause, yet unknown, would be that there are lawful conditions that make that phenomenon happen consistently. It is interesting that you tell me that the macro world is totally different than the micro world and yet you use an example from the macro world to make your case. You reject my explanation that reason’s rules inform evidence and insist, to the contrary, that evidence informs reasons rules. What evidence, then, would cause you to accept the [idea?] of non-contradiction as a law and the [idea"] of causality as a law? (Question unanswered). {We will judiciously ignore the fact that, until I brought them up, you had never heard of reason’s rules}. ---"Dunno. What evidence have you got? I think you’d need something that came up with a really great, non-contradictory, causal explanation for why the quantum universe does the weird things it does. So a non-contradictory explanation to say why a particle can exist in a superposition of states including not existing, existing in place A, existing in places B through Z…. and a causal explanation for why a radioactive particle emits at a particular time when an identical one in the same circusmtances doesn’t." Of course I have an explanation. Causal conditions that have not yet been discovered give rise to the event. On the other hand, it is your claim that evidence can influence the rules of reason, so you should be able to tell us what kinds of evidence would make them rules rather than mere ideas. The reason you don't know [or can't even conceive of the possibility] is because evidence doesn't influence those rules. Thus, even though you make the claim, you cannot provide even a hypothetical example of such a happening. What is interesting about all this, though, is the fact that you are open to past surprises when they challenge classical physics and causality, but you are not open to future surprises that would explain quantum causality. Such is the impact of materialist ideology. ---"Of course I believe they need to be interpreted. What I do not accept is your view which is basically “the evidence points to this, but I have preconceived ideas about what can and can’t be allowed to happen, therefore I shall rule out explanations X and Y because they don’t match my preconceived ideas.” I fail to see how you could even do the basics of quantum physics with such an attitude." You now acknowledge that evidence must be interpreted but all your arguments are based on the earlier assumption that the evidence speaks for itself. Just reread your posts in this session alone. Do you not see this? Evidence does not speak for itself which is thy kairosfocus, a professional physicist, has explained that quantum events are caused while the atheist physcists that inform your perspective insist that they are not. If evidence could speak for itself, there would be no such disputes. Thus, when I ask you why you believe that quantum events are uncaused, you simply answer, "because the evidence says so." It says that to atheists, but it does not say that to theists. The illogical proposition that quantum events are uncaused is not based on evidence but is rather a function of materialist ideology. StephenB

kai (475), "And since there are evidently cases where RA decay rates can be tweaked" We do? Interesting. Please provide more information, I've never heard of this. "That key nuclear particles such as nucleons are now thought to be composites is also suggestive." We've known this a long time. there are quarks in nucleons (also "sea quarks") and gluons as vectors for the strong force between quarks. Doesn't alter the issue. Gaz

PPS: Gaz, you need to bone up on the logic of cause, including the distinction between necessary and sufficient causal conditions. For instance, with radioactive decay, we know of many necessary causal factors that obtain, we just do not know -- and on Heisenberg uncertainty probably can not know -- the sufficient factor that triggers a particular atom to decay now and its neighbour at a later date. We do know from the statistical pattern that something is conforming to the driving factors of the decay process. And since there are evidently cases where RA decay rates can be tweaked, it is not necessarily all internal to the atomic nucleus. That key nuclear particles such as nucleons are now thought to be composites is also suggestive. kairosfocus

Above: Thanks. GEM of TKI. PS: Over the past day or so we have seen a spectacular reduction to absurdity on the part of evolutionary materialism advocates. Vivid's rebuke is especially apt. kairosfocus

StephenB (461), "Gaz, we still have a few questions that you have left unattended." You're right. I'll answer, then I'd be grateful for your answers to my unanswered questions. "Inasmuch as you assert that new evidence can invalidate the laws of logic, do you also assert that new evidence can invalidate the laws of mathematics?” (Question not yet answered)" No. Mathematics is basically a tool thaat utilises certain rules. Many of those rules can be "proven". The evidence we see relates not to mathematics, but to the natural phenomena that occur in the universe. We use mathematics to try to make sense of those phenomena -but our mathematical models of those phenomena are often very incomplete (e.g. in quantum mechanics we can't model anything much bigger than a hydrogen atom very well). It's not the mathematical laws (I wouldd prefer the term rules, though) that are the problem, the problem is our incompleteness of mathematical models used to describe phenomena. "You have said that quantum mechanics is uniquely different from the classical realm, and is, therefore, exempt from the law of causality." Well, not quite what I said. The cosmological realm is also different from the classical, although I'm not sure causality is an issue at that "super macro" level. Nor do I say that quantum mechanics is exempt from the "law" (I dislike that word! not a good descriptor for nature) of causality - on the contrary, it applies often at the quantum level - e.g. a photon may strike an electron in an energy level of an atom AND CAUSE the electron to be liberated from the atom). All I am saying is that at the quantum level there appear to be some phenomena that are not "caused" and hence causality is not a "law" that can be applied in nall circumstances. "However, you also say that new evidence may someday show that acausality could apply in other realms. Can causality be violated in one context, two contexts, or unlimited contexts? (Question not answered)" And the answer is .... ta da! I don't know. Depends what the evidence shows. My suspicion is that it will only be an issue for certain quantum phenomena, because the really weird stuff seems to happen at the very micro energy levels where Heisenberg's uncertainty principle means odd effects happen. Once you scale up to classical and cosmological energy levels then Heisenberg doesn't come into play. Only my thought, though. "You reject my explanation that reason’s rules inform evidence and insist, to the contrary, that evidence informs reasons rules. What evidence, then, would cause you to accept the [idea?] of non-contradiction as a law and the [idea"] of causality as a law? (Question unanswered). {We will judiciously ignore the fact that, until I brought them up, you had never heard of reason’s rules}." Dunno. What evidence have you got? I think you'd need something that came up with a really great, non-contradictory, causal explanation for why the quantum universe does the weird things it does. So a non-contradictory explanation to say why a particle can exist in a superposition of states including not existing, existing in place A, existing in places B through Z.... and a causal explanation for why a radioactive particle emits at a particular time when an identical one in the same circusmtances doesn't. "Why do you assume that, because we don’t know the causal conditions for quantum events, that there are no causal conditions. (Question unaswered).[Please do not ask me to "do the math" because, as I have already stated, the math merely indicates unpredictability, not acausality, which is an interpretation of the evidence] What I am asking for is an argument." Fine, but if you really want to understand this stuff then soomer or later you are going to have to get down to the math, otherwwise you are just blowing hot air. Alright: here's why I assume no causal conditions for why a sspecific radioactive particle decays at a particular time(and by the way: it would be FANTASTIC if someone came up with a causal explanation, there would be whole new areas of physics). Two identical particles, one next to another, one decays, the other never does in the history of the universe, despite the fact that they are in exactly the same quantum state and physical environment. That's a bit like two cars sat on the same railway track next to each other, a freight train come along at speed but only one is smashed up and the other isn't. What would the cause be? "All data must be analyzed, processed, and intepreted. Anyone who has ever performed a scientific experiment, established a correlation between variables, or provided a rationale for the final claims of a report, knows that facts without context cannot speak for themselves. Why are you the only person alive who believes that evidence does not need to be interpreted? (New Question)." Of course I believe they need to be interpreted. What I do not accept is your view which is basically "the evidence points to this, but I have preconceived ideas about what can and can't be allowed to happen, therefore I shall rule out explanations X and Y because they don't match my preconceived ideas." I fail to see how you could even do the basics of quantum physics with such an attitude. Gaz

Petrushka (465), "I can’t really speak for GAZ, but I assume he means that if evidence (as in some of the quantum experiments) contradicts axioms based on intuition, your intuition is wrong, or your derivation of the axioms is wrong." Precisely. Thank you. You put it far more clearly and succinctly than I - bornagain77's mud picture is probably quite apt as regards the clarity of my comments sometimes! Feel free to speak for me any time, you'd do a better job than I. Gaz

bornagain77 (455), "Gaz, And just how does a law of decay, which you claim is caused by nothing, help you to establish evolution Gaz????" It doesn't. I never claimed it did. They are entirely different phenomena. You really ARE muddled. Gaz

Gaz I find this following link very informative as to how right reason, especially when grounded in a solid mathematical basis, can lead to empirically verification by evidence, even though the conclusions are completely counterintuitive to the basis materialistic/atheistic thought that causes you, and others, to say such absurd things as "some things in quantum mechanics are "not caused"". Wheeler's Classic Delayed Choice Experiment: Excerpt: So it seems that time has nothing to do with effects of quantum mechanics. And, indeed, the original thought experiment was not based on any analysis of how particles evolve and behave over time – it was based on the mathematics. This is what the mathematics predicted for a result, and this is exactly the result obtained in the laboratory. http://www.bottomlayer.com/bottom/basic_delayed_choice.htm "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." Niels Bohr bornagain77

Petrushka, Maybe I wasn't clear. I'm not questioning astronomers. What I am saying is that original Ptolemeic system which postulated the sun rotating the Earth was derives from simple observation. Just look in the sky one day and you will see the sun - seemingly - orbit the Earth. But we know that is not the case. Galileo used his inferential reasoning to conclude a heliocentric postulate. But you are right on the last sentence of your post. You accept astronomers are reporting the best data... But without their interpretation, the data is meaningless and interpretation requires principles of right reason. above

Regarding Galileo, I don't think anyone has seen a planet orbit the sun. In fact, I would guess that not one person in ten thousand has observed the sky as thoroughly as Galileo. I can follow the arguments that were available in Galileo's time -- particularly the phases of Venus -- but in the end I accept that astronomers are truthfully reporting the data and their best interpretations. Petrushka

Petrushka, What everyone else is trying to point out and gaz simly goesn't seem to get it is that the very axioms he is using to reason are the one's he is denying. Also, I would contest that if evidence points to something but intuition elsewhere it's the intution that needs to give. To illustrate this I will give you the ubiquitous story of Gelileo. When he presented his thesis to the church the one of the Bishops questioned him based on the simple fact that what was observed (evidence) was not what Galileo was suggesting. "Can he not see?" He was reported in saying. The fact of the matter is, that it was Galileo's intuition that lead him and in his writings he specifically hailed thinkers who followed their inferential reasoning and intuition contra to the evidence! Finally, evidence alone means nothing! It's through rational interpretation that evidence assumes it effectiveness. above

"I can’t really speak for GAZ, but I assume he means that if evidence (as in some of the quantum experiments) contradicts axioms based on intuition, your intuition is wrong, or your derivation of the axioms is wrong" So it is an either or and once again Gaz would be using the rules of right reason to argue against the rules of right reason. Vivid vividbleau

I can't really speak for GAZ, but I assume he means that if evidence (as in some of the quantum experiments) contradicts axioms based on intuition, your intuition is wrong, or your derivation of the axioms is wrong. Petrushka

Gaz re 418 Gaz you have your feet firmly planted in thin air. "Nope – if the evidence is there you can’t just ignore it. If the evidence says one thing and your reasoning another, then your reasoning is wrong." This is so ironic. Here we have Gaz using the rules of right reason, specifically the law of non contradiction ) to argue against the rules of right reason. Gaz also uses the rules of right reason, specifically LNC to argue that the evidence for the superposition of states proves that the rules of right reason does not always apply. However without the rules of right reason you have no evidence that the superposition of states is evidence against the non superposition of states which is your claim. In short without the rules of reason that you deny you have no evidence. Vivid vividbleau

..please see this recent post by oramus ...

I'll stand by my post #460. The assertion was made that I mischaracterized mainstream biology. Petrushka

Petrushka as to your quote from PZ Myers here,,,, https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/stephen-meyer-on-ids-scientific-bona-fides/#comment-359725 ,,,, please see this recent post by oramus in which he completely takes PZ apart upon only cursory inspection of the quote you cited: https://uncommondescent.com/humor/pz-myers-goes-on-strike/#comment-359724 bornagain77

Gaz, we still have a few questions that you have left unattended. Inasmuch as you assert that new evidence can invalidate the laws of logic, do you also assert that new evidence can invalidate the laws of mathematics?" (Question not yet answered) You have said that quantum mechanics is uniquely different from the classical realm, and is, therefore, exempt from the law of causality. However, you also say that new evidence may someday show that acausality could apply in other realms. Can causality be violated in one context, two contexts, or unlimited contexts? (Question not answered) You reject my explanation that reason's rules inform evidence and insist, to the contrary, that evidence informs reasons rules. What evidence, then, would cause you to accept the [idea?] of non-contradiction as a law and the [idea"] of causality as a law? (Question unanswered). {We will judiciously ignore the fact that, until I brought them up, you had never heard of reason's rules}. Why do you assume that, because we don't know the causal conditions for quantum events, that there are no causal conditions. (Question unaswered).[Please do not ask me to "do the math" because, as I have already stated, the math merely indicates unpredictability, not acausality, which is an interpretation of the evidence] What I am asking for is an argument. All data must be analyzed, processed, and intepreted. Anyone who has ever performed a scientific experiment, established a correlation between variables, or provided a rationale for the final claims of a report, knows that facts without context cannot speak for themselves. Why are you the only person alive who believes that evidence does not need to be interpreted? (New Question). StephenB

I am afraid it is only your position.

I tell you what. Send my brief statement, as you quoted it, to anyone doing research or graduate level teaching, or any prominent PhD in biology holding science writer, and ask if it is seriously wrong.

It is my position (and I believe the position of most mainstream biologists) that most genes were discovered or invented by microbes, before the Cambrian. Most evolution since has been variations on sequences that existed billions of years ago.

Heck, send it to ID writers and see if they disagree with my characterization of the mainstream position. Petrushka

Gaz I find this 10 minute audio extremely fitting to your absurd position as to allowing "not caused" to be a first cause: Chance vs. God: The Battle of First Causes - John MacArthur http://www.vimeo.com/11812625 Petrushka please quit playing games and present the specific evidence for functional information generation by material/evolutionary processes as you were requested, by kairosfocus and I, so as to justify your grand claims for neo-Darwinian evolution. Else-wise you are not even in the realm of empirical science but are merely in the realm of telling warm and cozy bedtime stories to yourself so as to make yourself sleep better at night. bornagain77

So please, don’t present your personal opinions as official theories of science.

OK, I'll present the view of a currently prominent teacher of evolution:

There are a couple of reasons why an animal-centric biologist would be interested in bacteria. One is the principle of it; the mechanisms that animal cells use to build complex arrangements of tissues were all first pioneered in single-celled organisms. We have elaborated and added details to gene- and cell-level phenomena, but it's a collection of significant quantitative differences, with nothing known that is essentially new in metazoan cells. All the cool stuff was worked out by evolution in the 3-4billion years before the Cambrian, a potential that simply blossomed in the past half-billion years into big conglomerations of cells. Understanding how the building blocks of multicellularity work individually ought to be a prerequisite to understanding how the assemblages work.

Petrushka

Petrushka: It is my position (and I believe the position of most mainstream biologists) that most genes were discovered or invented by microbes, before the Cambrian. Most evolution since has been variations on sequences that existed billions of years ago. I am afraid it is only your position. I have shown you many times that according to existing literature (not ID literature) many protein domains (approximately 25% according to the paper I have repeatedly quoted) arose after the Cambrian explosion, in metazoa. So please, don't present your personal opinions as official theories of science. gpuccio

Petrushka (#421 - #427): Just to clarify: I said new genes are mostly derived from small changes in existing (inherited sequences). And that's completely wrong. You have misunderstood what you read. The paper you quote: "We estimate that around 24% are highly divergent members of mammalian protein families." Emphasis mine. What they are saying is that they estimate (read imagine) that part of the orphans could be derived from existing genes, and then changed so much that they are no more recognizable. That's because, as I said, orphans by definition have no recognizable significant homology to existing genes, something that you don't seem to want to aknowledge. So, just to try to explain how they could come out of the blue, these guys imagine that some of them have just cjanged so much that the supposed old homologies are no more there. The paper, again: "Interestingly, around 53% of the orphan genes contain sequences derived from transposable elements (TEs) and are mostly located in primate-specific genomic regions. This indicates frequent recruitment of TEs as part of novel genes." But transposons are not existing genes. They are active elements in no coding DSNA, which have the capacity to reshape genomes. The fact that TEs contribute to create new genes does not mean in any way that new genes share any sequence with old genes, which is what you erroneously and repeatedly stated. "Finally, we also obtain evidence that a small fraction of primate orphan genes, around 5.5%, might have originated de novo from mammalian noncoding genomic regions." Again emphasis mine. And again no mention of old genes with similar sequences. So, the story that: "The gene function may be novel, but the sequences are descended from the tree. You can have new functionality with very small changes to the sequences." is completely your invention. Just admit it, and let's pass to something else. There will always be gaps, but over time the gaps narrow. It’s a historical trend in all sciences. Gaps have nothing to do with your errors. All this is a bit over my head, but I read these papers to indicate that “new” genes are assembled from bits and pieces of old genes, making their functionality considerably more likely than a purely random process. Maybe a poor analogy, but I read it as more like assembling a sentence from assorted words, rather than assembling a sentence from unconnected letters. You are probably confounding the theory of exon shuffling for creating new multidomain protein genes with the emergence of new domains and of ORFan genes. Single domains are single functional units. ORFans are usually short genes, and arise "de novo", showing no similarities to existing genes in their sequence. That's why they are called ORFans. And even protein domain superfamilies (the about 2000 which we know) show no sequence similarities one with the other. That's exactly the way they are classified as separated superfamilies (see the SCOP site). Again I recommend that, although we may discuss on interpretations, facts should stay clear. gpuccio

Gaz, And just how does a law of decay, which you claim is caused by nothing, help you to establish evolution Gaz???? Extreme disconnect in your overall narrative here Gaz!!! You need to be quoting a "law of spontaneously generated order" not a "law of spontaneous degenerated decay" to support you neo-Darwinian belief system. But to put some meat on the "cause" of the second law's bones, here are a few things that I have found as to the cause of the second laws "radioactive decay" which you state has no cause Gaz: Boltzmann equation An important equation in statistical mechanics that connects entropy (S) with molecular disorder (W). It can be written: S = k log W where k is Boltzmann's constant. The Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann first linked entropy and probability in 1877. However, the equation as shown, involving a specific constant, was first written down by Max Planck, the father of quantum mechanics in 1900. In his 1918 Nobel Prize lecture, Planck said: This constant is often referred to as Boltzmann's constant, although, to my knowledge, Boltzmann himself never introduced it – a peculiar state of affairs, which can be explained by the fact that Boltzmann, as appears from his occasional utterances, never gave thought to the possibility of carrying out an exact measurement of the constant. Nothing can better illustrate the positive and hectic pace of progress which the art of experimenters has made over the past twenty years, than the fact that since that time, not only one, but a great number of methods have been discovered for measuring the mass of a molecule with practically the same accuracy as that attained for a planet. http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/B/Boltzmann_equation.html Roger Penrose discusses initial entropy of the universe. - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhGdVMBk6Zo The Physics of the Small and Large: What is the Bridge Between Them? Roger Penrose Excerpt: "The time-asymmetry is fundamentally connected to with the Second Law of Thermodynamics: indeed, the extraordinarily special nature (to a greater precision than about 1 in 10^10^123, in terms of phase-space volume) can be identified as the "source" of the Second Law (Entropy)." How special was the big bang? - Roger Penrose Excerpt: This now tells us how precise the Creator's aim must have been: namely to an accuracy of one part in 10^10^123. (from the Emperor’s New Mind, Penrose, pp 339-345 - 1989) http://www.ws5.com/Penrose/ Entropy of the Universe - Hugh Ross - May 2010 Excerpt: Egan and Lineweaver found that supermassive black holes are the largest contributor to the observable universe’s entropy. They showed that these supermassive black holes contribute about 30 times more entropy than what the previous research teams estimated. http://www.reasons.org/entropy-universe Evolution is a Fact, Just Like Gravity is a Fact! UhOh! Excerpt: The results of this paper suggest gravity arises as an entropic force, once space and time themselves have emerged. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/evolution-is-a-fact-just-like-gravity-is-a-fact-uhoh/ "Gain in entropy always means loss of information, and nothing more." Gilbert Newton Lewis "there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems." John Ross, Chemical and Engineering News, 7 July 1980 A "flat universe", which is actually another surprising very finely-tuned "coincidence" of the universe, means this universe, left to its own present course of accelerating expansion due to "Dark Energy", will continue to expand forever, thus fulfilling the thermodynamic equilibrium of the second law to its fullest extent (entropic "Heat Death" of the universe). The Future of the Universe Excerpt: After all the black holes have evaporated, (and after all the ordinary matter made of protons has disintegrated, if protons are unstable), the universe will be nearly empty. Photons, neutrinos, electrons and positrons will fly from place to place, hardly ever encountering each other. It will be cold, and dark, and there is no known process which will ever change things. --- Not a happy ending. http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys240/lectures/future/future.html Psalm 102:25-27 Of old You laid the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish, but You will endure; Yes, they will all grow old like a garment; Like a cloak You will change them, And they will be changed. But You are the same, And Your years will have no end. Big Rip Excerpt: The Big Rip is a cosmological hypothesis first published in 2003, about the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the matter of universe, from stars and galaxies to atoms and subatomic particles, are progressively torn apart by the expansion of the universe at a certain time in the future. Theoretically, the scale factor of the universe becomes infinite at a finite time in the future. Thermodynamic Argument Against Evolution - Thomas Kindell - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4168488 Does God Exist? The End Of Christianity - Finding a Good God in an Evil World - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4007708 Romans 8:18-21 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. ,,,,,,,,, I don't know about you Gaz but I think there is more than sufficient reason to believe that there is indeed a tangible "cause" to decay that is much more interesting than just saying nothing causes decay without investigating further. In fact I would say your approach is a sure guarantee of ignorance, bornagain77

bornagain77 (451), "Gaz do you have the nerve to call me “muddled” when you have repeatedly claimed the “nothing” is a “cause” of some of the things we observe happening in quantum mechanics???" Er, yes. Because you're muddled again. I'm not claiming "nothing" is a "cause", I'm claiming that some quantum level effects, such as radioactive decay, appear not to have a cause. There is a difference. I appreciate the picture, though. Glorious. Gaz

Gaz and Petrushka, in fact the second law of thermodynamics is so effective at preventing Darwinian evolution from being even remotely true it is actually possible to watch the second law in "real-time" action as we watch the wall of neo-Darwinian ignorance crumble before our own eyes with the onslaught of "functional" discoveries coming forth for "junk DNA": The "Junk DNA" Paradigm Continues to Collapse as New Functions Are Discovered for Retrotransposons - July 2010 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/07/the_junk_dna_paradigm_continue036461.html bornagain77

@bornagain -"Old Grandpa Gaz as a baby http://cgz.e2bn.net/e2bn/leas/.....puddle.jpg" LOL! above

Petrushka as with kairosfocus, all I ask for is that you provide DIRECT OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE for the origination of ANY functional information whatsoever, over and above what is already present in a parent species genome, so as to justify your claim that the encyclopedias of information we see in all the genomes living around us might be explained by the "physicality" of Darwinism. For you to pretend that neo-Darwinism has "no problem" with ANY physical law in completely absurd,,, neo-Darwinism violates the second law of thermodynamics in a spectacular way" "there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems." John Ross, Chemical and Engineering News, 7 July 1980 "The laws of probability apply to open as well as closed systems." Granville Sewell - Professor Of Mathematics - University Of Texas El Paso https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/eseb-liitle-shop-of-fallacies/#comment-347999 Evolution is easily the dumbest idea ever taken seriously in science. Granville Sewell - Professor of Mathematics - University of Texas - El Paso Can “ANYTHING” Happen in an Open System? - Granville Sewell PhD. Math Excerpt: If we found evidence that DNA, auto parts, computer chips, and books entered through the Earth’s atmosphere at some time in the past, then perhaps the appearance of humans, cars, computers, and encyclopedias on a previously barren planet could be explained without postulating a violation of the second law here (it would have been violated somewhere else!). http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/sewell/articles/appendixd.pdf Can Anything Happen In A Open System - Granville Sewell PhD. Math - video http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/sewell/articles/thermo.htm Casey Luskin interviews Granville Sewell - audio http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/player/web/2010-02-17T13_17_00-08_00 Evolution's Thermodynamic Failure - Granville Sewell (Professor of Mathematics - Texas University - El Paso) http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=9128 Gaz do you have the nerve to call me "muddled" when you have repeatedly claimed the "nothing" is a "cause" of some of the things we observe happening in quantum mechanics??? Muddled??? Please Gaz let's not get personal and start slinging mud at each other and dragging your "muddled" great great great grandfather into all this: Old Grandpa Gaz as a baby http://cgz.e2bn.net/e2bn/leas/c99/schools/cgz/accounts/staff/rchambers/GeoBlogBytes%20Blog%20Resources/Iceland%20Images/Mudpuddle.jpg bornagain77

Kindly address the issue of the empirical, observational support for origin of digitally coded, functionally specific complex information by chance and or necessity, in ANY form.

I've addressed the problem of OOL many times on this thread. There's a lot of research going on. I'd rather not characterize the findings before they are found. My position on this and other threads is fairly constant, considering that some posts are better worded than others. It is my position (and I believe the position of most mainstream biologists) that most genes were discovered or invented by microbes, before the Cambrian. Most evolution since has been variations on sequences that existed billions of years ago. I have no ego attached to any conjecture on how life first arose. I don't know. You don't know. If I had to bet, I'd bet that life arises because nature is rigged for life to arise. I have no personal knowledge of how or why that is. Petrushka

Thanks for the help Kairosfocus. I really appreciate you taking the time on several occasions to explain things. You have an interesting and effective way of simplifying complex issues to help others gain a better understanding of the subject matter. You’re actually right. I don’t have an extensive background in information systems and thermodynamics, which is why it was a little difficult to follow all the arguments. I was under the obviously false assumption that talkorigins was a fair ground for discourse. I will approach its content with a little more caution from now on. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said: “Try to find just one case where as observed — no just-so stories dressed up with scientific jargon!” Time and time again I have found myself faced with alleged explanations dressed up in excessive verbiage and scientific jargon and upon further research, realized that all this was, was simply nonsense made to sound as a “sophisticated” account of an alleged explanation. I also often find out that a lot of the arguments presented are mere semantic games. This was my suspicion when I run into the talkorigins site but due to the fact that I do not have deepest of understanding in information systems, I wanted to hear other people’s opinions and especially yours. I also appreciate the quotes from The Bible you provided. :) PS. Have you had a chance to read the Mathematics of Evolution by Fred Hoyle. I just began reading it and it seems like he makes some points that are related to the information argument you provide. above

Petrushka: Kindly address the issue of the empirical, observational support for origin of digitally coded, functionally specific complex information by chance and or necessity, in ANY form. Show us a program, a document or any other such data based entity where -- on observation -- the information of at least 1,000 bits originated by chance plus necessity without design. You also full well know that in the still warm pond, you don't even have the equivalent of Scrabble letters yet, and need to assemble them by chance plus necessity without design into a functional message and also assemble -- by chemistry, not any claimed mythical powers of biology -- a self-replicating molecular nanomachine entity that also carries out metabolism. no just-so stories please. Compared to that task, the random assembly of letters on a Scrabble game set into a sentence that makes sense is a very generously simple problem. As well you full know. Fish, or cut the bait so we can fish. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

PPPS: Onlokers, do not forget to observe the rhetorical frameshift -- old hat since Darwin used it -- from origin of the cell [the focus of Meyer's SITC BTW] to evolution of existing forms on presumed unlimited power of chance variations and so-called natural selction. Observe how o this last the issues of info genration of 10's mbits functional new info, embryological feasibility on a highly integrated organism, and empirical evidence of the gradual transitions have all been consistently ducked. No prizes for guessing why, once you know that he fossil record is now 1/4 million species deep and the many many crucially missing chain links to form the infamous tree of life are still overwhelmingly missing; especially when it comes to accounting for the origin of phylum and subphylum level body plans to explain the Cambrian layer fossils; the level where for instance you decide whether or not you have a backbone. kairosfocus

...they sometimes fall into the same trap, but more often rely on the subtler error of preloading a fitness landscape that boils down to an optimising search within an island of function.

I was just wondering why you chose to use an analogy that seems so close to Weasel, but even simpler and less similar to evolution. Biochemistry, of course embodies its own fitness lanscape. The list of structures that are possible are hard coded into the nature of nature. The concept of whether fitness functions and fitness landscapes can be explored by evolutionary algorithms should not be the question. They obviously can be. The important question is the one raised by Douglas Axe, whether the landscapes can be traversed via incremental change. This whole discussion might be more interesting if we focused on whether the differences between existing organisms can be bridged incrementally. That seems to be the focus of mainstream science. Petrushka

PPS: Petrushka is now simply recirculating a move the goalposts objection that has long since been adequately answered. The focus of the design research level work is currently on the implications of digitally coded functionally specific complex information. Currently, a growing series of peer reviewed papers is making plain that the way that we get significantly improved performance over a random search [it is BTW possible to get performance WORSE than random search] is through injection of active information, which can be quantified based on its impact. Another line of work is developing a set of various metrics, and has already produced a list of measures of FSC for 35 protein families. Petrushka would be better served if he would seek to correct the increasingly blatant and outrageous imposition of materialist ideology as a censoring constraint and glass ceiling [or worse] on science. The current case of a Nature Editorial trying to take down an eminent scientist because he is a man of faith [he is not either a Creationist or an ID supporter] is all too telling. Shameless! kairosfocus

PS: Weasel of course was an utterly dishonest "demonstration" where Dawkins used weasel words to actually acknowledge its fundamentally misleading nature, even while putting it forth as an illustration of the power of chance and selection to hit a target rapidly; the key problem being that the target was preloaded and generation champions -- regardless of non-function -- were chosen for their increments in proximity tot he target. It should be withdrawn and apologised for publicly. As for "improved" successors, they sometimes fall into the same trap, but more often rely on the subtler error of preloading a fitness landscape that boils down to an optimising search within an island of function. The real problem -- as old hands like Petrushka know or should know -- is to get to isolated islands of function in vast configuration spaces that easily overwhelm the search capacity, not of our little planet but he whole observed universe. Weasel was long since deconstructed across several threads here, and there is even what could well be actual code somewhere that will abundantly demonstrate the problem. Evo Informatics Lab shows the problems in its various simulations. And, the Scrabble example is of course of comparable though far lesser complexity to the real problem of just getting the DNA information for a viable first cell right [100 - 500 k bits . . . ]. We have not touched on where the codes came from, where algorithms came from, and where co-ordinated, mutually well matched implementing machines as an irreducibly complex set for BOTH metabolism and self-replication (which is a precondition for differential success of reproducing populations) credibly came from, absent intelligence. kairosfocus

Above, for instance, I discussed the way ANOVA works in experiment designs that compare treatments and controls in a great many fields.

Then it would seem to be the highest priority of ID researchers to demonstrate its effectiveness in some test cases where we know that some varieties have been produced in historical time by "intelligent selection" and others produced by some other form of selection, not involving humans. That is the way scientific protocols are certified, especially when the science is being used to enforce laws. Petrushka

Onlookers: Petrushka -- as a self-confesseed old hand -- knows or should know that design detection is a routine and serious matter in any number of scientific and scientifically informed fields. Above, for instance, I discussed the way ANOVA works in experiment designs that compare treatments and controls in a great many fields. In Information Theory, we routinely distinguish signal from noise and base the absolutely central ratio signal to noise on that distinction. So, he is simply not serious. As to he notion that there is ongoing research that someday hopes -- after 80 years so far -- hopes t voila, poof provide us with empirical support for abiogenesis on chance plus necessity in whatever version on Darwin's warm littel pond full of salts and zapped by lightning or whatever, we need to understand what is driving how that research is being done and reported in too many circles. So, let me again cite Lewontin's damaging 1997 admissions, noting how today's thread on a Nature editorial attacking Francis Collins is demonstrating yet again just how on target Lewontin was: ___________ >>. . . to put a correct view of the universe into people’s heads we must first get an incorrect view out . . . the problem is to get them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth [which is of course a philosophical truth and knowledge claim, so it refutes itself]. . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists, it is self-evident [yup, triumphalistic circular thinking can seem self-evident] that the practices of science [cf below on just how he wants science practiced, and ask yourself whether a priori materialist censorship is going to help with unfettered truth seeking] provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality, and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test [surely, you mean self-refuting evolutionary materialism?]. . . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [“Billions and Billions of Demons,” NYRB, January 9, 1997.] >> _____________ "Science" done like that has no credibility and we should not trust it, it is ideology in the false dress of a lab coat. And, pardon a few direct words: it is high time we were direct about it, demanding accountability from those who have subverted science in the interests of worldview agendas. Including refusing to accept and address a straightforward definition that in fact is commonplace in a great many fields of science and is implicit in a lot of experimental practice. G'day GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Get a set of Scrabble letters. Shake up the bag, and line up the little rests, putting letters one by one left to right until they were all used up. Does the result make sense as a sentence?

Your exercise sounds a lot like the Weasel demo, but minus fecundity, selection and iteration. Perhaps you could rephrase your analogy and make it have a few more of the features of evolution. Petrushka

I'm sorry. The first link is what I am assuming is kairosfocus' blog, where he explains some of the prevalent issues in biology as they pertain to information and FSCI at: http://iose-gen.blogspot.com/2010/06/introduction-and-summary.html The second link is the objections raised by some people on talkorigin at: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/infotheory.html above

PS: Watch Journey in the Cell, top right this page. kairosfocus

Above: TalkOrigins is so biased, distorted and frankly too often outright dishonest -- I last saw them trying to slander Creationists who paid a serious price for antiracist efforts as racists -- that they make Wikipedia's bias on this subject look tame. I would not give TalkOrigins the time of day, and anyone who cites it as an authoritative source is at best ill advised, at worst ill intentioned. On information systems, if you do not have the mathematical background to follow the arguments and the related ones in thermodynamics [especially statistical form] I would suggest you use a bit of common sense. Get a set of Scrabble letters. Shake up the bag, and line up the little rests, putting letters one by one left to right until they were all used up. Does the result make sense as a sentence? Why is that? (To very high confidence . . . ) ANS: The number of nonsensical possible configurations of letters at random far, far and away outnumbers the set where the letters make sense. Now, second exercise. You come upon a Scrabble set like above, but this time the opening sentences of this post are laid out, letter by letter. What is the most likely explanation for such digitally coded functionally specific complex information? A: Directed configuration, aka design. That is, when we find ourselves on an island of function isolated in a vast space of possible but overwhelmingly non-functional configurations, on abundant [and un-exceptioned] experience, the answer is design. Third exercise. Go to a PC shop. Look at the PCs and software. What is the best explanation for the origin of both, why? A: Digital, code based, algorithmic technology and he machines that make it work are again functionally complex, and specific organised entities, best explained on design. Then, examine the way DNA is transcribed by RNA, then edited and transferred to the Ribosome, then read and used to code a protein amino acid by amino acid. Observe how a tag end is sometimes used to direct the protein to where to go, snipped off before use [much like the headers used in packet switching across the Internet, or in a simple case email or snail mail addresses]. Q: What is the best explanation of this ancient digital technology? A: It all happened by accidental variation and natural selection, of course. NOT: this cme up simply because a pre-informaiton age theory was dominant, and has continued to be dominant, imposing censorship on teh very blatantly obvious best explanation. Just, don't let the ideologues at Talk Origin and elsewhere bamboozle you into accepting ideologically motivated censorship in the name of and under the false colours of science. Try to find just one case where as observed -- no just-so stories dressed up with scientific jargon! -- a complex digital code based algorithmic system originated by forces of blind chance and mechanical necessity. If they cannot show such a case on direct observation, they are blowing blue smoke and using glass mirrors to make you think you are seeing ghosts. You and I both know where digital computers and cell phone networks etc come from, why. And since you seem to be a Christian, you may find John 3:19 - 21, & 8:42 - 47 with Rom 1:19 - 32 to be interesting, though saddening, reading. Then, do a bit of praying for us and our civilisation. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

above, re: 433 - you posted 2 identical links. Can you fix this so we know what you're referring to? CannuckianYankee

Lot's of work is being done on OOL and reverse engineering. I'd prefer not to characterize the findings before they're found. Petrushka

In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection — how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose.

I'm not unaware of the claims of design detection. I simply haven't seen an example in a real-life context. I've asked, for example, whether design detection could distinguish animal varieties having a history involving human selection, from animals having a history not involving human selection. This should be a perfect test case, since we know a lot about both histories. It's also an incredibly simple test case. I'm sure such forensic methods as fingerprinting and DNA identification had to undergo similar trials before being certified for use in trials. So let's see the proponents of design detection publish a methodology that can be tested and certified. Petrushka

Petrushka: Yup, just as Materialists are blinkered by a priori materialism, there were people who puzzled over the best explanation of planetary motion. The basic problem you have to explain is how on the gamut of the observed cosmos, we can credibly get to codes, [thus language], algorithms, executing machinery and a self-replicating molecular nanomachine entity that also metabolises, in light of the known thermodynamics and chemical kinetics of molecules and the like, i.e. chance plus necessity. The answer to such a project is pretty obvious actrually: the trends, driven by relative statistical weights of functional and non-funcitonal macrostates, are such that the overwhelming trend is to break up rather than synthesise such complex, integrated irreducibly complex organisation. (And if that were not so every can of soup in your supermarket would be teeming over with new life as soon as it cools.) Here is where I discuss why. On origin of body plan level biodiversity, on chance plus necessity, you have to explain spontaneous origin of embryologiclaly feasible, tightly functionally integrated novel forms requiring 10+ mn bases of new bioinformation. (And while we are at it, there is need to explain the diverse sources of analogous structures, in the growing embryo.) The alternativfe that absent a prior imposiion of materialism, is the obvious one. The cell embeds a digital, code based flexible program computer. We know -- KNOW by direct experience in my case -- the routine cause of that. Intelligence. And, we are already playing with nanotechnologies. Absent an a priori imposition, the obvious conclusion would have been reached long ago. The cell is as much a technology as this Eee I am using. We would be setting out on reverse engineering it together, instead of trying to correct an ideological coup that has now begun to cripple science, and which will, if unchecked, cost science its reputation and public support. (That is already happening with those who have tried to substitute cooked computer simulations for genuine science on weather systems.) Wake up and smell the coffee, mon! hate to waste good Blue Mountain brew . . . GEM of TKI kairosfocus

@Kairosfocus I've been following a lot of your arguments pertaining to the importance of information theory in biology and the problems it creates for darwinism. After going over some of your points at: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/infotheory.html I did some internet searches on the subject and run into this site: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/infotheory.html Where certain individuals are trying to attack the arguments made by Gitt, Dembski and Spetner. I'm starting to get an understanding of the general idea behind this issue about information but I sometimes lack some backround in regards to the specifics of information theories wanted to hear your oponion about the objections made by these people on talkorigins. Are they valid? above

PS: Onlookers, it is not very hard to see what ID qua ID is, as can be seen in the definition given here in this site and in many other places [BTW, given the blatant smear job game and the corruption of that site by ideologues, do not trust Wikipedia on this topic, ande something like True Origins is far worse], as linked from every page: _____________ >>ID Defined The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. ID is thus a scientific disagreement with the core claim of evolutionary theory that the apparent design of living systems is an illusion. In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection — how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose. Design detection is used in a number of scientific fields, including anthropology, forensic sciences that seek to explain the cause of events such as a death or fire, cryptanalysis and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). An inference that certain biological information may be the product of an intelligent cause can be tested or evaluated in the same manner as scientists daily test for design in other sciences. ID is controversial because of the implications of its evidence, rather than the significant weight of its evidence. ID proponents believe science should be conducted objectively, without regard to the implications of its findings. This is particularly necessary in origins science because of its historical (and thus very subjective) nature, and because it is a science that unavoidably impacts religion. Positive evidence of design in living systems consists of the semantic, meaningful or functional nature of biological information, the lack of any known law that can explain the sequence of symbols that carry the “messages,” and statistical and experimental evidence that tends to rule out chance as a plausible explanation. Other evidence challenges the adequacy of natural or material causes to explain both the origin and diversity of life. >> ______________ What happens -- pardon a few direct words, but we are dealing with a self-confessed "old hand" not a naive novice to simply point to the weak argument correctives -- is that not being able to address this squarely on the merits, every sort of caricature and attempt to smear through guilt by association with the already smeared is being attempted. All in defense of the imposition of a materialist ideology that subverts science and corrupts its ability to seek the truth about our world based on evidence. Please correct your misrepresentations for next time. G'day GEM of TKI kairosfocus

You know or should know that the first gene and execution machinery problem begins in Darwin’s warm little pond or the preferred alternative du jour, out of molecular noise and common monomers.

I'm sure that lots of bright people were befuddled in the centuries between Copernicus and Newton, wondering how you could account for all the noise in what could only be perfect circular motion. Petrushka

StephenB, Check out kairosfocus' 420. Kairosfocus appears confused about it, but the text he quotes may explain my position. Gaz

bornagain77 (419), "Thus this is the breakdown in Gaz’s reasoning and allows Gaz to state that nothing can cause something i.e. zero can equal one, 0=1, in quantum mechanics for with Gaz there is no proper check to his philosophical bias, at least none that he will allow to challenge his atheistic worldview. Must be nice to write your very own rules of science Gaz!" You're very muddled. Nothing I've said is "atheistic", one could believe in a god and still agree with what I've said. Nor do I believe 0=1 : that is a matter of mathematics, a mere abstraction - it is not in itself a statement of how the physical world is. If you want a mathematical statement of the quantum world you need probability calculations and wavefunctions and other tools, not simple arithmetic. And even then the mathematics will only approximate what is going on at the quantum level. I'm not the one writing my own rules at all. I'll leave that to those who think that science should include supernatural explanations. Gaz

Petrushka: You know or should know that the first gene and execution machinery problem begins in Darwin's warm little pond or the preferred alternative du jour, out of molecular noise and common monomers. (If you want to go either metabolism first or genes/RNA world first, you have to resolve the Orgel-Shapiro exchange, on observable evidence, e.g. as summarised here, cf point c.) Thereafter, your mission is to show with evidence not just so stories, how ~ 1 mn base prs mutates into 10's - 100's of millions [i.e. it is not just slice and dice but multiply genome size by 10 to 1,000 fold, innovating whole new body plans, related algorithms etc], as is discussed with respect to the Cambrian life revolution here. Until you can do so on firm observational evidence, all that you are doing is regurgitating a standard just so story backed up by the enforcers in the evolutionary materialist establishment, cf remarks you have already been pointed to, here. Playing at distractions, strawman caricatures, question begging impositions of materialism and denigratory dismissals based on the fiat of the new Magisterium only show that you are aware your case on the actual merits is weak. G'day GEM of TKI kairosfocus

All this is a bit over my head, but I read these papers to indicate that "new" genes are assembled from bits and pieces of old genes, making their functionality considerably more likely than a purely random process. Maybe a poor analogy, but I read it as more like assembling a sentence from assorted words, rather than assembling a sentence from unconnected letters. Petrushka

Petrushka, you make the grand claim that random processes can generate new genes (functional information)

I don't personally make that claim. I just quoted from and linked to one of many published papers making that claim. I believe I found that paper as a result of following a link provided by an ID proponent. Can you cite how the laws of chemistry or physics or chemistry have been violated in these processes? Can you cite anything from a qualified ID proponent such as Axe or Behe, that indicates these processes are physically impossible? Or even that they violate probability by requiring multiple unselected mutations? I'm not aware that any competent biochemist has argued against the common descent of vertibrates, for example. Petrushka

Petrushka, you make the grand claim that random processes can generate new genes (functional information), yet you have provided zero evidence for this claim (nor have any of your neo-Darwinian cohorts provided any evidence. Yet just by you writing your posts you provide further concrete evidence that Intelligence can and does produce large amounts of coherent functional information. Functional information that is far above the capabilities of the material processes of the entire universe to produce coherent functional information. Yet despite the fact that greater levels of functional complexity/information, that far exceeds man's ability to produce as such in his machines, is being discovered on just about a weekly basis, and thus ever widening the gap between "physicality and choice contingency", as Abel puts it, you maintain the absolutely absurd position that the gap is getting narrow. This is sheer disconnect from reality on your part Petrushka!!! bornagain77

When a case has to rest on consistent misrepresentation of design thought and open or veiled attacks against design thinkers sustained in the teeth of correction, it is telling.

It's difficult for an outsider to understand what ID is, when its most distinguished proponents seem to disagree on such elementary concepts as the age of the earth, common descent, the efficacy of selection, the implications of the fossil record. This thread rambles for the simple reason that these issues remain unsettled in the ID community. Petrushka

It is the great divide between physicality and formalism.

Seems to divide people, but doesn't seem to impede progress in physics, chemistry and biology. I don't know of any contribution made to human knowledge based on the assumption that an unspecified entity having unspecified capabilities did unspecified somethings at unspecified times and places using unspecified methods for unspecified reasons. Petrushka

Petrushka, There will always be gaps, but over time the gaps narrow. It’s a historical trend in all sciences. Please show just one example of the novel origination of just one new gene from purely material processes, If you do provide a concise method to generate information from material processes there is One Million dollars waiting for you: "The Origin-of-Life Prize" ® (hereafter called "the Prize") will be awarded for proposing a highly plausible mechanism for the spontaneous rise of genetic instructions in nature sufficient to give rise to life. http://www.us.net/life/index.htm As with evolution itself, the problem for the origin of life clearly turns out to be explaining where the information came from in the first place: “The problem of the origin of life is clearly basically equivalent to the problem of the origin of biological information.” Origin of life theorist Bernd-Olaf Kuppers in his book "Information and the Origin of Life". Book Review - Meyer, Stephen C. Signature in the Cell. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. Excerpt: As early as the 1960s, those who approached the problem of the origin of life from the standpoint of information theory and combinatorics observed that something was terribly amiss. Even if you grant the most generous assumptions: that every elementary particle in the observable universe is a chemical laboratory randomly splicing amino acids into proteins every Planck time for the entire history of the universe, there is a vanishingly small probability that even a single functionally folded protein of 150 amino acids would have been created. Now of course, elementary particles aren't chemical laboratories, nor does peptide synthesis take place where most of the baryonic mass of the universe resides: in stars or interstellar and intergalactic clouds. If you look at the chemistry, it gets even worse—almost indescribably so: the precursor molecules of many of these macromolecular structures cannot form under the same prebiotic conditions—they must be catalysed by enzymes created only by preexisting living cells, and the reactions required to assemble them into the molecules of biology will only go when mediated by other enzymes, assembled in the cell by precisely specified information in the genome. So, it comes down to this: Where did that information come from? The simplest known free living organism (although you may quibble about this, given that it's a parasite) has a genome of 582,970 base pairs, or about one megabit (assuming two bits of information for each nucleotide, of which there are four possibilities). Now, if you go back to the universe of elementary particle Planck time chemical labs and work the numbers, you find that in the finite time our universe has existed, you could have produced about 500 bits of structured, functional information by random search. Yet here we have a minimal information string which is (if you understand combinatorics) so indescribably improbable to have originated by chance that adjectives fail. http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/reading_list/indices/book_726.html Petrushka, Only in you imagination is the gap growing more narrow for neo_Darwinian evolution. In fact the Gap for the design inference has been growing very narrow while the gap between material processes ever generating functional genetic information is shown to be growing ever wider. You keep stating the same lies over and over without ever providing any proof to the contrary. Does it not bother you to be completely out of the loop as far as evidence is concerned?: The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity - David L. Abel - 2009 Excerpt: "A monstrous ravine runs through presumed objective reality. It is the great divide between physicality and formalism. On the one side of this Grand Canyon lies everything that can be explained by the chance and necessity of physicodynamics. On the other side lies those phenomena than can only be explained by formal choice contingency and decision theory—the ability to choose with intent what aspects of ontological being will be preferred, pursued, selected, rearranged, integrated, organized, preserved, and used. Physical dynamics includes spontaneous non linear phenomena, but not our formal applied-science called “non linear dynamics”(i.e. language,information). http://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/10/1/247/pdf A monstrous ravine hardly sounds like the narrow gap you imagine Petrushka!!! bornagain77

gpuccio: I said new genes are mostly derived from small changes in existing (inherited sequences). The fact that their function as genes is new is implied in their name.

We estimate that around 24% are highly divergent members of mammalian protein families. Interestingly, around 53% of the orphan genes contain sequences derived from transposable elements (TEs) and are mostly located in primate-specific genomic regions. This indicates frequent recruitment of TEs as part of novel genes. Finally, we also obtain evidence that a small fraction of primate orphan genes, around 5.5%, might have originated de novo from mammalian noncoding genomic regions.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19064677 There will always be gaps, but over time the gaps narrow. It's a historical trend in all sciences. Petrushka

Onlookers: I am currently battling with a flat dead phone line [lightning storm?] and a faulty fault report system that 24 hrs after 1st report, had not queued my call-in for action. Heading off to Telco, so a pause at the local public library . . . Anyway, this thread has been a helpful beta test, cf clarifying updates here. (Thanks to critics and commenters.) ______________ Stephen & Gaz: I cannot but notice how this thread has drifted from one tangent to another, with the underlying unity being that objectors to the scientific bona fides of the design inference (cf. the just linked) consistently are unable to address the matter on the merits or even show that hey have accurately and fairly read what design thinkers and theorists or even bloggists have to say. When a case has to rest on consistent misrepresentation of design thought and open or veiled attacks against design thinkers sustained in the teeth of correction, it is telling. Similarly, it is telling that no-one has provided a clear and convincing demonstration that especially digitally coded functionally specific complex information -- what we find in the heart of the cell [cf the new fig I.5, promoted to the summary] -- can have its origin in undirected forces of chance and necessity. We note that we reliably know such to be routinely produced by intelligent agents, as we may see from this thread's posts. I notice quite a side-exchange on the first, self-evident principles of right reason, and related remarks on quantum phenomena. A few notes: 1 --> Objectors need to understand that cause comes in two flavours, sufficient and necessary (as already noted). Sufficient cause WILL make an event happen, and if a necessary causal factor is missing, the event CANNOT happen. (Think about how each of oxidiser, fuel and hear is necessary for, and the three are jointly sufficient to have a fire.) 2 --> Necessary factors are particularly relevant here, e.g. without a where and when to happen in [i.e. a space-time domain], even quantum events would not happen. That sounds physically trivial, but it is logically vital given what is being denied. For, it warrants the point that even quantum events are causally constrained. 3 --> Next, let us go back to Einstein's breakthrough with the photoelectric effect. One of the points he established is that here is an energetic threshold for photons, on which if the frequency in the expression E = h*f is too low, there will be no photoemission. This is of course a necessary condition, and is explained on how energy is required to break through the energy barrier. 4 --> Now tunneling is raised as an illustration of how classical barriers become permeable (looks like even temporal ones may be permeable), on the wave-particle duality. [Way back, the analogy in classical thinking we had was how total internal reflection may be frustrated by bringing a similar surface close enough to a glass block, i.e. there is an exponentially decaying disturbance [the evanescent wave] that can couple to the second block if it is close enough, so we get partial and eventually complete enough transmission.] 5 --> But, suddenly we are not in the zone of poof-magic, something happens out of nothing, nowhere, when as and if it wants [which is MORE of a miracle than the necessary being (so uncaused) Creator God saying "Fiat lux . . . "], but we are discussing: causal factors and constraints amenable to analysis, discussion, calculation and observational testing. 6 --> We may not know sufficient factors to determine that an effect will happen here, now -- and Heisenberg uncertainty [including Einstein's Energy-time version] principle is relevant here -- but we do know that we are dealing with factors that fit certain conditions, including the principle that energy-time uncertainty products or position-momentum products are fairly close to a small multiple of h-bar. 7 --> Such constraints are definitely necessary conditions, however imprecisely quantified. 8 --> A further issue raised above has been virtual, unobservable particle pairs within the energy time observability window. These are connected to the carrying of forces and to tunnelling; Wiki has a nice little remark that helps us see how:

A virtual particle is one that does not precisely obey the m^2*c^4 = E^2 ? p^2*c^2 [2] relationship for a short time. In other words, their kinetic energy may not have the usual relationship to velocity — indeed, it can be negative. The probability amplitude for them to exist tends to be canceled out by destructive interference over longer distances and times. They can be considered a manifestation of quantum tunnelling. The range of forces carried by virtual particles is limited by the uncertainty principle, which regards energy and time as conjugate variables; thus virtual particles of larger mass have more limited range. There is not a definite line differentiating virtual particles from real particles — the equations of physics just describe particles (which includes both equally) . . . In the quantum field theory view, "real particles" are viewed as being detectable excitations of underlying quantum fields. As such, virtual particles are also excitations of the underlying fields, but are detectable only as forces but not particles. They are "temporary" in the sense that they appear in calculations, but are not detected as single particles . . . . There are two principal ways in which the notion of virtual particles appears in modern physics. They appear as intermediate terms in Feynman diagrams; that is, as terms in a perturbative calculation. They also appear as an infinite set of states to be summed or integrated over in the calculation of a semi-non-perturbative effect. In the latter case, it is sometimes said that virtual particles cause the effect, or that the effect occurs because of the existence of virtual particles.

9 --> In other words, cause-effect constraints and analysis have not vanished in the quantum world. it is a lawful cosmos, not a lawless chaos. 10 --> going on, quantum fluctuations are similar, and are liked to he energy density of free space [i.e. of the vacuum itself . . . space, in Physics is real and has a lot of properties and also energy, indeed, an energy density of space is held to drive the cosmological expansion as a "yeast bubbler"]. Wiki again:

In quantum physics, a quantum fluctuation is the temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in space,[1] arising from Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle . . . . That means that conservation of energy can appear to be violated, but only for small times. This allows the creation of particle-antiparticle pairs of virtual particles. The effects of these particles are measurable, for example, in the effective charge of the electron, different from its "naked" charge. In the modern view, energy is always conserved, but the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian (energy observable) are not the same as (e.g. the Hamiltonian doesn't commute with) the particle number operators. Quantum fluctuations may have been very important in the origin of the structure of the universe: according to the model of inflation the ones that existed when inflation began were amplified and formed the seed of all current observed structure.

____________ In short, the materialist magicians have had the curtains suddenly pulled back in the land of Oz, and the hidden causal factors are there for us all to look at . . . Sure, we deal with stochastic phenomena, with uncertainty and unpredictability [and with probability -- that bug bear for materialists who don't like the low odds of codes, algorithms and first life as well as body plans materialising out of lucky noise] but that is very different indeed form causality being overturned. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Gaz states: "If the evidence says one thing and your reasoning another, then your reasoning is wrong." Thus this is the breakdown in Gaz's reasoning and allows Gaz to state that nothing can cause something i.e. zero can equal one, 0=1, in quantum mechanics for with Gaz there is no proper check to his philosophical bias, at least none that he will allow to challenge his atheistic worldview. Must be nice to write your very own rules of science Gaz! bornagain77

CannuckianYankee (415), "What’s there to explain? If you’re going to argue that a thing can be and not be at the same time, there’s no point in reasoning with you." Then you don't believe in superposition of quantum states? "Reason flies out the window at that point." No, it's just an acceptance that that is what the evidence shows. It may seem unreasonable, but the quantum world often seems that way. "You clearly use right reason when you try to present your case, unless it isn’t convenient for you." I just take the evidence and go where it leads. "Evidence does not supersede right reason. Right reason supersedes evidence." I see, so if you think reason means you can't have superposition of states then there isn't superposition of states even if the evidence says there is? "It’s a prime principle under which all evidence must adhere." Nope - if the evidence is there you can't just ignore it. If the evidence says one thing and your reasoning another, then your reasoning is wrong. Gaz

Gaz a paper just came out, which strangely confirms the sub topic of this thread that evidence does not supersede right reason, as well the paper overturns Duwell's objection to Bennett's claim for instantaneous infinite information transfer in Quantum Teleportation because it would violate what Duwell had perceived to be a "backwards in time" constraint. We were talking about this topic the other day here: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/proteins-fold-as-darwin-crumbles/comment-page-7/#comment-359265 Here is the paper that addresses Duwell's concern for his "backwards in time" constraint for teleportation: Time travel theory avoids grandfather paradox - July 2010 Excerpt: “In the new paper, the scientists explore a particular version of CTCs based on combining quantum teleportation with post-selection, resulting in a theory of post-selected CTCs (P-CTCs). ,,,The formalism of P-CTCs shows that such quantum time travel can be thought of as a kind of quantum tunneling backwards in time, which can take place even in the absence of a classical path from future to past,,, “P-CTCs might also allow time travel in spacetimes without general-relativistic closed timelike curves,” they conclude. “If nature somehow provides the nonlinear dynamics afforded by final-state projection, then it is possible for particles (and, in principle, people) to tunnel from the future to the past.” http://www.physorg.com/news198948917.html Gaz this paper is very interesting for Seth Lloyd, and company, are using the "transcendent logic/reason/information" of mathematics to establish that "infinite information of teleportation" is not bound by space-time constraints in the first place, Thus overturning Duwell's objection against Bennett's claim for infinite information transfer in teleportation. This paper is also, as I stated earlier, a excellent example of right reason superseding evidence, as well as confirming what should be clear to most IDer's by now,,, i.e. "Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day." Norbert Weiner - MIT Mathematician - Father of Cybernetics bornagain77

Petrushka: Your obsession with orphan genes is the result of a misunderstanding of what is meant. The gene function may be novel, but the sequences are descended from the tree.You can have new functionality with very small changes to the sequences. You are simply wrong. Orphans are defined on the basis of lack of homologues. Homology is evaluated at the primary structure level. Function has nothing to do with that (it may well be unknown). Here is the definition of orphan gene from Wikipedia: "there is no detectable homolog in other organisms or the homologous genes are restricted to closely-related organisms." I understand you are not a biologist, but you should be more careful not to state things that are wrong, please check them before making statements which can confound others. gpuccio

"He’s like a dog chasing his own tail. Why bother, Stephen?" Like this? StephenB (410), “A thing cannot be and not be at the same time and under the same formal circumstances. Superposition does not violate that principle.” Gaz (414) "Please explain why not." What's there to explain? If you're going to argue that a thing can be and not be at the same time, there's no point in reasoning with you. Reason flies out the window at that point. You're argument would be self defeating. You would say that validity for your argument is, while your reasoning would say that validity for your argument is not, or both at the same time - into total absurdity. You clearly use right reason when you try to present your case, unless it isn't convenient for you. Evidence does not supersede right reason. Right reason supersedes evidence. It's a prime principle under which all evidence must adhere. CannuckianYankee

StephenB (410), "A thing cannot be and not be at the same time and under the same formal circumstances. Superposition does not violate that principle." Please explain why not. Gaz

Hello All and well said, above. I have been following this thread and it is becoming quite entertaining seeing people denying the laws of logic. On a similar vein to how above just stated the problem, what rules of logic does Gaz use to argue that the laws of logic can be invalidated in certain circumstances. The answer can't be "mere evidence" since data must be interpreted logically in order to generate "evidence." Talk about sawing off the branch upon which you are sitting ..... I wish I could stick around, but alas edumacation calls. CJYman

@Stephen -"Speaking of which, are you now prepared to answer my question: Inasmuch as you assert that new evidence can invalidate the laws of logic, do you also assert that new evidence can invalidate the laws of mathematics? (Question not yet answered)" How can gaz invalidate logic through the use of evidence? Would he not be reasoning in making that claim? If he does not believe in principles of right reason, how can he "reason" that they do not exist? He's like a dog chasing his own tail. Why bother, Stephen? above

Petrushka, so you just deny the ORFans are unique genes? "If either of these possibilities were true, then the orphan genes should appear in other primate genomes, in addition to our own. To explore this, the researchers compared the orphan sequences to the DNA of two primate cousins, chimpanzees and macaques. After careful genomic comparisons, the orphan genes were found to be true to their name — they were absent from both primate genomes." After all, humans are recent, they reproduce slowly, and they are not that many. Some reshuffling and a bundle of mutations in HARs can always be tolerated, provided that we can affirm that the genomes of humans and chimps are 99% or something similar. But 1000 new genes? And so, the answer is simple: “Such a model would require a prodigious rate of gene birth in mammalian lineages and a ferocious rate of gene death erasing the huge number of genes born before the divergence from chimpanzee. We reject such a model as wholly implausible.” But such a model is not implausible at all. It is only implausible for darwinists. But if you reflect on the obvious fact that humans and chimps are very different, that humans are practically unique in their ability of abstract intelligent thoughts, that they have changed the world they live in under many respects, that they have built varied civilizations and explored reality scientifically and in other ways, then few hundreds of new genes in their basic level proteome information could in some way seem justified… https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/proteins-fold-as-darwin-crumbles/#comment-358505 But of course you knew all this petrushka, thus since you refuse to learn anything, and will only believe what you want to believe no matter what evidence is gone over in excruciating detail with you, I will not play your games any more save to expose you. bornagain77

---Gaz: "Why is this labelled by you as “right reason” and how does it differ from common-or-garden reason?" Right reason does not differ from common or garden variety reason. Inductions are inductions; deductions are deductions, abductions are abductions; syllogisms are syllogisms. [Hint: deductions are based on the principle of non-contradiction. If you reject that principle, you cannot deduce anything because you cannot rule out options that will allow you to go from step one to step two]. ---"Nor have you answered the question as to where the principles came from." How many names do you want? Let's begin with the law of non-contradi tion---Parmenides, Aristotle, Aquinas, Scotus, Leibniz, Locke, Mill, Spir, Einstein..........( ---"And don’t forget either that neither Aristotle nor any other philosopher or scientist up until the late 19th and early 20th century can have had the foggiest notion of the strangeness of the quantum universe." We scarcely have a clue about it ourselves, much less to we know enough to rule out causality each time we fail to identify the cause or the causal conditions, as is the case for quantum events. ---"So even if they did formulate your [A] to [F] – which are apparently non-exhaustive – it was based on an understanding of the universe which was far, far less than ours." We are always learning more about the universe, but the rational tools by which we study it do not change. If they did, we could not learn anything. The laws of logic do not change, the ordered nature of the universe does not change, and the laws of mathematics do not change. Speaking of which, are you now prepared to answer my question: Inasmuch as you assert that new evidence can invalidate the laws of logic, do you also assert that new evidence can invalidate the laws of mathematics? (Question not yet answered) ---"Let’s take an example – your [A], a Thing cannot be and not be at the same time. I’m afraid that in the quantum realm this is not correct. You have heard of quantum superposition, yes?" Yes. A thing cannot be and not be at the same time and under the same formal circumstances. Superposition does not violate that principle. You have not provided me with your reasons for saying that, if causality is suspended, it can only be suspended in the case of quantum mechanics. Indeed, you have multiple positions on the subject, saying at times that acausality is peculiar to quantum mechanics, and, at other times, saying that it could apply in the case of new evidence not yet discovered. And, of course, you clearly reject causality in terms of a first cause. ---"But I’ve just given you the reason in the paragraph above – it’s in the maths! You can calculate the value of h/4(pi) can’t you?" Yes, but that doesn't prove acausality and I can't imagine why you think it would. Your position on this matter is not really consistent. You have said that quantum mechanics is different from other realms. Indeed, it is different insofar as quantum events are unpredictable and hard to measure, but those differences do not add up to differences about causality. However, you now say that acausality could apply in other contexts. ---As you put it, "If new evidence invalidates it, then great – a whole new field of science opens up. But we do know, based on the observations and evidence we have so far, that such events would be rare even if they did theoretically happen." So, not only do you say quantum acausality is not unique, you even apply acausality to the beginning of the universe. So, the fact is, you barely believe in causality at any level---except when you want to. ---"It’s not a LAW, causality is something that happens AT THE CLASSICAL LEVEL, but not necessarily at the QUANTUM LEVEL." Or, as you just said "at other levels opening up new fields of science" (presumably none of which will be identified with causality), or, as you would have it, at the level of a beginning universe, or, as you insist, at the level of life coming from non life, or, as you believe, at the level of mind coming from matter. “[Gaz]”Wrong, see above. It’s not a matter of what is negotiable or not – you should understand that by now. It’s a matter of what the evidence shows.” But as I have pointed out to you in vain, bare evidence shows us nothing until it is interpreted and you have no standard for interpreting it. Do you have a standard? If so, what is it? Hint: "evidence" is not an answer to the question. (Question unanswered) ---"So you deny despite the evidence – some provided even by bornagain77 – that virtual particles can pop in and out of existence?" I deny that it is a causeless event, of course. I feel confident that bornagain77 would agree. Why not ask him? What evidence would cause you to accept the law of non-contradiction and the law of causality? (Question unanswered). The principles of right reason allow us to deduce the fact that the first cause must be an uncaused cause. I would take you through the proof except for the fact that you reject the logical principles by which the proof is made.” ---"Oh, I can follow proofs. Please go ahead. This should be interesting." It really isn't very complicated. According to the principle of "infinite regress" [another principle of right reason] a chain of causal events cannot go on into infinity. Thus, they must stop at a first cause--the causeless cause. (No, new evidence could not invalidate that principle either). Again, reason's principles inform evidence; evidence does not inform reason's principles. StephenB

Your obsession with orphan genes is the result of a misunderstanding of what is meant. The gene function may be novel, but the sequences are descended from the tree. You can have new functionality with very small changes to the sequences. Petrushka

@Petrushka It’s not common descent or evolution as a theory that I am inquiring about. I am specifically asking to see whether RV + NS are falsifiable. That’s the reason I elaborated and used vernacular language as so to unveil, in layman’s terms, what we are essentially referring to when we speak of things such as RV + NS. My challenge is best crystallized in the following paragraph from my previous post: “So in essence these so called nobel laureates are simply saying that things change and we are ignorant of what direction the change will be elicited in – if we knew what they represented and could predict them they would not be random after all – and that some of these changes persist in living organisms while others do not. To put it in the most vernacular way possible, what they are effectively saying is this: Life has the capacity to change and to learn.” The reason why I asked whether NS is a tautology – which in my opinion to some extend it is – comes from the notion of the survival of the fittest. Which in turn we ask, who is the fittest, the answer being the one that survives. Then we ask, who survives and the answer then becomes, the fittest. It’s in a sense self-referential. I’m not rejecting it completely – not yet at least. I’m merely bringing into question the hidden assumptions behind the language we use to talk about NS and its validity. You provided several situations of selection and for the most part I see some truth in all: 1. Environmental selection 2. Human selection 3. Random selection (asteroid etc) 4. Female selection 5. Divine selection And I am sure there are many more. So then, if a lot of things – possibly most things? – can act as selectors, then what exactly are we speaking of when we refer to ‘selection?’ It seems that selection or NS if presented as such is an extremely lose term. I do not want you to think that I am expecting you to defend evolution nor am I looking into attacking evolution per se. I am simply questioning whether or not RV + NS are strict science and free of philosophical assumptions. I am also interested in seeing what exactly is it that we mean when we speak of selection in this evolutionary context. To me, when I think of it, it seems to be something akin to Gould’s “advantages persist” notion. Feel free to ask me to clarify in case I wasn’t clear enough in how I presented my thoughts. In short, I am addressing two issues: 1. Scientific demarcation 2. Linguistic analysis above

To say that the fauna of the Cambrian period appeared in a geologically sudden manner also implies the absence of clear transitional intermediate forms connecting Cambrian animals with simpler pre-Cambrian forms...

Morphology isn't the issue. The origin of genes would be the issue, but you kindly provided a link that verified what I have been saying for the whole thread: the genes are ancient. What we have since the Cambrian is mostly tweaking. Petrushka

You know petrushka Instead of just playing games why don't you just go ahead and show us the generation of functional information by material/evolutionary processes and I, like Dr. Hunter, will join you in your crusade to enlighten the world to "the fact" of neo-Darwinism. bornagain77

Petrushka you state for falsification criteria: 3. Every fossil found must fit somewhere on a tree of descent. 4. Every sequence of DNA must be compatible with an inheritance tree. Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories By: Stephen C. Meyer; Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington "To say that the fauna of the Cambrian period appeared in a geologically sudden manner also implies the absence of clear transitional intermediate forms connecting Cambrian animals with simpler pre-Cambrian forms. And, indeed, in almost all cases, the Cambrian animals have no clear morphological antecedents in earlier Vendian or Precambrian fauna (Miklos 1993, Erwin et al. 1997:132, Steiner & Reitner 2001, Conway Morris 2003b:510, Valentine et al. 2003:519-520). Further, several recent discoveries and analyses suggest that these morphological gaps may not be merely an artifact of incomplete sampling of the fossil record (Foote 1997, Foote et al. 1999, Benton & Ayala 2003, Meyer et al. 2003), suggesting that the fossil record is at least approximately reliable (Conway Morris 2003b:505)." http://www.discovery.org/a/2177 One persistent misrepresentation, that evolutionists continually portray of the fossil record, is that +99.9% of all species that have ever existed are extinct when in fact 40 to 80% of all living species found on the earth are represented in the fossil record. In fact, we have a few million species living today whereas we only have 1/4 million different species collected in our museums, a large percentage of which happen to be "living fossils" which are still living today. The Fossil Record - The Myth Of +99.9% Extinct Species - Dr. Arthur Jones - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4028115 of note Bats popped out of the woodwork 55 million years ago with no evidence of transition from any other species: First Eocene Bat From Australia Excerpt: Remains of a bat, Australonycteris clarkae, gen. et sp. nov., are reported from freshwater clays radiometrically dated to 54.6 million years old in southeastern Queensland, Australia. It is the oldest bat recorded for the southern hemisphere and one of the world's oldest. http://www.jstor.org/pss/4523576?cookieSet=1 Australonycteris clarkae Excerpt: Australonycteris clarkae, from the Eocene of Queensland, is the oldest bat from the Southern Hemisphere and one of the oldest in the world. It is similar to other archaic Eocene bats from the Northern Hemisphere, and could probably navigate using echolocation, like most bats do today. (of note: some "modern" bats do not use echolocation today): http://australianmuseum.net.au/Australonycteris-clarkae I especially like this falsification criteria of yours petrushka 4. Every sequence of DNA must be compatible with an inheritance tree. Human Gene Count Tumbles Again - 2008 Excerpt: Scientists on the hunt for typical genes — that is, the ones that encode proteins — have traditionally set their sights on so-called open reading frames, which are long stretches of 300 or more nucleotides, or “letters” of DNA, bookended by genetic start and stop signals.,,,, The researchers considered genes to be valid if and only if similar sequences could be found in other mammals – namely, mouse and dog. Applying this technique to nearly 22,000 genes in the Ensembl gene catalog, the analysis revealed 1,177 “orphan” DNA sequences. These orphans looked like proteins because of their open reading frames, but were not found in either the mouse or dog genomes. Although this was strong evidence that the sequences were not true protein-coding genes, it was not quite convincing enough to justify their removal from the human gene catalogs. Two other scenarios could, in fact, explain their absence from other mammalian genomes. For instance, the genes could be unique among primates, new inventions that appeared after the divergence of mouse and dog ancestors from primate ancestors. Alternatively, the genes could have been more ancient creations — present in a common mammalian ancestor — that were lost in mouse and dog lineages yet retained in humans. If either of these possibilities were true, then the orphan genes should appear in other primate genomes, in addition to our own. To explore this, the researchers compared the orphan sequences to the DNA of two primate cousins, chimpanzees and macaques. After careful genomic comparisons, the orphan genes were found to be true to their name — they were absent from both primate genomes. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080113161406.htm The sheer, and blatant, shoddiness of the science of the preceding study should give everyone who reads it severe pause whenever, in the future, someone tells them that genetic studies have proven evolution to be true. This following site has a brief discussion on the biased methodology of the preceding study: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/proteins-fold-as-darwin-crumbles/#comment-358505 If the authors of the preceding study were to have actually tried to see if the over 1000 unique orphan genes of humans may actually encode for proteins, instead of just written them off, they would have found that there is ample reason to believe that they may very well encode for biologically important proteins: A survey of orphan enzyme activities Abstract: We demonstrate that for ~80% of sampled orphans, the absence of sequence data is bona fide. Our analyses further substantiate the notion that many of these (orfan) enzyme activities play biologically important roles. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/8/244 Dr. Howard Ochman - Dept. of Biochemistry at the University of Arizona Excerpt of Proposal: Although it has been hypothesized that ORFans might represent non-coding regions rather than actual genes, we have recently established that the vast majority that ORFans present in the E. coli genome are under selective constraints and encode functional proteins. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/proteins-fold-as-darwin-crumbles/#comment-358868 In fact it turns out that the authors of the "kick the ORFans out in the street" paper actually did know that there was unbiased evidence strongly indicating the ORFans encoded proteins but chose to ignore it in favor of their preconceived evolutionary bias: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/proteins-fold-as-darwin-crumbles/#comment-358547 So clearly every DNA sequence is NOT compatible with a tree!!! So please tell me Petrushka why will you not follow your very own falsification criteria and ignore the evidence presented? bornagain77

1. Are they falsifiable? 2. How is NS not a tautology?

Certainly. Common descent has entailments. Entailments are requirements imposed by a theory. 1.You can't find fossils of modern plants and animals in the same strata as plants and animals from earlier eras. 2. Evolution is slow. It requires much more time than was known to be available in 1859. The discovery of radioactivity and a power source for the sun was absolutely necessary to salvage Darwin's timeline. 3. Every fossil found must fit somewhere on a tree of descent. 4. Every sequence of DNA must be compatible with an inheritance tree. there are lots more. NS is not a tautology for the simple reason that it is not true under every possible condition. It is possible, for example, that a system could respond to pruning of certain types by accelerating the production of those types. We don't see living things doing that, but a designed system could do it. There are lots of possibilities for selection mechanisms. We have had some discussion of human directed selection. There is also random selection, as in being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Too close to an asteroid impact, for example. darwin was among the first to notice female choice, which appears to be responsible for extreme bird plumage. It is, of course, logically possible, that unseen agents do some of the choosing. The only problem is finding an instance to observe. Petrushka

Now you are confusing the phenomenological approach of ID science with the metaphysical assumptions that launched modern scienctific enterpreise. The two approaches are compatible but they are not the same.

I have no reason to doubt you on this. From my reading of the history of science, the early inventors of science were indeed looking for evidence of God's handiwork. Including evidence of a global flood. I think the flood project crashed and burned about 1830, although there are lots of holdouts. ID is not likely to crash and burn, but I think it will find its scope increasingly narrowed. I suspect Michael Denton's Nature's Destiny will have a revival in the next ten years. Petrushka

---Petrushka: "What I said was that human knowledge is not advanced by the assumption that an unknown entity did some unspecified something at unspecified times and places using unspecified methods for unspecified reasons." The trailblazers of science believed that the God of the Bible created the universe out of love in order to share his love. There is nothing ambiguous about that. ---"What those Christians were looking for was order, not caprice." That's right. They reasoned that a rational God purposely made a rational universe in order that men would "think God's thoughts after him." ---"You and I come from different Christian traditions. I was taught not to put God to the test." Putting the person of God to the test, which is indeed an offense, is not the same thing as putting the Christian religion to the test, which is exactly what any rational person should do. No one should believe something that is contrary to reason--above reason, yes--but not contrary to it. Christiantity begins by alluding to a visible universe that points to an invisible God, follows by pointing to a series of prophecies that became manifest in time/space/history, and ends by recording testimonies about miracles--all this in order to disguish itself as a reasonable faith system and draw a contrast between its tenets and those of all other faith systems which are based solely on faith It is from that reasonable foundation that Christians are then asked to make a further leap into theological truths that must be accepted on faith alone. Christianity, unlike all other world views, asks no one to make mindless leaps based on the whims of self-styled human prophets. ---"That can have a number of meanings, but I was taught that looking for proof of God’s existence is wrong. That the need for proof is an unworthy desire." The reason the Bible discusses the relationship of God to nature in Romans 1:20 and Psalm 19 is to make an appeal to reason so that the dogmatic articles of faith which follow will be seen to have come from the same reasonable God. ---"Unworthy and futile. I don’t think you will find God in the gaps." Now you are confusing the phenomenological approach of ID science with the metaphysical assumptions that launched modern scienctific enterpreise. The two approaches are compatible but they are not the same. To be sure, there are some, Hugh Ross comes to mind, who try to establish a complete thought system linking the findings of science with the existence of the Biblical God. I admire his work, and he may even be on the right track. He is not, however, an advocate of ID science or an admirer of ID paradigms, believing them to be unnecessary compromises. StephenB

StephenB (395), "[Gaz]—”I’ve answered it several time. I wonder if you are able at all to grasp even the basics of physics. You understand that elementary particles are very small, yes? They have a very tiny mass (=energy). Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states that we cannot be certain of the energy of a particle over a given time interval to a precision greater than h/4(pi)- here h is Planck’s constant (I’ll let you look up the value). At the quantum level that uncertainty in energy levels is very significant because of the mass of the particles is so small and can result in virtual particles popping in and out of existence. However, at the classical levels – things such as you, me and concrete walls – the masses are enormously greater, and so the uncertainty in the energy levels of you, me and concrete walls to a precision of h/4(pi) is absolutely tiny. The prospects of you, me and concrete walls popping in and out of existence is therefore highly unlikely to the point of being virtually impossible.” [StephenB] No, you haven’t answered the question. You have not provided me with your reasons for saying that, if causlity is suspended, it can only be suspended in the case of quantum mechanics." But I've just given you the reason in the paragraph above - it's in the maths! You can calculate the value of h/4(pi) can't you? "You have said only that quantum mechanics is different from other realms. Indeed, they are different insofar as they are unpredictable and hard to measure, but those differences do not add up to differences about causality." Yes, they are - check out the Heisenberg uncertainty inequality and the maths. "How do you know, based on your assumption, that new evidence will not invalidate causality at the macro level? You have provided no answer to that question." If new evidence invalidates it, then great - a whole new field of science opens up. But we do know, based on the observations and evidence we have so far, that such events would be rare even if they did theoretically happen. "I read the above. You did not answer the question. You can’t appeal to the law of causality because you disavow it." It's not a LAW, causality is something that happens AT THE CLASSICAL LEVEL, but not necessarily at the QUANTUM LEVEL. "[Gaz]”Wrong, see above. It’s not a matter of what is negotiable or not – you should understand that by now. It’s a matter of what the evidence shows.” [StephenB] The problem is that it is not I who does not understand. Evidence must be interpreted and you have no rational standard by which you can interpret it." So you deny despite the evidence - some provided even by bornagain77 - that virtual particles can pop in and out of existence? "What evidence would cause you to accept the law of non-contradiction and the law of causality? I don’t have to wonder about whether you can answer that question because I know for a fact that you cannot." Then why waste our time posing it? "If you confront that question honestly, you will come to understand your error. No amount of evidence can prove the law of causality, nor can any amount of evidence invalidate it." Making it suspicious. "To come to a deeper understanding, ask yourself this question: Could evidence invalidate the laws of mathematics? Or is it the case that you believe even that? Either you accept first principles and choose to be reasonable, or you reject them and choose to be unreasonable." So you are the arbiter of reason? Then tell us about "right reason" and its origins. "Incorrect. The principles of right reason allow us to deduce the fact that the first cause must be an uncaused cause. I would take you through the proof except for the fact that you reject the logical principles by which the proof is made." Oh, I can follow proofs. Please go ahead. This should be interesting. Gaz

StephenB (395), "—-Define “right reason”. How does it differ from other forms reason? Who formulated the principles of “right reason”? Please provide references. Here are some of the most important: [A] A Thing cannot be and not be at the same time. [B] (Derived from A) Nothing can begin to exist without a cause, [C] A proposition cannot be true and false at the same time. [D] We have rational minds, we live in a rational universe and there is a correspondence between the two. [E] Mathematics have laws [F]] The ordered universe is syncronized with the laws of logic and mathematics. References: Western Civilization beginning with Aristotle. The history of the philosophy of science." You are dodging the answer. Why is this labelled by you as "right reason" and how does it differ from common-or-garden reason? Nor have you answered the question as to where the principles came from: lazily saying "Aristotle and the history of the philosophy of science means either (a) you don't know or (b) you know that it's not going to stand scrutiny. And don't forget either that neither Aristotle nor any other philosopher or scientist up until the late 19th and early 20th century can have had the foggiest notion of the strangeness of the quantum universe. So even if they did formulate your [A] to [F] - which are apparently non-exhaustive - it was based on an understanding of the universe which was far, far less than ours. Let's take an example - your [A], a Thing cannot be and not be at the same time. I'm afraid that in the quantum realm this is not correct. You have heard of quantum superposition, yes? This is where a particle has a probability of existing in a range of states, which can be infinite in range and include a probability of not existing at all. This is the basis of the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment: basically the cat exists in a superposition of "dead" and "alive" depending on whether or not a particle is emitted from a radioactive nucleus (i.e. - the particle exists (cat dead) and doesn't (cat alive) at the same time). It is only when there is an interaction with an observer and the wavefunction collapses that the physical state reduces to one particular state. So indeed, a thing can exist and not exist at tghe same time - at the quantum level. Hence your [A] is wrong. So where does this leave your "right reason"? Gaz

I would like to raise a question here for everyone and including darwinists/materialists: WJM said: -“ From an open letter, signed by 38 Nobel Laureates, to the court during the Dover trial: Logically derived from confirmable evidence, evolution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection.” This first and foremost is an epistemological assertion. All this means is that we as humans are unable to understand the advent of life and its numerous forms, however we have proposed two “mechanisms” in our attempt to explain this phenomenon. The first is random variation – which is simply this: change happens in living organisms but we cannot predict it using our empirical methods or we are simply not capable to do so given our limitations (intellectual, biological, logical etc) – and natural selection is, to use one of Stephen J. Gould’s phrases, “advantages persist.” So in essence these so called nobel laureates are simply saying that things change and we are ignorant of what direction the change will be elicited in – if we knew what they represented and could predict them they would not be random after all – and that some of these changes persist in living organisms while others do not. To put it in the most vernacular way possible, what they are effectively saying is this: Life has the capacity to change and to learn. Does one even need a scientific understanding to come to that conclusion? Obviously not. I just don’t understand what the big fuss about evolution is. It’s made out to be this larger than life theory that is suppose to provide exceptional insight into living organisms. But this idea is neither new nor impressive. It’s just stating what is naively obvious to just about most people. Now I would like to proceed by investigating the validity of RV + NS as adequate, scientific and logical (as opposed to philosophical) explanatory proposals under the assumption of metaphysical materialism. For example: 1. Are they falsifiable? 2. How is NS not a tautology? 3. Even if we do accept RV + NS as explanatory mechanisms, how can we scientifically (not philosophically) prove their connection to materialism. E.g. how can we refute Lewotnin’s honest claim regarding a priori materialistic, metaphysical commitments? The reason I am bringing this up is to hopefully initiate a conversation about which aspects of the mechanisms of evolutionary theory are empirical and which are philosophical. I have a suspicion that there is a significant part of evolutionary theory that is simply not science proper but rather a philosophy. Once this is addressed, I think people can focus more on the actual science, where issues might be more easily resolved. I look forward to hearing people’s opinions on this! above

I'm not going to argue theology. I don't know enough. I'm simply stating my opinion that divine nature and invisible qualities are just that. They are invisible. ID seems to be searching for tangible proof. A signature. But my opinion on this is of no importance. Nor is my opinion that big gaps are made of little gaps, and little gaps of smaller gaps. All the way down. Petrushka

Petrushka, Once again you are patently wrong: Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. You are completely twisting the entire context of "not putting God to the test" to mean something other than what the original text meant and you know that!!! Luke 4 9-13 9The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. 10For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; 11they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’c” 12Jesus answered, “It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’d” 13When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time. bornagain77

Petrushka, every branch of modern “hard” science, save for evolution of course, is built on the backs of Christian theists who investigated the mysteries of reality precisely because they believed that all of reality had been ordered by the mind of a omnipotent Creator.

True. And they hoped to improve their understanding of order. What I said was that human knowledge is not advanced by the assumption that an unknown entity did some unspecified something at unspecified times and places using unspecified methods for unspecified reasons. What those Christians were looking for was order, not caprice. You and I come from different Christian traditions. I was taught not to put God to the test. That can have a number of meanings, but I was taught that looking for proof of God's existence is wrong. That the need for proof is an unworthy desire. Unworthy and futile. I don't think you will find God in the gaps. Petrushka

---Gaz: "No, it isn’t. It depends on the aspect of design you are talking about. Few designs are entirely original, especially in the auto world, and components and body shapes and colours are borrowed from other designs." I don't know what to say to someone who thinks that a 1959 Ford or a 1963 Corvette Sting Ray is not distinguishable from other models. ---"Yes, based on experience. We’ve both seen writing lots of times and know its generated by humans. So far, we agree. What the design inference doesn’t manage to do, though, is successfully sift out those items that appear in nature that actually are designed." How did you know that the sentence written in the sand on the planet Mars did not occur through natural causes? You have already acknowledged that it did not? ---"All you are telling me is that we assess what is design based on experience." Not solely. We also assess design from patterns, just as you assessed desing in the patterns I alluded to on the planet Mars. You have no experience of Mars, nor do you need it to know that sentences written in the sand did not occur via natural causes. Everyone knows that, from the standpoint of reasonable probability, wind, air, water, and time cannot produce intelligent-like patterns. Unfortunately, for ideological reasons, not everyone will admit what they know. ---"Where are your probability filters? How do you apply them?" You assessed the probability that natural causes did not write the sentences, ruled it out, and inferred design. The more letters involved, the less chance that natural causes were responsble. It isn't at all unlikely that natural causes would produce something that looks like an "S." or an "O." On the other hand, it is highly unlikely that natural causes would write thematic sentences that use those letters. This is all quite obvious. ---"That’s not a “formal design inference”, that’s a rough and ready assessment based on experience! For a formal design inference you need to sshow me the evidence and the probability calculations and the application of your filter. I see none of that here." That's right. I should have used the word, "informal." Thank you. The reason I have taken this tack is because most Darwinists who complain about the math do not even understand the inference independent of the math. ----Define “right reason”. How does it differ from other forms reason? Who formulated the principles of “right reason”? Please provide references. Here are some of the most important: [A] A Thing cannot be and not be at the same time. [B] (Derived from A) Nothing can begin to exist without a cause, [C] A proposition cannot be true and false at the same time. [D] We have rational minds, we live in a rational universe and there is a correspondence between the two. [E] Mathematics have laws [F]] The ordered universe is syncronized with the laws of logic and mathematics. References: Western Civilization beginning with Aristotle. The history of the philosophy of science. ----"And if the evidence conflicts with reason then the reason is wrong." How would you interpret evidence if not through reason's principles? ---"Sorry, the evidence at the quantum level suggests it can." There is no evidence that quantum events are uncaused nor could there ever be. You cannot assure me that your suspension of the law of causality is limited to quantum events and no where else because you acknowledge no principle by which you could make that claim. If it can be suspended even once, why can it not be suspended again and again? You cannot answer that question. ---"I’ve answered it several time. I wonder if you are able at all to grasp even the basics of physics. You understand that elementary particles are very small, yes? They have a very tiny mass (=energy). Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states that we cannot be certain of the energy of a particle over a given time interval to a precision greater than h/4(pi)- here h is Planck’s constant (I’ll let you look up the value). At the quantum level that uncertainty in energy levels is very significant because of the mass of the particles is so small and can result in virtual particles popping in and out of existence. However, at the classical levels – things such as you, me and concrete walls – the masses are enormously greater, and so the uncertainty in the energy levels of you, me and concrete walls to a precision of h/4(pi) is absolutely tiny. The prospects of you, me and concrete walls popping in and out of existence is therefore highly unlikely to the point of being virtually impossible." No, you haven't answered the question. You have not provided me with your reasons for saying that, if causlity is suspended, it can only be suspended in the case of quantum mechanics. You have said only that quantum mechanics is different from other realms. Indeed, they are different insofar as they are unpredictable and hard to measure, but those differences do not add up to differences about causality. How do you know, based on your assumption, that new evidence will not invalidate causality at the macro level? You have provided no answer to that question. Can a concrete wall appear out of nowhere on the highway causing some poor driver to collide with it? ---"No, see above." I read the above. You did not answer the question. You can't appeal to the law of causality because you disavow it. In fact, a concrete wall cannot come from nowhere because nothing can come from nowhere. ----"Wrong, see above and explain why we see virtual particles popping in and out of existence if you maintain your view." If it is the case that something can come from nowhere, then there is no reason in principle that a concrete wall cannot come from nowhere. For you, there is no non-negotiable principle of causality and therefore no standard for determining when and when causality will or will not apply. ---"Wrong, see above. It’s not a matter of what is negotiable or not – you should understand that by now. It’s a matter of what the evidence shows." The problem is that it is not I who does not understand. Evidence must be interpreted and you have no rational standard by which you can interpret it. ---"No, I am happy to change my assumptions in line with the evidence. You need to stick with your dogma because, at the root of it, you see a need for a first cause vanish. And that makes you uncomfortable." What evidence would cause you to accept the law of non-contradiction and the law of causality? I don't have to wonder about whether you can answer that question because I know for a fact that you cannot. If you confront that question honestly, you will come to understand your error. No amount of evidence can prove the law of causality, nor can any amount of evidence invalidate it. To come to a deeper understanding, ask yourself this question: Could evidence invalidate the laws of mathematics? Or is it the case that you believe even that? Either you accept first principles and choose to be reasonable, or you reject them and choose to be unreasonable. ---"Yet that agent itself [first cause] can spring from nowehere in violation of your own metaphysical principles." Incorrect. The principles of right reason allow us to deduce the fact that the first cause must be an uncaused cause. I would take you through the proof except for the fact that you reject the logical principles by which the proof is made. You consider the same evidence and yet, because you reject reason’s principles, assume that the universe could bring itself into existence. By that same standard, you assume that mind can come from matter and the life can come from non-life. ---"Correct, because that is what the evidence suggests." There is no evidence to suggest any of these things. None. Those are all misguided INTERPRETATONS of evidence. To put it simply, you are not distinguishing between evidence and interpretations of evidence. The difference in our points of view is not related to the evidence ---"Yes it is." No, it isn't. We are looking at exactly the same body of evidence. I reject not one piece of it. I acknowledge the first principles of right reason; you do not. StephenB

Petrushka, every branch of modern "hard" science, save for evolution of course, is built on the backs of Christian theists who investigated the mysteries of reality precisely because they believed that all of reality had been ordered by the mind of a omnipotent Creator. Thus you can say the specified entity of God, having specified omnipotent capabilities did specified creation events, at the specified time of each creation event, and at the specified place of each creation event, for the specified reason of His own specified purpose, for which he really owes us no explanation but He does give us solid clues to His specified reasons in the Holy bible. Thus since Christian Theists, who believed the "specific" things I just mentioned, actually are the ones who gave us all of modern technology. and you are caught in a falsehood once again!!! Whereas materialistic atheism has given us the burdens of Freud, Marx and Darwin. and the price of the tea in China is what petrushka? notes: Christianity and the Birth of Science by Michael Bumbulis, Ph.D Excerpt: Yet it's not just the bunching of these founders in a Christian culture alone that is significant. Perhaps even more significant is the complete lack of analogs for these men from other cultures. Where is the Greek version of Newton? Where is the Muslim version of Kepler? Where is the Hindu version of Boyle? Where is the Buddhist version of Mendel? Such questions are all the more powerful when you pause to consider that science studies truths that are universally true. How is it that so many other cultures, some existing for thousands of years, failed to discover, or even anticipate, Newton's first law of motion of Kepler's laws of planetary motion? So it's not just that the Christian religion is associated with the birth of modern science, it's also the fact that modern science was not birthed in cultures which lacked the Christian religion.,,, Furthermore, many of these founders of science lived at a time when others publicly expressed views quite contrary to Christianity - Hume, Hobbes, Darwin, etc. When Boyle argues against Hobbe's materialism or Kelvin argues against Darwin's assumptions, you don't have a case of "closet atheists." http://ldolphin.org/bumbulis/ http://www.tektonics.org,,, Christianity Gave Birth To Each Scientific Discipline - Dr. Henry Fritz Schaefer - video http://www.tangle.com/view_video?viewkey=8b121425f7e044148a1b Materialism is in fact the source of endless blind alleys for science!! Materialism compared to Theism within the scientific method: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dc8z67wz_5fwz42dg9 In fact materialism offers no explanation for why we should a-priori expect a underlying order to reality that man should be able to discover, but instead presupposes chaos as the fundamental "creator" of everything we see!! “… if nature is really structured with a mathematical language and mathematics invented by man can manage to understand it, this demonstrates something extraordinary. The objective structure of the universe and the intellectual structure of the human being coincide.” – Pope Benedict XVI ,,,,mathematics cannot be “true” unless an assumption for a highest infinity is true. A highest infinity which Cantor, and even Godel, held to be God. Thus math cannot be consistently true unless God is assumed to be true: Gödel’s Incompleteness: The #1 Mathematical Breakthrough of the 20th Century Excerpt: Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem says: “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle - something you have to assume to be true but cannot prove "mathematically" to be true.” http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/incompleteness/ The universe is indeed governed in overarching non-chaotic form by transcendent universal "information constants, which arise from no material basis, which give the universe its elegant mathematical structure. Systematic Search for Expressions of Dimensionless Constants using the NIST database of Physical Constants Excerpt: The National Institute of Standards and Technology lists 325 constants on their website as ‘Fundamental Physical Constants’. Among the 325 physical constants listed, 79 are unitless in nature (usually by defining a ratio). This produces a list of 246 physical constants with some unit dependence. These 246 physical constants can be further grouped into a smaller set when expressed in standard SI base units.,,, http://www.mit.edu/~mi22295/constants/constants.html Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe. Galileo Galilei The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences - Eugene Wigner Excerpt: The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html bornagain77

It seems also that other evolutionary scientists disagree with your notion that artificial selection and gene-manipulation falls under the definitional, historical, or theoretical purview of evolutionary theory.

There are unrelated concepts being conflated in your argument. The on that is incompatible with Darwinian evolution is the possibility that variation is directed. That would be the case with direct gene manipulation, whether by humans of by mysterious agencies. That could be detected. The other case, in which selection is manipulated is fully compatible with Darwin. In fact Darwin outlined many varieties of selection. The only thing they have in common is that some individuals wind up having more offspring than others. It is really pointless to argue about this. The point of contention is whether variation is guided. All sides seem to agree that selection is complicated and can be guided. Of course Darwin didn't believe it was guided prior to the existence of humans. But in case you didn't notice, I spent a dozen or more posts on this thread asking if design detection could distinguish varieties that are the result of artificial selection. Several posters said I was wasting time. But apparently not, since you seem to believe that human (or agency) directed evolution is fundamentally different from selection done by the non-human ecosystem. Petrushka

Petrushka, every branch of modern "hard" science, save for evolution of course, is built on the backs of Christian theists who investigated the mysteries of reality precisely because they believed that all of reality had been ordered by the mind of a omnipotent Creator. Thus you can say the specified entity of God, having specified omnipotent capabilities did specified creation events, at the specified time of each creation event, and at the specified place of each creation event, for the specified reason of His own specified purpose, for which he really owes us no explanation but He does give us solid clues to His specified reasons in the Holy bible. Thus since Christian Theists, who believed the "specific" things I just mentioned, actually are the ones who gave us all of modern technology. and you are caught in a falsehood once again!!! Whereas materialistic atheism has given us the burdens of Freud, Marx and Darwin. and the price of the tea in China is what petrushka? notes: Christianity and the Birth of Science by Michael Bumbulis, Ph.D Excerpt: Yet it's not just the bunching of these founders in a Christian culture alone that is significant. Perhaps even more significant is the complete lack of analogs for these men from other cultures. Where is the Greek version of Newton? Where is the Muslim version of Kepler? Where is the Hindu version of Boyle? Where is the Buddhist version of Mendel? Such questions are all the more powerful when you pause to consider that science studies truths that are universally true. How is it that so many other cultures, some existing for thousands of years, failed to discover, or even anticipate, Newton's first law of motion of Kepler's laws of planetary motion? So it's not just that the Christian religion is associated with the birth of modern science, it's also the fact that modern science was not birthed in cultures which lacked the Christian religion.,,, Furthermore, many of these founders of science lived at a time when others publicly expressed views quite contrary to Christianity - Hume, Hobbes, Darwin, etc. When Boyle argues against Hobbe's materialism or Kelvin argues against Darwin's assumptions, you don't have a case of "closet atheists." http://ldolphin.org/bumbulis/ http://www.tektonics.org,,, Christianity Gave Birth To Each Scientific Discipline - Dr. Henry Fritz Schaefer - video http://www.tangle.com/view_video?viewkey=8b121425f7e044148a1b Materialism is in fact the source of endless blind alleys for science!! Materialism compared to Theism within the scientific method: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dc8z67wz_5fwz42dg9 In fact materialism offers no explanation for why we should a-priori expect a underlying order to reality that we can discover< “… if nature is really structured with a mathematical language and mathematics invented by man can manage to understand it, this demonstrates something extraordinary. The objective structure of the universe and the intellectual structure of the human being coincide.” – Pope Benedict XVI ,,,,mathematics cannot be “true” unless an assumption for a highest infinity is true. A highest infinity which Cantor, and even Godel, held to be God. Thus math cannot be consistently true unless God is assumed to be true: Gödel’s Incompleteness: The #1 Mathematical Breakthrough of the 20th Century Excerpt: Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem says: “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle - something you have to assume to be true but cannot prove "mathematically" to be true.” http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/incompleteness/ The universe is indeed governed in overarching non-chaotic form by transcendent universal "information constants, which arise from no material basis, which give the universe its elegant mathematical structure. Systematic Search for Expressions of Dimensionless Constants using the NIST database of Physical Constants Excerpt: The National Institute of Standards and Technology lists 325 constants on their website as ‘Fundamental Physical Constants’. Among the 325 physical constants listed, 79 are unitless in nature (usually by defining a ratio). This produces a list of 246 physical constants with some unit dependence. These 246 physical constants can be further grouped into a smaller set when expressed in standard SI base units.,,, http://www.mit.edu/~mi22295/constants/constants.html Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe. Galileo Galilei The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences - Eugene Wigner Excerpt: The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html bornagain77

As for your references, Id suggest that anyone having the qualifications of Behe or Axe should publish their objections in a forum where other qualified researchers could respond. That's what everyone else has to do. And at the moment. ID has its own journal, so there;s no appeal to censorship. But I'm not buying the argument from gaps. I've seen that argument erode for decades. This was the first serious article I encountered that opposed evolution, beginning on page 23. http://www.herbert-armstrong.org/Plain%20Truth%201960s/Plain%20Truth%201969%20(Prelim%20No%2005)%20May.pdf I recall reading this:

As a result, variety within a species can reach astronomical proportions. (For example, note the number of varieties among moths and butterflies.) But, because DNA reproduces itself exactly, kind reproduces kind. Evolution cannot occur!

and thinking that no matter what the article might have gotten right, it's foundational statement is factually wrong. Actually, I think that article could be republished today on this forum and no one would notice it's age. Petrushka

Petrushka: I'll let Darwin himself refute your false implication that his evolutionary theory could subsume artificial selection (and direct genetic modifications by humans): "… no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations, alike in nature and the result of the same general laws, which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided. However much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief that "variation has been led along certain beneficial lines," like a stream "along definite and useful lines of irrigation." - Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication It seems also that other evolutionary scientists disagree with your notion that artificial selection and gene-manipulation falls under the definitional, historical, or theoretical purview of evolutionary theory. From an open letter, signed by 38 Nobel Laureates, to the court during the Dover trial: "Logically derived from confirmable evidence, evolution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection." "Evolution is random and undirected." - 9.Miller, Kenneth R. and Joseph S. Levine. Biology. 1998. Fourth Edition "Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless..." 10.Levine, Joseph S. and Kenneth R. Miller 1994. Biology: Discovering Life. Second Edition "By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous." -Douglas Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology (1998, 3rd Ed., Sinauer Associates) In your argument, is there nothing whatsoever that current evolutionary theory models out of its equation, if it now includes the very purposeful, intelligent agencies of design that Darwin, Dawkins and countless Darwinists in-between have worked tirelessly to keep out of evolutionary theory? What next? As long as god isn't supernatural - say, a John Wheeler-esque quantum collapsing consciousness - current evolutionary theory can take that kind of teleological manipulation throughout history in stride? William J. Murray

"what is truly a waste of time is your deaf, dumb, blind, method of looking at, and debating, the evidence." Yeah, but I bet he sure plays a mean pinball. :) CannuckianYankee

Why do you give so much biased favor to a materialistic theory that should be of no more concern to you than the price of tea in China...

Because I've been reading science and the history of science for 55 years and have never encountered a useful contribution to human knowledge that was based on the assumption that an unspecified entity having unspecified capabilities did some unspecified something at unspecified times and places for unspecified reasons. Simple as that. Petrushka

The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity: David L. Abel - Null Hypothesis For Information Generation - 2009 To focus the scientific community’s attention on its own tendencies toward overzealous metaphysical imagination bordering on “wish-fulfillment,” we propose the following readily falsifiable null hypothesis, and invite rigorous experimental attempts to falsify it: "Physicodynamics cannot spontaneously traverse The Cybernetic Cut: physicodynamics alone cannot organize itself into formally functional systems requiring algorithmic optimization, computational halting, and circuit integration." A single exception of non trivial, unaided spontaneous optimization of formal function by truly natural process would falsify this null hypothesis. http://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/10/1/247/pdf Can We Falsify Any Of The Following Null Hypothesis (For Information Generation) 1) Mathematical Logic 2) Algorithmic Optimization 3) Cybernetic Programming 4) Computational Halting 5) Integrated Circuits 6) Organization (e.g. homeostatic optimization far from equilibrium) 7) Material Symbol Systems (e.g. genetics) 8) Any Goal Oriented bona fide system 9) Language 10) Formal function of any kind 11) Utilitarian work http://mdpi.com/1422-0067/10/1/247/ag "LIFE’S CONSERVATION LAW: Why Darwinian Evolution Cannot Create Biological Information": Excerpt: Though not denying Darwinian evolution or even limiting its role in the history of life, the Law of Conservation of Information shows that Darwinian evolution is inherently teleological. Moreover, it shows that this teleology can be measured in precise information-theoretic terms. http://evoinfo.org/publications/lifes-conservation-law/ William Dembski Is Interviewed By Casey Luskin About Conservation Of Information - Audio http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/player/web/2009-10-15T13_14_01-07_00 Dr. Dembski has emphasized that the Law of Conservation of Information (LCI) is clearly differentiated from the common definition of Theistic Evolution since mainstream Theistic evolutionists, such as Ken Miller and Francis Collins, hold that the Design/Information found in life is not separable from the purely natural processes of the universe, whereas Dembski and Marks are clearly saying the Design/Information found in life is detectable, can be separated from the natural processes we see in the universe, and "can be measured in precise information-theoretic terms". In other words, the Dembski-Marks paper shows in order for gradual evolution to actually be true it cannot be random Darwinian evolution and that a "Intelligent Designer" will have to somehow provide the additional functional information needed to make gradual evolution of increased functional complexity possible. Thus, now the theoretical underpinnings, of random functional information generation by natural processes, are completely removed from Darwinian ideology. bornagain77

Petrushka, you say quote mining is a waste of time, yet what is truly a waste of time is your deaf, dumb, blind, method of looking at, and debating, the evidence. Why is this? Why do you give so much biased favor to a materialistic theory that should be of no more concern to you than the price of tea in China???? so now you want to hang your hat on "massive duplication events", and completely disregard little anomalies like the 1000 completely unique ORFans in the human genome?? Or the 100% functionality of the genome implicated by the ENCODE study and subsequent studies thereafter which render neo-Darwinism invalid to the nth degree??? Well let's look at what kind of evidence there is for duplication events: Experimental Evolution of Gene Duplicates in a Bacterial Plasmid Model Excerpt: In a striking contradiction to our model, no such conditions were found. The fitness cost of carrying both plasmids increased dramatically as antibiotic levels were raised, and either the wild-type plasmid was lost or the cells did not grow. This study highlights the importance of the cost of duplicate genes and the quantitative nature of the tradeoff in the evolution of gene duplication through functional divergence. http://www.springerlink.com/content/vp471464014664w8/ Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that require multiple amino acid residues: Michael J. Behe and David W. Snoke Excerpt: We conclude that, in general, to be fixed in 10^8 generations, the production of novel protein features that require the participation of two or more amino acid residues simply by multiple point mutations in duplicated genes would entail population sizes of no less than 10^9.,,,The fact that very large population sizes—10^9 or greater—are required to build even a minimal [multi-residue] feature requiring two nucleotide alterations within 10^8 generations by the processes described in our model, and that enormous population sizes are required for more complex features or shorter times, seems to indicate that the mechanism of gene duplication and point mutation alone would be ineffective, at least for multicellular diploid species, because few multicellular species reach the required population sizes. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2286568 Reductive Evolution Can Prevent Populations from Taking Simple Adaptive Paths to High Fitness - Ann K. Gauger, Stephanie Ebnet, Pamela F. Fahey, and Ralph Seelke – 2010 Excerpt: In experimental evolution, the best way to permit various evolutionary alternatives, and assess their relative likelihood, is to avoid conditions that rule them out. Our experiments, like others (e.g. [40]), used populations of cells growing slowly under limiting nutrient conditions, thereby allowing a number of paths to be taken to higher fitness. We engineered the cells to have a two-step adaptive path to high fitness, but they were not limited to that option. Cells could reduce expression of the non-functional trpAE49V,D60N allele in a variety of ways, or they could acquire a weakly functional tryptophan synthase subunit by a single site reversion to trpAD60N, bringing them within one step of full reversion (Figure 6). When all of these possibilities are left open by the experimental design, the populations consistently take paths that reduce expression of trpAE49V,D60N, making the path to new (restored) function virtually inaccessible. This demonstrates that the cost of expressing genes that provide weak new functions is a significant constraint on the emergence of new functions. In particular, populations with multiple adaptive paths open to them may be much less likely to take an adaptive path to high fitness if that path requires over-expression. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2010.2/BIO-C.2010.2 Assessing the NCSE’s Citation Bluffs on the Evolution of New Genetic Information - Feb. 2010 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/02/assessing_the_ncses_citation_b.html How to Play the Gene Evolution Game - Casey Luskin - Feb. 2010 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/02/how_to_play_the_gene_evolution.html The NCSE, Judge Jones, and Bluffs About the Origin of New Functional Genetic Information - Casey Luskin - March 2010 http://www.discovery.org/a/14251 Petrushka, I noticed that it is only quote mining when a ID advocate cites direct experimental evidence from literature, but when a neo-Darwinists cites merely the "ad-hoc" justification, in the very same literature, for why the experimental evidence does not fit the neo-Darwinian paradigm, then it is not quote mining but "science". Excuse me Petrushka, but experimental evidence in science has full weight of authority in the scientific method and if anything is polluting to clear interpretation of the experimental evidence that is coming out it is the neo-Darwinists insistence that their completely unsubstantiated ad-hoc explanations be given far more weight than is merited, all the while refusing to give ID its due credit for pointing out the extremely stick limits for material processes to produce any functional information whatsoever: Stephen Meyer - Functional Proteins And Information For Body Plans - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4050681 The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories - Stephen Meyer"Neo-Darwinism seeks to explain the origin of new information, form, and structure as a result of selection acting on randomly arising variation at a very low level within the biological hierarchy, mainly, within the genetic text. Yet the major morphological innovations depend on a specificity of arrangement at a much higher level of the organizational hierarchy, a level that DNA alone does not determine. Yet if DNA is not wholly responsible for body plan morphogenesis, then DNA sequences can mutate indefinitely, without regard to realistic probabilistic limits, and still not produce a new body plan. Thus, the mechanism of natural selection acting on random mutations in DNA cannot in principle generate novel body plans, including those that first arose in the Cambrian explosion." http://eyedesignbook.com/ch6/eyech6-append-d.html bornagain77

Regarding your quote mined article; the actual concluding remarks:

One may therefore wander to suggest that the basal metazoan genome was made up of 15-20,000 genes. The [approximately]70,000 genes of Vertebrates would then reflect the two massive duplication events that are thought to have occurred early in their history. If such is the case, then, except for vertebrates, morphological innovation within bilaterians would not have relied so much on generation of new genes as on tinkering with an already existing array. The new phylogeny thus reemphasizes the importance of evolution of developmental regulatory networks

Petrushka

this reference is a beaut:

Quote mining is really a waste of everyone's time. Petrushka

Since the current theory of evolution definitionally excludes any teleological, artifical process or influence, it cannot be the best explanation for current diversity. Only a theory of evolution that includes known ID influence can be “the best”.

Any reader of Origin of Species would know that artificial selection forms most of the experimental foundation for Darwin's theory of natural selection. Not to mention a good part of the book. Engineering that involves transplanting genes across widely separated species will be detectible far into the future, even if the engineered organisms are released to the wild and human records disappear. Petrushka

bornagain77: I haven't seen the link to a journal article that I requested. I will consider your other links after that one is verified. You also made claims regarding Michael Denton. Are you still certain he opposes the mainstream evolutionary narrative? Petrushka

Gaz,

Wrong, see above and explain why we see virtual particles popping in and out of existence if you maintain your view.

I prefer to say that virtual particles are "poofing" into existence rather than "popping". And all that can be said about the difference between the quantum level poofing being different than the classical level, is that we've seen the one and not the other. But observations are only descriptions, they are not explanations for why this "must" be the case. We have no insight into whatever caused these things to happen as a connected philosophy, or a mental necessity. It is not like we have knowledge that the enactor of the micro "poof" law (if we may call it a law) said that "It may only occur at the micro level and not at the macro level. " All we can say is that it appears to only occur at the micro level, but what the mental necessity behind it is, as we know with real laws (mathematics, reason, etc.) we do not know. And since we do not know, we cannot say that it is a mental impossibility to occur at the macro level. All we can say is that we haven't seen it. What we cannot say is that it is impossible, for we do not know what makes it possible at the micro level either; we do not have that sort of insight into it, we have no explanation of why two things connected physically connects them philosophically, and thence cannot say what is impossible. Clive Hayden

WJM (379), "because that theory intentionally excludes a commodity known to be necessary in any complete explanation for that diversity." What is the evidence that such a commodity is "known to be necessary" to explain the divergence of life? Gaz

Petrushka said: "I do not assert that evolution is TRUE. I argue that it is the best explanation we have for the diversity of life." I assume you meant that you do not assert that current evolutionary theory is true. It cannot in fact be the best explanation we have for the current diversity of life, because that theory intentionally excludes a commodity known to be necessary in any complete explanation for that diversity. Humans have been using intelligent design to artifically select (instead of natural selection, which the definitional opposite) breeds of plants and animals for thousands of years, and lately to directly genetially modify organisms. Since the current theory of evolution definitionally excludes any teleological, artifical process or influence, it cannot be the best explanation for current diversity. Only a theory of evolution that includes known ID influence can be "the best". William J. Murray

this reference is a beaut: The new animal phylogeny: Reliability and implications: Excerpt: "The new molecular based phylogeny has several important implications. Foremost among them is the disappearance of "intermediate" taxa between sponges, cnidarians, ctenophores, and the last common ancestor of bilaterians or "Urbilateria."...A corollary is that we have a major gap in the stem leading to the Urbilataria. We have lost the hope, so common in older evolutionary reasoning, of reconstructing the morphology of the "coelomate ancestor" through a scenario involving successive grades of increasing complexity based on the anatomy of extant "primitive" lineages." From Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, in 2000 - http://www.pnas.org/content/97/9/4453.full.pdf?ijkey=USJfrrxyih/gM bornagain77

further notes: A New Model for Evolution: A Rhizome - May 2010 Excerpt: Thus we cannot currently identify a single common ancestor for the gene repertoire of any organism.,,, Overall, it is now thought that there are no two genes that have a similar history along the phylogenic tree.,,,Therefore the representation of the evolutionary pathway as a tree leading to a single common ancestor on the basis of the analysis of one or more genes provides an incorrect representation of the stability and hierarchy of evolution. Finally, genome analyses have revealed that a very high proportion of genes are likely to be newly created,,, and that some genes are only found in one organism (named ORFans). These genes do not belong to any phylogenic tree and represent new genetic creations. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-model-for-evolution-rhizome.html Testing the Orchard Model and the NCSE’s Claims of “Nested Patterns” Supporting a “Tree of Life” Excerpt: Perhaps the reason why different genes are telling “different evolutionary stories” and “one group suggests one biogeographic pattern, and another group suggests another” is because the genes and organisms have wholly different stories to tell, namely stories that indicate that not all living organisms are ancestrally related, thereby fulfilling a testable prediction of the orchard model. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/03/testing_the_orchard_model_and.html bornagain77

Petrushka to concretely establish the fact that evolutionists "only see what they want to see" from given data sets of molecular sequences:, as you are trying so desperately to do with the evidence I presented to you that shows gross dissimilarity of molecular sequences when the entirety of molecular sequences are considered: Pattern pluralism and the Tree of Life hypothesis - 2006 Excerpt: Hierarchical structure can always be imposed on or extracted from such data sets by algorithms designed to do so, but at its base the universal TOL rests on an unproven assumption about pattern that, given what we know about process, is unlikely to be broadly true. http://www.pnas.org/content/104/7/2043.abstract Thus Petrushka why is this evidence not good enough for you? Why will you continue to repeat the lie that sequence similarity establishes evolution? note: Botching Evolutionary Science - Casey Luskin - April 2009 Excerpt: The textbook touts the cytochrome C tree, but it ignores the cytochrome B tree, which has striking differences from the classical animal phylogeny. As one article in Trends in Ecology and Evolution stated: “[T]he mitochondrial cytochrome b gene implied,, an absurd phylogeny of mammals, regardless of the method of tree construction. Cats and whales fell within primates, grouping with simians (monkeys and apes) and strepsirhines (lemurs, bush-babies and lorises) to the exclusion of tarsiers. Cytochrome b is probably the most commonly sequenced gene in vertebrates, making this surprising result even more disconcerting.” (See Michael S. Y. Lee, “Molecular Phylogenies Become Functional,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Vol. 14: 177 (1999).) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/04/the_biggest_problem_in_asking.html#more bornagain77

But Petrushka if you would have taken ten seconds to google the quote you wanted referenced, the second site gets you this:

But I did find your reference, which is why I asked for a journal citation. I don't see a reference to a journal in which the research was published. Petrushka

Petrushka, ignoring all the other referenced articles I cited from journals that show gross discontinuity for establishing molecular sequence similarly, you asked for a reference for just this one quote???? "The theory makes a prediction (for amino acid sequence similarity); we’ve tested it, and the prediction is falsified precisely." Colin Patterson But Petrushka if you would have taken ten seconds to google the quote you wanted referenced, the second site gets you this: Evolution? Prominent Scientist Reconsiders by Luther D. Sunderland, B.S. - Far worse for the evolution hypothesis of common ancestry are the latest data of molecular homology, amino acid and nucleotide sequence studies. Patterson said that if Mayr and evolutionary theory are saying anything, they must be saying that those forms more recently descended from a common ancestor have a greater similarity among their genes and gene products than those more distantly related. Certainly, it would seem, that is the clearest, simplest, most direct deduction based on the theory of descent from a common ancestor. But concerning this foundational principle of evolution, Patterson concludes: "The theory makes a prediction, we’ve tested it, and the prediction is falsified precisely." http://www.icr.org/article/evolution-prominent-scientist-reconsiders/ If you want Petrushka, you can purchase the audio recording of the meeting in which Patterson said these exact words to a audience full of "evolutionary experts" at ARN. Can You Tell Me Anything About Evolution? http://www.arn.org/arnproducts/audios/c010.htm Petrushka, It is interesting that evolutionists did not even dispute the facts as were presented then at that conference, and indeed when the audio surfaced, the main gripe from evolutionists was not with the truthfulness of what Patterson had said but rather had been that a "creationist" had "unethically" recorded the meeting without permission. Thus even though the evidence is indeed accurate, as is confirmed by my other peer-reviewed references you neglected to reflect upon, it seems that neo-Darwinists, then and now, are much more concerned with the "ethics" of airing dirty little evolutionary secrets than with the far more important matter of practicing of good science. notes; Evolution Vs. Gene Comparison - Neo-Darwinisms Gene Homology Problem- video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4181835 A Primer on the Tree of Life (Part 4) Excerpt: "In sharks, for example, the gut develops from cells in the roof of the embryonic cavity. In lampreys, the gut develops from cells on the floor of the cavity. And in frogs, the gut develops from cells from both the roof and the floor of the embryonic cavity. This discovery—that homologous structures can be produced by different developmental pathways—contradicts what we would expect to find if all vertebrates share a common ancestor. - Explore Evolution http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/05/a_primer_on_the_tree_of_life_p_3.html#more bornagain77

And, before you tac off on your next tangent, please realize that Denton provides a full-fledged attack on Darwinism in both his major works.

You mean like this attack on Darwinism?

"it is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science - that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended ultimately in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school". According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world - that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies." (page xvii-xviii).

Petrushka

(Natural variation does not explain the origins of novel features. You can make a dog’s legs longer or shorter via artificial selection, but I’d bet money that you cannot evolve legs and wings on a rattle snake via selective guidance or natural.)

I've been admonished several time about straw men. If you can point me to a serious biologist who asserts that snakes evolved into birds, I'll consider your point made. But snakes once had legs, and still do as embryos. Some skinks could be mistaken for snakes, if you didn't see their legs. Pachyrhachis problematicus is a snake with well-developed hind limbs (a fossil). Petrushka

The theory makes a prediction (for amino acid sequence similarity); we’ve tested it, and the prediction is falsified precisely.

No doubt you can cite a reference to the journal article in which this finding was published. Petrushka

StephenB (305), "No, sorry, a 1959 Ford is a definite form different from all other forms." No, it isn't. It depends on the aspect of design you are talking about. Few designs are entirely original, especially in the auto world, and components and body shapes and colours are borrowed from other designs. "I am not sure about your last scenario and the attempt to inject biological paradigms into the mix, but basically you are right. According to the evidence, the sequence of written letters was most likely designed. You have just performed a classic design inference based on the evidence." Yes, based on experience. We've both seen writing lots of times and know its generated by humans. So far, we agree. What the design inference doesn't manage to do, though, is successfully sift out those items that appear in nature that actually are designed. There has been no example given of a natural entity on which the design inference - whatever that may be, presumably these "filters" mentioned from time to time - has been successfully applied. "You are starting to show signs of life." That's just the Viagra kicking in. "I didn’t say that no other effects were not present, but never mind that because you are headed in the right direction and I don’t want to disrupt your momentum. The point is to rule out naturalistic causes as a reasonble hypothesis and draw an inference to intelligent agency as the best explanation, which is exactly what you did. Excellent!!!" So far so good - but also so far, so unremarkable. All you are telling me is that we assess what is design based on experience. Fine for items that are clearly designed, but not so good for items at "the edge", as Behe might put it - i.e. those items that appear natural but were actually designed. Where are your probability filters? How do you apply them? "The strongest argument, however, is not the open dresser drawers, but rather the open dresser drawers and the absence of the jewelry. Whether a tornado can open dresser drawers without causing other damage is problematic, just as you suggest, however, there is no question about that fact that tornados do not run off with jewelry." I diagree. If a tornado can run off with a house it can certainly run off with jewellery. "In any case, the point of the burglar/tornado connection is to point out that a formal design inference is based on observable data, meaning that, contrary to Darwinist claims, there is no apriori assumption of design prior to the observation of the evidence. That's not a "formal design inference", that's a rough and ready assessment based on experience! For a formal design inference you need to sshow me the evidence and the probability calculations and the application of your filter. I see none of that here. "What you don’t understand, and possibly never will, is that no amount of evidence can invalidate the principles of right reason just as no amount of evidence can invalidate the laws of mathematics." Define "right reason". How does it differ from other forms reason? Who formulated the principles of "right reason"? Please provide references. "We do not interpret reason’s rules and mathematics through evidence, we interpret evidence through reason’s rules and mathematics." And if the evidence conflicts with reason then the reason is wrong. "You continue to misunderstand the relationship between the role of reason and the role of evidence. All evidence must be interpreted through metaphysical principles. You, for example, accept the false metaphysical principle that something can come from nothing and you interpret all evidence accordingly." Sorry, the evidence at the quantum level suggests it can. "I, on the other hand, interpret evidence based on the law of causality. Thus, for you things can come into existence without a cause." At the quantum level, yes. As I have repeatedly stated that is not the case at the classical level. "Accordingly, you cannot assure me that your suspension of the law of causality is limited to quantum events and no where else because you acknowledge no principle by which you could make that claim. If it can be suspended even once, why can it not be suspended again and again? You cannot answer that question." I've answered it several time. I wonder if you are able at all to grasp even the basics of physics. You understand that elementary particles are very small, yes? They have a very tiny mass (=energy). Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that we cannot be certain of the energy of a particle over a given time interval to a precision greater than h/4(pi)- here h is Planck's constant (I'll let you look up the value). At the quantum level that uncertainty in energy levels is very significant because of the mass of the particles is so small and can result in virtual particles popping in and out of existence. However, at the classical levels - things such as you, me and concrete walls - the masses are enormously greater, and so the uncertainty in the energy levels of you, me and concrete walls to a precision of h/4(pi) is absolutely tiny. The prospects of you, me and concrete walls popping in and out of existence is therefore highly unlikely to the point of being virtually impossible. "Can a concrete wall appear out of nowhere on the highway causing some poor driver to collide with it?" No, see above. "You can only say that we have never seen it happen and, based on that evidence, it likely will not haappen, but you cannot assert with any reasonable confidence that it cannot happen." Yes I can, see above. "In fact, a concrete wall cannot come from nowhere because nothing can come from nowhere." Wrong, see above and explain why we see virtual particles popping in and out of existence if you maintain your view. "A concrete wall will not come into existence without a cause because nothing can come into existence without a cause." As explained above. "For you, on the other hand, there is no non-negotiable principle of causality and therefore no standard for determining when and when causality will or will not apply." Wrong, see above. It's not a matter of what is negotiable or not - you should understand that by no. It's a matter of what the evidence shows. "Thus, you and I both look at the same evidence but arrive at different conclusions based on our respective metaphysical orientations." No, I am happy to change my assumptions in line with the evidence. You need to stick with your dogma because, at the root of it, you see a need for a first cause vanish. And that makes you uncomfortable. "Considering the current cosmological evidence, I acknowledge that space/time/and matter began in time" As do I. "and, using the principles of right reason," "hich you have been asked to explain. "conclude that some agent had to bring it into existence." Yet that agent itself can spring from nowehere in violation of your own metaphysical principles. "You consider the same evidence and yet, because you reject reason’s principles, assume that the universe could bring itself into existence. By that same standard, you assume that mind can come from matter and the life can come from non-life." Correct, because that is what the evidence suggests. "The difference in our points of view is not related to the evidence" Yes it is. "but is rather a reflection on the metaphysical principles that we bring to the table. I acknowledge the first principles of right reason; you do not." When you answer the questions I asked about regarding "right reason", then we shall speak again. Gaz

Petrushka, pardon the intrusion. In regards to your #367:

"I suppose since it is neither mysterious nor an intervention, except in the case of selective breeding directed by humans."

It's only unmysterious if one defines evolution as "change over time." This is the equivocation that ID proponents labor against on a regular basis. If evolution is defined as the product of RM+NS from LUCA to contemporary disparate life, then it is indeed mysterious, because only speculations are available as explanations for novel functionality, be it organs or organelles. It has not been demonstrated empirically that complex functionality is the result of unguided and spontaneous self-organization. Rely on healthy, reasonable skepticism to suggest that nanomachines, along with their coded assembly instructions, may not come about by themselves through undirected forces, and that there is a high burden of proof for this hypothesis, i.e., empirical validation of such. (Natural variation does not explain the origins of novel features. You can make a dog's legs longer or shorter via artificial selection, but I'd bet money that you cannot evolve legs and wings on a rattle snake via selective guidance or natural.) It's fine to leave both options on the table: 1) life is the result of law and chance -- physics and chemistry interacting over deep time in just the right conditions -- and that the discovery of a law of spontaneous information generation will eventually be discovered, that is, physics and chemical affinities necessitate the eventual formation of life, as they do the formation of crystals; 2) life, along with the complex arrangement of functional contingency and abstract information, requires purposeful input from a guiding intelligence. So far we await empirical validation of the first, while we currently have empirical validation of the second. That doesn't mean the first option is invalidated forevermore, at least from a scientific perspective -- it means that we have a sufficient explanation currently, specifically option two. (Gaps arguments against ID are irrelevant, since mechanistic and engineering research can continue regardless of which is true, and further discoveries can always bolster one against the other.)

"I remain curious why directed evolution is regarded as so much more “efficient” than evolution not influenced by humans."

I would suppose that artificial selection is more efficient with regard to desired features. While animals in the wild may be highly optimized for survival in a natural environment (and more readily optimized for survival in the wild), selection guided by human intervention can produce changes in features over fewer generations because humans can select those features which do not confer a survival advantage, and we can do so precisely at each generation. We needn't play cards to make purposeful selections like nature must. If you want to know which species evolved naturally and which were guided by humans, release packs of them into the wild. It's highly likely that animals bred for specific optimizations by humans will not be respected in the wild (specifically optimizations for appearance or food production). Chances are that human guided species will either die out completely, or be absorbed into native wild populations. Apollos

Petrushka, It's very mysterious, since nobody actually states exactly how it works apart from just-so stories: "the fit are selected," which only begs a lot of questions: How does evolution determine what is fit and what is not without the Darwinist appealing to further just-so stories? How does evolution determine what to select without the Darwinist appealing to further just-so stories? If evolution is an undirected process, how does it know when to stop once optimal fitness is selected? How does it even determine what is optimal fitness? Darwinists keep pointing to non-optimal fitness as evidence that a designer would not have done it; yet it seems to me that evolution, having been in operation for millions of years, would have reached optimal fitness by now. Where does it end? You don't find this rather mysterious? Parsimony appears to belong to design. In fact, even Darwinists admit to the appearance of design, yet due to their discomfort with a designer, it appears that they would opt for any answer apart from actual design. The only real difference between a Darwinist and an ID theorist when looking at the evidence, is that an ID theorist isn't uncomfortable with a designer. What is it that makes a Darwinist uncomfortable with a designer? Hint: it isn't that it's scientifically unfeasible, it's that a Darwinist is committed to a philosophy of materialism, and can't differentiate between that philosophy and his/her methodology. CannuckianYankee

Since when is RM + NS not a “mysterious intervention in nature?”

I suppose since it is neither mysterious nor an intervention, except in the case of selective breeding directed by humans. I remain curious why directed evolution is regarded as so much more "efficient" than evolution not influenced by humans. We've made some very curious dog breeds in the last 300 years, and the Brits have made some awesome pigeons, and the Japanese have made some fowl with decorative tail feathers, but nature has produced peacocks and birds of paradise. Petrushka

Petrushka, Allow me to add my 2 cents: "It becomes not-OK when one side declares the issue settled in favor of mysterious intervention in nature." Since when is RM + NS not a "mysterious intervention in nature?" They've been at it for 150 years and still don't know how it works in light of the continued evidence of optimal complex systems, as BA77 pointed out in post # 362. Their answer? "We don't know, but it looks designed." Yet they continue to look for answers other than design. ID is hardly considering the issue settled. There's much work to be done, but we could at least be searching within a paradigm, which offers insight; rather than one, which continues to overlook that obvious insight. CannuckianYankee

I suggest we stay with that model and leave the trivialities and pointless observations to others, okay?

It becomes not-OK when one side declares the issue settled in favor of mysterious intervention in nature. In fairness, I would not approve of school books declaring the issue solved, but the last time I looked, they included a lot of maybes and perhapses. There's one thing ID proponents say they are in favor of that that I agree with. I would love to see introductory science courses emphasise unsolved problems. There was a tendency in my high school -50 years ago -- to suggest that all the really great puzzles had been solved. One teacher declared that the whole enterprise of science would be finished in ten years. Everything that could be known would be known. I guess that left me rather hypersensitive to claims that methodological naturalism is finished. I saw the same claim made fifty years ago when I was deciding on a career. Petrushka

...cheers Upright BiPed

Petrushka, I do not know that Denton is wrong, I know materialists are, as well as those who refuse to address the evidence. It's all in the evidence. And, before you tac off on your next tangent, please realize that Denton provides a full-fledged attack on Darwinism in both his major works. (e.g. Darwinism is not looking for a set of design principles embedded in nature that direct purpose upon the unfolding of Life from the beginning). Have you actually read his work? It was what brought me into ID. However, in your case this is all a moot point. As has already been stated above, you do not intend to address the evidence as we find it, you intend to argue from a position bolstered by that which is safely ignored. Upright BiPed

Petrushka you stated: "I have no idea how to generate information," That is completely nonsensical sense you in fact generated information to say you did not know how to generate information, or do you deny that a coherent English sentence is information? Falsehood number two from you: "but I have a good idea how genomes change over time." but the evidence says: Comparing molecular sequences gives the same pattern of discontinuity as the fossil record does: The Biological Big Bang model for the major transitions in evolution - Eugene V Koonin - Background: "Major transitions in biological evolution show the same pattern of sudden emergence of diverse forms at a new level of complexity. The relationships between major groups within an emergent new class of biological entities are hard to decipher and do not seem to fit the tree pattern that, following Darwin's original proposal, remains the dominant description of biological evolution. The cases in point include the origin of complex RNA molecules and protein folds; major groups of viruses; archaea and bacteria, and the principal lineages within each of these prokaryotic domains; eukaryotic supergroups; and animal phyla. In each of these pivotal nexuses in life's history, the principal "types" seem to appear rapidly and fully equipped with the signature features of the respective new level of biological organization. No intermediate "grades" or intermediate forms between different types are detectable; Congruence Between Molecular and Morphological Phylogenies - Colin Patterson Excerpt: "As morphologists with high hopes of molecular systematics, we end this survey with our hopes dampened. Congruence between molecular phylogenies is as elusive as it is in morphology and as it is between molecules and morphology." http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od171/sampler171.htm 'The theory makes a prediction (for amino acid sequence similarity); we've tested it, and the prediction is falsified precisely.' Dr. Colin Patterson Senior Principal Scientific Officer in the Paleontology Department at the British Museum Walter T. Brown, In the Beginning (1989), p. 7 Excerpt: "There is not a trace of evidence on the molecular level for the traditional evolutionary series: simple sea life > fish> amphibians > reptiles> mammals. In general, each of the many categories of organisms appear to be equally isolated." http://evolution-facts.org/Appendix/a21.htm Bones, molecules...or both? Excerpt: Evolutionary trees constructed by studying biological molecules often don't resemble those drawn up from morphology. Can the two ever be reconciled?,,, When biologists talk of the 'evolution wars', they usually mean the ongoing battle for supremacy in American schoolrooms between Darwinists and their creationist opponents. But the phrase could also be applied to a debate that is raging (between Darwinists) within systematics. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v406/n6793/full/406230a0.html Trees for bees Excerpt: the application of different analytical methodologies does not explain why molecular and morphological data suggest strikingly different hypotheses for the evolution of eusociality in bees. http://www.life.illinois.edu/scameron/pdfs/Lock&Cam.TREE_01.pdf The universal ancestor - Carl Woese Excerpt: What then was this universal ancestor? A discrete picture of the ancestor began to emerge only when many more sequences representing all three phylogenetic domains became available. These sequences could be seen as putting phenotypic flesh on an ancestral phylogenetic skeleton. Yet that task has turned out to be anything but straightforward. Indeed, it would seem to require disarticulating the skeleton. No consistent organismal phylogeny has emerged from the many individual protein phylogenies so far produced. Phylogenetic incongruities can be seen everywhere in the universal tree, from its root to the major branchings within and among the various taxa to the makeup of the primary groupings themselves. http://www.pnas.org/content/95/12/6854.full Do orthologous gene phylogenies really support tree-thinking? Excerpt: We conclude that we simply cannot determine if a large portion of the genes have a common history.,,, CONCLUSION: Our phylogenetic analyses do not support tree-thinking. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15913459 Why Darwin was wrong about the (genetic) tree of life: - 21 January 2009 Excerpt: Syvanen recently compared 2000 genes that are common to humans, frogs, sea squirts, sea urchins, fruit flies and nematodes. In theory, he should have been able to use the gene sequences to construct an evolutionary tree showing the relationships between the six animals. He failed. The problem was that different genes told contradictory evolutionary stories. This was especially true of sea-squirt genes. Conventionally, sea squirts - also known as tunicates - are lumped together with frogs, humans and other vertebrates in the phylum Chordata, but the genes were sending mixed signals. Some genes did indeed cluster within the chordates, but others indicated that tunicates should be placed with sea urchins, which aren't chordates. "Roughly 50 per cent of its genes have one evolutionary history and 50 per cent another," Syvanen says. ...."We've just annihilated the tree of life. It's not a tree any more, it's a different topology entirely," says Syvanen. "What would Darwin have made of that?" Does the fossil record help your grand evolutionary narrative Petrushka? Deepening Darwin's Dilemma - Jonathan Wells - Sept. 2009 Excerpt: "The truth is that (finding) “exceptionally preserved microbes” from the late Precambrian actually deepen Darwin’s dilemma, because they suggest that if there had been ancestors to the Cambrian phyla they would have been preserved." Deepening Darwin's Dilemma - Jonathan Wells - The Cambrian Explosion - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4154263 "The point emerges that if we examine the fossil record in detail, whether at the level of orders or of species, we find' over and over again' not gradual evolution, but the sudden explosion of one group at the expense of another." Paleontologist, Derek V. Ager "A major problem in proving the theory has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants - instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God." Paleontologist, Mark Czarnecki "There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways, it has become almost unmanageably rich and discovery is outpacing integration. The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps." Professor of paleontology - Glasgow University, T. Neville George "Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them." David Kitts - Paleontologist "The long-term stasis, following a geologically abrupt origin, of most fossil morphospecies, has always been recognized by professional paleontologists" – Stephen Jay Gould - Harvard Genesis 1:21 & 25 So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.,,,,, each according to its kind”; and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. "Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums now are filled with over 100 million fossils of 250,000 different species. The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What is the picture which the fossils have given us? ... The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wider and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record." Luther D. Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma 1988, Fossils and Other Problems, 4th edition, Master Books, p. 9 "The evidence we find in the geological record is not nearly as compatible with Darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be .... We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than in Darwin's time ... so Darwin's problem has not been alleviated". David Raup, Curator of Geology at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History The Fossil Record - Don Patton - in their own words - video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4679386266900194790 "In virtually all cases a new taxon appears for the first time in the fossil record with most definitive features already present, and practically no known stem-group forms." Fossils and Evolution, TS Kemp - Curator of Zoological Collections, Oxford University, Oxford Uni Press, p246, 1999 "Every paleontologist knows that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of family appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.” George Gaylord Simpson (evolutionist), The Major Features of Evolution, New York, Columbia University Press, 1953 p. 360. I don't know Petrushka you repeatedly state one thing and yet the evidence repeatedly says another,,, Why does it not bother you to keep repeating these falsehoods of evidence? Does repeating a lie over and over make you it any less of a lie? Of course not!!! So why the games? bornagain77

Petrushka, "Either that or a simple replicator" That was nothing but a punt. A willful refusal to address the observable evidence as we find it. You are certainly welcome to close your eyes if you must, but if you are going to be consistent, then stop taking positions about what must then follow. Upright BiPed

It’s about the observable presence of a semiotic abstraction of the orgainsm embedded in matter. It’s about inanimate matter creating a semiotic abstraction of itself. It’s about that abstraction being embedded into a material carrier for the purposes of heredity. It’s about matter establishing the non physico-dynamic rules by which that abstraction can be realized from that carrier.

How do you know that Michael Denton is wrong, and that it is not in the nature of matter itself, for whatever reason or cause, to self-organize? Petrushka

This sentence "Just like all of the arguments you and Gaz were using before about the scientific usefulness of the idea of a straight line and so on and so forth." should end with "so on and so forth are just distractions really." And "One position is that all phenomenon.." Phenomena** Phaedros

It’s about the observable presence of a semiotic abstraction of the orgainsm embedded in matter. It’s about inanimate matter creating a semiotic abstraction of itself.

Either that or a simple replicator. As I said, I don't have any predictions about how OOL research will go. I'm glad that it's being done. Petrushka

Petrushka- "On the part about the conceptual plausibility of self-replicators arising from simpler compounds, I’d say you are standing on the same ground as those who thought in a previous century that organic compounds could not be synthesized." I would say this type of argument is useless at best. Just like all of the arguments you and Gaz were using before about the scientific usefulness of the idea of a straight line and so on and so forth. We don't know, and can't know, which of our ideas about particular things hinder our understanding of other things. We have to work with what we have and what we know now. That aside, from the naturalistic viewpoint human beings are natural phenomena. If human beings are a natural phenomenon, then intelligence is a natural phenomenon, i.e. it can be found in nature. This, I think, is a great paradox in your thinking. It is obvious that intelligence is a natural phenomenon, if naturalism is to be consistent, and yet naturalists, or materialists, constantly argue against the possibility of it being a natural phenomenon. Choose a position. One position is that all phenomenon are natural therefore anything to be found an nature can possibly be appealed to as a cause or some things are not natural and therefore naturalism (materialism) is falsified. Phaedros

Petrushka, You are missing the point. There is no need to. You begin by saying I don't know the "full history of life". This is a trivial observation to be sure, but if it were somehow a prerequisite to understanding then we all could know nothing in the least. These debates over interpretation of evidence would be silly at best, always ending with "yeah, but you don't know the full history of life". A clearer view might suggest that Newton didn't know the history of life either, but that didn't stop him from being productive in interpreting what was in front of him. I suggest we stay with that model and leave the trivialities and pointless observations to others, okay? Now you say: "On the part about the conceptual plausibility of self-replicators arising from simpler compounds, I’d say you are standing on the same ground as those who thought in a previous century that organic compounds could not be synthesized." Here is the deal, I am not talking about the synthesis of parts. In that regard I stand on the ground that assumes every constituent part of biology can be synthesized by some means, and that each will follow the laws of nature with unwaivering regularity. I gain this rather ground-shaking perspective by realizing they all exist already. And this is the point. The researchers who synthesize the chemical constituent parts of living systems do not accomplish that task by inducing the tranfer and intepretation of semiotic content. In other words, I am talking about something else entirely. I am on record here suggesting that after every last tidbit of biology has been created in the lab, this debate will at last begin in earnest. Its not about the synthesis of parts. It's about the observable presence of a semiotic abstraction of the orgainsm embedded in matter. It's about inanimate matter creating a semiotic abstraction of itself. It's about that abstraction being embedded into a material carrier for the purposes of heredity. It's about matter establishing the non physico-dynamic rules by which that abstraction can be realized from that carrier. "How do you label your thought?" I am not sure how to answer that question, but I can say this: I am certain that there is only one recorded source of semiosis and meaning in the Universe. If you can offer a second, I am happy to listen. Also, I can tell you that I do not need to misrepresent the evidence presented by my intellectual opponents in order to attack it. "Do you believe the absence of evidence justifies the absence of research?" Like I said before, let's leave the silly questions to others. Upright BiPed

And yet Petrushka we have zero present observed instances of material/evolutionary processes generating functional information...

I have no idea how to generate information, but I have a good idea how genomes change over time. Based on a rather detailed series of fossils, I believe the bones of the inner ear evolved from jawbones through slight, incremental changes. In doing so, evolution created a new function. I'd bet that interpretation would win in a court of law. In fact I know it would. Petrushka

But, what ground are you on?

On the part about the conceptual plausibility of self-replicators arising from simpler compounds, I'd say you are standing on the same ground as those who thought in a previous century that organic compounds could not be synthesized. In the absence of actual evidence, I'll label my thought as a conjecture. I think you are in the same evidentiary boat as I am. How do you label your thought? Do you believe the absence of evidence justifies the absence of research? Petrushka

---Clive Hayden on [mainstrem science]: "That’s because their catfights are lovefests." LOL. StephenB

In the face of not a single contrary example in evidence, and indeed, in the face of no conceptually plausible means to have physical entities begin to fashion non-physical mappings to other physical entities...I would say that I am on safe evidentiary ground. After all, which of our four Grand Theories of the material universe decides what the non-material rules are in semiotic mappings? But, what ground are you on? On what observable, non-contradicted evidence do you base the idea that material entities can create and organize themselves from the processing of semiotic mappings? Upright BiPed

But Petrushka you stated this: “I have no apologies for extrapolating present observations to the past. That’s what geologists have done for hundreds of years. It’s a productive approach.” And yet Petrushka we have zero present observed instances of material/evolutionary processes generating functional information, or constructing machines, at the present time, even though the cell is overflowing with functional information and machines. And yet we have "present observations" of intelligence generating functional information and constructing machines right now with humans (although of a lower level of complexity for the functional information, and a lower level of efficiency for the machines) Thus Petrushka why in blue blazes do you not heed your very own words and "have no apologies for extrapolating present observations to the past"??? notes: Stephen C. Meyer - The Scientific Basis For Intelligent Design http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4104651 The Coding Found In DNA Surpasses Man's Ability To Code - Stephen Meyer - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4050638 Bill Gates, in recognizing the superiority found in Genetic Coding, compared to the best computer coding we now have, has now funded research into this area: Welcome to CoSBi - (Computational and Systems Biology) Excerpt: Biological systems are the most parallel systems ever studied and we hope to use our better understanding of how living systems handle information to design new computational paradigms, programming languages and software development environments. The net result would be the design and implementation of better applications firmly grounded on new computational, massively parallel paradigms in many different areas. http://www.cosbi.eu/index.php/component/content/article/171 “Although the tiniest living things known to science, bacterial cells, are incredibly small (10^-12 grams), each is a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of elegantly designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world”. Michael Denton PhD Nanoelectronic Transistor Combined With Biological Machine Could Lead To Better Electronics: - Aug. 2009 Excerpt: While modern communication devices rely on electric fields and currents to carry the flow of information, biological systems are much more complex. They use an arsenal of membrane receptors, channels and pumps to control signal transduction that is unmatched by even the most powerful computers. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090811091834.htm The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines "We have always underestimated cells. Undoubtedly we still do today,,, Indeed, the entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each which is composed of a set of large protein machines." Bruce Alberts: Former President, National Academy of Sciences; http://www.imbb.forth.gr/people/aeconomou/documents/Alberts98.pdf "There are no detailed Darwinian accounts for the evolution of any fundamental biochemical or cellular system only a variety of wishful speculations. It is remarkable that Darwinism is accepted as a satisfactory explanation of such a vast subject." James Shapiro - Molecular Biologist As well, Physicists find many processes in a cell operate at the "near optimal" capacities allowed in any physical system: William Bialek - Professor Of Physics - Princeton University: Excerpt: "A central theme in my research is an appreciation for how well things “work” in biological systems. It is, after all, some notion of functional behavior that distinguishes life from inanimate matter, and it is a challenge to quantify this functionality in a language that parallels our characterization of other physical systems. Strikingly, when we do this (and there are not so many cases where it has been done!), the performance of biological systems often approaches some limits set by basic physical principles. While it is popular to view biological mechanisms as an historical record of evolutionary and developmental compromises, these observations on functional performance point toward a very different view of life as having selected a set of near optimal mechanisms for its most crucial tasks.,,,The idea of performance near the physical limits crosses many levels of biological organization, from single molecules to cells to perception and learning in the brain,,,," http://www.princeton.edu/~wbialek/wbialek.html bornagain77

Petrushka: Your second statement is unkind. I have freely admitted having no academic credentials. I do this as a hobby. I do it to improve my own understand of evolution. I seek out the best challenges I can find and I argue in good faith. Didn't mean in any way to be unkind. And I am no fan of academic credential. My cobcept is that I prefer any single creative concept from you to any passive restatement of the trivialities exhibited at Dover, because it's with you that I am discussing, and I definitely prefer you or any other sincere and tolerant interlocutor to the likes Dawkins or Moran or Myers, whatever their credentials. Moreover,I am frankly tired with the Dover affair, a merely political plot with no relevance to science, and it is really sad to see people who call themselves scientists hide behind the authority of a judge. It would be ridicule, if it were not depressing. Moreover, I am in no way interested to the school issue. I live in Italy, where the political aspects of the darwin wars are scarcely known, understood and felt, for various reasons. It's fine for me that the darwinian model be teached as the main accepted explanation. ID must win in the science field, before entering the schools. If ID is accepted in the scientific field, as it rightly deserves, be it even as a minority approach, than the school has to acknowledge its existence. But with the current scientific establishment, utterly dogmatic and intolerant to this regard, and shamefully ready to willingly delegate a judge to decide what is science and what is not, there is little hope. But time and truth and knowledge will help, where politics and authority continue to deny freedom of thought. gpuccio

This hardly seems to be the case

I've only posted on a few threads, and I've stuck with them. I don't simply drop comments and run. I can't pretend that I've devastated anyone with my knowledge and my logic, but I do try to learn about the shortcomings of my own arguments. Of course people who disagree on fundamental things seldom see their adversaries improve. That works both ways. Petrushka

There is only one presidence for semiotic mappings of meaning in all of history, and that is intelligence.

You appear to be assuming your conclusion. You don't actually know the full history of life. Petrushka

>> precedence sorry... Upright BiPed

"I have no apologies for extrapolating present observations to the past. That’s what geologists have done for hundreds of years. It’s a productive approach." Life as we know it is powered (to a large extent at least) by the semiotic mappings of chemical structures. One thing means another thing, but is not the product of it. There is only one presidence for semiotic mappings of meaning in all of history, and that is intelligence. Thats an observation of the here and now. There isn't a single alternative to it, and that is but one of the ID arguments being made. Your statement above is therefore likely to be more self-serving than it is about being productive in observations. "I seek out the best challenges I can find and I argue in good faith." This hardly seems to be the case, but you are welcome to begin at any time. Thats the intellectually repsponsible thing to do, is it not? Upright BiPed

The questions asked at Dover are not necessarily good questions. Do you want a free advice? Try to ask questions from your free mind...

The questios posed at Dover will surface whenever the issue of teaching ID in public schools is brought to court. It's only going to get worse, because many of the questions about flagella and blood clotting have been illuminated in the past five years. Your second statement is unkind. I have freely admitted having no academic credentials. I do this as a hobby. I do it to improve my own understand of evolution. I seek out the best challenges I can find and I argue in good faith. When I make mistakes I admit it. I avoid debating religion and philosophy because I know only a little about them. Certainly not enough to debate them. I do not assert that evolution is TRUE. I argue that it is the best explanation we have for the diversity of life. The only thing I have to say about the origin of life is that I am interested in the research. I will always side with people who are tring to find things out. Not to the point of agreeing with all their conjectures, but agreeing with their approach. I have no apologies for extrapolating present observations to the past. That's what geologists have done for hundreds of years. It's a productive approach. Petrushka

Petrushka, further study of irreducible complexity is in order. Its an exceedingly simple concept to understand. It is not based upon proteins having other functions. What you count on as a falsification is nothing but another misrepresentation. May I ask... It is well known that ID critics often seem frozen in a constant state of misrepresenting ID arguments. This is all propelled by a science and media community that incessantly promotes the misprepresentations, so anyone who is new to the arguments could easily be forgiven for it. Yet, you say that you're an old hand at this, so I can only assume you've been given the correctives. So... does this constant need to misrepresent ID arguments ever grow tiresome for you? And on that note, how does one intellectually process the knowledge that one must ignore correctives in order to maintain a particular worldview? Upright BiPed

I have presented positive evidence in the form of the natural history of protein domains.

You have posed a challenge, but you have presented no history. Neither has mainstream science. The big question is how you deal with mysteries and challenges. Do you continue the centuries old traditions of science, and look for natural explanations? Do you assume, for the generation of research proposals, that phenomena observable today can lead to explanations of historical phenomena? Petrushka

Behe has presented two examples of irreducible complexity, the bacterial flagellum and the common branch of the clotting cascade. Both are still perfectly valid.

The only issue of importance is whether a large number of mutations would have to occur in a single step.would imply that the protein That would imply that the proteins, taken individually, have no value. We know that is wrong because all but one or two are present as subsets in other organisms. In lots of different subsets. Petrushka

Petrushka: Mainstream science makes catfights look like lovefests. Yes, except for challenging the most challengeable of theories: neo darwinism. For most scientists, the greatest moment in their lives would be to find a flaw in someone else’s hypothesis, or some data that is inconsistent with established theories. But at the moment of offering adoration to neo darwinism, they all agree. OK, just as soon as you get some positive evidence for an instance of design intervention, or a definition of CSI that results in a reliable, meaningful number in a broad set of contexts, or an instance of something irreducible in the sense that subsets of its components have no function or do not function in other contexts, give me a holler. I have presented positive evidence in the form of the natural history of protein domains. I have given a very precise definition of dFSCI which is valid for all biological information in the proteome, and practical methods to measure it. Behe has presented two examples of irreducible complexity, the bacterial flagellum and the common branch of the clotting cascade. Both are still perfectly valid. I have to say that you are the only UD poster who actually engages my questions, and although I have no formal credentials, I do not ask trivial questions. I ask the kinds of questions that were asked at Dover and the kinds of questions that will be asked at any future confrontation where the teaching of ID is on the line. Thank you. The questions asked at Dover are not necessarily good questions. Do you want a free advice? Try to ask questions from your free mind, not from the mind of an arrogant judge. It's more difficult, but more satisfying. And one thing I deeply believe: questions are more important than answers. gpuccio

blockquote>That’s because their catfights are lovefests. It occurred to me after I posted that, that catfights and cat lovefests might sound pretty much alike, from a safe distance. Petrushka

When it comes to the origin of the observed cosmos, on multiple factors [amounting to the several dozens], we see a cumulative case for a fine-tuned design, set up to support carbon chemistry cell based intelligent life. To a degree of precision that is well beyond what human engineering can dream of.

That seems to be the position of Michael Denton in Nature's Destiny. Of course that book accepts pretty much all of mainstream biology's narrative for the history of life. Petrushka

---Petrushka: "I don’t want to derail the discussion or be interpreted as ridiculing ID, but I think ID has a lot in common with advocacy of UFOs and the paranormal. The difficulty is not about ID but rather with your mistaken impressions about it. ID scientists understand the limits of their pardigms, meaning that they argue only for the existence of a designer and make no claims about the designers identity or methods. If only Darwinists understood the limitations of their paradigm. ---"Same with ESP, ghosts, and such." Keep the strawmen coming. Please! ---"In the context of this thread, I have been called hyperskeptical. I’m not offended, That’s part of my personality." There are two extremes to be avoided, gullibility and hyperskepticism. The former trait is found in those who accept dubious propositions without sufficient supporting reasons; the latter trait is found in those who reject good arguments for ideological reasons. What is called for is a healthy skepticism concerning questionable claims and a rational faith concerning self evident truths. It's the golden mean between two radical extremes, with Darwinism at one end of the continuum and superstition at the other end. The irony is that Darwinists are hyperskeptical toward good arguments for design, yet they are, at the same time, exceedingly credulous about anything that will support their world view. Consider the case of those on this thread who believe that wind, air, water, and time can build a perfect sand model of a 1963 Corvette Sting Ray or could, in principle, write thematic sentences on the the surface of the planet Mars. What is that except irrational and unwarranted trust in naturalistic metaphysics? In keeping with that point, Darwinists are hyperskeptical about first principles and a creator God, but they are exceedingly gullible about everything else, holding that something comes from nothing, life comes from non life, mind comes from matter, and universes come from out of nowhere. That is the way it is with any extreme position. To be hyperskeptical about reason's first principles is to be hypercredulous about everything else. StephenB

Petrushka,

Mainstream science makes catfights look like lovefests.

That's because their catfights are lovefests. Clive Hayden

Petrushka,

Give me an observable phenomenon like evolution, and I’m willing to extrapolate it, even into areas that are unknown and unexplored.

Thank you for your honesty. Clive Hayden

Petrushka at 327, 331, 333 et al, Quit pandering to yourself. If you think no one notices, you are sadly mistaken. Upright BiPed

Petrushka: Note that again you do not see the focus of the design inference: That of the observed causal factors, chance, necessity and agency, each has characteristic manifestations. Thus, through appropriate procedures and in light of evident and tested signs, it is appropriate to infer from the evidence of the sign to the signified, the act of design. At no point thus far has any hypothesis or assumption entered regarding the nature or identity of a designer, i.e. we are reasoning back from evidence to explanatory causal factors on principles of warranting a best explanation, in light of the reasonable enough premise that the present points the way to the past, but bearing in mind the observation that was old in the days of Job: we obviously were not there to observe the deep past of origins, so our explanations have to be very open to correction indeed. So, sadly, you have again erected and knocked over an unwarranted strawman misrepresentation, and that after the accurate summary haws been repeatedly presented to you. Answer, please: why is it that you are consistently unable to accurately summarise and respond to what we have said, and even insisted on? That inability to acknowledge what is in front of you is not any healthy skepticism, it is plainly selective hyper-skepticism that demands unreasonable and often arbitrary standards of warrant from what does not fit with one's preconceptions that are not demanded of cases that do. As a consequence, ironically, one then often ends up in the hyper-credulous fallacies of question-begging, confirmation bias and ideological closed-mindedness. in this case, evidently in a priori, Lewontinian evolutionary materialism. (Please cf the summary discussion here, as has been repeatedly linked. Next time, can you kindly first tell us in a precis, what it argues, and why; before making your own responses in that light. That will assure us that you are responding to us not to a strawman.) Now, also, evidence that warrants inference to design, under certain circumstances can then tell us a lot about the designer in question, especially if we can locate place and time to some reasonable degree of confidence. For that may allow us to rule in or out certain candidates or suspects as the case may be. (Remember how a successful alibi is a valid defence against a criminal charge.) Now, too, that may in turn sit ill with say an evolutionary materialistic worldview, but that is a matter for a different level of discourse, comparative difficulties across competing worldviews. (And, notice, as the linked summary shows, we have documented and linked abundant materials to show that this is an issue of concern in institutional science and science education.) What the scientific design inference is telling us on the case of the digital information system in cell based life is that there was credibly a designer at the point of origin of life, capable of molecular nanotechnology, and of sophisticated software and hardware design and integration. We may then seek further evidence on what such a designer most likely is as to identity, but that is a further floor in the building. One thing we do know is that blind forces of chance and mechanical necessity in a still warm pond, or a volcano vent or a comet are simply not credible sources for the origin of such an entity as cell based life, for reasons that have been discussed repeatedly and linked. (Onlookers, notice how consistently the subject gets switched when this issue is put on the table. No prizes for guessing why.) When it comes to the origin of the observed cosmos, on multiple factors [amounting to the several dozens], we see a cumulative case for a fine-tuned design, set up to support carbon chemistry cell based intelligent life. To a degree of precision that is well beyond what human engineering can dream of. Such a designer would be enormously powerful, would be of superior genius level intelligence, and would be causally antecedent to matter, energy and the like as we know it. We also know that the observed cosmos credibly had a beginning, which leads to the logical inference that the ultimate ground of the cosmos is a necessary being; on the premise that something does not come from nothing. Cumulatively, such inferences do fit well with core Judaeo-Christian worldview claims, but that is a matter of the inference to best explanation on evidence and relevant signs, not of a priori imposition. (Eighty years ago, the dominant view was that the material cosmos was the necessary and eternal being. Then came Hubble, and eventually, 3K background cavity radiation [a la Planck . . . the actual case that led to the rise of Quantum mechanics] that fits very well with the energy radiation expected form such a singularity-expansion model.) So, your diversion to tabloid type speculations is a crude caricature and strawman. Please, do better than that. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

I don't want to derail the discussion or be interpreted as ridiculing ID, but I think ID has a lot in common with advocacy of UFOs and the paranormal. I can't say that there has never been an alien spaceship visiting earth, but there are enormous problems with accepting evidence and arguments for such. Same with ESP, ghosts, and such. In the case of arguing for such phenomena you can amass large arrays of testimony and of unexplained phenomena. And it is easy to label one side as kooks and the other side as hyperskeptical. In the context of this thread, I have been called hyperskeptical. I'm not offended, That's part of my personality. Give me an observable phenomenon like evolution, and I'm willing to extrapolate it, even into areas that are unknown and unexplored. Give me a conjecture that lacks any observed instances or any firm attributes, and I remain a skeptic. Petrushka

Steve: Not least, the cast is not the source of the relevant spatial information. It only propagates it with more or less of fidelity. So, wherein lieth the source of the information? We are back to: forces of chance and necessity, or intelligence. And while there are sculptural forces of chance and necessity, they are a vastly inferior explanation of something like the shape of a Corvette Stingray, or a beat up Ford, or for that matter, a crankshaft. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

The presence of different opinions in the context of a theory os a sign of vitality. Darwinists should reflect on that.

Mainstream science makes catfights look like lovefests. If ID proponents behaved like scientists they woud be holding conferences where they tear each other's ideas apart. For most scientists, the greatest moment in their lives would be to find a flaw in someone else's hypothesis, or some data that is inconsistent with established theories. That is why there is so much material available for quote mining.

The common points in ID are the evidence for a designer of biological information, the principle of design detection, the concepts of CSI (in all forms) and of irreducible complexity.

OK, just as soon as you get some positive evidence for an instance of design intervention, or a definition of CSI that results in a reliable, meaningful number in a broad set of contexts, or an instance of something irreducible in the sense that subsets of its components have no function or do not function in other contexts, give me a holler. I have to say that you are the only UD poster who actually engages my questions, and although I have no formal credentials, I do not ask trivial questions. I ask the kinds of questions that were asked at Dover and the kinds of questions that will be asked at any future confrontation where the teaching of ID is on the line. Petrushka

Paul Giem @319, Thanks for the thoughts. Good points all. Actually, my objective in using the hypotheticals was to demonstrate for onlookers that Darwinists will believe the incredible [wind, water, erostion, and time will produce the model of a Corvetter Sting Ray] in order to to avoid the obvious [informal design inferences are part of everyday life]. As far as the argument for the "history of human activity" is concerned, that argument was swept away with my example of the letter sequences on the planet Mars. You will notice that he did not address that second example because it renders the history of human activity irrelevant. My response to his example about the clam casts and crocodile coprolites was an attempt to draw out the fact that he had not even considered his own argument. If you will notice, he used the passive voice in order to avoid describing the process in active terms. When I said that I didn't follow his argument, I didn't mean that literally. I was simply asking him to accept the burden of articulating his own point. If he had done so, he would have discovered that the dynamic he was trying to describe, especially the appeal to "casts," is not analogous to the process of wind, air, water, and time forming a model of a Corvette Sting Ray. StephenB

Petrushka: No one jumps on you and calls you an atheistic materialist. Perhaps because I am not. Anyway, I do believe in a designer of biological information. I must say that, personally, I don't really approve of attempts to "convert" materialists here. For my taste, the only things materialists have to defend here are their scientific opinions, and not their worldview. But again, this is a blog, and I respect the point of view of all. gpuccio

Petrushka: Sorry for the confusion. The big bang has nothing to do with the real big bang. I was referring to this paper: “Sequence space and the ongoing expansion of the protein universe” Inna S. Povolotskaya & Fyodor A. Kondrashov Nature, Vol 465| 17 June 2010| doi:10.1038/nature09105 The abstract: “The need to maintain the structural and functional integrity of an evolving protein severely restricts the repertoire of acceptable amino-acid substitutions1, 2, 3, 4. However, it is not known whether these restrictions impose a global limit on how far homologous protein sequences can diverge from each other. Here we explore the limits of protein evolution using sequence divergence data. We formulate a computational approach to study the rate of divergence of distant protein sequences and measure this rate for ancient proteins, those that were present in the last universal common ancestor. We show that ancient proteins are still diverging from each other, indicating an ongoing expansion of the protein sequence universe. The slow rate of this divergence is imposed by the sparseness of functional protein sequences in sequence space and the ruggedness of the protein fitness landscape: ~98 per cent of sites cannot accept an amino-acid substitution at any given moment but a vast majority of all sites may eventually be permitted to evolve when other, compensatory, changes occur. Thus, ~3.5?×?109?yr has not been enough to reach the limit of divergent evolution of proteins, and for most proteins the limit of sequence similarity imposed by common function may not exceed that of random sequences.” Regarding your other remarks: a) This is a blob: anybody can express his views- b) ID is a scientific theory, not a political party. There is no official representative of ID, there is no party line. Like all fundamental scientific theories, ID is of all and for all. c) The common points in ID are the evidence for a designer of biological information, the principle of design detection, the concepts of CSI (in all forms) and of irreducible complexity. I think on those points we all agree in ID. d) The presence of different opinions in the context of a theory os a sign of vitality. Darwinists should reflect on that. And the present of different opinions in the context of science is a sign of vitality of science itself. gpuccio

gpuccio: Your post rambles a bit (not necessarily a bad thing). I'm not sure what the big bang has to do with evolution other than set an upper limit to the time available for evolution. Interesting things are being found in meteorites and possibly in comets. Perhaps some complex organics from space jump started life on earth. But it's all conjecture at this point. Finding an indepently originated instance of life on Mars or Europa might cast some light on OOL. Other than that, research seems best focused on generating biochemically possible scenarios, which could then be narrowed to plausible scenarios. We've been around on LUCA before. I don't think LUCA has any precise meaning for pre-Cambrian life. Posting here is very confusing. The regulars at this site don't seem to communicate with each other about anything important. You seem to be accepted as an ID advocate, but you accept the value of evolutionary algorithms and directed evolution. No one jumps on you and calls you an atheistic materialist. I don't understand why you folks don't discuss your differences. It's like there are half a dozen parallel but isolated thread imbedded in one. The dividing lines seem to be based on who the poster is rather than on what is being said. Petrushka

Petrushka:

You speak of protein domains and vast desserts of non-functionality. I’m wondering how, specifically, a designer knows where the islands of functionality are hidden. I’m particularly interested in how a designer would find these islands. You assert that we are getting better at computing protein folds, but computation will never be as fast or efficient as the real thing. It can’t be, because a folding protein is essentially a quantum computer. So if you are a designer, which is faster and more economical: computing protein coding sequences or setting up a laboratory in which evolution computes them?

That's an interesting subject, at last. In theory, all of the mechanisms I listed in my post #94 are possible mechanisms which an intelligent designer can use. To those, for completeness, I should probably add some more "extreme" hypotheses, like direct creation with overt violation of physical laws, but I will stick to my opinion of not considering that as a priority scenario. But my point is that we must not just list possible scenarios: we must look ar the facts to see if some scenarios are more plausible than others. So, reagrding the emergence of protein domains, I will try a little bit to do that. Obviously, let's keep in mind that we probably know too little at present to really understand, but I am sure that evidence is gathering fast. The more we know of genomes and proteomes in detail, the easier it will be to reason about those subjects. So, what can we say at present? I would like to sum up the facts as we know them (indeed, not only facts, but also some reasonable inferences that we can for the moment accept): a) We have quite a number of independent protein domains in the global proteomes. Let's say 1962 superfamilies in SCOP 1.75 (23 Feb 2009). b) Those superfamilies are, as far as we know, isolated island of functionality in the search space. c) Let's say, according to the paper I often quote, that half of those were present in LUCA, and that a half arose after, about one quarter in prokaryotes, about one quarter in metazoa, with a slowing rate. The number could be different, but that is a reasonable general scenario. d)Let's say, according to another paper I quoted, that protein domains appear in the beginning and then, throughout evolution, "traverse" their own functional island, producing the multitude of variants at primary structure level of the same domain and of the same fold and function (the "big bang" theory of protein evolution, which IMO is well supported by what we see in the proteome). So, what can we reasonably say to answer your questions? One important point is the emergence of about half of the domains very early after OOL. That's something. Differently from you, I don't believe that we can leave OOL out of our scientific reasonings. That would be really silly form a methodological point of view. After all, I think we all agree that OOL happened, so it is a fact that we have to explain. And avoiding facts is never a good idea for science. The second important point is that protein domains continue to emerge after that, even if in a slower rate, and continue to emerge throughout all of natural history. A point I have recently made with Occam (the blogger here, not the historical one :) ) is that it would be parsimonious to consider that the same mechanism which gave birth to protein domains in the beginning could well be responsible for their emergence after that. There is no reason, at first analysis, to invoke two different mechanisms, one for the first half of protein domains and one for the second half. After all, as you seem to agree, finding functional protein domains is such a difficult task that there is no reason to invoke a second causal mechanism, if we have already found one. Then we must consider that the multiplicity of primary structures corresponding to one single domain seems to be the result of domain "evolution" in time, rather than the cause of their emergence, at least according to the "big bang" theory. IOW, we do not find any trace in the proteome of an ancient, long and patient search for fucntional domains. The cats as we know them seem to suggest that new protain domains appear rather suddenly, a la Gould, and then change slightly through time, while retaining the same fold and the same function thjey had in the beginnig, possibly with minor microevolutionary tweaks. So, again, what can we say from those facts? I would say that the most reasonable scenario, the one which is best suited to what we know, is that a designer implements functional domains in a rather short time (at least, evolutionarily speaking), and without leaving any trace of a long random serach, even if directed and intelligent. That is certainly consisten with my mechanism a) in post 94: guided mutation. That would imply that in some way the designer already knows how to implement functional domains, IOW that he has sufficient understanding of the biochemical laws according to which proteins fold and work to know in advance, if not the final solution, at least how to very efficiently approximate it. But that is not the only possibility. A relatively quick appearance of new domains could also be explained by a targeted random search followed by intelligent selection. To explain how, I will again go back to my model of antibody maturation. Here, the system (the intelligent algorithm embedded in the immune system) does not know in advance which AA substitutions will increase the affinity of the existing antibody for the stored antigen. So, the system targeted hypermutation, a very high rate of mutation realized by biochemical molecules, and then selects through measurement of the obtained affinity using the stored antigen. The important point is that the system, here, is not relying on generic random variation caused by spontaneous errors in replication. On the contrary, it is producing its own RV, targeted to a specific part of the existing molecule, and by specific biochemical means. That, coupled to the ingtelligent measurement of the results, makes the system so efficient that in a few months the affinity increases greatly. I don't know how the biological designer could achieve that in natural history, but I beluieve that it could be possible. After all, we have many examples, especially in bacteria, of shared adaptive mechanisms, like HGT and in general plasmid genes. Maybe the appearance of new domains is realized by the designer in special "niches": that would certainly make some darwinists happy :) . These are obviously very generic speculations, but their purpose is to show that it is perfectly possible to speculate on these mechanisms, to build possible scenarios, and to try to test them with known facts. Again, the more facts we gather about genomes and proteomes (and about any other relevant aspect of biology, including regulatory mechanisms), the more we will be able to differentiate between different possible scenarios. That's the only way science can proceed. gpuccio

Petruahka: Because a good many people at this forum talk about things like front loading, even direct creation, or perhaps just nudging an atom at critical times. Probably many people at this forum believe that the designer is God and that He, being omniscient, would have no such problems. In that case, direct creation or front loading could be a mechanism. That's a possibility, but certainly not the only one. And personally, as you may have noticed, I don't kike that any specific religious idea be invoked in scientific reasoning. So, I stick to what we can observe. And what we observe, IMO, is best explained by the scenario of a designer acting in a context, and accepting the constraints of that context. So, that's my current hypothesis. Which in no way implies that the designer cannot be a god, because that remains a valid scientific hypothesis. But anyway, we have to derive our understanding of the designer and of his mechanisms of implementation from facts, and not from religious convictions. I’m trying to get a clear distinction between designing in the human sense, where you don’t get a lot of opportunity to evolve skyscrapers or passenger planes, and evolving stuff. Again I can't understand your use of the word "evolution". Skyscrapers and passenger planes have certainly "evolved", in the sense that there is no doubt that they are the result of gradual design, passing through successive states of discovery and amelioration, through different mechanisms which probably include both top down and bottom up procedures, personal intuitions, multiple inferences, some right and some wrong, deductions, and why not, maybe even random search. That's evolution, for me. Directed evolution. Design. Obviously, neither skyscrapers nor passenger planes evolved through "natural" laws, or by RV + NS, and I suppose that even the theory that they are casts of something else can be found not entirely satisfying. gpuccio

Paul Giem: For there you have him on the science, and his only recourse is to use theological arguments, and he wants to avoid that at all costs. Hi Paul! I think that, as usual, you have really struck a chord here. If I had a cent for each time a darwinist has eluded specific biological and scientific arguments, to find refuge in religious, metaphysical, or false epistemological discussions, I would not probably be rich (maybe I shoud raise that at least to a dollar), but at least I would be getting some real benefit from my blogging activity :) . It's strange that our interlocutors are so ready to discuss the reasons why we should avoid the discussion, if they are really so sure that ID is based on false premises. Most of the arguments here are reduced to problems such as if ID is science or not. Strange to say, the supporters of "the most important scientific theory of our times" (in their opinion, obviously), of a theory which according to many of them has accomplished the miracle of transubstantiation from a theory to a fact, prefer to question the validity of the ID inference to a designer (an inference by analogy quite simple and obvious) rather than overwhelm us with their knowledge by becoming engaged in the details of ID falsification of their beliefs. And yet, it's really a pity, because each time some serious darwinist has accepted to come here and discuss the real stuff (and it does happen sometimes, I could name Arthur Hunt and rna, whoever he was, as an example of serious biologists who have done that recently) the discussion immediately becomes specific, interesting, constructive. And it's not really interesting who "wins" or "loses": nobody loses when people of different opinions share their views in a respectful way, even if that implies fiery intellectual confrontation, because respect does not grow in unanimity of thought, but rather the opposite. But that kind of discussion, a discussion which passionately is after some real truth, in a good scientific way, is interesting for all, and can really be useful to all. gpuccio

This morning's Youtube moment (a subtle quotemine): Paul Burnett:

"ThatOneQuestion" pointed out that Phillip Johnson wrote the Wedge Document. That was in 1998. Here's what Johnson said in 2006: "I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time... There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable (to the Darwinian theory). ... Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people? that we have affiliated with the movement. ... No product is ready for competition in? the educational world.”

Kyazu The Insane:

@BurnettPaul Of course, to be fair to ID, there is no reason to say that this quote mine destroys the movement. He could be saying? that evolution is just better supported, with the implication that ID would eventually overtake it. Of course, it is not falsifiable and is ill defined, to the? point where TDG argues that ID is real if anyone in the entire universe ever farmed. Of course, ID is not about analyzing the psychology of species. It is about analyzing life and making up a creator... @KyazuTheInsane Who would? have a reason to make life in that exact way. While god is not the only creator they posit, it is also one of the possible creators they posit. Thus , their explanations need not abide by the laws of? reality. They stick to a bastardization of information theory-if you could even call it THAT- simply because it is a useful means of making their arguments from ignorance look meaningful. At its heart, ID is an unbeatable psuedoscience

The underlying cite is taken from a hostile report on an interview in Berkely Science review, in the reported context of disucssing whether ID should be officially incorporated in HS level science education, in the context of the Dover trial:

[P Johnson, as cited:] I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove…No product is ready for competition in the educational world.

1 --> The cite in itself is essentially observing that the current ID research programme is a nascent school of thought in science, and as such is not comparable in maturity to Darwinian Evolution. As such it is unsurprising that it has to earn its spurs across time through the efforts of researchers [as is ongoing but is not acknowledged by the objectors], and that it is not sufficiently mature to be incorporated in education in schools. 2 --> Newsflash [NOT . . . ]: this is more or less the official view of the Discovery Institute. What DI advocates is:

Instead of mandating [teaching of] intelligent design, Discovery Institute seeks to increase the coverage of evolution in textbooks. It believes that evolution should be fully and completely presented to students, and they should learn more about evolutionary theory, including its unresolved issues. In other words, evolution should be taught as a scientific theory that is open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can't be questioned. Discovery Institute believes that a curriculum that aims to provide students with an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of neo-Darwinian and chemical evolutionary theories (rather than teaching an alternative theory, such as intelligent design) represents a common ground approach that all reasonable citizens can agree on . . .

3 --> This is common sense, and would be utterly uncontroversial if the integrity of science and of science education were a priority. 4 --> But, plainly, it is not. That is why the remarks were scooped out of their wider context and presented as if they implied a concession of the unscientific, even pseudo-scientific nature of the emerging design theory. This reflects the imposition of a priori, Lewontinian evolutionary materialism and the associated ideologisation of institutional science, science education policy and related praxis and textbooks, aw well as popular science and too much of public discussion. 5 --> KTI then insistently fails to address the fact that key design theory proposals are in fact testable and in principle falsifiable, the basic problem that there is no firm and sharp dividing line between science and non-science in epistemology, and so on, all, as previously corrected in this thread. 6 --> Similarly, he fails to understand that the observations of our world we make show causal forces and factors tracing to chance, necessity and intelligence, and that there are empirically credible observable signs and procedures that allow us to reliably differentiate and identify such factors. 7 --> Indeed, in the central sanctum of scientific investigation and testing, experiment praxis, intelligent investigatorsd manipulatre key variables, and record results, distinguishing between chance scatter, lawlike regularities tracing to the effect of the intelligent manipulations, and methodological or instrument biases or personal equations. 8 --> When it comes to basic Information theory, it is uncontroversial that the distinction between [intelligent] signals and [natural, or sometimes interfering] noise is a central construct. (Dismissal this plain fact with contempt only shows willful ignorance or intent to mislead.) 9 --> Further to this, the inference to design on best explanation of observed effects is not an appeal to ignorance, despite the notorious big lie agitprop tactic of insistent repetition of outright falsehood in hopes of drowning out correction. 10 --> For, despite much willful and even hostile blindness to the fact, we are intimately familiar with the fact of intelligence and its artifacts and manifestations as a major feature of the world as we experience it. 11 --> So, we are all quite familiar with signs and manifestations of intelligence as a key causal factor, e.g. we readily discern intelligent and intelligible text from random text strings: frujwqjfguwfshh. 12 --> So, to infer on known signs of intelligence to the signified causal factor is not an appeal to what we do not know, but to what we do know. 13 --> Moreover, certain signs, as assessed on step by step, aspect by aspect procedures, are -- on millions of test cases -- empirically reliable. So we have every right to make the usual scientific induction to provisional generality. 14 --> A generality that (as Newton pointed out) is to be tested, not against a priori imposition of materialist frames that censor science from being an unfettered pursuit of the truth about our world on empirical evidence and reasonable analysis, but against observed credible counter-examples. 15 --> On the case of greatest relevance, it is an easily confirmed fact that since the 1950's the living cell has been revealed to embed a digital information processing system that uses coded DNA strands to control step by step protein assembly in the ribosome, and this is closely connected to both metabolism and self-replication. 16 --> As such, we see that there is a cluster of codes, algorithms, data structures, readers, effectors and the like, all of which are in every directly obse4rved case the product of intelligence. And, in the particular case of symbolic language, meaning is an inherently intelligent construct, where one element, the symbol is assigned a significance in a system for communication and control. 17 --> The only real alternatives to that source are mechanical necessity and chance. For the first, if the cosmos's laws have life on C-chemistry written into them, then that is as strong a proof of design of the cosmos as can be imagined; especially bearing in mind the other evidence of cosmological finetuning, which already points strongly in that direction. 18 --> For the latter, the simple fact is that while it is logically possible for chance and happenstance to mimic just about anything, once we see the gamut of the observed universe and the ~ 10^150 Planck time states the 10^80 or so atoms in it would go through over its thermodynamic lifespan, we soon enough see that a functionally specific algorithmic entity that takes as few as 125 bytes of storage capacity would establish a config space of 1.07 * 10^301 possible states, which is ten times the square of the number of states the cosmos could have over its lifespan. 19 --> That is, the universe we observe would not be able to even scratch the surface of the space, and 125 bytes is vastly too small to effect a self-replicating entity. So, the search capacity of the cosmos is effectively zero. Appeal to chance is an appeal to miraculously lucky noise. 20 --> We already saw that appeal to law of necessity is appeal to design without frankly acknowledging the plain implication. And to combine the two has to reckon with the source of variations and fresh combinations in such a process: chance. Also, as the digital information system is intertwined inextricably with self-replication of a metabolising automaton, until it is in place natural selection on differential reproductive success is off the table. That is, back to square one. 20 --> So, we have a known class of causes, competing with a class of causes that has no credible power to originate the sort of system in view. 21 --> But, the chance that the intelligence involved may be God -- notice how they begrudge the capital letter, revealing their hostility and bias for all to see -- is sufficient to call in the rhetoric orf strawmanisation, denigration and dismissal. In correction, let us note that the contrast is nature vs art, not nature vs the supernatural. The latter is injected for ideological reasons, and to cast an unjust accusation of dishonesty and hidden agendas of theocracy. 22 --> Of course, we have already seen that this is a resort to the rhetoric of turnabout accusation by motive mongering. (Cf the Weak Argument Correctives for a more detailed rebuttal.) 23 --> In this context we can easily enough see the real intent of accusation that the design inference is in disregard to the laws of reality. What is really meant is that to those who take materialism as an a priori, anything that challenges it is a denial of obvious reality. In short, we here see exposed a grand exercise in question-begging. 24 --> instead, let us restore science to integrity:

science at its best is an unfettered (but intellectually and ethically responsible) progressive pursuit and exploration of the truth about our world, based on observation, experiment, logical-mathematical analysis, and discussion among the informed.

It is clear that nothing else can restore the day and free science form ideological captivity to evolutionary materialist ideologues and linked fashionable progressivism. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

PS: And we still have not accounted for Stephen's sculpturally produced sand model of a 1959 Ford on undirected forces of chance plus necessity. (Moulding by being buried in an avalanche of cementitious material and solidifying into a mould, then somehow extracting the car or its remnants as rust] and replacing it it with sand then cracking the mould and exposing the sand sculpture car to view on a convenient beach, strikes me as a "logically possible but empirically utterly implausible just-so story.") kairosfocus

F/N: Re Petrushka, 317: "if you are a designer, which is faster and more economical: computing protein coding sequences or setting up a laboratory in which evolution computes them?" Here of course "evolution" is personified into a powerful computer-cum-programmer that computes solutions to otherwise intractable problems, via the magical poofery of quantum bits etc. The problem is that proteins [especially enzymes] are not mutated in some isolated lab, but would have to vary by forces of chance in an embryologically feasible organism with viable metabolic and cellular replication systems, and its variation would have to be coded for in relevant DNA strands fed through ribossomes. So, we begin to run into the by now familiar problem of getting to algorithms and associated functional data structures through the claimed power of chance. First, for original life, then for life forms on novel body plans. In both cases, we soon run well past the credible threshold of the observed cosmos' search resources. Meyer's remarks in his well-known PBSW article (which, contrary to Darwinista spin, passed proper peer review by "renowned scientists") are apt:

One way to estimate the amount of new CSI that appeared with the Cambrian animals is to count the number of new cell types that emerged with them (Valentine 1995:91-93) . . . the more complex animals that appeared in the Cambrian (e.g., arthropods) would have required fifty or more cell types . . . New cell types require many new and specialized proteins. New proteins, in turn, require new genetic information. Thus an increase in the number of cell types implies (at a minimum) a considerable increase in the amount of specified genetic information. Molecular biologists have recently estimated that a minimally complex single-celled organism would require between 318 and 562 kilobase pairs of DNA to produce the proteins necessary to maintain life (Koonin 2000). More complex single cells might require upward of a million base pairs. Yet to build the proteins necessary to sustain a complex arthropod such as a trilobite would require orders of magnitude more coding instructions. The genome size of a modern arthropod, the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster, is approximately 180 million base pairs (Gerhart & Kirschner 1997:121, Adams et al. 2000). Transitions from a single cell to colonies of cells to complex animals represent significant (and, in principle, measurable) increases in CSI . . . . In order to explain the origin of the Cambrian animals, one must account not only for new proteins and cell types, but also for the origin of new body plans . . . Mutations in genes that are expressed late in the development of an organism will not affect the body plan. Mutations expressed early in development, however, could conceivably produce significant morphological change (Arthur 1997:21) . . . [but] processes of development are tightly integrated spatially and temporally such that changes early in development will require a host of other coordinated changes in separate but functionally interrelated developmental processes downstream. For this reason, mutations will be much more likely to be deadly if they disrupt a functionally deeply-embedded structure such as a spinal column than if they affect more isolated anatomical features such as fingers (Kauffman 1995:200) . . .

Such issues cannot be brushed aside with a convenient metaphor that turns "evolution" into a computer-cum programmer. W@e know that intelligent programmers routinely produce linguistic, data structure and algorithmic items well past the FSCI threshold, but so far we have yet to learn of such functionally specific and complex information originating on undirected chance plus necessity in our direct observation. Perhaps Petrushka, Gaz and Acipenser et al could be so kind as to provide us some credible OBSERVED cases of such lucky noise in action? (After all if qubits are in effect quasi-infinitely capable as computers, such feats of chance plus necessity should be happening all around us, e.g. in the cans of soup in our friendly local supermarkets. OOL events, in short, SHOULD be a dime a dozen.) GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Dr Giem: An interesting point. You are right that it is quite evident that the central issue raised by Meyer in the video and book is being ducked and diverted, for 300+ posts now. It is clear that indeed evolutionary materialists commonly assume that living forms "must have" originated spontaneously through forces of chance and necessity, due to the Lewontinian a priorism already pointed out and corrected above. But, they are plainly consistently unable to account for the digital, code based, algorithmically functional specific information in the cell on observed patterns of forces of chance and necessity in whatever versions of Darwin's warm little pond are in favour on any given day. So, they resort to the appeal to logical possibilities as though that which is merely logically possible is empirically credible and probabilistically plausible. (Darwin's own remarks in Ch 6 on how logical possibility alone would be enough to preserve his just-so stories on the origin of the eagle's eye are a classic.) Thus, they show themselves in the grip of a question-begging metaphysical a priori imposed on the science and the hitherto unfettered process of inference to best current explanation on empirical evidence. That is itself a very important point for us to note as we explore the degree of warrant attaching to origins science theories and conclusions. Especially when such evolutionary materialists confidently assert that "evolution" is a fact comparable to gravity or the roundness of the earth. This is diagnostic, as the observed, extremely modest micro-evolutionary changes such as Bacterial resistance to drugs are well within the FSCI threshold, and have nothing to credibly say to the origins of the self-replicating and metabolic machinery in cell based life, or the origin of major body plans that have to be embryologically feasible, in the presumed or estimated deep, unobserved past. So, we are seeing a grand extrapolation that seems to be rooted in a priorism and often scants concerns on that which is a reasonable threshold for chance based forces to do on the gamut of our observed cosmos. (Onlookers, note the utterly studious silence of the otherwise prolific evolutionary materialism advocates above, on the peer-reviewed paper by Abel on the universal plausibility bound, which discusses the basis for the sort of probabilistic reasoning that is so often successfully used in statistical thermodynamics etc. For instance, it is such probabilities that are the grounds of confidence in the statistical form of the second law of thermodynamics. The selective hyperskepticism we saw above on inference form scope of config space to the relatively minimal search capacity of the observed cosmos are plainly specious.) Johnson's rebuke to such arbitrary a priorism imposed in the name of science, associated ideological attempts to redefine science away from pursuit of the truth about our world based on observational evidence, and manipulation of formal and popular science education, is well deserved. However, I do believe that Acipenser has (apparently inadvertently -- he probably thought it a knockout rhetorical blow) helped us resolve a legitimate point of concern. Namely, that when we apply signs of intelligence reasoning, we must be careful to always explicitly set this in the context of the explanatory filter as a generalised scientific framework for empirically grounded analysis. Specifically, we must be careful to enumerate and address observed chance and mechanical forces acting in the context of an object as first steps of reasoning, also being open to other forms of hitherto unrecognised natural regularities and/or stochastic patterns, before concluding that chance and necessity are unable to account for the observed patterns, objects or phenomena. Accordingly, I have clarified my remarks in the previously linked survey post on the inference to design form signs of intelligence, in key part as follows: ____________ >> . . . on our experience and observation, art is the product of intent. By contrast, natural occurrences are driven by (i) blind mechanical forces (e.g. a dropped heavy object falls) and/or by (ii) chance (e.g. fair dice tumble and settle to particular values effectively at random). So, the recognisably artificial (a) will not be credibly the product of observed blind chance and mechanical forces acting in its context, (b) will be specifically functional, and (c) it will be sufficiently complex that the functional configuration is not credibly the result of happenstance. Thus, in a reasonable context, functionally specified highly complex organisation is a recognisable sign of intentionally directed configuration. That is, of design. Therefore, we have at least one possible empirical sign of intelligent design. Given such a possible sign, we can now understand the key error in methodological naturalism. For, the “natural causes only” rule has the effect of implicitly imposing a philosophical -- specifically, materialistic -- conclusion on origins science studies before potentially observable facts can speak scientifically. But, science is widely respected precisely because it is seen as being based on freely -- and in significant part successfully -- seeking and discovering the truth about or world based on the objective balance of the evidence. (“Truth,” here, is understood more or less as Aristotle described it 2,300 years ago in Metaphysics 1011b: “. . . to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.”) So, the key danger of putting materialistic philosophical blinkers on science is that it can easily lead on to the practical establishment of materialistic ideology under false colours of “truth” or the closest practical approximation we can get to it . . . >> _______________ I trust this will make the point clearer and less evade-able. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

StephenB (#318), Don't be too hard on Acipenser. He's afraid of what conclusions might follow if he admits the obvious, and is grasping at every straw he can. For example, his sand casts (#310), while sounding naturalistic, beg the question. If one finds a cast of a clam, the cast itself may very well be the product of forces that do not directly involve intelligence. But the clam from which the cast is made might very well be the product of intelligence. If so, the process of making the cast required the product of intelligence. He, of course, doesn't see this because he thinks he has clams all figured out, and they didn't require intelligence. Well, when pushed, he would admit that he personally doesn't have it figured out, but science does, or will if given enough time. (That's faith in the efficacy of a particular view of science.) Of course, this doesn't begin to solve the problem of the 1959 Ford in sand. One might argue for a replacement of the Ford by sand by unguided forces. But the creation of the Ford was most definitely not the work of unguided forces. So unlike the clam, about which there might be some debate, the sand Ford most definitely involved intelligent design. (On the other hand, one could argue that they are alike in this way.) Of course, a comeback he could use is that we don't find sand casts of 1959 Fords outside the realm of human activity, so that it is a hypothetical. Then you can argue about hypotheticals, and the whole merry-go-round starts again. The problem is that Acipenser wants the argument to degenerate to this level. He is perfectly happy having the argument go around and around, sometimes with him being tripped up, and sometimes with you being tripped up, but never getting to the core of the argument. For there you have him on the science, and his only recourse is to use theological arguments, and he wants to avoid that at all costs. So you might try an indisputable non-hypothetical directly relevant approach. A. Intelligence exists. We may debate its precise makeup, causes, or whether it can be accounted for without residual by non-intelligent forces and entities, but it exists. The denial of that fact has certain unavoidable derogatory self-referential consequences. B. Intelligence can make, among other things, long strings of functionally specified complex DNA from inorganic precursors, without simply copying them physically (like using some kind of DNA polymerase). These strings are, as far as we know, necessary for life to exist and reproduce. C. There is no known process that does not involve intelligence that has been shown to plausibly be able to produce such strings of DNA, and no experimental evidence that a pathway to such strings exists. D. It is therefore reasonable to draw a fallible but evidence-based conclusion that intelligence was involved in the first occurrence of physical DNA strings long enough, complex enough, and accurate enough to function as the genetic substrate for life. Then let's see how Acipenser, or any of his fellows, argues against this logic. Paul Giem

---Acipenser: "However, there are natural mechanisms which could also produce that image." Thank you for acknowledging that you believe that naturalistic forces can produce the image of a 1959 Ford or a 1963 Corvette Sting Ray. I appreciate your honesty. Clearly, if wind, air, water, time, and erosion could accomplish such a task, then a design inference would be impossible. Indeed, given that framework, those same forces could produce Mount Rushmore or even perfect likenesses of you and me. I gather that you also believe that solely naturalistic forces could have produced the ten word sentence etched in the sand that I alluded to as my second example. ---"For example I participated in excavations at several green sand mines principally searching for sharks teeth. While we found more than a few sharks teeth we also found many many casts of clams and crocodile coprolites. ---"These were perfect casts of the originals and were quite fragile crumbling into a pile of sand grains if too much pressure were applied. The same process that made these casts could easily do the same thing with an automobile producing a perfect cast of the original which would persist long after the original is gone." Meaning no disrespect, but I cannot follow the process that you are alluding to. What naturalistic force or forces [wind, water, air, time, erosion etc.] is it that you think could have caused the sand to form into the sand image of the specified automobile? What does any of that have to do with animal fossils or other such artifacts or remains? StephenB

Again, why do you think that design menas only implementing a solution that one already knows in detail?

Because a good many people at this forum talk about things like front loading, even direct creation, or perhaps just nudging an atom at critical times. I'm trying to get a clear distinction between designing in the human sense, where you don't get a lot of opportunity to evolve skyscrapers or passenger planes, and evolving stuff. You speak of protein domains and vast desserts of non-functionality. I'm wondering how, specifically, a designer knows where the islands of functionality are hidden. I'm particularly interested in how a designer would find these islands. You assert that we are getting better at computing protein folds, but computation will never be as fast or efficient as the real thing. It can't be, because a folding protein is essentially a quantum computer. So if you are a designer, which is faster and more economical: computing protein coding sequences or setting up a laboratory in which evolution computes them? Petrushka

Beach stones are easily explained by beach forces

Interesting. Petrushka

F/N: That is, if you were to walk down a beach and see a sand sculpture in the shape of a beach stone, the usual rounded oval shape, what would you infer as its best explanation? Why? [Beach stones are easily explained by beach forces (or here beach and volcano forces), a collection of sand grains pushed together in the shape of such a stone are most definitely not.] kairosfocus

Petrushka: And, a sand sculpture [as opposed to mould] of such a stone would be best explained by what factors, why? GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Acipenser: Fossil casts are indeed interesting natural features, credibly explained by law and evidently fairly unusual circumstances. (Remember, though, the first two nodes of the explanatory filter: law and chance, i.e. if the circumstances lend themselves to an explanation on such circumstances the third node, design, will not be engaged. [That is why it is always important to engage the full design filter during an investigation.]) To amplify on the cases of immediate interest: when last did you see a natural circumstances, fossil sand cast of a '59 Ford or a '63 Corvette Stingray? Or, of a bust of Nefertiti? And of course, per SB's actual example, when last did we see such forming by carving by wind, rain, water and erosion on a beach? (NB: The volcanic ash moulds of victims of Vesuvius do not generally fit the criterion of sculptural precision [I found them surprisingly vague on outline], and they come in a context that amply shows their tragic but natural provenance.) That is, even if you could make the case that a sand cast fossil of an animal species is by itself functionally specific to the animal, where "function" here implies close resemblance to the presumed original animal or tree etc, and would on reduction to a nodes and arcs mesh exceed 1,000 bits [i,e would be complex in the relevant sense], we would still have already allocated the case to natural factors through the circumstances of the matter -- as you did in presenting the case as a possibility. (How did you know the case was a "natural" formation?) At most, then, you would have shown us a case where we need to be careful to engage the three-node filter in each case, to ensure that explanation on law and necessity have been specifically ruled out through absence of the relevant signs and circumstances of those factors. More centrally, the particular cases of interest (especially in the living cell) are digital and algorithmic or linguistic; as Gpuccio has underscored. (So, even if we could in no wise differentiate between a case of a fossil and a sculpture [and we have seen how the full filter would help us do so], the distinctive context of algorithmic or linguistic function would still obtain. Which is the particularly relevant context at the proper focus of this thread,and it is the one that after 300 posts, is still being dodged.) So, what would be a good, observationally based reason to hold that such linguistically and/or algorithmically functional information of 1,000 or more bits comes about by law and/or chance without intelligent guidance, on our direct observation, to address the inductive reliability issue? (There is an Internet full of cases on the known source of such dFSCI, to borrow GP's specific abbreviation.) Similarly, what would be a good, empirically directly observed, natural mechanism that can credibly account for the origin of codes, language and algorithms BEFORE cell based life came to be? (For, recall, self-replication is a condition of having a living cell. And, recall, we have a great many cases in point on the origin of such dFSCI by intelligence.) GEM of TKI kairosfocus

I wonder how many triangles it would take to skin a polished stone from a stream. Petrushka

"kairofocus: …”the sand sculpture fits a specification [cf. here on how accurate 3-d models (computer sculptures if you will) are built], will be quite complex (notice the number of triangles added to skin the mesh!) and can easily be discerned as fitting in the FSCI criterion as a sign of intelligence. (Just ask how many yes/no decisions have to be chained to make a good 3-d wireframe for your sand model.)" I have many sand casts (sculptures so to speak) of clams dated to a abotu 40 million years ago. These casts are great replicates of the original. How would ID go about discerning the specification of these naturally produced sculptures to the specification contained in one that were made today by humans? Acipenser

"StephenB: I didn’t ask you who sculpted the sand image of the 1959 Ford, so I don’t know why you continue answering a question I didn’t ask. —”Human(s) built the sand sculpture I appreciate that fact that you think you know who did the sculpting, but that is not the question on the table. Again, here is the question: Is it possible [within the bounds of reasonable probability] that naturalistic forces such as wind, air, water, erosion and time could form the sand image of a 1959 Ford." Stephen, you were inquiring as to the origins of the sand sculpture/image of a model of automobile. Given our knowledge of human art forms and known examples of that expression done in sand there is no need to puzzle over the source of the sculpture. However, there are natural mechanisms which could also produce that image. For example I participated in excavations at several green sand mines principally searching for sharks teeth. While we found more than a few sharks teeth we also found many many casts of clams and crocodile coprolites. These were perfect casts of the originals and were quite fragile crumbling into a pile of sand grains if too much pressure were applied. The same process that made these casts could easily do the same thing with an automobile producing a perfect cast of the original which would persist long after the original is gone. Acipenser

kairosfocus @152: ..."the sand sculpture fits a specification [cf. here on how accurate 3-d models (computer sculptures if you will) are built], will be quite complex (notice the number of triangles added to skin the mesh!) and can easily be discerned as fitting in the FSCI criterion as a sign of intelligence. (Just ask how many yes/no decisions have to be chained to make a good 3-d wireframe for your sand model.) ---"Such sand sculptures are quite plainly distinct from dune forms, sand ripples or beach forms shaped by natural forces of chance and mechanical necessity." This point is beautifully expressed and the words "plainly distinct" capture the essence of the observation. kairosfocus continues: "And, we routinely see them as made by intelligences, but not by blind forces of nature. Islands of specific function — the target, or at least “hot” zone — in a sea of non-function." So, not only do we perform legitimate design inferences, our conclusions lend themselves to scientific constructs and formal measurement. StephenB

Petrushka: Perhaps your son can invent a new molecule with really surprising properties. Chemists try to produce new molecules all the time. Why do you insist that one should know in advance the result? Intelligents experiments are continuously performed by intelligent scientists exactly to understand the laws of nature and the possible results. That's design all the way dow. Again, why do you think that design menas only implementing a solution that one already knows in detail? Only Dawkins seems to think that way. Are you Dawkins? :) Eben an artist experiments while creating a new work of art, and most times he does not know in advance what he will get in the end. gpuccio

---Gaz @257: "Can I have a go? [At answering my question to another blogger about the car] ---Gas @257: "Answer that one, and I’ll give you the rest of my answer on the car." Please decide on which response you would care to make since it it not possible to both address a question and refuse to address it at the same time. StephenB

(And of course to reject the first principles of right reason is at once to descend into absurdity. of course, in the real world, ever since 1905 it has been known that there are causal constraints on quantum phenomena. If there were not, they would not be amenable to law of any kind.) kairosfocus

A] Could naturalistic forces [such as wind, water, sand, erosion etc. ] have formed the image of a beat up 1959 Ford? [B] Suppose space explorers go to Mars and find the following symbols etched in the sand: “Pretrushka and Acipenser have both contracted a condition called designophobia.” Could naturalistic forces such as wind, water, and erosion have produced that sequence?” ---Gaz: "Can I have a go?" Sure. ---"The answer to A is that it depends on the fidelity of the “image”. Very often, humans – being creatures that have evolved to recognise and compare patterns -look at something entirely natural and say “that looks just like a [example: beat up 1959 Ford]. That’s where the phrase “methink it is like a weasel” comes from – the character (Hamlet, I believe) points out that the cloud looks like a weasel." No, sorry, a 1959 Ford is a definite form different from all other forms. ---"Answer to [B] is: it’s possible but incredibly unlikely that it was done naturally." So far, so good. ---"Most likely it’s either designed (i.e. someone wrote it from scratch) or it’s selected for. In the latter case, it’s quite possible that an entity saw wind-blown sand swirls making letters individually, froze them and collected them to put together to make the sentence." I am not sure about your last scenario and the attempt to inject biological paradigms into the mix, but basically you are right. According to the evidence, the sequence of written letters was most likely designed. You have just performed a classic design inference based on the evidence. ---"Foresnics often can tell how a drawer was was opened – e.g. finger prints on the handle will tell if the handle was pulled to open, and which hand or hands it was done with. The surrounding aspects of the crime scene will also tell if a tornado was involved: no tornado has ever opened a drawer without leaving other effects." You are starting to show signs of life. I didn't say that no other effects were not present, but never mind that because you are headed in the right direction and I don't want to disrupt your momentum. The point is to rule out naturalistic causes as a reasonble hypothesis and draw an inference to intelligent agency as the best explanation, which is exactly what you did. Excellent!!! The strongest argument, however, is not the open dresser drawers, but rather the open dresser drawers and the absence of the jewelry. Whether a tornado can open dresser drawers without causing other damage is problematic, just as you suggest, however, there is no question about that fact that tornados do not run off with jewelry. In any case, the point of the burglar/tornado connection is to point out that a formal design inference is based on observable data, meaning that, contrary to Darwinist claims, there is no apriori assumption of design prior to the observation of the evidence. ---"As far as your comments on cause and effects is concerned, I’m tired of telling you – you just don’t seem to learn – that the classical world we see is completely different to the quamntum world. In the former, cause and effect clearly apply: in the latter, it’s clear that sometimes they don’t." What you don't understand, and possibly never will, is that no amount of evidence can invalidate the principles of right reason just as no amount of evidence can invalidate the laws of mathematics. We do not interpret reason's rules and mathematics through evidence, we interpret evidence through reason's rules and mathematics. ---"You trying to extrapolate classical world effects to turn them into “laws” that apply generally, even at the quantum and cosmological level, shows that you aren’t thinking scientifically and using the evidence found at these other levels. You can forget your metaphysics: if the evidence says one thing and the metaphysics another, then its the metaphysics that’s wrong." You continue to misunderstand the relationship between the role of reason and the role of evidence. All evidence must be interpreted through metaphysical principles. You, for example, accept the false metaphysical principle that something can come from nothing and you interpret all evidence accordingly. I, on the other hand, interpret evidence based on the law of causality. Thus, for you things can come into existence without a cause. Accordingly, you cannot assure me that your suspension of the law of causality is limited to quantum events and no where else because you acknowledge no principle by which you could make that claim. If it can be suspended even once, why can it not be suspended again and again? You cannot answer that question. Can a concrete wall appear out of nowhere on the highway causing some poor driver to collide with it? You can only say that we have never seen it happen and, based on that evidence, it likely will not haappen, but you cannot assert with any reasonable confidence that it cannot happen. In fact, a concrete wall cannot come from nowhere because nothing can come from nowhere. A concrete wall will not come into existence without a cause because nothing can come into existence without a cause. For you, on the other hand, there is no non-negotiable principle of causality and therefore no standard for determining when and when causality will or will not apply. Thus, you and I both look at the same evidence but arrive at different conclusions based on our respective metaphysical orientations. Considering the current cosmological evidence, I acknowledge that space/time/and matter began in time and, using the principles of right reason, conclude that some agent had to bring it into existence. You consider the same evidence and yet, because you reject reason's principles, assume that the universe could bring itself into existence. By that same standard, you assume that mind can come from matter and the life can come from non-life. The difference in our points of view is not related to the evidence but is rather a reflection on the metaphysical principles that we bring to the table. I acknowledge the first principles of right reason; you do not. StephenB

GP: Pausing for a minute. Yes, many properties of water arise in more or less calculable ways from the constituents and their interactions. Never mind, water is quite a surprising substance in its behaviours, including a sort of semi-polymerisation that is a key to many really unusual but important behaviours. (Also,look up how many ices exist under different P-T regimes.) In that context, given the complexity of proteins, they too will have surprising properties - think prions -- and are a real Swiss army knife molecular family. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

---Acipenser: “StephenB: We have been discussing a sand formation. Can any combination of naturalistic forces [wind, water, erosion, time etc.] (meaning without the help of an intelligent agent) produce the specific model in question?” ---"Oh, a sand sculpture. I’ve already asnwered this question, Stephen." No, you have not. You have reframed the question in order to avoid answering it. ---"There is one and only one answer to this question. The sand sculpture of any make automobile (engine or not) is an artistic expression of humans." I didn't ask you who sculpted the sand image of the 1959 Ford, so I don't know why you continue answering a question I didn't ask. ---"Human(s) built the sand sculpture I appreciate that fact that you think you know who did the sculpting, but that is not the question on the table. Again, here is the question: Is it possible [within the bounds of reasonable probability] that naturalistic forces such as wind, air, water, erosion and time could form the sand image of a 1959 Ford. StephenB

I am not sure what is emerging here. Could you specify?

The problem is to deduce water and all its properties before you know water exists. Working backward doesn't count. The designer of first life must know that life is possible before it exists. Humans will never be in that situation. We have enought trouble with reverse engineering. Perhaps your son can invent a new molecule with really surprising properties. Petrushka

That’s why I believe in common descent.

Fine. I'll accept that we have no detailed history of the origin of protein domains. I won't try to dissuade you from believing they are the work of some invisible agent, working at unknown times, etc. For most of them them to have been present two billion years ago, about one new one would have to arise every million years or so. Petrushka

Gaz: <So, StephenB – was the weasel-shaped cloud designed? Answer that one, and I’ll give you the rest of my answer on the car. If I may intrude, I would state again that if we want detailed quantitative analysis, we should stick to dFSCI (digital functionally specified functional information). The principles of design detection are alawys the same, but analogic information and other-than-functional specifications create greater problems. So, why not stick to the simpler case? (also because that case is more than enough to treat biological information, which both in the genome and the proteome is of the dFSCI type). gpuccio

Petrushka: In fact, as more species are sequenced, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find examples of coding or regulatory sequences that are isolated by more than a couple of mutations from sequences found in other species. What an example of false reasoning! Protein superfamilies are isolated, and there are thousands of them. Obviously, the same protein with the same functions is passed form one species to another, and the differences in sequence will be caused mainly by neutral mutations, or maybe by some tweaking in different species. That's why I believe in common descent. So you have hundreds of myoglobims, slightly different one form the other, sometimes different enough, but they are always myoglobins. The folding is the same, the function is the same. If you have seen the paper about the "big bang theory" for proteins, which I linked some time ago, you can see how new protein domains appear, and then in time they "travel" thorugh their own functional spcae, bearing a variety of different proteins which have the same structure and function. But protein domains and superfamilies are isolated one from the other. Were you nor present in the long tghread about Axe's paper? gpuccio

Petrushka:

I will not that I have not fired a barrage. I have brought up approximately three questions for which I think ID should have a response. 1. How do you eliminate false positives from design detection? I’ve presented a number of scenarios, but haven’t seen the math. It appears to be intuitive. 2. How does the designer meet the challenge of large numbers — the same large numbers that presumably rule out chance? 3. How does the designer deduce emergent properties? Or the effects of small changes in a complex ecosystem?

To sum up: 1. By choosing an appropriate threshold of complexity for functionally specified strings. That rules out false positives, while false negatives remain. 2. Using intelligent methods, as I have argued, and therefore optimized search. 3. The designer can deduce, or more often infer, according to his previous knowledge. And he can also use a trial and error method. gpuccio

Petruahka: It’s going to run into the problem of big numbers rather rapidly, unless you cheat and do it with evolution. Not true. Protein top7 was calculated. Folding can be calculated. Take a simple case: deduce the properties of water from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen. Or find someone who knows how to do it. I think that many properties of water can be calculated from the laws of physics. I am not a physicist, but my son, who is, agrees with that. It can be true that some aspects can defy present computational power, or present knowledge, but most are not. The properties of water depend on the properties of the molecule. the structure of the molecule is known, and depends on the properties of its constituents, on how the electron orbitals are formed, and so on. I am not sure what is emerging here. Could you specify? gpuccio

Of course they can be solved through evolution. I asked you how you would solve a problem and your answer was directed evolution. Yes, that's correct. And so? Directed evolution is design. gpuccio

Reproductive advantage must be defined in some environment. In my lab model, the lab system is the environment. So, the model is consistent. If you want to do the experiment in the open air, and in geological times, be my guest.

Already in progress. Petrushka

Folding can be computed. Biochemical binding can be understood and computed. It’s not easy, but it can be done.

It's going to run into the problem of big numbers rather rapidly, unless you cheat and do it with evolution.

Emergent properties like those ones (if they are emergent properties, I really can’t undersatnd the meaning of that concept in any clear-cut sense) can be deduced.

Take a simple case: deduce the properties of water from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen. Or find someone who knows how to do it. A related problem is that of mathematical complexity, the rapid divergence of system behavior starting from small changes. Petrushka

Petrushka: Reproductive advantage must be defined in some environment. In my lab model, the lab system is the environment. So, the model is consistent. If you want to do the experiment in the open air, and in geological times, be my guest. gpuccio

Petrushka: If this is true, then one ought to be able to distinguish samples of artificially bred animals from those that exist without human intervention. Isn’t that what design detection is about, separating things that would not exist without intelligent intervention, from those that exist without intervention? Ahh! Again with bred animals. Let's go back to dFSCI. I have told you many times that the laws of design detection are always the same, but that if you want a rigorous, easy and quantitative analysis it is better to stick to digictal functional information. Dog breeding "could" be analyzed, but it is difficult to do that. But I think that protein information is a better model, and nearer to the true problem, don't you agree? So, very simple: a string of 500 - 1000 bits, of pseudo-random nature (not significantly compressible), which has a recognizable and measurable function encoded in the whole string, for which no credible necessity model is known, and for which the ratio "target functional space / search space" is lower than some conventional, appropriate threshold (defined according to the empirical context: for biological strings, I would suggest something like 10^-50, just to stay on the safe side) is a designed object. There are no false positives. There are no counter-examples to that. gpuccio

There are some specifical problems, especially mathemathical, which cannot be solved algorithmically in a finite time, but biological problems are not like that. Protein engineers are out there, working: they are not planning suicide because their work is doomed to failure. Please, don’t repeat any more this silly concept.

Of course they can be solved through evolution. I asked you how you would solve a problem and your answer was directed evolution. Petrushka

Petrushka: How does a designer calculate the effects of changing a sequence that codes for a protein? First: through a top down process: protein top7 is an example. Protein folding can be computed: it's long, it's complex, but it can be done. Second: through a bottom up process: the Szostac way. That's probably easier, at least for now. Is it even possible to design from first principles? I’m not aware that anyone in the field of physics or chemistry thinks that emergent properties can be deduced. Folding can be computed. Biochemical binding can be understood and computed. It's not easy, but it can be done. Emergent properties like those ones (if they are emergent properties, I really can't undersatnd the meaning of that concept in any clear-cut sense) can be deduced. The challenge for design advocates is to demonstrate that it is possible to deduce emergent properties. We know that cut and try works. Inefficiently, but it works. You are just saying that top down methods cannot solve all problems. I don't agree for biological problems, but even if that were the case, you are forgetting that bottom up methods are design methods too. You make a fundamentsl mistake: you identify design with top down, deductive methods. That's simply not true. Top down methods are only a type of design, and moreover they are not wholly deductive: inferential reasoning is always important in all human empirical knowledge. And anyway, bottom up designs are designs just the same. You are really epistemologically confused. Is that what darwinism makes to human methodology? gpuccio

As far as petrushka falsely claiming (once again though he has been corrected before) that the flagellum is proof of evolution: The flagellum has steadfastly resisted all attempts to elucidate its plausible origination by Darwinian processes, much less has anyone ever actually evolved a flagellum from scratch in the laboratory; Genetic Entropy Refutation of Nick Matzke's TTSS (type III secretion system) to Flagellum Evolutionary Narrative: Excerpt: Comparative genomic analysis show that flagellar genes have been differentially lost in endosymbiotic bacteria of insects. Only proteins involved in protein export within the flagella assembly pathway (type III secretion system and the basal-body) have been kept... http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/msn153v1 "One fact in favour of the flagellum-first view is that bacteria would have needed propulsion before they needed T3SSs, which are used to attack cells that evolved later than bacteria. Also, flagella are found in a more diverse range of bacterial species than T3SSs. ‘The most parsimonious explanation is that the T3SS arose later," Howard Ochman - Biochemist - New Scientist (Feb 16, 2008) Michael Behe on Falsifying Intelligent Design - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8jXXJN4o_A Genetic analysis of coordinate flagellar and type III - Scott Minnich and Stephen Meyer Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity. In all irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering played a role the origin of the system. http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?id=389 STILL SPINNING JUST FINE: A RESPONSE TO KEN MILLER - William Dembski Excerpt: "Darwin's theory, without which nothing in biology is supposed to make sense, in fact offers no insight into how the flagellum arose." http://www.designinference.com/documents/2003.02.Miller_Response.htm Bacterial Flagella: A Paradigm for Design – Scott Minnich – Video http://www.vimeo.com/9032112 Flagellum - Sean D. Pitman, M.D. http://www.detectingdesign.com/flagellum.html bornagain77

It seems that petrushka is very selective of exactly which evidence he will consider. For example he considers sequence similarity to be a slam dunk for Darwinism yet neglects to mention that no one has ever actually observed any protein mutating amino acid by amino acid into another protein of a different function: “Mutations are rare phenomena, and a simultaneous change of even two amino acid residues in one protein is totally unlikely. One could think, for instance, that by constantly changing amino acids one by one, it will eventually be possible to change the entire sequence substantially… These minor changes, however, are bound to eventually result in a situation in which the enzyme has ceased to perform its previous function but has not yet begun its ‘new duties’. It is at this point it will be destroyed - along with the organism carrying it.” Maxim D. Frank-Kamenetski, Unraveling DNA, 1997, p. 72. (Professor at Brown U. Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering) "A problem with the evolution of proteins having new shapes is that proteins are highly constrained, and producing a functional protein from a functional protein having a significantly different shape would typically require many mutations of the gene producing the protein. All the proteins produced during this transition would not be functional, that is, they would not be beneficial to the organism, or possibly they would still have their original function but not confer any advantage to the organism. It turns out that this scenario has severe mathematical problems that call the theory of evolution into question. Unless these problems can be overcome, the theory of evolution is in trouble." Problems in Protein Evolution: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/blocked.html Nor has petrushka mentioned the severe constraints placed on proteins gradually evolving: Extreme functional sensitivity to conservative amino acid changes on enzyme exteriors - Doug Axe Excerpt: Contrary to the prevalent view, then, enzyme function places severe constraints on residue identities at positions showing evolutionary variability, and at exterior non-active-site positions, in particular. http://nsmserver2.fullerton.edu/departments/chemistry/evolution_creation/web/AxeProteinEvolution.pdf This following paper, and audio interview, shows that there is a severe "fitness cost" for cells to carry "transitional" proteins that have not achieved full functionality yet: Reductive Evolution Can Prevent Populations from Taking Simple Adaptive Paths to High Fitness - May 2010 Excerpt: Despite the theoretical existence of this short adaptive path to high fitness, multiple independent lines grown in tryptophan-limiting liquid culture failed to take it. Instead, cells consistently acquired mutations that reduced expression of the double-mutant trpA gene. Our results show that competition between reductive and constructive paths may significantly decrease the likelihood that a particular constructive path will be taken. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2010.2 In fact, the Ribosome, which makes the myriad of different, yet specific, types of proteins found in life, is found to be severely intolerant to any "random mutations" occurring to proteins. The Ribosome: Perfectionist Protein-maker Trashes Errors Excerpt: The enzyme machine that translates a cell's DNA code into the proteins of life is nothing if not an editorial perfectionist...the ribosome exerts far tighter quality control than anyone ever suspected over its precious protein products... To their further surprise, the ribosome lets go of error-laden proteins 10,000 times faster than it would normally release error-free proteins, a rate of destruction that Green says is "shocking" and reveals just how much of a stickler the ribosome is about high-fidelity protein synthesis. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090107134529.htm nor did petrushka mention that, much like words in the English language, similar sequences of amino acids (similar to words that are spelled, or sound, the same way) can have completely different functions (meanings): A shining case in point being this: Kangaroo genes close to humans Excerpt: Australia's kangaroos are genetically similar to humans,,, "There are a few differences, we have a few more of this, a few less of that, but they are the same genes and a lot of them are in the same order," ,,,"We thought they'd be completely scrambled, but they're not. There is great chunks of the human genome which is sitting right there in the kangaroo genome," http://www.reuters.com/article/science%20News/idUSTRE4AH1P020081118 So petrushka should kangaroos be placed before or after primates in the cartoon drawings of man's supposed evolution??? to drive the point home down to level of proteins though (that similar sequences DO NOT establish functional, nor morphological relationship) Human Genes: Alternative Splicing (For Proteins) Far More Common Than Thought: Excerpt: two different forms of the same protein, known as isoforms, can have different, even completely opposite functions. For example, one protein may activate cell death pathways while its close relative promotes cell survival. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081102134623.htm As well it seems that petrushka failed to mention the over 1000 ORFan genes found that are completely unique to humans: This following site has a brief discussion on the biased methodology of the ORFan study: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/proteins-fold-as-darwin-crumbles/#comment-358505 As well petrushka seems to labor under the illusion that sequence similarity, when applied in a consistent manner, (As unbiased science would dictate it be done), supports his meta-narrative: "Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life," New Scientist (January 21, 2009) Excerpt: Even among higher organisms, “the problem was that different genes told contradictory evolutionary stories,”,,,“despite the amount of data and breadth of taxa analyzed, relationships among most [animal] phyla remained unresolved.” ,,,,Carl Woese, a pioneer of evolutionary molecular systematics, observed that these problems extend well beyond the base of the tree of life: “Phylogenetic incongruities [conflicts] can be seen everywhere in the universal tree, from its root to the major branchings within and among the various taxa to the makeup of the primary groupings themselves.”,,, “We’ve just annihilated the (Darwin's) tree of life.” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/05/a_primer_on_the_tree_of_life_p_1.html#more bornagain77

Petrushka: ID rests on a foundation of big numbers and huge configuration space. But big numbers are a problem for designers. No one has explained how designers get around the problem. That's false. Thats' false. Thats' false. Designers do not work through random search, but through intelligent optimized search. They can both profit of their understanding of nature, of laws, os search spaces, and use random search in optimized ways. They can do a lot of things which RV + NS cannot do. How can you deny that? Are you blind? There are some specifical problems, especially mathemathical, which cannot be solved algorithmically in a finite time, but biological problems are not like that. Protein engineers are out there, working: they are not planning suicide because their work is doomed to failure. Please, don't repeat any more this silly concept. gpuccio

I could start a process of hypermutation on that protein, possibly after having duplicated it (targeted hypermutation), and periodically measure the function I need..</blockquote. In other words, you would use evolution. Just improve it a bit. But the question is about reproductive advantage, not reproductive speed. Reproductive advantage includes survival of the population in a dynamic environment and in an ecosystem that includes preditors that are also jockeying for reproductive advantage.

Petrushka

"StephenB: We have been discussing a sand formation. Can any combination of naturalistic forces [wind, water, erosion, time etc.] (meaning without the help of an intelligent agent) produce the specific model in question?" Oh, a sand sculpture. I've already asnwered this question, Stephen. There is one and only one answer to this question. The sand sculpture of any make automobile (engine or not) is an artistic expression of humans. Human(s) built the sand sculpture. Acipenser

That is, we see here an irreducibly complex set of core components that must all be present in a properly organised fashion for a successful self-replicating machine to exist.

Just a quick question. Does Spiegelman's Monster qualify? Petrushka

Petrushka: Wow, what an activity during the night! (my night, at least). I'll try to catch up... Suppose you are a designer and your boss says to increase the reproductive advantage of model 4573-A-23. What do you do? There are many possibilities. First of all I would consider what I know of the existing model. Than I would perform an analysis of the pros and cons of what already is there. Than I would device some possible ameliorations, based on my knowledgde of basic science and on the observed results os what already exists. Then I would try to implement some definite positive variation. Let's imagine that for that variation I need some radical modification of an existing protein to nobtain a new function. I could start a process of hypermutation on that protein, possibly after having duplicated it (targeted hypermutation), and periodically measure the function I need, promoting the mutations which exhibit a higher level of function. Something similar to what Szostac did, and other protein engineers do. But it is imnportant that I have a plan in mind for the new protein and the new function. That plan should include integration of the new function with what already exists. And if I work well, my boss will be satisfied. gpuccio

PS: Goal-post shifting! Really now. every scientific endeavour is subject to adjustment or correction in light of further evidence.

. I appreciate your comments on the barrage of objections and the requirement of science to modify hypotheses based on evidence. Good points for any debate. Petrushka

PS: Goal-post shifting! Really now. every scientific endeavour is subject to adjustment or correction in light of further evidence. Solutions we do have in hand are not obviated by problems we have not yet solved -- demanding full daylight instead of using candlelight to do what we can in the meanwhile will not do. And so on, we are seeing recirculated objections that have already been adequately answered [e.g. on alleged false positives -- while the real case is being ignored again and again . . . ], yet another case of refusing to read and take seriously what is right in front of the relevant darwinist advocates. Selective hypersketpicism in short. kairosfocus

Onlookers: Back for a moment. First it is plain that Petrushka refuses to simply read the discussion surrounding Fig I.1 (and the following two figures), which provide a discussion on the reason for FSCI [and linked organisation] as a reliable empirical sign of design. WITHOUT THAT SORT OF GIVE AND TAKE, A REASONED DISCUSSION IS NOT POSSIBLE. This is an impasse, and it is occasioned by refusal of evolutionary materialist advocates to be reasonable. As for the barrage of objections to the work of Behe, there is a whole universe of exchanges on the topic, and the balance is that the concept of irreducible complexity is plainly valid and indeed a commonplace of technology: we usually have parts in machines because they do a necessary job, and jointly achieve the overall core function. Objections on co-optation typically fail to address the issue of co-ordination and mutual adaptation of parts to work together successfully. They don't begin to touch on the issue of automatic self-assembly in living organisms, and they don't ever deal with the root IC question of all: self-replication rests on a cluster of hard and soft ware components that are the premise for being able to metabolise AND replicate the metabolising entity. For, a von Neumann replicator (as has already been pointed out but pointedly and studiously ignored) requires:

(i) an underlying storable code to record the required information to create not only (a) the primary functional machine [[here, a Turing-type “universal computer”] but also (b) the self-replicating facility; and, that (c) can express step by step finite procedures for using the facility; (ii) a coded blueprint/tape record of such specifications and (explicit or implicit) instructions, together with (iii) a tape reader [[called “the constructor” by von Neumann] that reads and interprets the coded specifications and associated instructions; thus controlling: (iv) position-arm implementing machines with “tool tips” controlled by the tape reader and used to carry out the action-steps for the specified replication (including replication of the constructor itself); backed up by (v) either: (1) a pre-existing reservoir of required parts and energy sources, or (2) associated “metabolic” machines carrying out activities that as a part of their function, can provide required specific materials/parts and forms of energy for the replication facility, by using the generic resources in the surrounding environment.

Note, parts (ii), (iii) and (iv) are each necessary for and together are jointly sufficient to implement a self-replicating machine with an integral metabolic capacity required as well. That is, we see here an irreducibly complex set of core components that must all be present in a properly organised fashion for a successful self-replicating machine to exist. [[Take just one core part out, and self-replicating functionality ceases: the self-replicating machine is irreducibly complex (IC).]. This irreducible complexity is compounded by the requirement (i) for codes, requiring organised symbols and rules to specify both steps to take and formats for storing information, and (v) for appropriate material resources and energy sources. Immediately, we are looking at islands of organised function for both the machinery and the information in the wider sea of possible (but mostly non-functional) configurations. In short, outside such functionally specific -- thus, isolated -- information-rich target zones, want of correct components and/or of proper organisation and/or co-ordination will block function from emerging or being sustained across time from generation to generation. So, once the set of possible configurations is large enough and the islands of function are credibly sufficiently specific/isolated, it is unreasonable to expect such function to arise from chance, or from chance circumstances driving blind natural forces under the known laws of nature. Further, let us consider a tape of 1,000 bits (= 125 bytes), which is plainly grossly insufficient to specify the parts and instructions for a von Neumann replicator. However, the number of possible configurations of 1,000 bits is 1.07 * 10^301, more than ten times the square of the 10^150 states the 10^80 atoms of our observed universe would take up across a reasonable estimate of its lifespan. So, viewing our observed universe as a search device, it would scan less than 1 in 10^150th part of even so “small” a configuration space. That is, it would not carry out a credible “search” for islands of function, making such islands sufficiently isolated to be beyond the reasonable reach of a blind search. The Darwinian tree of life has no credible root. And since major body plan innovasions require upwards of 10 MB of new DNA bases, and coordinated functional integration that is embryologically feasible, there is no credible mechanism for the major branches as well. This is joined by the persistent general absence of links for such body plan innovations in the fossil record, when we should stumble across them every time we go out the front door. In short there is something rather rotten in the state of Darwinland. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

I will not that I have not fired a barrage. I have brought up approximately three questions for which I think ID should have a response. 1. How do you eliminate false positives from design detection? I've presented a number of scenarios, but haven't seen the math. It appears to be intuitive. 2. How does the designer meet the challenge of large numbers -- the same large numbers that presumably rule out chance? 3. How does the designer deduce emergent properties? Or the effects of small changes in a complex ecosystem? Petrushka

The real false positive on the specific case of the blood clotting cascade was the claimed dismissal. (As I recall, the point that has the irreducible core was AFTER the point that was highlighted in the attempted rebuttal, look it up.)

That's called moving the goalposts. Where are you going to move the goalposts when further subsets of clotting proteins are found? Petrushka

PS: One must beware the fallacy of the barrage of objections.

Good point. Petrushka

With the flagellum, the TTSS, the claimed antecedent that was to have been co-opted and augmented, tu4rns out to be derivative.

Perhaps, but derivitave of what? There are dozens of cilia and partial flagella employing many different subsets of the E.coli proteins. Many of the proteins are used in other organisms for purposes other than locomotion. Petrushka

PS: One must beware the fallacy of the barrage of objections. Issues in science are not like ships that can be blown up and sunk by a lucky shot. And when so many fallacies of distractive irrelevance are being committed it points to a great weakness on the central matter on the part of the evolutionary materialism advocates. It is obvious that hey cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that the question of empirically reliable signs of intelligence in action is a valid scientific question, and one that has significant import for those of us who wish to restore science to its proper course as an unfettered pursuit of the truth about our world based on empirical evidence and uncensored reasoned analysis. kairosfocus

As to the claim that we are ignoring relevant cases, evidently Petrushka has yet to examine Fig. I.1 in the repeatedly linked before making adverse comments.

I seem to be unable to find the generalized method for distinguishing art from natural objects. Is there some math involved, or is it, "I know it when I see it"? I assume you have taken into account the fact that most human produced art is not photographically representational. Petrushka

Petrushka: The real false positive on the specific case of the blood clotting cascade was the claimed dismissal. (As I recall, the point that has the irreducible core was AFTER the point that was highlighted in the attempted rebuttal, look it up.) In any case, had this been a successful objection, it would only have meant that Behe was in error on a particular case. It does not overturn the principle that IC is possible and evidently present in many, many biologically relevant cases. I start giving examples by citing the digital system required for cell replication, i.e right at the root of the tree of life. If this one cannot be solved, there is no basis for OOL on evolutionary materialistic premises, and the whole grand claim of origin of biodiveristy on chance + necessity alone is moot. With the flagellum, the TTSS, the claimed antecedent that was to have been co-opted and augmented, tu4rns out to be derivative. Sequence similarity of proteins of course fails to address the need to assemble and coordinate a functionally specific complex organised entity -- which BTW self-assembles -- by co-opting disparate parts. Such suggestions only tell those who have had to design and develop engineered systems that their proposers have little or no real world engineering experience. Even so simple a composite entity as a nut and bolt has key subtleties in it. Enough for now . . . GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Petrushka: We have clear historical antecedents to see that it is legitimately scientific to develop theories in absence of complete knowledge on related issues and questions. (Indeed, this is the precise context in which Newton said that he feigns no hypotheses.) Furthermore, we see from major incidents in the history of science that the most effective strategy for the advance of science is to move cumulatively, starting from what we can learn and infer on what we know now in a limited area, then adding future developments as they occur. To object to doing business by candlelight because daylight is not available is obviously counterproductive. (Maybe I need to point out how my physics profs would talk about the story of the drunk encountering another searching under a streetlight for something. My contacts. After helping for a time without success, the question is: are you sure you lost the lenses here? Nope, I lost them over there in the dark, but this is where the light is. Often in physics, simplified models are what we have to use and they give enough help to begin to at least understand the problem.) So, the latest lead distraction and objection is plainly selectively hyperskeptical. Going beyond that, we have a specific case in view, that causal factors are known to trace to one or more of chance, necessity and design, with relevant characteristic signs and patterns. We have specific signs of design in view, in particular, functionally specific, complex information. There are literally millions of test cases that show how it is in fact a characteristic of design where we can independently observe that the case is indeed design in action. There are no clear counter-instances, and the latest one being proffered, fails because the images that are/were falsely inferred are not specific enough. (And in any case we now have an implied acceptance that the criterion is subject to empirical testing [a key scientific virtue], not that that has been acknowledged.) As to the claim that we are ignoring relevant cases, evidently Petrushka has yet to examine Fig. I.1 in the repeatedly linked before making adverse comments. This does not speak well of his approach. going on, we now meet the claim that something is excessively complex and so cannot have been designed. In actuality, we see that the fine-tuned physics of the observed cosmos -- about as complex a material object as we can find -- shows patterns of functionally specific complex organisation and related information. On these grounds, an inference from sign to signified is possible, and design is a serious option for cosmology. And, again, we find nowhere the faintest trace of a serious coming to grips with the many signs of design in the living cell, in light of the discovery of discrete state [= digital] coded information storage in data structures, used to effect algorithmic assembly processes with halting, using molecular nanomachines that are themselves assembled through the system, and coupled to a metabolising automaton that interacts with its environment, taking in raw materials and energy to achieve its processes. What is more the self replicating facility that uses these entities is a necessary condition for life to emerge and for any possibility of natural selection on differential reproductive success. Worse,t he entity is plainly irreducibly complex, as without any of the key components, or with derangement of functional integration and synchronisation, function collapses. So, codes, language, algorithms, digital information processing in integrated systems etc -- all which we know are produced by intelligences, and which in every case where we do observe the origin, come form such intelligence, in a context of overwhelming configuration space challenges to chance plus necessity on the gamut of the observed cosmos [i.e. blind chance plus necessity are NOT the credible key causal factors] -- long precede man. Finally but one, of course evolutionary algorithms are designed, developed, tested and implemented by intelligent designers, using intelligently designed machines. We must also never overlook the key issue with such hill-climbing by differential success of modest variation: the islands of function in which one may climb to hilltops of optimal performance, must first be found in the sea of non-functional configurations, starting in the equivalent of Darwin's warm little pond. In short, major questions are being begged by the evolutionary materialism advocates, and we are seeing all sorts of fallacies of irrelevancy, again and again. No prizes for guessing why. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Also in the realm of false positives are the cases of the blood clotting system and the flagellum, which on investigation are neither irreducible nor isolated in sequence space. In fact, as more species are sequenced, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find examples of coding or regulatory sequences that are isolated by more than a couple of mutations from sequences found in other species. Petrushka

In every case he cites the claimed false positive holds for an entity well below the 1,000 bit capacity threshold, or is not particularly specific

You ignored the cases of stone faces, stone balls, peacocks and others, where you have full access to the object. Nor did anyone respond in any serious way to the question of distinguishing a fossil from a fake, without reference to the history of the object. Remember that ID seems to be a special case of forensics in which one is forbidden to discuss the attributes of the intelligent agent or the possible methods of the agent. Petrushka

We know that designers are able to use intelligence and imagination to surmount challenges, using heuristics and experience as well as knowledge and analysis.

I didn't say it couldn't be done. I asked how it could be done. It's a real problem. Show me the solution. Mathematical complexity is a simple fact of life. It's why we can't forcast the weather in detail for anything more than a few hours. Days under the best conditions. The inability to deduce emergent properties is a fact of physics and chemistry. As far as we know, these problems are intractable. No one has suggested that they can ever be solved. So what you are left with is evolution and its gaps, and design, which appears to be impossible, even in principle. Of course you could design using evolution. Evolutionary algorithms are very powerful. Petrushka

Head not working right this AM, 40. kairosfocus

Correction: 15 - 20 pixels kairosfocus

PPS: It should be noted that, because they are so information-dense, images require well over 125 bytes of information to be sufficiently specific to be relevant. 125 bytes in a 3-colour, 24 bits per pixel [8-bit RGB] image would be about 5 pixels worth. kairosfocus

PWS: Petrushka now wants to assert that the design inference is prone to false positives. In every case he cites the claimed false positive holds for an entity well below the 1,000 bit capacity threshold, or is not particularly specific (i.e is like the case of seeing a face or a weasel in a cloud) and/or is an artifact. E.g. the Mars face was produced by the camera and digital processing equipment; once resolution went up, the vague face vanished. Similarly, the canals seen on Mars in early days vanished on improved resolution, i.e. the phenomenon was insufficiently specific. Again, an examination of the contrast shown in Fig I.1 as linked just now will help resolve the matter. Moreover,the real issue at the heart of this thread, the observed and partly elucidated discrete state algorithmic, coded information system in the living cell is avoided like the plague. No prizes for guessing why, and for guessing what ideological commitment drives the sort of desperation we are seeing. kairosfocus

kairosfocus: Love the Newton reference above. As usual, you provide a profound and straightforward - and complete - rebuttal and analysis. The anti-ID proponents are simply fully committed to defending their materialist ideology, which prevents them, IMO, from accepting simple, self-evident premises and following the argument to a simple, rational conclusion - which is why they obfuscate and avoid the direct thought-experiment arguments. Humans have ID and employ it to generate lineages of biological features that cannot be accounted for via current evolutionary theory; current evolutionary theory doesn't allow artificial selection, or deliberate, teleological transfer of genetic material - in fact these have been declared "non-scientific" as potential contributors to evolutionary theory. How then can evolutionary theory be a complete or sufficient set of explanatory models when it comes to describing how life evolves over time? Evolutionary theorists have deliberated omitted by rule a commodity that is known to have contributed to it for thousands of years - the intelligent design of humans in the form of selective breeding and direct genetic manipulation. It is inescapable logic that the teleological designs and manipulations of human ID must be part of evolutionary theory, and must be scientific, or else evolutionary theory is doomed to inaccuracy and incompleteness. Imagine in any other science if ideology prevented known, empirical facts from gaining entrance into the explanatory models ... wait, we don't have to imagine; history is full of just such occurrences, and in one particular case, the role of the church is being played by the materialist scientific mainstream, and the role of Galileo is being played by ID proponents. William J. Murray

Onlookers: The distractions continue, here Petrushka:

ID rests on a foundation of big numbers and huge configuration spaces. But big numbers are a problem for designers. No one has explained how designers get around the problem. How does a designer calculate the effects of changing a sequence that codes for a protein?

We know that designers are able to use intelligence and imagination to surmount challenges, using heuristics and experience as well as knowledge and analysis. That is as commonplace as posts in this blog thread, and it is as culturally and economically important as the discipline of engineering. (And TRIZ has already been linked and remarked on. That is P has failed to read and ensure his understansding before commenting adversely.) Similarly, when Newton deduced the law of Gravitation, no-one understood how it worked. The same held for any number of major scientific discoveries. That is we see a selectively hyperskeptical dismissal. Going beyond that Petrushka again tries to change the subject. Since he knows we do not fully understand protein folding, he points to a notoriously hard and unsolved problem, on the pretence that this suffices to dismiss a far simpler one where we have a large body of evidence that supports the contention that FSCI is a reliable sign of design. He needs to go back to 251 and look at how Newton saw science as making cumulative progress. To refuse to use the light of the candle we do have, because we do not have full daylight is no excuse. (And, lest I be accused of plagiarism in the mad rush to indict design thinkers with any handy accusation, that is from Locke in his introduction to his Essay on Human Understanding.) GEM of TKI kairosfocus

The third problem that I don't see being address is the problem of false positives. The world is full of bad inferences. Throughout human history people have attributed intelligence to natural phenomena. Lightening, earthquakes, volcanoes, problems with crops and fertility. People have invented countless gods and demiurges to account for these phenomena. One can easily invent hypothetical cases of sand Corvettes, but there is no need to invent imaginary cases. History is full of real cases. Take a real case and do the math. Show how application of design detection principles could unambiguously distinguish between natural objects and objects that could not exist without intelligent intervention. I've mentioned several candidates. The Martian face, the Martian glass worms, the Martian trees, any of a number of megalithic objects, such as stone faces or stone balls, Alphabet characters occurring on living things. Pick any one of these and do the math. Demonstrate how design detection can avoid false positives without reference to the history of the object. Petrushka

PS: Gaz then thrashes on about quantum level phenomena being different from lab scale ones etc. Gaz, is an ordinary drawer in an ordinary house subject to significant quantum effects, or are they not in the zone where there is a convergence between the two per the correspondence principle and the known reliability of Newtonian dynamics at that scale? And, do such effects happen without causes in our observation? Moreover, you are trying to imply that quantum effects happen without causes, i.e your plain intent is to deny and dismiss causality. FYI, Gaz, causes act in two logical forms: sufficient and necessary ones. When sufficient factors are present an effect WILL happen. When necessary ones are absent, it cannot. When we look at quantum phenomena, there are abundant necessary factors involved, but we have reason to believe we do not know the sufficient ones, so we report on a stochastic pattern, often with hard upper or lower limits, e.g. absent enough energy int he photon, no photoelectrons will be emitted, no matter how intense the light; a key observation in establishing Q-th and gaining Einstein his Nobel Prize. Quantum effects, in short, are not a-causal. Rhe distractions and distorrtions fail, again. Let us get back to basics: can you identify a clear case where we directly know the cause and functionally specific complex information [1,000 or more bits capacity] is a result of blind chance and mechanical necessity? kairosfocus

The design advocates seem stuck on sand models of cars, but refuse to tackle real-world problems of design detection. We know because we have historical documents, that most pedigreed animals are the result of selective breeding by humans. At least a few ID advocates on this thread have argued that artificial of "intelligent" selection is conceptually quite different (more efficient) than natural selection. If this is true, then one ought to be able to distinguish samples of artificially bred animals from those that exist without human intervention. Isn't that what design detection is about, separating things that would not exist without intelligent intervention, from those that exist without intervention? Petrushka

Lots of words being written, but I see no one addressing any of the real problems with ID as a conjecture. ID rests on a foundation of big numbers and huge configuration spaces. But big numbers are a problem for designers. No one has explained how designers get around the problem. How does a designer calculate the effects of changing a sequence that codes for a protein? Is it even possible to design from first principles? I'm not aware that anyone in the field of physics or chemistry thinks that emergent properties can be deduced. Even in the simple case of deducing the properties of water from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen. The challenge for design advocates is to demonstrate that it is possible to deduce emergent properties. We know that cut and try works. Inefficiently, but it works. Petrushka

Onlookers: Gaz, 257, of course is busily not addressing the substance of discussions of Figs I.1 - 3 here (as has been repeatedly pointed out), on high-fidelity images vs the commonly encountered natural phenomena of imaginative resemblance that the cloud looking vaguely like a weasel exemplifies. (If one were to see a cloud with a high precision, accurate weasel image, one would strongly infer to design; of course, e.g. some sort of hologram. [Unless, one were inclined to infer to a ghost instead, a very different type of inference. Thus, we easily see the difference between nature vs art and nature vs the supernatural.]) Unsurprisingly, a high fidelity image exhibits FSCI, as can be determined form a mesh of controlled points and arcs joining them to create a faceted surface. (Cf already linked detailed discussion here. Notice the role played by a triangular mesh with up to six million facets.) So, we again see the now familiar pattern of distraction, distortion and dismissal or evasion on the part of objectors tot he scientific validity of the inference to design from functionally specific, complex information. (Observe my specific remarks on that at 251.) However, eventually, the piper has to be paid: advocates for a cause indulge such fallacies of irrelevancy constantly only because they do not have a good case on the merits. Coming on 300 posts, and we still see evasions . . . GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Back after a weekend away and you guys have really been busy.... StephenB (249), "[A] Could naturalistic forces [such as wind, water, sand, erosion etc. ] have formed the image of a beat up 1959 Ford? [B] Suppose space explorers go to Mars and find the following symbols etched in the sand: “Pretrushka and Acipenser have both contracted a condition called designophobia.” Could naturalistic forces such as wind, water, and erosion have produced that sequence?" Can I have a go? The answer to A is that it depends on the fidelity of the "image". Very often, humans - being creatures that have evolved to recognise and compare patterns -look at something entirely natural and say "that looks just like a [example: beat up 1959 Ford]. That's where the phrase "methink it is like a weasel" comes from - the character (Hamlet, I believe) points out that the cloud looks like a weasel. So, StephenB - was the weasel-shaped cloud designed? Answer that one, and I'll give you the rest of my answer on the car. Answer to [B] is: it's possible but incredibly unlikely that it was done naturally. Most likely it's either designed (i.e. someone wrote it from scratch) or it's selected for. In the latter case, it's quite possible that an entity saw wind-blown sand swirls making letters individually, froze them and collected them to put together to make the sentence. Selecting them as in the case of "methink it is like a weasel", for instance. (By the way - your response on the burglar and the drawers was wrong again. Foresnics often can tell how a drawer was was opened - e.g. finger prints on the handle will tell if the handle was pulled to open, and which hand or hands it was done with. The surrounding aspects of the crime scene will also tell if a tornado was involved: no tornado has ever opened a drawer without leaving other effects. As far as your comments on cause and effects is concerned, I'm tired of telling you - you just don't seem to learn - that the classical world we see is completely different to the quamntum world. In the former, cause and effect clearly apply: in the latter, it's clear that sometimes they don't. You trying to extrapolate classical world effects to turn them into "laws" that apply generally, even at the quantum and cosmological level, shows that you aren't thinking scientifically and using the evidence found at these other levels. You can forget your metaphysics: if the evidence says one thing and the metaphysics another, then its the metaphysics that's wrong). Gaz

---Acipenser: "Let’s clear up one question at a time shall we. What is the image made out of, i.e., photograph, sand sculpture, ect?" We have been discussing a sand formation. Can any combination of naturalistic forces [wind, water, erosion, time etc.] (meaning without the help of an intelligent agent) produce the specific model in question? StephenB

PS: Behe's discussion here of how objections to the mousetrap as an iconic case of irreducible complexity fail but are persuasive, is an important read, and shows the utter contrast between the real Behe and the rhetorically convenient strawman being assailed over at Youtube. kairosfocus

Ouch on numbering . . . kairosfocus

F/N: The daily dose from Youtube.

[ThatOneQuestion:] @brando92346? "You care to back up your? assertions? " . No need to: Behe's claim of supernatural causation is unsupported, fallacious, and completely useless in explaining anything, especially since it is untestable.

1 --> Behe made no claim of supernatural causation [i.e loaded words are here being dishonestly put into mouths], but instead pointed out that irreducible complexity exists and is such that Darwinian mechanisms cannot credibly achieve it, as several well-matched adaptations would have to simultaneously occur to achieve function. 2 --> This is of course an example of the injection of the ad hominem laced strawman contrast "natural vs supernatural" instead of addressing what has been on the table ever since Plato in The Laws Bk X [as already cited above and referred to in the Weak Argument Correctives for coming on two years now so there is no excuse]: natural forces of chance and necessity vs intelligent acts of art. 3 --> It is worth citing a useful triple definition of irreducible complexity, from ISCID:

Michael Behe's Original Definition: A single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function of the system, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. (Darwin's Black Box, 39) William Dembski's Enhanced Definition: A system performing a given basic function is irreducibly complex if it includes a set of well-matched, mutually interacting, nonarbitrarily individuated parts such that each part in the set is indispensable to maintaining the system's basic, and therefore original, function. The set of these indispensable parts is known as the irreducible core of the system. (No Free Lunch, 285) Michael Behe's "Evolutionary" Definition An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway.

4 --> A bit of historical context, from Darwin, in Origin Ch 6:

He who will go thus far, if he find on finishing this treatise that large bodies of facts, otherwise inexplicable, can be explained by the theory of descent, ought not to hesitate to go further, and to admit that a structure even as perfect as the eye of an eagle might be formed by natural selection, although in this case he does not know any of the transitional grades. His reason ought to conquer his imagination; though I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to be surprised at any degree of hesitation in extending the principle of natural selection to such startling lengths. It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye to a telescope. We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued efforts of the highest human intellects; and we naturally infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man? If we must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we ought in imagination to take a thick layer of transparent tissue, with a nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be continually changing slowly in density, so as to separate into layers of different densities and thicknesses, placed at different distances from each other, and with the surfaces of each layer slowly changing in form. Further we must suppose that there is a power always intently watching each slight accidental alteration in the transparent layers; and carefully selecting each alteration which, under varied circumstances, may in any way, or in any degree, tend to produce a distincter image. We must suppose each new state of the instrument to be multiplied by the million; and each to be preserved till a better be produced, and then the old ones to be destroyed. In living bodies, variation will cause the slight alterations, generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this process go on for millions on millions of years; and during each year on millions of individuals of many kinds; and may we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to those of man? If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case . . .

5 --> of course, Darwin loaded the matter: he here exerts not a criterion of level playing field inference to best explanation, but of LOGICAL POSSIBILITY, to justify a case where all he could offer was imagination. 6 --> So, on fair comment, we see that there is excellent reason to note that irreducibly complex systems [which are evidently quite common in life forms, despite much hand waving, special pleading and specious attempted rebuttals] are not credibly produced by mechanisms of slow incremental change,where each tiny step of advance must be able to win the battle for survival on a population basis. 6 --> This, for the very excellent reason that ex hypothesi each such step of advance has no foresight on the ultimate outcome, so it must be immediately advantageous. Or the very forces of natural selection being alluded to would eliminate it, long before cumulative change would lead to success. (The origin of the avian wing and lung as well as skeletal structure are excellent cases in point to check the triumphalistic dismissals that are so commonly encountered.) 8 --> Of course, the concept of irreducible complexity is a commonplace in engineering, e.g certain car parts are vital: take one out and the car is dead. Similarly, in biology, there are many cases of systems that are evidently like that. 9 --> This is implied by the sort of objections that are commonly made, on proposed -- actualy, imagined [no solid evidence of steps of origin and shift to novel use are actually demonstrated from undeniable empirical facts (per newton on speculative "hypotheses"), the TTSS being a capital case of a derivative entity being put forth as a precursor] -- co-optation of structures originally serving another purpose. 9 --> Those who make such an objection plainly have never had to do much adaptation of components to make a new system. For, the functional integration of components to do a new task is generally a non-trivial engineering exercise. (Compare how often engineers have to come up with adapters of one form or another. A classic case in point was the on the fly creation of a CO2 scrubber after the emergency on the Apollo 13 Moon shot.) 10 --> Irreducible complexity is therefore neither useless, nor fallacious nor untestable. Many systems exhibit the behaviour, as any broken down car by the roadside can demonstrate. 11 --> It evidently occurs in many biological cases. And, it can be tested for by simply seeing if [one by one] knocking out the relevant part blocks function, and putting it back in restores function. 12 --> Similarly, the claim that such IC entities can arise incrementally can in principle be tested by showing clear factual evidence of such development, from the living and/or fossil worlds. From the hypothetical and speculative nature of ever so many objections, this plainly has not been done. ____________ In short, we see how the same problem of failure to do an honest evaluation of design theory claims on their own terms crops up yet again. Instead we see red herrings, led out to ad hominem soaked strawmen, ignited to cloud, confuse, polarise and poison the atmosphere. Sad, and sadly revealing about the state of science and science education in our day. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

PS: Above, several times there was mention of coming across a crashed spaceship, and how one would go about inferring from the FSCI to its credible source in a presumably alien technology. Now, we have something that is fairly close to that to deal with: the living cell embeds a discrete state, coded data structure using, algorithmic process expressed through a cluster of molecular nanomachines. That leads us to the now classic challenge posed by Denton: _______________ >> To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter [[so each atom in it would be “the size of a tennis ball”] and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. We would see endless highly organized corridors and conduits branching in every direction away from the perimeter of the cell, some leading to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others to assembly plants and processing units. The nucleus itself would be a vast spherical chamber more than a kilometer in diameter, resembling a geodesic dome inside of which we would see, all neatly stacked together in ordered arrays, the miles of coiled chains of the DNA molecules. A huge range of products and raw materials would shuttle along all the manifold conduits in a highly ordered fashion to and from all the various assembly plants in the outer regions of the cell. We would wonder at the level of control implicit in the movement of so many objects down so many seemingly endless conduits, all in perfect unison. We would see all around us, in every direction we looked, all sorts of robot-like machines . . . . We would see that nearly every feature of our own advanced machines had its analogue in the cell: artificial languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices used for quality control, assembly processes involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction . . . . However, it would be a factory which would have one capacity not equaled in any of our own most advanced machines, for it would be capable of replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours . . . . Unlike our own pseudo-automated assembly plants, where external controls are being continually applied, the cell's manufacturing capability is entirely self-regulated . . . . [Denton, Michael, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Adler, 1986, pp. 327 – 331.] >> ________________ In that light, it would be well worth the pause to examine the video here. (Observe the contrasting interviews with Dawkins and Denton.) kairosfocus

Onlookers: After 250 posts, it is time to draw out a few conclusions, given the nature and evident roots of he impasse we saw overnight. For, it is quite evident that there is an unfortunate rhetorical policy in effect on the side of evolutionary materialistic advocacy. One that is utterly hostile to the spirit of inquiry towards discerning the truth about our world based on evidence that lies at the heart of genuine scientific endeavour. Let us therefore recall what Newton had to say in 1704 in Opticks, Query 31, to remind us of what has been lost or suppressed:

As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, but such as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. For Hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental Philosophy. And although the arguing from Experiments and Observations by Induction be no Demonstration of general Conclusions; yet it is the best way of arguing which the Nature of Things admits of, and may be looked upon as so much the stronger, by how much the Induction is more general. And if no Exception occur from Phaenomena, the Conclusion may be pronounced generally. But if at any time afterwards any Exception shall occur from Experiments, it may then begin to be pronounced with such Exceptions as occur. By this way of Analysis we may proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from Motions to the Forces producing them; and in general, from Effects to their Causes, and from particular Causes to more general ones, till the Argument end in the most general. This is the Method of Analysis: And the Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discover'd, and establish'd as Principles, and by them explaining the Phaenomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations.

1 --> Newton points out that we must begin with analysis of actual observed experience if we are to have a sound base for science. 2 --> He then proceeds to infer what he calls "General Conclusions" achieved by inductive inference. (In our more modern understanding, we appreciate that a key aspect of this is inference to best explanation of patterns of observation, which gives us rules of inference that we may use in prediction and further testing through onward observations and/or experiments.) 3 --> In turn, the only objections to be entertained against such inferred provisional explanatory models are those tracing to further facts of observation or to the certain demonstrations of logic and mathematics. 4 --> He therefore exerts a stricture on imposition of speculative metaphysical impositions. In short, no censoring a prioris need apply. (What a contrast tot he Lewontinian a priori evolutionary materialism highlighted above, and associated censorship by so-called methodological naturalism.) 5 --> He acknowledges the inevitable provisionality and open-endedness of such an inductive procedure, pointing out that our predicament (as finite, fallible and too often ill-willed creatures) is such that this provisional inference to and on the empirically reliable is the best we can do, in practical reasoning and investigation. 6 --> he notes that empirically reliable generalisations may be trusted pending observations that expose limitations. 7 --> He highlights the focal patterns of such analysis of experiences and observations: from compounds to constituents, from changes to the driving facts that trigger them, from effects to causes, and from the particular to the general. (This is where cumulative inference to best explanation becomes most evident.) 9 -->He then highlights the role of Synthesis, which uses well-established, empirically reliable ingredients, forces and causes to deduce predictive conclusions. This is also used for elaboration and general explanation of new phenomena, testing and for application to the control of natural phenomena. (Thus, Newton hints at the use of science in technology.) 10 --> It takes no great effort to see that the design inference process fits in well with these investigatory strategies. 11 --> For, chance, necessity and art are well-known, long since empirically well-established causal facts [just think about hypothesis testing in statistical studies and related ANOVA variance and factor analysis as applied to experimental [treatment vs control group designs] and observational studies, in both pure and applied scientific contexts]. They each have characteristic signs, which may be characterised and investigated as to reliability:

(a) Explanation of natural regularity by lawlike necessity is a method championed by Newton. (b) Explanation by chance circumstances and stochastic processes has an equally long pedigree, though it really came to its own in the elucidation of the statistical behaviour of gas molecules and atoms, and in the surprising world of Quantum mechanics. (c) In many scientific disciplines, identification of agent action is a concern, and practical techniques have long been used, often in contexts of life and death. And, the significance of intelligent signals in information theory is also of great significance. (d) And in particular, the whole Internet and the wider world of technology in which we live (surely, a world of empirical phenomena to be observed and investigated for significant patterns!) stand in demonstration of the power and reliability of functionally specific complex information (especially digital information that is algorithmic or linguistic) as reliable signs of intelligence.

12 --> So, when we see a sand sculpture of a Corvette Sting Ray or an old beat up Ford, or run across a sign scrawled in the sand on a beach [on this world or another would make no material difference] there is excellent reason to scientifically and confidently infer from FSCI as sign to the signified causal factor, art. 13 --> Similarly, when we see computers as entities reflecting algorithms, data structures and implementing machines in an irreducibly complex whole, we have excellent reason to infer form complex, finely co-adapted functional organisation and associated information, to design. 14 --> And it is well known that such computers don't normally come about by the functional equivalent to tornadoes hitting Dell's junkyard in Austin Texas. (This is logically and physically possible, but on the vastness of the configuration space involved, the islands of function are far too deeply isolated in the space to expect that we would see such an event even once, even if similar blind chance and mechanical forces were to act using the entire resources of the observed cosmos for its thermodynamic lifespan. The search capacity of the observed cosmos is simply far too small a fraction of the relevant config space to make such a random walk search across configurations sample a fraction of possible configs significantly different from zero.) 15 --> So, the project of design theory is classically scientific. ____________ Why then is it so controversial and so stoutly resisted that we see not the slightest intention to even look at the thought experiment cases proposed above? Plainly, the problem is not the merits of the approach or the project per classical scientific interests and criteria of sound process. Something is interfering with the normal process of science. In short, we see abundant evidence of ideology manifest in rhetorical agenda, and its damaging effects, once science is understood as a pursuit of the truth about our world in light of evidence. Specifically, the Lewontinian agenda of a priori materialism. So, it is time to restore the integrity of science. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

"StephenB:A] Could naturalistic forces [such as wind, water, sand, erosion etc. ] have formed the image of a beat up 1959 Ford?" Let's clear up one question at a time shall we. What is the image made out of, i.e., photograph, sand sculpture, ect? Acipenser

---Acipenser: "If the image is made of sand then humans made it. It really isn’t any more complex than that." Please attend to the questions that I did ask and please do not answer questions that I did not ask. [A] Could naturalistic forces [such as wind, water, sand, erosion etc. ] have formed the image of a beat up 1959 Ford? [B] Suppose space explorers go to Mars and find the following symbols etched in the sand: “Pretrushka and Acipenser have both contracted a condition called designophobia.” Could naturalistic forces such as wind, water, and erosion have produced that sequence? StephenB

Distract, distort, dismiss . . . kairosfocus

it’s simple: In an algorithm based on RV + NS, RV has to build the function of reproductive advantage, otherwise no selection is possible. So, it’s not true that there is no target.

Suppose you are a designer and your boss says to increase the reproductive advantage of model 4573-A-23. What do you do? Petrushka

g"puccio: Are you saying Venter’s plans are fairy tales? (Maybe you have some sense, sfter all)." No, I did not say that at all. Venter's claims will be limited by the data his, and others, research generates. However, your position that nothing can be excluded makes anything possible. Do you deny that it is possible to spin straw into gold? Acipenser

"WJM: Will one of you answer how (by what process) one can ever make a determination that a solitary artifact found on an otherwise desolate planet was the product of some form of intelligent design? . Is there a scientific means to make such a determination? Must it be intuition? Something else?" If you want me to play 'let's pretned' you'll have to give me more details. Starting with: What planet will we find the artifact on? Acipenser

Acipenser: Are you saying Venter's plans are fairy tales? (Maybe you have some sense, sfter all). gpuccio

"gpuccio: Why? Because aliens would not be able to do what Venter deems himself capable to realize? (I mean creating life, not traveling in the universe )." The aliens/designers can do anything we can imagine and thus, we must accept that it is possible to spin straw into gold. We have no method to exclude such a possibility so we must accept it as a valid construct. Maybe those stories we called fairytales were really testimonials. Acipenser

Petrushka: Really. If it is easy to imagine, I’d like to hear the details of how you directly measure reproductive advantage. Are you kidding? For instance, if the system is an agar culture, you can just measure the diameter of the colony after a standard time. And even if you did not measure anything, you could just let the new clone expand spontaneously, and that would be at least as efficient as NS (even more, if you intervene with some selective rewarding as soon as a definite level of expansion is achieved. Where is your problem? gpuccio

Acipenser & Petrushka: . Will one of you answer how (by what process) one can ever make a determination that a solitary artifact found on an otherwise desolate planet was the product of some form of intelligent design? . Is there a scientific means to make such a determination? Must it be intuition? Something else? William J. Murray

Petrushka: ID proponents presented the case of the sand sculpture, and I asked if ID had an actual metric, a procedure for distinguishing natural sand sculptures such as fossils from human crafted replicas. Again, fossils are not "natural sand sculptures". The form in them comes from the biological being. I wondered if there is a method for eliminating false positives that does not require finding a plausible naturalistic history. Yes, there is. CSI is the way. The confutation of the ID detection through CSI could be achieved by presenting a credible naturalistic model based on RV + any necessity mechanism. The detailed natural history is not necessary. But if no such model exists (and RV + NS is not a credible model) than ID remains the best explanation. gpuccio

Acipenser: It is one thing to postulate intelligent life in the universe. It is quite another to postulate intelligent life traveling the universe creating life with their technology. From that point it would be a reasonable inference that straw can be spun into gold. Why? Because aliens would not be able to do what Venter deems himself capable to realize? (I mean creating life, not traveling in the universe :) ). Or is your problem with the traveling? Anyway, I really don't know why I am defending the alien hypothesis: it is certainly not mine. Its purpose was only to demonstrate that intelligence can be conceived even out of the human reference. gpuccio

Petrushka: it's simple: In an algorithm based on RV + NS, RV has to build the function of reproductive advantage, otherwise no selection is possible. So, it's not true that there is no target. The algorithm works only with the function of reproductive advantage, so that's the only valid target for the system. If in a lab we measure reproductive advantage in a lab system, and reward it actively, we will have an equeivalent of NS, only more powerful (the active reward can certainly be more efficient than just waiting for spontaneous expansion. That wouls be a first example of how intelligent selection is better than NS. But the true point is that IS can measure and reward any possible property. Szostac in his experiment has meausred, selected and rewarded sticking to ATP. Any intelligent designer can measure and reward any kind of fucntion, or simply of property, at any minimal level. So, intelligent selection can select specific properties even if they do not immediately confer a reproductive advantage, and use them in the general program of the design. In the case of antibody maturation, just think what would happend if the organism modified the initial antibody by random hypermutation and then just waited to see if any reproductive advantage had emerged. That would never work. Instead, the immune system does the intelligent thing. It changes the initial antibody by hypervariation, and then immediately it tests it against the stored epitope. If the affinity has incresed, the new cell clone is promoted, otherwise it is inhibited. That's why antibody maturation has all the characteristics of intelligent design: targeted hypermutation, intelligent selection through fine measurement of the desired function, and active rewarding/inhibiting of the mutated clones. And it works! The affinity drastically increases in a few months. Obviously, here the intelligent algorithm is embedded in the immune system. Guees by whom? gpuccio

Instead you have assailed a limited method for what it is not and has never claimed to be: a universal method that detects any and all designs, beyond any rational doubt or question.

Actually, I merely asked for input on a fescases relevant to this thread. ID proponents presented the case of the sand sculpture, and I asked if ID had an actual metric, a procedure for distinguishing natural sand sculptures such as fossils from human crafted replicas. Someone on this thread said dog breeds were obviously the result of artificial selection, so I asked if ID had a method that would distinguish the histories of peacocks from that of show birds. I also asked how ID eliminated false positives without presenting a case for natural formation of things like the martian face. I wondered if there is a method for eliminating false positives that does not require finding a plausible naturalistic history. Petrushka

"gpuccio: The possible existence of intelligent aliens is considered a very serious possibility by many mainstream scientists. Not everybody is so obstinate in denying reasonable inferences as you seem to be." It is one thing to postulate intelligent life in the universe. It is quite another to postulate intelligent life traveling the universe creating life with their technology. From that point it would be a reasonable inference that straw can be spun into gold. Acipenser

We can well imagine a form of intelligent selection where reproductive advantage is directly measured by the system, and actively rewarded by immediate expansion. That would be a form of intelligent selection which, though measuring the same function as NS, would be more efficient.”

Really. If it is easy to imagine, I'd like to hear the details of how you directly measure reproductive advantage. Sound like the old Soviet 5-year plans that were going to be more efficient than capitalism. Petrushka

I state again here that NS is only a tiny subset of case b2.

I guess I had trouble following how a process that has no goal or target or anticipation could be a subset of "Intelligent selection through knowledge of the function to be achieved." Petrushka

Petrushka: Any practitioner of serious empirical methods knows that a method or technique does not have to apply to all and any cases in order to be useful and effective, or even reliable and trustworthy within its context of use. You have repeatedly been presented with a warrant for the inference from functionally specific, complex information to its routinely observed -- and only observed -- source [intelligence], in the context that other major causal factors [chance and/or necessity] are seen as not sufficiently capable to be a credible source. You have not been able to produce the classic rebuttal to an inductive case on inference to best explanation: a counter example. Instead you have assailed a limited method for what it is not and has never claimed to be: a universal method that detects any and all designs, beyond any rational doubt or question. Such a standard is not a proper standard of criticism within science, as you know or should know. Kindly therefore refrain from setting up and knocking over strawmen. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Acipenser: The possible existence of intelligent aliens is considered a very serious possibility by many mainstream scientists. Not everybody is so obstinate in denying reasonable inferences as you seem to be. gpuccio

Petrushka: You present three examples of selection but ignore and fail to present the case applicable to biology. Not true. Please read again: "I state again here that NS is only a tiny subset of case b2. In NS, the only function which is recognized is reproductive advantage. And in true NS, that function is not really rewarded actively by the system: it just “self-rewards itself” through expansion in the population. We can well imagine a form of intelligent selection where reproductive advantage is directly measured by the system, and actively rewarded by immediate expansion. That would be a form of intelligent selection which, though measuring the same function as NS, would be more efficient." You seem really confused about that. Your blind beliefs prevent you from a very simple reasoning: there is a very specific target in NS: reproductive advantage. That's the function which can be recognized, that's the function that RV must be able to build. And, as I said, it is a very specific function, which reduces NS to a tiny, powerless subset of IS. Please, answer that, instead of hiding behind myths like "no target". Some of your compatriots, earlier in this thread, claimed that dog breeds were obviously designed. That kind of statement seems common among design proponents. You just look at something, tote up its CSI, and voila, you know if it is natural or designed. So I’d like to know if this claim is BS, or whether it can be applied in an instance where we have known dissimilar histories. I have never commented on dog breeds. I am really not interested in them (I leave them to Dawkins). I don't know the subject very well, and I don't believe it is relevant to the ID theory. It is possible, IMO, that "races" in a species (be it dogs or humans) are connected just to sexual re-shuffling of alleles. That can be random or designed (in the case of dog breeders), but I am not sure if design detection could distinguish between the two cases, because I have really no idea of how to define the function or compute the complexity. That's why I am not interested to analyze that particular scenario. gpuccio

"StepehnB: Petrushka and Acipenser continue to avoid my question about whether naturalistic forces could have formed the image of a beat up 1959 Ford without the engine." If the image is made of sand then humans made it. It really isn't any more complex than that. "gpuccio: Your argument is false. Conscious intelligence is a property of humans. We have no reasons to affirm that other beings cannot be conscious and intelligent like humans. Can you exclude, or consider unlikely, that intelligent aliens may exist?" It wasn't an argument it was a question. But in any case, gpuccio, do you have any reason to believe that straw cannot be spun into gold? Acipenser

gpuccio: You present three examples of selection but ignore and fail to present the case applicable to biology. The case where there is no target. The case where there is no anticipatory mutation. The case where there is no known solution. The case where, for reasons too complex to anticipate, children having some characteristic have more offspring than children not having the characteristic. As for why you would want to be able to tell the history of peacocks from the history of show fowl, it goes to the heart of whether you can say anything about the history of a living thing simply by toting up its CSI, or whatever. Some of your compatriots, earlier in this thread, claimed that dog breeds were obviously designed. That kind of statement seems common among design proponents. You just look at something, tote up its CSI, and voila, you know if it is natural or designed. So I'd like to know if this claim is BS, or whether it can be applied in an instance where we have known dissimilar histories. I pick on you because you seem to think there is some intrinsic difference between natural and artificial selection, as if they have different capabilities. Petrushka

"WJM: First, the theory that other creatures might have intelligence is not “nothing but speculation”, because we already have one creature with intelligence; that is evidence that creatures in the universe can be intelligent." It is speculation that there are other 'intelligent' (as we've used it in sand sculture creation)and will remain so until we have evidence to the contrary. If it weren't you would have simply provided the example I requested. "WJM: Second, even if it was speculation, so? Is such speculation non-scientific? Can it not lead to fruitful scientific enquiry, such as the speculation, in years past, that other stars might have planets orbiting them? Or was such speculation a waste of scientific time and effort?" Speculation in and of itself is fine the trouble arises when someone mistakes such speculations as being factual. "WJM: Why do you avoid simply answering the questions I ask in the manner I ask them? Let’s say you’re right and we know how all crop circles are made now; before we knew, we didn’t know. All we had were strange geometric patterns in the crops. Why didn’t everyone just assume it was a natural phenomena? Why did everyone conclude that they had to be the product of some form of intelligence?" Why didn't you provide me with the example I requested? Or even admit that you were constrained by the same evidence that everyone else is constrained by? Of course 'we' knew crop circles were of human origins. Afterall people created them and I doubt they did so unknowingly. That everyone did not conclude the same thing does not influence the human-nature of the crop circle constructs. No one concluded natural phenomena because the crop circles are human art work and we are very familiar with human artwork and what it looks like. Much like sand sculptures. "WJM: You attribute comments to me in 171 I didn’t make." my apologies! Acipenser

Petrushka: Can you apply design detection to distinguish between the histories of peacocks and Japanese show fowl? Why should I do such a bizarre thing? gpuccio

Petrushka: You keep saying there is some elemental difference between natural selection and inteligent selection. I say it and I argue for that. From my post #94: "b) Intelligent selection. That is probably one of the most powerful option for an intelligent designer. If evolutionary algorithms have proved anything, it’s that intelligent selection can very well do the magic. Even Dawkins’ infamous Weasel clearly demonstrates that you can easily reach a solution by a random search if you already know it. Indeed, there are at least three different ways a designer can use intelligent selection, IOW thre different ways an “oracle” can optimize an algorithm for the search of biological funtion, operationg through a random variation engine: b1) Intelligent selection though previous knowledge of the solution. That’s exactly the case of the Weasel. The designer already knows the solution, and he just “matches” the various variations against the solution. Easy, but nor specially useful. The same result can certainly be reached through direct guided variation. But, if guided variation is not available, and if the designer knows the solution, intelligent selection of random variation remains a very efficient procedure. b2) Intelligent selection through knowledge of the function to be achieved, and measurement of that function after random variation. That’s the case of the Szostac paper, of antibody maturation, and in general of all bottom up protein engineering. It’s very efficient, too, because direct measurement of the function allows very fine and sensitive selection, and really optimizes the search. It’s interesting to note that this case includes, as a very tiny subset of it, what is usually called “natural selection”. Indeed, natural selection is just a very raw and limited form of intelligent selection where only one function can be measured: reproductive advantage. b3) Finally, an importan accessory method for intelligent design in biology is targeted random mutation. IOW, the mutations can be random, but with specific constraints which are based on previous knowledge of the search space, which, as Dembski and Marks have shown, is a very effective way of introducing active information in the search. We have again an example of that in antibody maturation, where selective hypermutation (restricted to the perinent parts of the gene) is applied to the existing antibody to increase its affinity, and the results are evaluated, and then selected positively or negatively, through a measurement of function (binding to the stored antigen). It’s important to consider that all the above mechanisms could have been used together, or differently in different cases." I state again here that NS is only a tiny subset of case b2. In NS, the only function which is recognized is reproductive advantage. And in true NS, that function is not really rewarded actively by the system: it just "self-rewards itself" through expansion in the population. We can well imagine a form of intelligent selection where reproductive advantage is directly measured by the system, and actively rewarded by immediate expansion. That would be a form of intelligent selection which, though measuring the same function as NS, would be more efficient. As intelligent selection can measure any function we want, and in any degree, and actively reward it, it is obvious that it is hugely more powerful than NS. Can you unbderstand that? That's an argument. gpuccio

It’s used by the immune system to increase antibody specificity. It works. And it’s a design method.

You keep saying that. You keep saying there is some elemental difference between natural selection and inteligent selection. Can you apply design detection to distinguish between the histories of peacocks and Japanese show fowl? Petrushka

Petrushka: The algorithm occurs anywhere there is self-replication. The traveling salesman solving algorithm? Please, explain. gpuccio

Petrushka: please read again (if ever you red it) my post #94 here. I don't understand what it is that you call "evolution" in your 224. A form of computation? What form of compitation? One of my scenarios (targeted RV + intelligent selection) is a very effective way to evaluate "the effects of small changes to protein coding sequences". It's a method used in protein engineering. It's used by the immune system to increase antibody specificity. It works. And it's a design method. gpuccio

Did the travelling salesman problem solving algorithm arise spontaneously in biological replicators?

The algorithm occurs anywhere there is self-replication. Petrushka

Let me understand: all that complex functional information, whose existence our friends darwinists always deny with unrestrained passion, is now becoming evidence against design?

Yep. Evolution is the only form of computation that can deal with those astronomical numbers that design proponents keep tossing out. Want to disagree? Fine. Show us an alternative for anticipating the effects of small changes to protein coding sequences. Show us a non-evolutionary way to anticipate need in ecosystems. Petrushka

Acipenser: "Well let’s see if humans are the only known source of such intelligent designs than postulating any other intelligenct sources is nothing but speculation." First, the theory that other creatures might have intelligence is not "nothing but speculation", because we already have one creature with intelligence; that is evidence that creatures in the universe can be intelligent. Second, even if it was speculation, so? Is such speculation non-scientific? Can it not lead to fruitful scientific enquiry, such as the speculation, in years past, that other stars might have planets orbiting them? Or was such speculation a waste of scientific time and effort? Acipenser: "Crop circles are a known instance of human activity. We know who made them and how they made them by their own admissions and demonstrations." Why do you avoid simply answering the questions I ask in the manner I ask them? Let's say you're right and we know how all crop circles are made now; before we knew, we didn't know. All we had were strange geometric patterns in the crops. Why didn't everyone just assume it was a natural phenomena? Why did everyone conclude that they had to be the product of some form of intelligence? You attribute comments to me in 171 I didn't make. Petrushka said: "You operate the way you would operate in any forensic investigation. If the inference is obvious, as with sand sculptures, you make it. If the inference is not so obvious, as with stone faces or large stone balls, you have to do some work. In some cases experts may never agree." . What does that mean, "if the inference is obvious"? "Obvious" to whom? We're talking about, putatively, what looks like it might be an alien-design spacecraft. How is it going to be "obvious" to anyone? Are you talking about intuition? Do you mean that for some investigators, the object on the planet might "obviously" be, to them, in a non-scientific way, "the product of intelligence", and to others, "obviously not" such an artifact? You're not telling me how we should make a decision about what we should consider the object, you're just avoiding the essential point to the whole debate by saying "well, if it's obvious ..." without explaing how it can be obvious, or why people should disagree, or how a finding either way should be made. Is it made in a scientific way? Or is it just plain-old intuition? William J. Murray

Petrushka: you will never stop surprising me. Did the travelling salesman problem solving algorithm arise spontaneously in biological replicators? You must know facts of which I am not aware. Please share. gpuccio

Petrushka: There’s a way around that you know. Write up your thoughts and publish them on the Biologic Institute journal. Why is everybody always giving me advices on what I should do? Al Kafir is counseling my readings, others have adviced me on where to blog, and Petrushka absolutely wants me to publish! But I am stupid and obstinate, and I suppose I will go on my own way. Petrushka, what's the problem? Can't you read my posts on this blog? gpuccio

I have nothing against evolutionary algorithms: they are obviously designed.

Not so. They arise spontaneously with the simplest replicators. Evolution will happen wherever there is self-replication. Petrushka

Petrushka: All that complexity argues against a designer. That really can compete with Al Kafir's statement on the short peptides thread for the title of "most ludicrous statement ever heard": "Probably too complex to have been designed, since complex-system theory shows that evolved systems tend to be more complicated than designed systems for a given function." Let me understand: all that complex functional information, whose existence our friends darwinists always deny with unrestrained passion, is now becoming evidence against design? Ah, what a mystery is the darwinists mind! gpuccio

I have answered those points many times, and given specific possible scenarios..

There's a way around that you know. Write up your thoughts and publish them on the Biologic Institute journal. Petrushka

Petrushka: All that complexity argues against a designer. In all the history of mathematics, we have found only one successful approach to traversing gradients in enormous spaces, and that is using evolutionary algorithms. I have nothing against evolutionary algorithms: they are obviously designed. And your faith in gap solving naturalistic research is based on such a confused epistemology, that I will not even begin to try to counter it... gpuccio

Our technology has improved, and what has it shown? Increasing levels and sublevels of functions, organized, integrated functions, even in the simplest cells...

All that complexity argues against a designer. In all the history of mathematics, we have found only one successful approach to traversing gradients in enormous spaces, and that is using evolutionary algorithms. The only way to solve large problems, like the travelling salesman problem with 100,000 stops is by using evolutionary algorithms. On your side, you have the assertion that function is sparse. That assertion evaporates with research. In the case of the flagellum, the mascot of this site, a bit of research reveals a vase cloud of variations on flagella, a vast array of subsets of flagellar proteins, some employed in motility, and some not. The same thing happens when you investigate blood clotting. ID is full of false positives, and it has no native method for eliminating false positives. The only way to eliminate false positives is to do the hard work of finding exceptions, and the hard work of finding natural pathways. You do no add to the sum of human knowledge by digging a hole, finding nothing, and asserting that all holes will be equally barren. Petrushka

Third line from the bottom: again=against* above

Petrushka: ID has no entailments. It assigns no attributes to the designer. It assigns no times or places to the actions of the designer. It assigns no specific actions to the designer. There is no class of evidence that could confirm or disconfirm the design inference for the origin of species, because there are no entailments. ???? I have answered those points many times, and given specific possible scenarios, all of them entailing many things. But I don0t think I will go on with a discussion at this level. Again, when you have new arguments (which sometimes you do have), or when you want to ackowledge and discuss the answers I have already given, instead of repeating ad nauseam the same pseudo-truths, please let me know. gpuccio

I just got the chance to watch the video and it truly disturbs me to think that the so-called scientific establishment of the materialistic faithfuls represent everything science ought not to be. It's as if they have caricatured science into a puppet, whose only aim is to propagate their materialistic agenda. The sad part is that unless one has a good understanding of linguistics, philosophy, metaphysics and theology all these brutalities again science and reason go unnoticed and in the worst case get accepted by young impressionable minds. above

Stephen: As for me, I wpould definitely suspect you as the designer. Did you leave DNA traces? gpuccio

PS: FYI, the design explanatory filter -- as was repeatedly shown above (and in the onward linked) -- is not primarily or necessarily a probability calculation. Instead, it is a comparison, in light of a great body of experience and related analysis of the causal capabilities of chance, mechanical necessity and intelligence. For instance, if a high-contingency outcome is associated with an information storage capacity of in excess of 1,000 bits and the particular configuration observed is functionally specific, with great confidence we may conclude design not chance or necessity. (For instance, no one would seriously infer that the best explanation for posts in this thread, beyond about 125 characters, is anything but intelligence.) And of course,the sort of probability calculations that are sometimes used are precisely those that are routinely used in information theory, statistical thermodynamics and other serious endeavours. That is, the objection is one of selective hyperskepticism in defence of an a priori question-begging assumption of materialism. kairosfocus

gpuccio @205. Thanks for the kind words. I predict that the answers will be even more creative!!! StephenB

Having a different opinion, and being perfectly available to discuss it in detail against all known facts, is not, IMO, “shielding oneself”.

It's always fair to argue that someone is hiding from rational explanations. Did O.J. Simpson kill his wife? Do you think the jury hid from the best explanation? If you are honest about pursuing the best explanation, you will consider the entailments of various explanations and look for confirming or disconfirming evidence. ID has no entailments. It assigns no attributes to the designer. It assigns no times or places to the actions of the designer. It assigns no specific actions to the designer. There is no class of evidence that could confirm or disconfirm the design inference for the origin of species, because there are no entailments. That leaves natural explanations as the only explanations that can be confirmed or disconfirmed. It is fine for people like Douglas Axe to look for and fail to find gap fillers. I could do something equivalent by digging up my back yard and failing to find important fossils. It's lots easier to fail to find something than to find something. I could also dig up my back yard and find no gold. I could then argue that gold is too sparsely distributed to support any economical search for gold. The people who found Tiktaalik endured years of failure. There was lots of luck in finding anything. But if they had found nothing, it would not have proved that Tiktaalik never existed. And the failure to find complete series of fossils for every species does not prove that intermediates never existed. It only proves that lots of hard work is required in science. It also demonstrates that the way you do science is to expect things entailed by your hypotheses and to look for them. Petrushka

StephenB: “Petrushka and Acipenser have both contracted a condition called designophobia.” Could naturalistic forces such as wind, water, and erosion have produced that sequence? Hi Stephen! That's a creative scenario :) gpuccio

About Mars objects: I remember that some time ago Gil Dodgen posted a very interesting thread about that, expressing an extremely appropriate concept. If I remember well, it was more or less this way: a) Let's pretend we lokk at Mrs, and we see lines and interpret them as channels or routes. Then, our technology improves, and we can see better, and those lines appear as natural formations. That's one scenario. Our first design inference was superficial, and based on insufficient data. b) But suppose instead that, with our technology improvement, we can see better, and we see that the lines are rellay routes, and that cities are joined by them, and galleries traversing mountains, and cars moving on the streets, and so on. Wouldn't our design inference be infinitely strengthened by the new data? Well, the second scenario is exactly what has been happening in biology in the last few decades. Our technology has improved, and what has it shown? Increasing levels and sublevels of functions, organized, integrated functions, even in the simplest cells. And there is no need to go back to Darwin's time and its concept of the cells as bubbles of protoplasm to understand the difference. For me, it's enough to compare what was known when I studied medicine for the first time, too many years ago, and what is known today: the difference in the scenario of functional complexity is astounding. And believe me, that simple fact really strengthens the design theory. It really does. gpuccio

On lookers: Patent reductio ad absurdum. This is what we are dealing with, in the words of Lewontin in his January 1997 review in NYRB:

. . . to put a correct view of the universe into people's heads we must first get an incorrect view out . . . the problem is to get them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth . . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists, it is self-evident that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality, and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test . . . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [“Billions and Billions of Demons,” NYRB, January 9, 1997.]

Johnson's First Things Rebuttal of November that year is stingingly apt:

For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them "materialists employing science." And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) "give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." . . . . The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses. [Emphasis added.] [The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]

In short, the triumph of evolutionary materialism represents an ideological captivity of scienitific reasoning, that blocks it from the fair and free pursuit of the truth about our world based on the best explanation of the relevant empirical evidence. That is why we see all of the strained evasions and obfuscations above, to dodge the implications of finding ourselves on a narrow target zone in a beyond astronomical configuration space. But, Rom 1 said something about that attitude, ever so long ago now:

Rom 1:20 . . . since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. 21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened . . .

In other words, what we are seeing here looks a lot like willful blindness, sorry to say GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Petrushka and Acipenser continue to avoid my question about whether naturalistic forces could have formed the image of a beat up 1959 Ford without the engine. So, I will ask another one: What if space explorers go to Mars and find the following symbols etched in the sand: "Pretrushka and Acipenser have both contracted a condition called designophobia." Could naturalistic forces such as wind, water, and erosion have produced that sequence? StephenB

but proper application of design detection proofed that pulsars were not specified or complex.

What principles of design detection resolved the issue of the Martian face, the Martian glass worms, and the Martian trees? I'd be curious how the mathematics of design detection saved the day. I'd bet a nickel that in all cases where design has been ruled out, it was ruled out because researchers took the pains to find natural explanations. I doubt if you can find a single example of design being ruled out due to application of the explanatory filter -- the calculation of probabilities. The simple fact is that the only way to eliminate false positives in design detection is to search for natural explanations. Petrushka

Petrushka: Speciation is no longer in need of explanation. Amen. Excuse me, I had forgotten your divine status. gpuccio

Petrushka: The fact that you shield yourself from centuries of evidence and research does not make the argument for evolution non-credible. That's not fair. You have admitted yourself that I accept all the known facts. I have stated clearly that I do, and that I disagree on interpretations. I have never been shy to openly discuss the interpretations. A lot of times I have given detailed arguments in response to you personally, arguments which very often you have not commented upon. So, I don't "shield myself" from anything. Having a different opinion, and being perfectly available to discuss it in detail against all known facts, is not, IMO, "shielding oneself". If you have serious arguments, I am always ready to discuss them. gpuccio

Again, I don’t accept panspermia, but it is at least a better hypothesis than pure darwinism, because in some way it “explains” OOL.

Until such time as someon assembles a complete plausible scenario, a recipe for creating evolving replicators without shoving individual atoms around, all such conjectures are speculative. Some speculations are better than others because the suggest productive experiments, but all are speculation. Speciation is no longer in need of explanation. Petrushka

Petrushka, I can only talk about the Mars objects. It should be clear that a false positive is caused by poor application of a design inference. In fact pulsars were also considered a signal from aliens, but proper application of design detection proofed that pulsars were not specified or complex. Proper design detection is only prone to false negatives. Wishful thinking is not design detection. P.S. Are you referring to the low resolution pictures from Mars that looked like a face and pyramids. mullerpr

Petrushka: I’d also argue that many fossils are sand replicas of living things, the sculptures having been made in the absence of guidance from an intelligent agent. Yes, through simple natural mechanisms which can easily make an analogic copy of an existing designed form. Why are you always moving the discussion through false superficial diversions? Is it intentional, or is it just a bad habit? gpuccio

Both. I think you should know my position in some detail, after all this time. Let’s try not to repeat infinite times the same debates, without any new argument.

The fact that you shield yourself from centuries of evidence and research does not make the argument for evolution non-credible. You see the mechanisms; you know they operate in the current time; you simply choose to ignore Newton's dictum that :

The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intensification nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.

Petrushka

Petrushka: Panspermia is a valid hypothesis for abiogenesis. I don't accept it, because it can't explain speciation. But the general concept is that the ancestors of life (LUCA, or archea, or bacteria) arrived on earth form space, and that they has the potential (front-loading, or just supposed sufficiency of darwinian evolution for speciation) to generate what followed. Again, I don't accept panspermia, but it is at least a better hypothesis than pure darwinism, because in some way it "explains" OOL. Although, after all it's not a real explanation, because we should still explain how those ancestors were generated elsewhere. gpuccio

I'd also argue that many fossils are sand replicas of living things, the sculptures having been made in the absence of guidance from an intelligent agent. Petrushka

Petrushka: No credible explanation exists for what? speciation, or abiogenesis? Both. I think you should know my position in some detail, after all this time. Let's try not to repeat infinite times the same debates, without any new argument. gpuccio

So how many living things can do sculptures?

Of Corvettes, only one. Of complex functional objects, things that are not knonwn to be created by non-living forces of nature, I'd include birds, honeybees, African termites, caterpillars, and quite a few others. Now answer my question about the failures of design induction in the case of objects on Mars. Or explain how the design inference could distinguish the history of peacocks from that of Japanese show fowl. Petrushka

Petrushka,

How is one to prove the non-existence of an entity that has no demonstrable attributes, which is alleged to operate at unspecified times and places, using unspecified means for unspecified purposes, and having unspecified capabilities and limitations?

This sounds very much like any possible mind including human minds. Take a look at "Boltzman Brain" then you'll see. Again I have to ask... How much do we exactly know about the mechanisms that creates the human mind? mullerpr

Acipenser: Fine. Can you give me an example of a non-human intelligence (or non-intelligence) that creates images of automobiles, castles, and people out of sand? Your argument is false. Conscious intelligence is a property of humans. We have no reasons to affirm that other beings cannot be conscious and intelligent like humans. Can you exclude, or consider unlikely, that intelligent aliens may exist? Of course it is credible to claim that only humans create sand sculptures since there exists no evidence on this planet otherwise. Any claims to the contrary are pure unadulterated speculation with no facts/evidence to support any other claim. I am happy that now you have restricted your dogmatic conclusions to "this planet". And yet, on this planet biological beings exist, and no existing theory can explain them, except design. And could you accept that for centuries humans have believed that biological beings were designed by some conscious intelligent being, on this planet? But I understand, they did not have your conscious intelligence, which is certainly of a superior kind. You cannot just state your opinions and pretend that they are truth. That we know not of any other physical conscious intelligent beings on this planet (except maybe possible aliens, either crop-circlers or not) does not mean that no other conscious intelligent being exists, either on this planet or elsewhere. The existence of designed beings on this planet is empirical evidence which cannot be explained away by your prejudices. If you, like darwinists, are convinced that you have a reasonable non design explanation for that fact, please accept to discuss, like anybody else here, your theory against our theory. And stop making senseless dogmatic statements of supposed truth. gpuccio

Panspermia is a valid design hypothesis.

Flesh out the hypothesis. Let's hear some details. Times and places and events. Petrushka

Indeed, no other credible explanation exists. That’s empirical validity.

No credible explanation exists for what? speciation, or abiogenesis? Petrushka

Petrushka, So how many living things can do sculptures? In any event, a design inference for the origin of life is not dependent on the nature of the designer. You are right if you want to postulate a living thing to be a potential candidate for the acting intelligence that caused life. Panspermia is a valid design hypothesis. mullerpr

To compound your detrimental position, you need to explain why a counter example is required to proof that the class intelligence is NOT isolated to humans.

It isn't possible to prove a negative. How is one to prove the non-existence of an entity that has no demonstrable attributes, which is alleged to operate at unspecified times and places, using unspecified means for unspecified purposes, and having unspecified capabilities and limitations? Petrushka

Acipenser: This is where your argument by analogy falls apart. You, and ID research, need to demonstrate that it is true in order to remove the ‘if’ from the argument. With no evidence that enables the removal of the ‘if’ it is just as likely that it is not true. Demonstrating that the "if" is true is exactly what ID is about. And it does it. ID is the best explanation for biological information. Indeed, no other credible explanation exists. That's empirical validity. Obviously, we can discuss in detail why that is the case. That's what we do in this blog. About crop circles, it should be clear that I am not interestes in your personal opinion. But you have not amswered my only pertinent point: " Whatever the truth, the fact is that the two competing hygpothese were: human artifact or alien artifact. IOW, design hypotheses. No one ever thought they were the result of random forces, or of natural forces (at least, not that I know: but again, I am not an expert of crop circles)." gpuccio

I forgot the "NOT", To compound your detrimental position, you need to explain why a counter example is required to proof that the class intelligence is NOT isolated to humans. Are you claiming science can proof the non-existence of something? mullerpr

Petrushka, You don't seem clever by claiming the non-existence of a counter example. You are facing all the evidence of a counter example in every new piece of research exposing the genetic code's secrets. To compound your detrimental position, you need to explain why a counter example is required to proof that the class intelligence is isolated to humans. How about the fact that it is perfectly logical to postulate alien intelligence or postulating a "Boltzman Brain"? Or would any inference of a mind acting be ok, as long as it does not infringe on Darwinian dogma? mullerpr

I'm intereste to hear from anyone who's actually witnessed an instance of any sculpture being created by INTELLIGENCE, as opposed to being made by a living thing. (or a thing made by a living thing, as in a robot) Petrushka

"kairofocus: We know no such thing." Fine. Can you give me an example of a non-human intelligence (or non-intelligence) that creates images of automobiles, castles, and people out of sand? "kairofocus: We do know that humans do this, but we have no credible basis for claiming that ONLY humans do so." Of course it is credible to claim that only humans create sand sculptures since there exists no evidence on this planet otherwise. Any claims to the contrary are pure unadulterated speculation with no facts/evidence to support any other claim. Acipenser

The design-doubters have no where to hide. There is certainly nothing about human intelligence that isolate the logical class – intelligence.

Other than the absence of any counterexamples. I see no one seems to want to discuss recent failures of design induction in the case of objects on Mars. And no one wants provide an example of design induction to distinguish the history of peacocks from the history of Japanese show bantams. Petrushka

PS: Observe how the relevant consideration of intelligence allows us to pass the challenge of enumerative induction. That is, because we have a known force capable of the cause [INTELLIGENCE] and because we see that The other possibilities [BLIND CHANCE AND/OR MECHANICAL NECESSITY] are not sufficiently capable to be credible causes, we are not just blindly extrapolating like the inductive turkey who turns up for corn every morning -- until he gets grabbed Christmas Eve. kairosfocus

Acipenser, The design-doubters have no where to hide. There is certainly nothing about human intelligence that isolate the logical class - intelligence. If you like to use the other non-starter argument that we need to know the mechanism of an intelligence acting, then I just like to ask you if you know the mechanism that cause human intelligence? Are we suppose to know the mechanism of human intelligence before we can claim human intelligence at work? These questions are highlighted by Steven Meyer's talk. mullerpr

Acipenser:

Yes , we know only humans make sand sculptures of automobiles, castles, and any number of other objects including people.

We know no such thing. We do know that humans do this, but we have no credible basis for claiming that ONLY humans do so. Just as we know that humans are intelligent, but we have no such knowledge that we exhaust the possible or actual cases of intelligence. Indeed, there are indicators that we do not. Starting with the language-based [coded], algorithm-using information systems that are embedded in the cells in our bodies. For, we do have good reason to infer that only intelligences will be able to surpass the configuration space barriers outlined above, to create such entities and program them. Then, beyond that the observed cosmos shows evident signs of fine tuning that sets it up in a cosmological configuration that fits with carbon chemistry cell based intelligent life. So long as one has not ruled out such intelligences a priori -- i.e. begged the question -- such indicators, on inference to best explanation, are cogent. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

PS: How many ways are there of arranging 2 mn grains of sand in 3-d space, on the constraint that each grain must be in contact with at least one other? (Let's make it easy by assuming cubes, say ~1/2 mm on the side, and that contact is full face to full face. Each grain thus can have from 1 to 6 contacts, i.e. the six faces correspond to 6 bits, with the constraint that at least one must be in state 1. A wire-mesh network with 2 mn nodes soon emerges. Without detailed calculation, obviously astronomical. First one has six possible faces to cover the "must contact" requirement, and the other five faces can have two states each, i.e. 6 * 2^5 possibilities. The second grain in contact has 2^5 possibilities for further contact, and so on. In any case the nodes and links mesh passes 1,000 bits rather quickly indeed, at more or less 5 bits per grain: 200 grains would do, with another 1,999,800 to go. In short, our observed cosmos plainly lacks the search resources to scan through an appreciable fraction of the possibilities, across its thermodynamically credible lifespan.) As a fraction of possible configs, how many of the possible shapes will be sufficiently close to the shape of a Corvette Stingray (how many models were there, across how many years?) to be recognisably "close enough to be acceptable"? Plainly, a very tiny fraction indeed, and deeply isolated in the space of possible configs. So, if we see such a sand pile in the shape of a Corvette Sting Ray, we have functionally specific, complex information, and we are in a very narrow target zone in the space of possible configs. (For that matter, any other simply and independently describable config would strongly point to design, e.g even a cube or a sphere or a topo model of a landscape. The overwhelming fraction of possible configs would be shapeless piles of one form or another) The best explanation for such is directed contingency, or, design; and that is intuitively obvious even before trying to do the serious calculation to get a specific number. Save, to those who find such an inference threatening to things they are otherwise strongly committed to. But such selectively hyperskeptical denialism comes at a price: blatant reductio ad absurdum. kairosfocus

"gpuccio: if it is true (as we do believe)" This is where your argument by analogy falls apart. You, and ID research, need to demonstrate that it is true in order to remove the 'if' from the argument. With no evidence that enables the removal of the 'if' it is just as likely that it is not true. "gpuccio:L I have no definite opinion about crop circles, but I am not sure that everybody would agree with that." It doesn't matter if everyone agrees or not. I once watched an interview with a crop circle designer and constructor. He demonstrated how he made a recent crop circle and despite his admission and demonstration of creating the crop circle the 'true' believer immediately stated that he was lying and that is was aliens. Who would a rational and logical person believe? The one who denied the evidence presented or the one who came forward to claim ownership of the design as well as demonstrating how he did it? Who would you believe? Acipenser

"kairofocus: (Let us go back to the basic point again. We see a sand shape, which of all possible congfigs, just happens to look like a ‘63 corvette. Why do we form the intuition that it is an artifact of intelligence and not of chance + necessity?" We don't use any intuition for the creation of the sand sculpture. We not only know who makes sand sculptures but how they make them as well. One can walk down any beach during the summer and find children (and adults) making all manner of sand sculptures. It isn't puzzling and requires a minimal of mental effort to recognize that a sand corvette is a human construct. "kairofocus: In short, it is quite plain that we can abstract a pattern, FSCI, that is a characteristic of a great many known cases of intelligent design. [We can make the further case that it is ONLY produced by such intelligence in our observation, and further, such high contingency outcomes, on the sheer statistical weight of outcomes, would not be seen to be formed by chance + necessity. Intelligence routinely does so.])" Yes , we know only humans make sand sculptures of automobiles, castles, and any number of other objects including people. We know this because as children we likely constructed something similar while playing on the beach. Acipenser

Acipenser: Well let’s see if humans are the only known source of such intelligent designs than postulating any other intelligenct sources is nothing but speculation. You are forgetting the "small" problem of functional information in biological beings, which is, in case you have not understood, the object of all our discussions. The design inference for that is an inference by analogy. It is absolutely appropriate, and, if it is true (as we do believe), then it's no more true that "humans are the only known source of such intelligent designs", unless you believe that humans designed biological beings. Crop circles are a known instance of human activity. We know who made them and how they made them by their own admissions and demonstrations. I have no definite opinion about crop circles, but I am not sure that everybody would agree with that. Anyway, unless you are sure of knowing truth by divine inspiration, you should admit that the origina of crop circles has been (and is) the object of many discussions. Whatever the truth, the fact is that the two competing hygpothese were: human artifact or alien artifact. IOW, design hypotheses. No one ever thought they were the result of random forces, or of natural forces (at least, not that I know: but again, I am not an expert of crop circles). gpuccio

"WJM: Then can you explain your epistemic resources that supports your conclusion that humans are the only intelligence able to create pictures of Corvettes? I.e. what is the evidence you have that exclude other intelligence from creating any designed artifact in particular?" Well first I would point out to you that you have failed to provide an example of such intelligence other than humans. I would further point out that no one on this forum or this planet could provide an example of a non-human intelligence that has created images of corvettes or any other artifact. "WJM: Your last comment confirmed that, your argument boils down to the irrational point of denying any other form of intelligence but human intelligence." It is not irrational to accept what are recognized facts. There are no examples of any non-human intelligence that creates images or artifacts. It would, however, be irrational to consider that your argument is anything other than pure speculation based on no factual evidence. Acipenser

"WJM: What difference does it make if humans are the only known source of such intelligent design features?" Well let's see if humans are the only known source of such intelligent designs than postulating any other intelligenct sources is nothing but speculation. "WJM: Let’s say we have a feature that appears somewhere that doesn’t depict anything specific to human history. Take, for instance, crop circles. Even if we don’t know who did them, or how they did them, or even that humans did them, are we fairly certain that an intelligence of some sort designed them?" Crop circles are a known instance of human activity. We know who made them and how they made them by their own admissions and demonstrations. Acipenser

OK, Acipenser, Then can you explain your epistemic resources that supports your conclusion that humans are the only intelligence able to create pictures of Corvettes? I.e. what is the evidence you have that exclude other intelligence from creating any designed artifact in particular? Your position is equivalent to 19th century persons claiming that man can not fly, because they have never seen a man flying. All of this unfounded certainty about what kind of intelligence might and might not be able to create Corvette pictures in the face of the empirically exposed genetic design features. P.S. Your last comment confirmed that, your argument boils down to the irrational point of denying any other form of intelligence but human intelligence. mullerpr

Petrushka TRRUMPET! (Let us go back to the basic point again. We see a sand shape, which of all possible congfigs, just happens to look like a '63 corvette. Why do we form the intuition that it is an artifact of intelligence and not of chance + necessity? For, if we can only recognise as intelligent that which we saw previously, we are in trouble, with an infinite regress lurking. In short, it is quite plain that we can abstract a pattern, FSCI, that is a characteristic of a great many known cases of intelligent design. [We can make the further case that it is ONLY produced by such intelligence in our observation, and further, such high contingency outcomes, on the sheer statistical weight of outcomes, would not be seen to be formed by chance + necessity. Intelligence routinely does so.]) P, your remarks above are beginning to look a whole lot like straining at gnats while swallowing elephants. And the scope of difficulties that have to be swallowed to evade acknowledging the significance of FSCI as a sign of design, are in some ways even more revealing. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

---Acipenser: "Of course it is the issue. You stated that the construction of an image of a corvette made out of sand is unprecedented when it is not." I said, "assuming that is the case." Do you ever read what is written? We are dealing in probabilities, not certainties, which is the essence of science. The model of the automobile doesn't matter. That is why I offered you the alternatives of the Volkswagon or the beat up Ford. The point is that there are many models for which there is likely no history of a formation and therefore no realistic opportunity to use a historical argument for them. Thus, when you come upon that model, [pick one you think has no history of sand formation] you have only two choices: Either wind, water, and time formed it, or a human formed it. Make your choice. You are studiously avoiding the argument and it is quite comical. ---"we have known for eons that people….living humans…make images out of sand and some of them are cars." Irrevelant. You still do not understand the significance of my choice of specific models which have likely not been formed. On the other hand, you have given yourself away. If, while walking down a beach, you came upon the sand image of a 1960 Volkswagon, you are obviously open to the possibility that the wind, water, time, and the sea could form it. Remarkable. ---"Of course the second image is more ‘vette-like’ than the 1915 image and that is a simple fact that even a child would recognize." It is not the image of a Corvette Sting Ray, which is what I alluded to. ---"I did look at a corvette forum and there was a link to a (now removed from photo bucket) of a image of a corvette made of sand." Even if your guess is right, and it is just a guess, it doesn't matter. Not all Corvette's are Sting Rays. Again, I remind you that I used a proper name for a reason. I didn't say, "car." ---"To state that there are none or have never been any sand images of corvettes is a statement based on a simple lack of knowledge." To say that, "as far as we know," is obviously an accurate statement inasmuch as you probed the internet looking for loopholes and could not find any. ---"As to your point of using 2 million grains of sand is that supposed toi indicate that someone (i.e., human) made some itty bitty teensy images of a corvette? How big do you suppose an image of a vette made of 2 million grains of sand might be? maybe about a 1/2 to 1 cup size." Probably about a half-foot long, which is what I had in mind all along. I was hoping that some Darwinist would actually ask me an intelligent question, such as, "would it be more likely to have been caused by naturalistic causes if it contained only one million grains of sand?" However, I am no longer interested in the prospect of answering intelligent questions on this thread. I will simply deal with the inanities and all attempts to avoid the argument. StephenB

How are we going to reach a conclusion that the object on the otherwise desolate planet was in fact designed by intelligent agents? Is there a rigorous, scientific way? If “no”, then must we operate from intuition?

See my post above regarding the objects on Mars. You operate the way you would operate in any forensic investigation. If the inference is obvious, as with sand sculptures, you make it. If the inference is not so obvious, as with stone faces or large stone balls, you have to do some work. In some cases experts may never agree. My point is very simple: in cases where you have an object of a class known to be made by humans and never observed to be made by natural forces, you will make the simplest inference. With classes of objects known to be made by humans and also known to be made by natural forces -- stone faces and stone balls -- you have to do further investigation. Living things fall into neither category. No one knows the history of their origin. It is not in any way scientific to use intuition to assert their origin. All kinds of phenomena have been attributed to intentional causes. Early humans attributed nearly everything to intentionality. We call this animism. Lightening, earthquakes, disease, storms, crop failure and crop success, fertility. Just about every phenomenon of any importance. Science has eroded this attribution in most cases. We cannot be certain that individuals are not struck down by the hand of God, but we are pretty certain that we cannot see the hand of God. Most people have accepted natural causes for these phenomena. People have always wanted to see God. I believe Moses had a tent where he spoke with God. Some people apparently tried to build a tower high enough to see or be with God. I think ID is such and attempt. Phrases like "the signature" are attempts to photograph God in action. I think they are doomed. I think they are theologically silly and scientifically vacuous. Just my opinion. But the history of science is the history of failure to find such signatures or fingerprints. The natural world always turns out to be deeper and more subtle than anything imagined. Petrushka

Acipenser: What difference does it make if humans are the only known source of such intelligent design features? Let's say we have a feature that appears somewhere that doesn't depict anything specific to human history. Take, for instance, crop circles. Even if we don't know who did them, or how they did them, or even that humans did them, are we fairly certain that an intelligence of some sort designed them? William J. Murray

"mullerpr: I forgot, somehow you know that humans are the only intelligence that can create pictures of Corvettes." Yes, it is true that the only intelligence I know of that can create images of corvettes are humans. Can you give me an example of intelligence, other than humans, that can/have created images of corvettes (or any similar images at all) or are you stuck with the same evidence that I and everyone else are stuck with, i.e., the only known intelligence that can create images of corvettes are humans? Acipenser

Petrushka said: I assume we would attribute it to creatures somewhat like ourselves (having bodies, brains, and so forth). You didn't answer me. This isn't about biology at all. How are we going to reach a conclusion that the object on the otherwise desolate planet was in fact designed by intelligent agents? Is there a rigorous, scientific way? If "no", then must we operate from intuition? William J. Murray

What is it with design-doubters and their insistence that our knowledge of human intelligence’s actions is the only reason any FSCI (Functionally Specified Complex Information) can be attributed to intelligence. It does not make sense… at all.

Actually we have some recent examples of the attempt to apply design dection principles to alien objects of unknown provenance. the face on Mars, the glass worms on Mars, the trees on Mars. Some pretty famous and bright people lent their names to interpretations that these were intelligently designed or living objects. Petrushka

Acipenser, If you are not one of the design-doubters I described in #160, then you have to pardon me because you did sound like one, but I might be mistaken. mullerpr

Acipenser, What is it with design-doubters and their insistence that our knowledge of human intelligence's actions is the only reason any FSCI (Functionally Specified Complex Information) can be attributed to intelligence. It does not make sense... at all. There is no need, at all, to know it was a human that created the pictures of the Corvettes. Your argument boils down to the irrational point of denying any other form of intelligence but human intelligence. Why would you and any other design-doubters do that? Would you insist on this approach if those exact pictures come to us encoded in an clearly alien code system from space? Or would you actually have to conclude some aliens decrypted a signal depicting the Corvettes and sent us their own signal back? What kind of intelligence were at work then? O... I forgot, somehow you know that humans are the only intelligence that can create pictures of Corvettes. What if the coding system used is one that has never been used by any known human? In fact that code system successfully encode biological machinery that builds all living things. mullerpr

Do we hear the elephant in the middle of the room trumpeting away? kairosfocus

Stephen, fif you also notice that there were images of people made out of sand in those two links I provided. I'm not sure what the ID ramifications of such images are but most would simply attribute them to humans' expressing themselves in a form of art, i.e., sand sculptures. Acipenser

The simpler question for Petrushka is this: if humans land for the first time on an otherwise desolate planet, and find an object that appears to some to be an abandoned alien spacecraft, how are we to proceed in our determination of how to classify and thus investigate and explain the existence of the object?

I assume we would attribute it to creatures somewhat like ourselves (having bodies, brains, and so forth). But suppose on the same alien planet we encounter microbes. Do we assume they were created by the same entities that made the spaceship? The question is not about the abstract attributes of these objects, but about their history. Reasoning from abstraction is always hazardous, but your example is particularly pernicious, because it eliminates the difference between silica and carbon compounds. It also eliminates the difference between objects that self-replicate and objects that do not. It ignores everything know from observation and research regarding changes in genomes over time. It's a terrible analogy for discussing the history of living things. Petrushka

"StephenB: That is hardly the issue. It is no challenge to find a SPECIFIC example for which that has NOT been the case in order to prove the point. Refer to @148. What is this thing about context that Darwinists cannot comprehend." Of course it is the issue. You stated that the construction of an image of a corvette made out of sand is unprecedented when it is not. You've used a terrible example since we have known for eons that people....living humans...make images out of sand and some of them are cars. If we found one such sculpture we would know immediately that some person(s) made it and give it no more thought. "StephenB: I just checked your images and neither were similar to a Corvette Sting Ray, which means that you not only missed the context and the point but were also wrong about your facts. It is still that case that, as far as we know, no one has ever formed the image of a Corvette Sting Ray in the sand, which is what I said before you weighed in with your assertions to the contrary." Of course the second image is more 'vette-like' than the 1915 image and that is a simple fact that even a child would recognize. I did look at a corvette forum and there was a link to a (now removed from photo bucket) of a image of a corvette made of sand. To state that there are none or have never been any sand images of corvettes is a statement based on a simple lack of knowledge. As to your point of using 2 million grains of sand is that supposed toi indicate that someone (i.e., human) made some itty bitty teensy images of a corvette? How big do you suppose an image of a vette made of 2 million grains of sand might be? maybe about a 1/2 to 1 cup size? Acipenser

PS: A peer-reviewed article on the Universal Plausibility Bound, by Abel. Abstract:

Mere possibility is not an adequate basis for asserting scientific plausibility. A precisely defined universal bound is needed beyond which the assertion of plausibility, particularly in life-origin models, can be considered operationally falsified. But can something so seemingly relative and subjective as plausibility ever be quantified? Amazingly, the answer is, "Yes." A method of objectively measuring the plausibility of any chance hypothesis (The Universal Plausibility Metric [UPM]) is presented. A numerical inequality is also provided whereby any chance hypothesis can be definitively falsified when its UPM metric of ? is < 1 (The Universal Plausibility Principle [UPP]). Both UPM and UPP pre-exist and are independent of any experimental design and data set. Conclusion No low-probability hypothetical plausibility assertion should survive peer-review without subjection to the UPP inequality standard of formal falsification (? < 1).

[I hope the xi's print.] kairosfocus

WJM: But, we are on an alien planet, and we have already run into the crashed spaceship: cell based life that uses informational macromolecules to carry out an information system . . . GEM of TKI kairosfocus

PS: I forgot to mention how in GA's the generational champions are ART-ificially selected for promotion . . . kairosfocus

Steve: Someone out there is probably busy this morning, doing a '63 'vette. (My uncle is probably looking over Heaven's balcony and smiling as he remembers his own!) Somebody else is doing your beat-up Ford, and someone else is doing a VW bug . . . Can't help out down here, as we seem to be having waves of tropical waves on this the 15th anniversary of the beginning of the ongoing volcano eruption. But in any case your underlying point is solid: the sand sculpture fits a specification [cf. here on how accurate 3-d models (computer sculptures if you will) are built], will be quite complex (notice the number of triangles added to skin the mesh!) and can easily be discerned as fitting in the FSCI criterion as a sign of intelligence. (Just ask how many yes/no decisions have to be chained to make a good 3-d wireframe for your sand model.) Such sand sculptures are quite plainly distinct from dune forms, sand ripples or beach forms shaped by natural forces of chance and mechanical necessity. And, we routinely see them as made by intelligences, but not by blind forces of nature. Islands of specific function -- the target, or at least "hot" zone -- in a sea of non-function. But that is the point. [And notice, we here imply a functional target. So, an imagined genetic algor would first try to come to a pile and then move it step by step to be more and more 'vette like. Maybe, adding and subtracting grains of sand until it hits close enough to the ideal or meets some other halting criterion, i.e. an alternative terminus or target. Once we have an optimising or satisficing or so-called fitness function with hill-climbing and halting conditions, we define targets and feed in a lot of active information, which is what explains the performance advantage over blind random walk search! (And, remember, halting is a biggie problem in general theory of algorithms. In the case in view, where there are islands of function in large seas of non-function,you have the problem that the so-called fitness function very seldom rises above zero level.)] There is an elephant in the middle of the room, and design thinkers are rude enough to point it out. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

The simpler question for Petrushka is this: if humans land for the first time on an otherwise desolate planet, and find an object that appears to some to be an abandoned alien spacecraft, how are we to proceed in our determination of how to classify and thus investigate and explain the existence of the object? Should we just assume that the object was generated by non-intelligent forces, and attempt to find "natural" explanations for it? Would there be a scientific means for determining if it is a construct of alien intelligence? Would we have to just rely on intuition - i.e., if it is similar enough in appearance to what a human would construct? William J. Murray

---Acipenser: "Stephen, here is another more ‘vette-like’ image made of grains of sands. I don’t know how many exactly but probably wuite a ..." P.S. I just checked your images and neither were similar to a Corvette Sting Ray, which means that you not only missed the context and the point but were also wrong about your facts. It is still that case that, as far as we know, no one has ever formed the image of a Corvette Sting Ray in the sand, which is what I said before you weighed in with your assertions to the contrary. There is a reason why I gave my example a proper name and didn't just call it a car. Here is a crazy thought. Why not take time out to find out what a Corvette Sting Ray looks like. StephenB

---Acipenser: "Intricate sand sculpters are hardly a rarity. Your assumption of no precedence is unfounded." That is hardly the issue. It is no challenge to find a SPECIFIC example for which that has NOT been the case in order to prove the point. Refer to @148. What is this thing about context that Darwinists cannot comprehend. StephenB

---Acipenser: "Stephen, here is another more ‘vette-like’ image made of grains of sands. I don’t know how many exactly but probably wuite a few." Good grief, you people are absolutely amazing. OK, let's make it a 1960 Volkswagon. As far as I know, no one has ever shaped one with 2 million grains of sand. Now, resume the exercise with the sand model of the Volkswagon and tell me whether or not wind, water, and time can do the job. Or, do I need to get a beat up Ford with a missing engine. Unbelievable! StephenB

PS: Over at Youtube, they seem to be being exercised by the question of how function emerges from a combination of parts. Of course this is a whole-property that arises from the complex organisation node-and-network of components with particular required properties, in accord with a "wiring diagram." Anyone who has designed and build a complex electronic circuit can tell you that, and it is apparent from careful reflection on a computer program or even a typed out sentence. Thus, beyond a certain threshold, we soon see tha there are so many possible non-functional arrangements that he only feasible way to get a functional whole is by intelligence, skill and knowledge that eliminates the vast majority of possible but unworkable combinations, and designs one that works or nearly works, then adjusts for desired optimum; and then knows when to stop. Which last is not a trivial issue. (And BTW, trial and error works in that context, or it would be lost in the sea of non-function.) kairosfocus

Onlookers: The above documents the saddening persistent refusal to discuss the inconvenient elephant in the middle of the room. When we come across a sand or an ice or an ice cream sculpture we recognise it as designed because of its functionally specific, complex information. If you were to take a 6 year old child who had never seen such a sand sculpture -- and who did not know of the use of clay models in car design -- she or he would instantly recognise the work of an intelligent agent. Such a child would not attribute a sculpture to forces of nature (wind, rain etc), but would discern that it is to precisely shaped to be natural. (Cf here the previously linked -- and studiously ignored -- discussion of Old Man of the Mountain vs Ge Washington at Mr Rushmore, here, in light of the onward discussion of point and arc meshes and wireframes of a dolphin vs Nefertiti. A generic, rough and roughly recognisable shape in a cloud in the sky or a cliff is one thing, a precision image is utterly another. BTW, the Sphinx in Egypt is evidently a case where an erosion-shaped formation was then modified artistically to form a mythological image with the head of a certain Pharaoh. And of course, one of the features of art is knowing when to stop, i.e. the issue of halting. Old Man of the Mountain is no longer with us.) Now, on select, specific objections: 1] Petrushka, 142: Life forms beginning with the cell are vastly more complex than the simplest possible replicator. The vast sea of non-function simply doesn’t exist. We are of course dealing with living forms, which must integrate a metabolic automaton with a self-replicating facility to be a living form, not imagined autocatalytic molecules (which have their own problems as already linked). Such a replicator will have to fulfill the von Neumann-type requisites:

(i) an underlying storable code to record the required information to create not only (a) the primary functional machine [[here, a Turing-type “universal computer”] but also (b) the self-replicating facility; and, that (c) can express step by step finite procedures for using the facility; (ii) a coded blueprint/tape record of such specifications and (explicit or implicit) instructions, together with (iii) a tape reader [[called “the constructor” by von Neumann] that reads and interprets the coded specifications and associated instructions; thus controlling: (iv) position-arm implementing machines with “tool tips” controlled by the tape reader and used to carry out the action-steps for the specified replication (including replication of the constructor itself); backed up by (v) either: (1) a pre-existing reservoir of required parts and energy sources, or (2) associated “metabolic” machines carrying out activities that as a part of their function, can provide required specific materials/parts and forms of energy for the replication facility, by using the generic resources in the surrounding environment.

Parts (ii), (iii) and (iv) are each necessary for and together are jointly sufficient to implement a self-replicating machine with an integral von Neumann universal constructor. That is, we see here an irreducibly complex set of core components that must all be present in a properly organised fashion for a successful self-replicating machine to exist. This immediately implies an island of function in a sea of non-function, as can be seen from the precise organisation of specific components and instructions that is required for function to exist and to be self-replicated. Or else, every can of soup in your friendly neighbourhood grocery shop would be teeming with de novo life. 200 years ago, Paley aptly noted that a watch that tells time would be instantly recognisable as an artifact, and went on to discuss how the addition of a self-replicating facility would increase the force of that inference. From Darwin on, evolutionary materialism advocates have studiously ignored the force of that point. When it comes to novel body plans, it has already been highlighted that such a plan has to be embryologically feasible, which requires a cluster of tightly integrated mutually interacting changes, that -- starting from unicellular organisms -- and in light of the Cambrian revolution -- require 10's+ millions of bases of new integrated bio-information, dozens of times over. So, again and again we see the imagined smoothly varying continental fitness landscape of ever so much evolutionary theorising disintegrate into a more realistic pattern of isolated islands of function in a vast sea of non-function. We can be assured that such denials of the herd of elephants in the middle of the room are a sign of just how much trouble evolutionary materialism is in, once it was learned that cell based life is rooted in digital information systems of enormous sophistication. 2] The molecular differences between species are not vast, nor are they non-functional. Species is of course a relatively minor level of difference, and one that is often fairly arbitrary. For instance, in the 1980's it was discovered that the different species of Darwin's Finches were capable of interbreeding. Similarly, circumpolar herring gulls and the like show a fairly minor range of variation. But, we are discussing origin of first life, and of the origin of kingdoms and phyla or subphyla from unicellular organisms, in light of the long since known Cambrian fossil life revolution that tells us that major body plans came first and without evident antecedents, and certainly no smoothly varying fossil pattern comparable to circumpolar gulls. As has been very clear since the days Darwin struggled with the Cambrian fossils and expressed hope that onward digs would provide the smoothly varying populations and links that would fill in his postulated tree of life; the only illustration in Origin. But, while that infamous icon still appears in just about every textbook or popular presentation, we are seldom given the truth that he smoothly varying trunks and branches to the tips are conjectural. The actual record of the fossils -- as e.g. Gould admitted n trying to propose punctuated equlibria to explain the systematic gaps -- is one of sudden appearances of basic forms, stasis, then disappearance and/or continuation into the modern world. The herd of elephants in the middle of the room is trumpeting in unison. 3] Even Michael Behe sees no problem with the evolution of vertebrates. Behe of course, notoriously, is pointing out that the precisely integrated irreducibly complex functions required for major body systems is such that the mechanism of origin cannot credibly be chance variation of whatever flavour of the month, feeding into blind culling out of the less fit sub-populations. That herd of elephants is looking like it may be about to charge. 4] Acipenser, 143: Intricate sand sculpters are hardly a rarity. Your assumption of no precedence is unfounded. And, what do we know about such sculptures?

(a) they are observed as routinely produced by intelligent agents, (b) they exhibit functionally specific complex organisation and associated information, (c) they sharply contrast with natural sand forms such as dunes or ripples or beaches or even piles, (d) FSCI is a reliable criterion to discriminate the artifacts from the natural forms tracing to blind chance and mechanical necessity.

In short, you have cited yet another instance of how on inspection, we can see that the FSCI criterion is an empirically reliable sign of intelligence. That is, further grounds for our confidence to infer that FSCI is a reliable sign of intelligence. But, by going after the red herring that SB seems to have been unaware of such sculptures -- come over to where we got beaches that are much nicer than ice, mon! -- Acipenser has again manged to ignore the trumpeting and pawing elephants in the middle of the room. Whoops, here they come, on that charge! ___________ We again and again see evidence that substantiates that there are good, empirically reliable signs of design, that is of purposefully directed contingency, especially that special subset of complex, specific information that we have descriptively termed functionally specific, complex information. So, we have good reason to trust the inference form reliable sign tot he signified causal factor, intelligent action. This becomes strongly evident when we look at the digital information system that is a key component of the metabolic and self-replicating functions of the living cell. It is evident in the orders of magnitude increments in integrated complex information required to originate embryologically viable body plans. It is supported by the actual abruptness and stasis in the fossil record, which contrasts ever so sharply with Darwin's hoped for smoothly varying tree of life. News flash: The stampeding herd of elephants has just over-run the evolutionary materialist camp of the neo-Darwinists, smashing it flat. Rescue and recovery operations are underway . . . GEM of TKI kairosfocus

whoopes: http://www.zazzle.co.uk/automobile_sand_sculpture_poster-228077145764844283 Acipenser

Stephen, here is another more 'vette-like' image made of grains of sands. I don't know how many exactly but probably wuite a few. Acipenser

"StephenB: I have never heard of anyone making an image of a Corvette Sting Ray with the raw materials of sand. Have you ever heard of such a thing? As far as I know, there is no precedence for it. Assuming that to be the case, we have no history of humans designing a Corvette Sting Ray with two million grains of sand [which is about what it would take]." Intricate sand sculpters are hardly a rarity. Your assumption of no precedence is unfounded. From a 1915 contest: http://www.mcmahanphoto.com/lc1291--atlantic-city-beach-sand-sculpture-contest-photo.html There are images of many things that have been constructed from sand. Acipenser

And, you go on to pretend that hill-climbing within an island of function addresses getting to the shores of such an island in the midst of a vast sea of non-function, beyond the credible resources of the observable cosmos.

Life forms beginning with the cell are vastly more complex than the simplest possible replicator. The vast sea of non-function simply doesn't exist. The molecular differences between species are not vast, nor are they non-functional. Even Michael Behe sees no problem with the evolution of vertebrates. Petrushka

---Petrushka: "We know that humans make images of cars in all kinds of materials, so there is no reason to doube that a scuplted image of a Corvette is made by humans." I have never heard of anyone making an image of a Corvette Sting Ray with the raw materials of sand. Have you ever heard of such a thing? As far as I know, there is no precedence for it. Assuming that to be the case, we have no history of humans designing a Corvette Sting Ray with two million grains of sand [which is about what it would take]. So, for the third time, I ask the question: If you come upon a sand model of a Corvette Sting Ray on the beach, there are only two possible explanations. Either wind, water, and time accidentally shaped the sand to provide the illusion of design [natural causes] or else an an intelligent cause [agency] purposefully formed the sand into a model of a Corvette Sting Ray. Which option do you choose? ---"My argument is that ivings things change from generation to generation, and the change can accumulate." Your argument is irrelevant to my question. StephenB

Petrushka: Again, you depart on yet further tangents. The underlying rhetorical tactic is to ignore what cannot be answered, and try to go off on a distraction. Plainly, you are unwilling to acknowledge that there is such a thing as a sign of intelligence, starting with something so simple as a Corvette sand sculpture on a beach. But we can take it that you know or should know that. When it comes to evoutionary algorithms, you again ignore the obvious issue: where do codes, algorithms and implementing machines come from, what characteristic signs of what hey are do they exhibit? And, you go on to pretend that hill-climbing within an island of function addresses getting to the shores of such an island in the midst of a vast sea of non-function, beyond the credible resources of the observable cosmos. FYI, slope information, objective functions, hill-climbing algorithms and the like constitute active information, intelligently fed into intelligently designed and tested algorithms, implemented on intelligently designed machines, based on intelligently designed languages. All of which manifest functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information. And, without the first self replicators -- onlookers, observe the "assume a can opener" solution to he problem of first getting the can opened on the desert island . . . i.e. begging the key question then acting as though it is irrelevant -- that depend on precisely these sorts of systems, we do not get to the possibility of reproducing populations and selection off differential success. Going beyond that, novel body plans credibly require upwards of 10 mn bits of additional information to account for cell types, tissues, organs, etc, all of which has to be embryologically integrated into a functional organism. On pain of failure to be born. So, until embryologically valid body plans and regulatory mechanisms for development exist, we do not have a viable population for reproduction. Also, this has to start from unicellular organisms, on evolutionary materialistic premises, and has to successfully happen dozens of times over by blind chance plus mechanical necessity. All of which vastly exceed the search resources of the observed cosmos simply to get to shores of initial functionality. The evolutionary materialist theory of origin of body plans collapses in the face of the Cambrian fossil life record, and in the face of the challenge to get to first life from a still warm pond or whatever. 9Which last, recall, is the focus of SITC.) By sharpest contrast, we already know in principle what is required for a self replicating automaton, and from that we can see how to move on to diverse self-replicating forms, by design. The best explanaiton for life bawsed on digital information technology based on informaitonal macromolecules in teh cell is plainly design. And, major body plans likewise show strong signs indeed of design. That is why Dawkin's famous remark acknowledged that biology studies complex entieis that give every appearance of being designed. However, after 150 years of trying, the proposed mechanisms to dismiss that appearance as illusory are increasingly threadbare. Life forms, starting with the cell look designed for he excellent reason that that is their best and most credible causal explanation. Absent of course a priori imposition of materialism. Which is precisely what we are dealing with. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Evolutionary algorithms are a case of designed, targetted search..

Can be, but dispite much rhetoric to the contrary they work just fine without targets. The travelling salesman problem is an example of a gradient without a target. Some members of a population are simply shorter thatn others. The fitness function has no knowledge of what the best solution is or could be. It's a given fact that we do not know what the first replicator was, but it's also a fact that the simplest non-living replicators, such as Spiegelman's Monster, evolve. It doesn't require programming. It's an inevitable behavior of replicating systems. So for the moment you are free to imagine any history you wish for the genesis of first replicators, but once you have replication, you have the means to follow fitness gradients. Petrushka

Petyrushka Evolutionary algorithms are a case of designed, targetted search, much rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding. In short, yest another red herring and strawman. Start from the source of the algorithm itself (and the code/language used to make them), the machines on which it runs, and the program design that moves up a performance slope to a target zone. Hill-climbing presupposes being on an island of function. We are looking instead at cases where the issue is to get to such islands in a sea of non-function that is sufficiently large that the resources of the cosmos are vastly insufficient to traverse the sea to get to one of the relevant shores of function. this is especially evident in the case of Origin of Life, which is what Meyer discusses. Where do we know that algorithms, codes, programs, executing machines etc come from, again? What is the implication of their functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information? Can such credibly be created by the equivalent of a tornado in a junkyard in Austin Texas, and zener noise spewed across a hard drive? In short, you have aptly shown the power of intelligent design, but have again mislabelled it. Sorry, the wizard is visible even behind the curtain. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Evolutionary algorithms routinely handle fitness searches in configuration spaces as large as 10,000! or 2.8 × 10^35659. Petrushka

Petrushka I must be even more direct: you are still dodging the point. Your "direct" questions have all been in pursuit of distractive red herrings, and in the case of e.g. the dog breed question, when I gave you an answer that is not flattering to your cause, you ignored it. Twice over. The above on the Corvette more than adequately shows the effectiveness of functionally specific complex information as an empirically reliable sign of intelligence, and it illustrates aptly how such signs of intelligence function. It is by now quite clear that you have no answer to the original point that the digital information system observed in cell based life implies functionally specific complex information and a configuration space well beyond the credible search capacity of the observable cosmos, on the assumption that blind chance and mechanical necessity are the claimed forces at work. In the case of OOL, this is BEFORE reproduction is possible, i.e. the hope that one can explain away complexity on increments from minimal function evaporates. For, until one has the elements of a digital information controlled replicator and the implementing machines in place, reproduction is not possible. In short, there plainly is a signature of design in the cell. And, wen it comes to body plan level biodiversity, we are talking of having to account for upwards of 10 mn bit5s of information, dozens of times over, just to address the Cambrian revooution. It is now all too blatantly plain that he reason that the obvious explanation is being dismissed and obfuscated is as Lewontin so frankly acknowledged in 1997:

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

You and your ilk are free to do that if you wish, but you cannot then turn around and claim that such a priori evolutionary materialist ideology in the name of science is anything more than an ideology flying the false colours of an unfettered pursuit of the truth about our universe based on evidence, responsible reasoned analysis and discussion among he informed. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Is that complexity specific and targetted? (Yes,it reflects a rather specific shape, that of a Corvette Stingray.)

But what if the targeted shape is that of a trilobite? Can you easily distinguish between a natural fossil and a human made fake? The history is of more interest than the shape. Petrushka

Pardon a direct question: why can’t you resist the temptation to go off on a strawman?

I was asked a direct question and my answer was yes, sculptures of automobiles are among the things known to be produced by humans. I notice the question was not about images resembling human faces, or alphabetical characters. http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/images/poster.jpg I've asked a lot of direct questions on this thread, and none of them have been answered. I asked, for example, whether an ID proponent can demonstrate a reliable, objective method for distinguishing natural varieties from those bred by humans. I've also asked whether ID proponents can suggest how a non-omniscient designer can overcome the problem of mathematical complexity, the tendency of small changes to diverge rapidly. I asked this specifically in reference to anticipating the effects of small changes in DNA. Petrushka

Petrushka: Re: The issue is not the signs of design, but the history of the design. Whether is is poofed into existence or whether the current form includes countless small refinements accumulated over millions of years. Pardon a direct question: why can't you resist the temptation to go off on a strawman? Let us look at Stephen's corvette sand sculpture again: does it show signs of high contingency? (Plainly yes, piles of sand may take many shapes.) Is there reason to believe that high degree of contingency is driven by mechanical necessity? (No: laws of necessity lead to low contingency.) Is there reason to believe the high contingency is complex? (Yes, there are a great many possible configs and it would take a fairly extensive capacity to hold the nodes and arcs mesh for the act5ual shape.) Is that complexity specific and targetted? (Yes,it reflects a rather specific shape, that of a Corvette Stingray.) Is that contingency more credibly explained by chance or design? (Design, as specific complexity is signature of design, and the particular shape is well away from outcomes that one reasonably would expect on chance + necessity.) Is this sign of design dependent on how the sculpture was specifically produced, e.g by mould or carving or grain by grain across time by an army of nano robots etc? (No, it is discernible from the end product and allows us to infer from the entity in front of us to the category of cause that is dominant in its particular outcome.) __________ In short your consistent refusal to look at and acknowledge the existence of the elephant in the middle of the room is absolutely telling. Reductio ad absurdum, in short. Sorry to have to be so direct. But it looks like nothing else will gain your attention. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

By that definition, the genetic and regulatory codes stored in DNA are information, discrete state — i.e. digital — information that functions in an algorithmic context in an information system implemented using molecular nanotechnologies.

Evolution is an algorithm , and it can accumulate and store information about the relative survival value of variants. It does so through the differential reproductive success of variants. Petrushka

This is a multiple choice question for which there are only two answers. What is your answer?

We know that humans make images of cars in all kinds of materials, so there is no reason to doube that a scuplted image of a Corvette is made by humans. So what? My argument is that ivings things change from generation to generation, and the change can accumulate. Petrushka

The focus of investigation is thus the object, phenomenon or process in front of us, and the issue is, does it exhibit credible, empirically reliable signs of design, i.e purposefully directed contingency.

The issue is not the signs of design, but the history of the design. Whether is is poofed into existence or whether the current form includes countless small refinements accumulated over millions of years. To disprove or make unlikely the accumulation of small variations, you would need to demonstrate the simultaneous appearance of two or more useful mutations. This is unlikely, since the typical genetic distance between species suggests it takes thousand of years to fix a mutation in a population. there is no evidence for or need for hopeful monsters. Alternatively, you might try to demonstrate that some variations are produced in anticipation of need or in anticipation of some new complex structure. Good luck with that. The history of life indicates that when the environment changes suddenly, large swaths of species go extinct rather than adapt. Petrushka

---_Petrushka: "If I had seen sand models of Corvets replicating themselves, I might be uncertain. I’ve picked up stones having the shape of a cross. They have been attributed by some to the work of fairies." What is it about providing a straight answer to a straight question that you find so daunting? If you come upon a sand model of a Corvette Sting Ray on the beach, there are only two possible explanations. Either it was the result of wind, water, and time [natural causes] or else it was designed [intelligent agency]. This is a multiple choice question for which there are only two answers. What is your answer? ---"But why not use a real case from biology? First things first. If you don't understand the basic principle of a design inference, we cannot apply it to biology. StephenB

F.N 2: Someone at Youtube needs to be reminded that DNA is a string-based data structure that stores discrete sate coded information. Information, of course per Wikipedia (cf the glossary top right every page at UD) is something that we can recognise, identify and objectively define, so it is not a circular argument to identify something as information-bearing:

Information — Wikipedia, with some reorganization, is apt: “ . . that which would be communicated by a message if it were sent from a sender to a receiver capable of understanding the message . . . . In terms of data, it can be defined as a collection of facts [i.e. as represented or sensed in some format] from which conclusions may be drawn [and on which decisions and actions may be taken].”

By that definition, the genetic and regulatory codes stored in DNA are information, discrete state -- i.e. digital -- information that functions in an algorithmic context in an information system implemented using molecular nanotechnologies. And if that then strongly points to an intelligence as its most credible source, then that is now an empirically warranted point, not a question-begging assumption. kairosfocus

A reminder that this analysis is hardly a new one. Here, again, is Plato in The Laws Bk X, 360 BC: ___________ >> Ath. . . . [[The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [[i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as to the bodies which come next in order-earth, and sun, and moon, and stars-they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them-of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only. [[In short, evolutionary materialism premised on chance plus necessity acting without intelligent guidance on primordial matter is hardly a new or a primarily "scientific" view!] . . . . [[Thus, they hold that t]he Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.- [[Relativism, too, is not new.] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might, and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions, these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others, and not in legal subjection to them. >> ______________ kairosfocus

F/N: On the absurdity of evolutionary materialism: _____________ >> . . . [evolutionary] materialism [a worldview that often likes to wear the mantle of "science"] . . . argues that the cosmos is the product of chance interactions of matter and energy, within the constraint of the laws of nature. Therefore, all phenomena in the universe, without residue, are determined by the working of purposeless laws acting on material objects, under the direct or indirect control of chance. But human thought, clearly a phenomenon in the universe, must now fit into this picture. Thus, what we subjectively experience as "thoughts" and "conclusions" can only be understood materialistically as unintended by-products of the natural forces which cause and control the electro-chemical events going on in neural networks in our brains. (These forces are viewed as ultimately physical, but are taken to be partly mediated through a complex pattern of genetic inheritance ["nature"] and psycho-social conditioning ["nurture"], within the framework of human culture [i.e. socio-cultural conditioning and resulting/associated relativism].) Therefore, if materialism is true, the "thoughts" we have and the "conclusions" we reach, without residue, are produced and controlled by forces that are irrelevant to purpose, truth, or validity. Of course, the conclusions of such arguments may still happen to be true, by lucky coincidence — but we have no rational grounds for relying on the “reasoning” that has led us to feel that we have “proved” them. And, if our materialist friends then say: “But, we can always apply scientific tests, through observation, experiment and measurement,” then we must note that to demonstrate that such tests provide empirical support to their theories requires the use of the very process of reasoning which they have discredited! Thus, evolutionary materialism reduces reason itself to the status of illusion. But, immediately, that includes “Materialism.” For instance, Marxists commonly deride opponents for their “bourgeois class conditioning” — but what of the effect of their own class origins? Freudians frequently dismiss qualms about their loosening of moral restraints by alluding to the impact of strict potty training on their “up-tight” critics — but doesn’t this cut both ways? And, should we not simply ask a Behaviourist whether s/he is simply another operantly conditioned rat trapped in the cosmic maze? In the end, materialism is based on self-defeating logic . . . . In Law, Government, and Public Policy, the same bitter seed has shot up the idea that "Right" and "Wrong" are simply arbitrary social conventions. This has often led to the adoption of hypocritical, inconsistent, futile and self-destructive public policies. "Truth is dead," so Education has become a power struggle; the victors have the right to propagandise the next generation as they please. Media power games simply extend this cynical manipulation from the school and the campus to the street, the office, the factory, the church and the home. Further, since family structures and rules of sexual morality are "simply accidents of history," one is free to force society to redefine family values and principles of sexual morality to suit one's preferences. Finally, life itself is meaningless and valueless, so the weak, sick, defenceless and undesirable — for whatever reason — can simply be slaughtered, whether in the womb, in the hospital, or in the death camp. In short, ideas sprout roots, shoot up into all aspects of life, and have consequences in the real world . . . >> ______________ So, we plainly have a comparative difficulties case to address. And we can see that not only is evolutionary materialism inherently amoral (which is already a serious issue with destructive implications for the community), but it plainly entails that the mind we must use even to think evolutionary materialistic thoughts, is unreliable, being caused and controlled by forces that are irrelevant to reason and logic and truth. Of course, evolutionary materialists may be logical thinkers, even brilliant ones, and of course they may often behave in morally upright ways, but the SYSTEM OF THOUGHT is clearly morally and intellectually incoherent and cannot ground the credibility of morality or the mind. kairosfocus

And, of course . . . today's excerpt from Youtube:

[Kyazu TheInsane:] @brando92346 You're right! If we removed? every mechanism of natural selection and chemistry involved in life processes, DNA might have been created by a wizard. Who created this wizard's DNA, though? Or,better, can we apply our knowledge of life currently on this planet to? understand the psychology of this wizard and make falsifiable predictions regarding it?

1 --> The chemistry of DNA as a polymer, of course is not the issue, so the first step is a red herring being led out to a strawman "wizard." 2 --> The real issue is that DNA uses the chaining chemistry to set up a code-bearing string data structure used in step by step algorithmic processes, e.g. protein synthesis. 3 --> Can KTI account -- on actual observation -- for the origin of complex nanotechnology information systems by blind chance plus mechanical necessity in his warm little pond or at an undersea hot vent or on a comet etc? 4 --> Obviously not. (Or he would have pointed it out gleefully, instead of resorting to distraction and distortion tactics.) 5 --> The strawman is of course the focus on chemistry and natural selection. No one denies that biochemistry is based on chemistry. No one says that natural selection does not happen. 6 --> The first problem is that NS is not an information source but the "executioner" of inferior varieties that cannot compete. It is to the chance variation that one has to look for information generation without intelligent input, and we run straight into the point that he information quantum we observe is well beyond the credible search capacity of the cosmos, which runs out at 125 bytes (about a sentence or two worth of characters in typescript, and well below the 100,000+ bits for credible fIrst life and much less than the 10 mn + bases for novel multicellular body plans observed at the Cambrian.) 7 --> When it comes to the chemistry of life, it is constrained by algorithmoc control systems, and that organised information is a higher level than the existence of mere codes. The only known source of step by step sequences of actions of coordinated entities towards solving problems is intelligence. For the same reason that chance contingency simply does not have the legs to carry out the task, on the gamut of the observed cosmos. 8 --> And now we see the ad hominem: the dismissive label, "wizard." 9 --> Instead of acknowledging that intelligence is the routinely observed source of information systems, a word is chosen to suggest the magical, or supernatural. Of course neither Redmond nor Cupertino are noted for hiring wizards to create software. They do hire what are now called "software engineers." 10 --> Next we see an attempted reductio by infinite regress: where did the DNA of the wizard come from? Irrelevant: the issue is that from the observed empirically reliable signs, we have good reason to infer to a designer of the information-based technology of cell based life. 11 --> going beyond that, the cosmos is evidently fine tuned and functionally organised for carbon chemistry cell based life, on multiple dimensions. That means that we have good reason to infer to an extra-cosmic, powerful and genius level intelligent designer [just think of the Maths to handle the physics involved] beyond the matter-energy space-time world we experience. In other words one capable of causing the existence of the cosmos. Such a designer would be a suitable candidate to have gone on to create life and obviously does not require DNA, as DNA is based on matter as we experience it, which as it plainly had a beginning -- usually dated at 13.7 BYA -- has a cause. 12 --> This is where the absence of a good basic exposure to philosophy in our current education systems tells. For, it is easy to see that once we have a contingent cosmos, it necessitates a causally prior being that is not contingent, i.e a necessary being. (in the old days when it was credible to hold that he observed universe was eternal, that necessary being was identified with the cosmos as a whole. But now with a cosmos with a credible beginning at a finite time in the past, we need an extra-cosmic begin-ner; and (as the linked notes will amplify) multiverse speculations simply extend that contingency, so they only postpone the issue of the implied necessary being.) 13 --> As a further stage of distractive subject shifting, the question of psychoanalysing the inferred "wizard" was raised. 14 --> But all of this is utterly irrelevant. For the issue on design theory is the inference form empirically reliable sign to the signified intelligence, which obviously is not being addressed by objectors who are so busy seeking every distractive red herring they can. 15 --> Besides, the real psychology to be critically assessed is a lot closer to home. For, our civilisation has a major tradition regarding an extra-cosmic intelligence fully capable of causing the existence of a cosmos. 16 --> On the obvious emotional intensity involved in rejecting inference to design of life and cosmos on signs of intelligence, the real problem plainly is, that since the obvious possible candidate in question is a morally just Creator God who calls for repentance and service in righteousness, many are motivated to find every excuse to not face this alternative. Sadly, this plainly includes perverting science in service to evolutionary materialism, regardless of the patent absurdities involved. ____________ GEM of TKI kairosfocus

PS: Do I need to point out how, 200 years ago, Paley pointed out the implications of observing a watch that has the capacity to replicate itself? The cell is a metabolic entity that acts into its environment, and has a self-replicating facility. And, all of this is on yet another strawman: the point of seeing a Corvette sand carving and inferring that it is designed, is the implications of the inference we routinely and reliably make onobserving functionally specific, complex organisation and information, here of a sand sculpture. Cf here, noting especially the discussion of Figs I.1, I.2 and I.3, and applying the results to Fig I.4 in light of the Denton cite.. kairosfocus

Petruska: on your breeding case, the problem of not being able to detect reliably what was natural and what was artificial selection [or design otherwise], means that the sort of evidence often used to show alleged cases of evolution by natural selection, fails. This was already pointed out above, at 108, but you have studiously ignored it. Also, you are again misidrecting he thread fromt he issue that the cell has in it cleqar and strong signs of intelligent design. The real issue you need to address is the origin of the information systems in the cell on blind chance plus necessity only. (Onlookers, observe how studiously this issue is ducked by evolutionary materialist advocates. Take a look here as a quick 101 to see why, and look at section B in my always linked research notes.) GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Petrushka: Kindly, stop setting up strawmen to knock over:

So does it make sense to claim the status of science to the proposition that an unspecified entity did unspecified things at unspecified places and unspecified times for unspecified reasons using unspecified means?

1 --> In fact, as you know or should know, the project of intelligent design is simply not like your handy scarecrow just above. 2 --> The focus of investigation is thus the object, phenomenon or process in front of us, and the issue is, does it exhibit credible, empirically reliable signs of design, i.e purposefully directed contingency. 3 --> The secondary question, is, what are such signs, if any. And, of course, how may we validate them. 4 --> It is in that context that it has been observed that complex, functionally specific organisation and associated information is a common sign of design, e.g. the strings of alphanumerical symbols that make up posts in this thread. 5 --> Further to this, It is observed that routinely such FSCI is produced by intelligence, and that in every case where we directly observe the causal process, this is the source. 6 --> Indeed, this is a commonplace, and (save in one context, where an a imposed priori interferes with the inference) utterly uncontroversial. [We routinely do not infer that the highly contingent text strings in posts here are the product of lucky noise, but instead immediately recognise them as artifacts of intelligence.] 7 --> This is obviously easily testable and falsifiable: simply produce a case of FSCI, where functionally specific organisation and associated information of at least 500 - 1,000 bits storage capacity, as credibly observed, comes about by blind chance and/or undirected mechanical necessity. (My favourite case is to suggest a million retired PC's, with zener noise sources spewing random bits across their floppy drives every half minute, and tested for formatting and functional information, for a year. IIRC, that would be 10^12 tests or so.) 8 --> What in fact happens in the one controversial case, is that as has been openly acknowledged by Lewontin, and as has been implied by the US NAS and many others, a censoring constraint is imposed on inference to best explanation of the remote past. They will only permit the best MATERIALISTIC explanation, usually disguised by blandly declaring a novel and question-begging redefinition that science seeks natural [materialistic] explanations of the empirical world. 9 --> So, by taking advantage of the accident of their power in relevant institutions, they sacrifice the key value that science seeks to discover the truth about the world. Thus, science is censored and corrupted (and, science education too). 10 --> But, we need pay no attention whatsoever to such antics, once they are exposed. On the strength of well-known, empirically reliable signs of design, cell based life is an information system based technology. Similarly, major body plans are artifacts of design. 11 --> On the strength of that, a new vista opens up: reverse engineering the technology, and putting it to use [as is already in process]. As a part of that process, we may be able to identify effective methods of design, in addition to the traditional one used by breeders and the now decades long one of genetic engineeering using viri as gene modification carriers. Beyond that, we may one day be able to identify (probably on circumstantial details) the original designers of terrestrial life. ____________ I trust the above helps you correct your strawman-driven misunderstanding. And BTW, you would be well advised to examine the challenges of dating the remote unobserved past, as are discussed here at 101 level. (Including the work of Kelvin.) I also note that Darwin's "need" for 10s or more mn yrs, fails utterly to come to grips wit the implications of the complex information system lying at the heart of cell-based life. You now need to account for the emergence of codes/language from lucky noise in some still warm pond, for the origin of algorithms and co-ordinated implementing machines, and their organisation in the first living cell. Then, for the origin of major body plans requiring embryologically early changes in development that must be coordinated on pain of death at that stage, i.e. long before a population could form for reproduction. The information generation challenges involved on the assumption of blind chance and mechanical necessity (47 engines of variation notwithstanding) are vastly beyond the search resources of our observed cosmos, and that has been repeatedly dodged rather than faced squarely when pointed out above. GEM of TKI PS: Onlookers, observe how, contrary to the accusation by denizens at Youtube, a serious two-sided discussion can easily enough be had at UD. Also observe that he problem Petrushka has is exactly the same as one of the key problems at Youtube, by cf comment no 5 above, on the first Youtube excerpt presented and dissected. here. kairosfocus

No. Let’s try this: If you were walking down a beach and saw a sand model of Corvette Sting Ray, would you conclude that it had been formed by wind, water, and time [natural forces] or would you conclude that it had been designed [intelligent agency].

If I had seen sand models of Corvets replicating themselves, I might be uncertain. I've picked up stones having the shape of a cross. They have been attributed by some to the work of fairies. But why not use a real case from biology? Take a group pf peacocks, birds of paradise, various dog breeds, show fowl, show pigeons and such, place them in a room with someone who has never seen any such things, and explain how you tell which are the result of human directed breeding. Petrushka

Interesting. List formatting tags that displayed correctly on the preview, disappeared. Petrushka

Long ago, I was taught the principles of inductive investigation, on the famous six questions: who, what, where, when, why, how?

So does it make sense to claim the status of science to the proposition that an unspecified entity did unspecified things at unspecified places and unspecified times for unspecified reasons using unspecified means? Or is it scientific to parcel these bits out, solving each as technology permits? For example, in 1859, the WHEN question was a serious problem. Darwin estimated the need for tens of millions of years to get from single celled organisms to things like mammals. It was a rough, back of the envelop calculation, but it required a level of deep time that was unavailable according to physics. That problem was solved with the discovery of radioactivity. The remaining questions have incomplete answers in mainstream biology, but are not even addressed by ID. As for Newton, I'll let his speak for himself regarding the methods of science.

admit no more causes of natural things than are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances, to the same natural effect, assign the same causes qualities of bodies, which are found to belong to all bodies within experiments, are to be esteemed universalpropositions collected from observation of phenomena should be viewed as accurate or very nearly true until contradicted by other phenomena.

This is not an inch from methodological naturalism and uniformitarianism. Petrushka

Petrushka: Long ago, I was taught the principles of inductive investigation, on the famous six questions: who, what, where, when, why, how? Each of these is an independent inquiry, and stands on its own feet. THAT something, on evidence, was designed, is a vital fact. Even in forensics, it is central to establish that an act of criminal intent was done: accident, suicide or murder, in the classic triad. Or, in Stephen's case: tornado, earthquake or burglar. If that has not been credibly established, it is unsafe and unjust to then seek out someone to prosecute and punish as a perpetrator. (Remember all those lynch mobs? And, as a Christian, I must reflect on the point that my Lord was crucified on a trumped up charge of rebellion.) Returning to the question of the design inference -- whether or not you and others of like ilk wish to acknowledge it -- it is an objective and scientific investigation to note that causal factors commonly trace to chance, mechanical necessity and agency, then to seek reliable signs that allow us to see which apsects of a given object or event or phenomenon may trace to such factors. It is an easily substantiated matter to observe that:

(1) chance factors give rise to credibly undirected, statistically distributed contingency (2) mechanical necessity manifests itself in lawlike natural regularity (thus low contingency) (3) choice contingency or design commonly shows itself in complex, functionally specific, credibly purposeful orgsanisation and associated information.

That is a commonplace of day to day life, of management, of the courtroom and many unquestionably scientific endeavours. It only becomes controversial on matters of deep past unobserved origins, as there is a dominant school of thought that has tried to enforce evolutionary materialism as an ideologically loaded orthodoxy. So, the problem is not science,or the credibility of empirically based inference to design per reliable sign. No, it is with those who have perverted the meaning of science, distorting it from being an unfettered, responsible exploration of the truth about our world based on empirical evidence and sound analysis. And, unfortunarely, many have been misled to believe that such so-called methodological naturalism is a vital aspect of the historic success of science. But, to do that, they have been carefully led away from the true facts, such as are documented in Newton's Query 31 to his Opticks, as was cited above. For, it is beyond reasonable doubt that the founders of modern science by and large envisioned science as thinking God's creative and ordering thoughts after him. Hence the very term LAW to describe natural regularities. And, despite the ruthlessness of many members of today's scientific magisteria, many real world scientists still quietly do science under that historic and enormously productive vision. It is a time for truth. And for justice to correct the imposition of ideology under the false colours of science, knowledge and truth. Including, truth on origins science, its strengths, limitations,gaps and weaknesses. Not to mention, alternatives. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

---Petrushka: "It’s true I don’t know the process." [How a design inference is made]. Thank you. ---"Are you claiming that ID has something equivalent to the burgler? Something with actual cababilities and limitations? Something that has been observed burlgling? Something with a known M.O.?" No. Let's try this: If you were walking down a beach and saw a sand model of Corvette Sting Ray, would you conclude that it had been formed by wind, water, and time [natural forces] or would you conclude that it had been designed [intelligent agency]. StephenB

Inasmuch as you do not seem to understand the process of a design inference, you are hardly in a position to make that judgment.

It's true I don't know the process. I've read that there's an objective process for determining that dog breeds are the result of artificial selection. I asked several times for the objective process -- one that could, for example, allow an alien visitor to make the determination while not misidentifying birds of paradise as the result of artificial selection. Even more interesting, how would you instruct the alien visitor to distinguish the heritage of Japanese show chickens or British show pigeons from the heritage of birds of paradise and peacocks. Petrushka

whatever happened to your claim that a forensic scientist cannot use a design inference to distinguish between the effects of an earthquake and the activities of a burglar?

Are you claiming that ID has something equivalent to the burgler? Something with actual cababilities and limitations? Something that has been observed burlgling? Something with a known M.O.? Petrushka

---Petrushka: "ID is not science until it begins making hypotheses about the properties of the designer and testing them. A designer not having entailments is a ghost." That is the typical Darwinist claim, but it is based solely on your arbitrary definition of science. ---"The problem is that there is no event entailed by evolution that violates any law of physics." Question begging. The issue is whether or not the laws of physics can explain everything about evolution. ---"Mutations happen, they are observed. They happen at fairly constant rates. The rates are consistent with the molecular distance between species. The rates are consistent with dates arrived at by geology and physics. There is a massive amount of consilient evidence from every branch of science supporting gradual change and common descent." Irrelevant to the question as to whether or not the proposed "mechanism" can do the job ---"The Grand Man of ID, Michael Behe, accepts common descent. The author of “Evolution, a Theory in Crisis” accepts common descent." So what? ID paradigm is not anti-evolution nor is it anti common descent. Clearly, you do not understand the details of a design inference or the claims that ID makes about or against evolution. ---"ID cannot demonstrate that ID is even possible. Inasmuch as you do not seem to understand the process of a design inference, you are hardly in a position to make that judgment. In keeping with that point, whatever happened to your claim that a forensic scientist cannot use a design inference to distinguish between the effects of an earthquake and the activities of a burglar? StephenB

All that means is that forensic science is more developed than ID. It does not mean that ID is not science.

ID is not science until it begins making hypotheses about the properties of the designer and testing them. A designer not having entailments is a ghost. The problem is that there is no event entailed by evolution that violates any law of physics. Mutations happen, they are observed. They happen at fairly constant rates. The rates are consistent with the molecular distance between species. The rates are consistent with dates arrived at by geology and physics. There is a massive amount of consilient evidence from every branch of science supporting gradual change and common descent. The Grand Man of ID, Michael Behe, accepts common descent. The author of "Evolution, a Theory in Crisis" accepts common descent. The only thing ID has going for it is big numbers when dubious probabilities are calculated. But ID has the same problem with big numbers. ID has not solved -- and is unlikely to solve -- its own problem with big numbers. ID cannot demonstrate that ID is even possible. No one in the ID movement has any idea how to predict the result of modifying a gene sequence, unless the change results in a previously identified sequence. The only way to find out the consequences of a change is to insert it into an organism and see what happens. There's no design from first principles, no design from anticipating emergent properties, no mathematics for anticipating that doesn't simply mimic chemistry. It isn't at all like designing an airplane, where structural elements have the same physical properties regardless of where they occur. Changes to genes have mathematical complexity. Tiny changes diverge rapidly. No one can anticipate where the changes will lead or how large the eventual impact. The mathematics of complexity offers no hope that this will ever be overcome or that it even can be overcome. So what you have is one scenario in which a chain of low probabilities pretty much guarantee that it would never follow the same path twice, and another scenario in which an unknown agent having unknown capabilities somehow manages to forsee every possible pathway, and follow specific ones using unknown methods for unknown reasons. Petrushka

---Petrushka: "Means, motive, opportunity: the cornerstones of forensics." Both ID and forensic science use the design inference as does many other sciences. That forensic science employs other methods is irrelevant to the discussion. ---And, of course, matching potential perps to the evidence." Irrelevant to the discussion. --"I can’t think of any prosecutor who would keep a forensic scientist employed who stopped the investigation at observing that a safe was opened by force." Neither can I. So what? ---"Without naming the agent or the properties of the agent, it could be an earthquake, or the contents of the safe exploding, or falling off a truck." You think that a forensic scientist cannot distinguish the activity of a burglar from the effects of an earthquake without knowing the burglar's identity do you? StephenB

You see the difference? Knowing the mechanism makes a world of difference to a forensic investigator, and the prospects of conviction.

Means, motive, opportunity: the cornerstones of forensics. And, of course, matching potential perps to the evidence. I can't think of any prosecutor who would keep a forensic scientist employed who stopped the investigation at observing that a safe was opened by force. Without naming the agent or the properties of the agent, it could be an earthquake, or the contents of the safe exploding, or falling off a truck. Petrushka

—"Gaz: “My point about ID is that merely saying “it was designed by a Designer” is no different to saying “God did it” – it isn’t science, doesn’t tell us anything, and is a dead end. That is why ID needs to come up with a mechanism.” [That is like saying that a forensic scientist who looks at a ransacked house with missing jewelry, rules out a tornado [natural causes], and attributes the disorder to a burglar [agency], is not doing sciece on the grounds that he can’t explain how the burglar opened the dresser drawers ---Gaz: "Not a great example, since we know how drawers open." Do you, in fact, know that? Let's put it to the test. Given the information I provided, tell me by what mechanism the drawers opened and tell me how you know. How, for example, do you know that a violent storm didn't slam the dresser against the wall causing the drawers to open. Indeed, as one who thinks that effects can, in principle, occur without causes, how do you know that the drawers did not open themselves? --"But let’s take your analogy further – suppose it wasn’t drawers, but a safe with a combination lock?" Then we WOULD expect a forensic scientist to explain how the burglar opened the safe. Was the door blown off?" It is not necessary to know how the burglar opened the safe to know that a tornado was not responsible. Thus, even if the forensic scientist could not tell us which mechanism was used, he would still be doing science. On the other hand, if he can discover the mechanism, so much the better. All that means is that forensic science is more developed than ID. It does not mean that ID is not science. In any case, I did not imply that ID was equal to forensic science in every way, but rather that both use the same kind of design inference to distinguish agency causes from natural causes. This is the difference, by the way, between ID, which makes limited claims based solely on evidence, and Darwinism. which makes unlimited claims with no evidence at all. As Clint Eastwood once said, a man has "got to know his limitations." --"You see the difference? Knowing the mechanism makes a world of difference to a forensic investigator, and the propsects of conviction." As a rule, it is always better to know more than less. What does that have to do with your claim that ID is not science because it doesn't address mechanisms. Unlike Darwinism, ID does not make sweeping claims without evidence. StephenB

Or are you suggesting that non coding DNA is “front-loaded” with sequences which are very “near” to functional genes...

I believe much noncoding DNA is the remnants of formerly functional DNA. I'm not an expert on this and am willing to be educated, but as it stands, I would not be surprised if much of it is just a few steps away from having some function. If I remember correctly, it seldom reverts to its historic function. At any rate, the history of novel genes is the subject of much research. I believe I linked you to a major paper on the subject, one that was entered as evidence at the Dover trial. Suffice to say, it is not a neglected field of research. Petrushka

Gaz: The observed, actual on the ground production of dog breeds and the like shows one way variation is in part produced by art, i.e purposefully directed contingency, or design. So, it empirically establishes a clear possibility: design by artificial selection. That is a matter of fact, but one you plainly struggle with, for you then try to move goal posts to demand a method for detecting any and all cases of design by such selection. The answer to that is simple: we already have an approach that is empirically well supported, and which allows us to see that design is the best warranted explanation in certain cases. Artificial selection was a complementary point, on how it can be produced, and has in fact been produced. Of course, the problem you have is that if a visiting alien were to come along and not know the specific history, he might well infer that dog breeds are different species produced by natural selection. That is, we see here that variation is not decisive evidence for the power of natural selection, nor for the origin of varieties by such natural selection. So, an inspection might yield a false negative: ruling chance and necessity where art was actually the cause. That's fine, for in the design detection approach, we wish to be conservative; happily accepting false negatives to gain high confidence that we do not have false positives. So, when the criterion for specified complexity rules design, it does so conservatively and we have reason to take it that a false positive is rather unlikely. (As in, origin of life and origin of major body plans.) But this is not so happy for natural selection enthusiasts, as they may be claiming natural selection where artificial selection is the correct explanation. Oops. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

106.... ...and the reason most often used to rule agency out is an unneccessary and non-falsifiable assumption to begin with. Upright BiPed

Gaz,

But I am asking them. My point is that even ID institutes such as Biologic Institue haven’t answered them.

As long as the questions are not ruled out a priori, wonderful. We agree that they should be asked, just as the origin of life question should be asked. Where the difference comes into play once the questions are indeed established, is in the methodology, and I can see absolutely no reason why intelligence should be rules out a priori from these complex questions. Clive Hayden

mullerpr (100), Thanks, I'll be looking at gpuccio's (94) when I get the chance. As you appreciate, there's a bit to be going on with. Gaz

gpuccio (94), Good points as usual, and will take me time to digest. I'll get back to you when I can. Regards, Gaz Gaz

StephenB (89), "That is like saying that a forensic scientist who looks at a ransacked house with missing jewelry, rules out a tornado [natural causes], and attributes the disorder to a burglar [agency], is not doing sciece on the grounds that he can’t explain how the burglar opened the drawers." Not a great example, since we know how drawers open. But let's take your analogy further - suppose it wasn't drawers, but a safe with a combination lock? Then we WOULD expect a forensic scientist to explain how the burglar opened the safe. Was the door blown off? If the combination was opened properly how did the burglae get it? Did the burglar have the combination because it was an inside job (i.e. an employee who had access to the combination)? You see the difference? Knowing the mechanism makes a world of difference to a forensic investigator, and the propsects of conviction. Gaz

Clive hayden (86), "Anti-ID folks do not allow for these questions, and then begrudge ID for trying to answer them. You will certainly never get answers to those questions by refusing to ask them and refusing to answer them." But I am asking them. My point is that even ID institutes such as Biologic Institue haven't answered them. Gaz

WJM (80), "To be considered science by whom? You seem to think there is no scientific value in establishing that an intelligence deliberately configured a feature; and that scientific value can only be derived from figuring out how that intelligence accomplished its feat." On the contrary, I think there would be value in establishing ID, I just don't think it's been done yet. But figuring out how it was done or even coming up with a plausible mechanism for how it may have been done - would greatly enhance the prospects of its acceptance. "Think about the catch-22 problem here: how can you go about the business of determining how an intelligence accomplished a goal, if you cannot first establish that an intelligence was involved at all?" I don't think the two are necessarily sequential at all. Coming up with a mechanism that would make predictions would actually hel establish whether or not an intelligence was involved. "If you allow that ID can identify **that** an intelligent agent was likely involved, but assert that this determination is of no scientific value until ID can find the mechanisms by which the agent accomplished its goal, then you are saying that it is of no scientific merit to be able to determine that an artifact on a distant planet **was** the product of intelligent design, unless you could also tell us how the artifact was built." No - but I am saying that the questioning would not stop there, as it does at present with ID. Even here, on earth, archaeologists are interested in how ancient artifacts were made. "Just the knowledge that the artifact was intelligently designed changes the nature of the investigation, and opens up research into divining the purpose of the artifact and of any interior mechanisms; figuring out the design philosophy and methodology and applying it into researching other artifacts that appear designed by the same intelligence; instead of wasting huge amounts of time and resources trying to come up with unintelligent, “natural” explanations, one can turn their attention to reverse engineering, design specifications, material fabrication techniques, tooling techniques, etc." It's not a waste of time if there are pausible natural mechanisms - especially if they fit the evidence, which is where we are now. "Let’s say that we could scientifically demonstrate that the universe was most likely designed specifically for the existence of life, and that Earth was most likely specifically configured in placement, mechanics and composition, for life … you don’t think that such a finding would have scientfic relevance unless we could also tell you how it was done?" Certainly. But it hasn't been done. And even if it was the question of how would be very relevant and would help ascertain the veracity of whether ot not it really was intelligently designed. Gaz

Gaz, I don't think you appreciate the importance of abductive reasoning in any form of conscious activity. Without abductive reasoning there pretty much will be no consciousness because no base for any decision will exist. Analyzing, describing and even implementing a mechanism or algorithm requires hypothesising at each decision junction. But in the end I think you should take gpuccio @94 as a convincing answer you need to evaluate and argue against. You will not sound intelligent if you keep insisting that the are no ID mechanism without considering what is presented. mullerpr

Cable (79), "ID is not a theory of everything the way evolution is." Evolution doesn't explain everything. It only explains where species come from. "It only seeks to determine if something is the product or an effect of an intelligence or not. Nothing more." That is deliberately self-limiting. If you believe that soemthing is the product of intelligence then the next question is what was the intelligence. Other questions flow - when was it produced etc. Gaz

SecondOpinion, If you pay attention to transcripts from Dover, Behe wasn't arguing that astrology was necessarily scientific, but that it deals with scientific questions; while it's answers are not scientifically valid. You should really pay more attention to the context from which Behe spoke. Darwinists often use this against Behe, and they're wrong. ID deals with scientific questions, and unlike astrology, it's answers ARE scientifically valid. They don't invoke magic. CannuckianYankee

Petrushka: I believe it is commonly posted on this site that most of the genes present in contemporary animals are also present in single celled organisms, or very primitive organisms. To be precise, only about half of them. And really it's not genes, but protein domains. The other half arose after, and about a quarter in metazoa. The genes that at first glance seem to be new can be traced to slight modifications of non-coding sequences present in the nested hierarchy. I don't believe that to be true. And even if some genes derived form non coding sequences, the modifications were not certainly "slight". Or are you suggesting that non coding DNA is "front-loaded" with sequences which are very "near" to functional genes? I don't believe that to be true, but if it were, it would definitely be an ID scenario. gpuccio

Clive Hayden (76), "Abduction is what is employed in the design inference, and it is the very first principle of science itself." Fine, but what I'm arguing is that ID needs to move beyond hypothesising and actually come up with some evidence and a mechanism. Gaz

I am astonished that some people seem to struggle to acknowledge that a dog breed is the product of ART-ificial selection, thus cannot be accurately causally explained without that factor.

Then you can no doubt provide visiting aliens with a foolproof methodology for distinguishing the artful selection of dog breeds from whatever form of selection resulted in peacocks and birds of paradise. Petrushka

Gaz (#75): I have written recently many times about the problem of the mechanism of design implementation. You can find some concepts here: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/genomic-junk-and-evolution/#comment-358540 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/genomic-junk-and-evolution/#comment-358670 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/proteins-fold-as-darwin-crumbles/#comment-359179 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/proteins-fold-as-darwin-crumbles/#comment-359180 Just to propose again the discussion here, I would suggest two fundamental points: 1) How does the designer interact with matter to implement design? I suggest that the designer's consciousness interacts with biological matter exactly as our consciousness interacts with our brains: through some interface, probably at the quantum level. That would allow the implementation of conscious representations of design in matter without violating any physical laws. 2) Through what specific methods does the designer implement his design? That is completely open to empirical research. I suggest, as I have often done in the past, that the most likely scenarios are: a) Guided mutations (variations which happen exactly as random variations do, but which are no random, but guided by design). That way, no physical laws would be violated. Probabilistic laws would indeed be violated, but that would be recognized only by a conscious intelligent observer, who can recognize the specification (the function). We have to remember that the functional strings in the genome are formally pseudo-random strings: they have almost all the formal properties of random strings, except for the fact that they are functional. b) Intelligent selection. That is probably one of the most powerful option for an intelligent designer. If evolutionary algorithms have proved anything, it's that intelligent selection can very well do the magic. Even Dawkins' infamous Weasel clearly demonstrates that you can easily reach a solution by a random search if you already know it. Indeed, there are at least three different ways a designer can use intelligent selection, IOW thre different ways an "oracle" can optimize an algorithm for the search of biological funtion, operationg through a random variation engine: b1) Intelligent selection though previous knowledge of the solution. That's exactly the case of the Weasel. The designer already knows the solution, and he just "matches" the various variations against the solution. Easy, but nor specially useful. The same result can certainly be reached through direct guided variation. But, if guided variation is not available, and if the designer knows the solution, intelligent selection of random variation remains a very efficient procedure. b2) Intelligent selection through knowledge of the function to be achieved, and measurement of that function after random variation. That's the case of the Szostac paper, of antibody maturation, and in general of all bottom up protein engineering. It's very efficient, too, because direct measurement of the function allows very fine and sensitive selection, and really optimizes the search. It's interesting to note that this case includes, as a very tiny subset of it, what is usually called "natural selection". Indeed, natural selection is just a very raw and limited form of intelligent selection where only one function can be measured: reproductive advantage. b3) Finally, an importan accessory method for intelligent design in biology is targeted random mutation. IOW, the mutations can be random, but with specific constraints which are based on previous knowledge of the search space, which, as Dembski and Marks have shown, is a very effective way of introducing active information in the search. We have again an example of that in antibody maturation, where selective hypermutation (restricted to the perinent parts of the gene) is applied to the existing antibody to increase its affinity, and the results are evaluated, and then selected positively or negatively, through a measurement of function (binding to the stored antigen). It's important to consider that all the above mechanisms could have been used together, or differently in different cases. I believe that all the above models can be investigated starting from facts, both known and to be discovered, in a purely empirical way. So, I believe that ID is about design detection and design mechanisms. And probably many other things. All perfectly scientific. gpuccio

Footnote: I see Oakram is resorting to personal attacks and slanders against me by name at Youtube. (So, we see outing behaviour, yet another uncivil behaviour.) He has failed, again, to answer the issue on the merits, and seems to imagine that further resort to uncivil conduct does any more than exposing him as an enemy of the civil peace of justice. Precisely as Plato warned 2300 years ago. As for Talk Origins, that site, for good reason, has zero credibility; I have no interest in wasting time and energy there. (It is WORSE than Wikipedia on origins related subjects, which takes some doing.) If Oakram is serious about the issue, he will come here and will behave in a civil fashion, as others have. If he behaves civilly, he has nothing to fear from UD's moderators. Unfortunately, what he has done at Youtube over the past few days does not lend itself tot he conclusion that he intends to address matters seriously and civilly. The same holds for Mr Engel and others of that ilk. Good day, GEM of TKI kairosfocus

What you need to address is the central issue: the empirically supported origin of functionally specific complex organisation and associated information.

Perhaps this needs to be addressed to have a theory of the origin of life, but it doesn't need to be addressed to discuss the radiation of life from the Cambrian. I believe it is commonly posted on this site that most of the genes present in contemporary animals are also present in single celled organisms, or very primitive organisms. When we say nested hierarchy, we mean that the alleles present in all living things can be nested in a way that supports very gradual change over time. I call it tweaking. Some call it microevolution. The genes that at first glance seem to be new can be traced to slight modifications of non-coding sequences present in the nested hierarchy. So to account for the last 500 million years of evolution, you do not need to consider the creation of new information, just the gradual shifting of parameters. We see it going on all the time. We have much data on the rate of various kinds of mutations. We have data on the genetic distances between organisms. It's all consilient with physics and geology. Petrushka

--obviously 89 should read, "is not doing [science]." StephenB

Petrushka said: "Perhaps you could provide a mathematical analysis and detailed chain of reasoning that proves that pekingese are the products of human intelligent design, but peacocks and birds of paradise are not." A genetic or mathematical analysis is hardly necessary, since we know empirically that humans are responsible. The point about the pekingese and GMO crops isn't that they can be proven genetically to require ID as part of their sufficient explanation, but rather that we know, on a factual, emprical basis, that some biological features exist that require human ID as part of their sufficient explanation. Petrushka said: "Genetically modified crops are outside the nested hierarchy and would probably be recognised by aliens as the result of something other than common descent." Unfortunately, however, if their research paradigm axiomatically precluded the possiblity of "intelligent design", they would be forced to invent convoluted non-intelligent ("natural") explanations, which would be false and misleading. Petrushka said: "The products of selective breeding still follow the rules of variation and selection." I never said otherwise; the point is that "the rules of variation and selection" are not sufficient explanations for the existence of the pekingese, and a theory of the origin of the pekingese that does not contain ID would be scientifically incorrect and incomplete. Here's the point; if ID exists if ID can affect evolutionary product in significant ways, then a research paradigm that precludes ID from being considered as a potential contributor to the explanation might tender false conclusions and result in all sorts of wasted time and ad hoc, speculative hypothesis and theory. The kicker is, we know that ID exists and we know it contributes to biological diversity, because humans have been doing it for thousands of years. See the problem? The current research paradigm precludes a known commodity (ID), that is known to affect biological features, from being accessible as part of evolutionary explanations. Why is that? William J. Murray

---Gaz: "My point about ID is that merely saying “it was designed by a Designer” is no different to saying “God did it” – it isn’t science, doesn’t tell us anything, and is a dead end. That is why ID needs to come up with a mechanism." That is like saying that a forensic scientist who looks at a ransacked house with missing jewelry, rules out a tornado [natural causes], and attributes the disorder to a burglar [agency], is not doing sciece on the grounds that he can't explain how the burglar opened the drawers. StephenB

Petrushka: Are you familiar with the paper clip taxonomy exercise? One can construct a nested hierarchy of such fasteners, on keys; indeed this has been used as a demonstration exercise in biology classes in College. But of course, the items were all designed. Similarly, the Corvettes can be shown in a line of descent, from the 1950s to whenever. Berra did that to illustrate how we can have descent with modification. But he forgot one thing: Corvettes are not self-replicating and evolving without external intervention. They are designed. Classification exercises like you suggest are not evidence that discriminates design and descent. What you need to address is the central issue: the empirically supported origin of functionally specific complex organisation and associated information. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

I am astonished that some people seem to struggle to acknowledge that a dog breed is the product of ART-ificial selection, thus cannot be accurately causally explained without that factor. kairosfocus

Gaz,

When were the first designs done? Did design stop? Pretty much any question you care to ask about ID can’t be answered, and there’s no indication of when we ever will get answers.

This is exactly the quintessential science-stopping philosophy that is being propounded by folks who think like you, and it is exactly this science-stopping philosophy that is being rejected by ID. If you do not allow for these questions from the outset, of course you will never get answers. Anti-ID folks do not allow for these questions, and then begrudge ID for trying to answer them. You will certainly never get answers to those questions by refusing to ask them and refusing to answer them. Clive Hayden

...that the pekingese and genetically modified crops are factual, empirical examples of biological features that cannot be sufficiently explained without reference to human intelligent design...

Perhaps you could provide a mathematical analysis and detailed chain of reasoning that proves that pekingese are the products of human intelligent design, but peacocks and birds of paradise are not. Genetically modified crops are outside the nested hierarchy and would probably be recognised by aliens as the result of something other than common descent. The products of selective breeding still follow the rules of variation and selection. Petrushka

Clive at 74 You are correct. In the years that I have been following the posts on UD, I have never seen Paul Burnett make a post that was anything but political. It is the same thing every time, the first is as the last. Upright BiPed

2nd Opinion: There is no one-size fits all definition of a scientific theory, whatever you may have been told in school; whether across time or in our day. And, in the professional literature of our time, "theory" is used in many quite distinct ways. Back in C16 - 17, Astrology as then understood would have been viewed as a "science." (As would have been alchemy. And yes, Newton did alchemical researches too, as apparently did Kepler, who also cast astrological portents.) And I am uncomfortable, as there is an anachronism there, as, e.g. may be seen from how Newton speaks of natural philosophy in Principia, and how natural history was used otherwise. All of this feeds into how intractable the demarcation problem is. "Science" is in many respects a conventional label. The only real core I can see is that at its best, it is an unfettered (but intellectually and ethically responsible) progressive pursuit and exploration of the truth about our world, based on observation, experiment, reasoned analysis and discussion among the informed. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

WJM: Very well said. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Gaz Observe carefully. The cited top rated review is by someone who actually read and critiques the book, noting how - as has become notorious -- there is a herd of negative reviews by those who obviously have not read the book but come to propagate their ideological hostility. (No prizes for guessing why.) Sadly, this is the second time I have had occasion to remark on a turnabout accusation from you, just this day. Please, pause and take a fresh look. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Gaz said: "That’s what ID is missing, and what needs to be done for it to be considered science." To be considered science by whom? You seem to think there is no scientific value in establishing that an intelligence deliberately configured a feature; and that scientific value can only be derived from figuring out how that intelligence accomplished its feat. Think about the catch-22 problem here: how can you go about the business of determining how an intelligence accomplished a goal, if you cannot first establish that an intelligence was involved at all? If you allow that ID can identify **that** an intelligent agent was likely involved, but assert that this determination is of no scientific value until ID can find the mechanisms by which the agent accomplished its goal, then you are saying that it is of no scientific merit to be able to determine that an artifact on a distant planet **was** the product of intelligent design, unless you could also tell us how the artifact was built. Just the knowledge that the artifact was intelligently designed changes the nature of the investigation, and opens up research into divining the purpose of the artifact and of any interior mechanisms; figuring out the design philosophy and methodology and applying it into researching other artifacts that appear designed by the same intelligence; instead of wasting huge amounts of time and resources trying to come up with unintelligent, "natural" explanations, one can turn their attention to reverse engineering, design specifications, material fabrication techniques, tooling techniques, etc. Let's say that we could scientifically demonstrate that the universe was most likely designed specifically for the existence of life, and that Earth was most likely specifically configured in placement, mechanics and composition, for life ... you don't think that such a finding would have scientfic relevance unless we could also tell you how it was done? William J. Murray

Gaz@75 ID is not a theory of everything the way evolution is. It does not invalidate all of evolutionary theory, its applications are limited. It only seeks to determine if something is the product or an effect of an intelligence or not. Nothing more. As many have stated ID can easily be invalidated. Just show us how any natural processes can produce anything new feature with the equivalent of 500 - 1000 bits of CSI. Cable

Sorry, astrology of course. second opinion

In the Dover trial Behe said that his extended definition of what a scientific theory is would make ID a scientific theory but also include astronomy. What Meyer says in the video that methodological naturalism is equivalent to not invoking creative intelligence does not seem consistent with what Behe said. second opinion

Gaz,

But for ID and nature, not only do w not know what the ID had done, but there is not even any mechanism proposed for it. That’s what ID is missing, and what needs to be done for it to be considered science.

Are you familiar with Charles S Pearce and his notion of abduction as a logical principle? Abduction is what is employed in the design inference, and it is the very first principle of science itself. http://www.jstor.org/pss/40320156 Clive Hayden

mullerpr (73), No. That would be like saying I can't build a car engine because I don't know how the electronic details of how hydrocarbons in gas break down. My point about ID is that merely saying "it was designed by a Designer" is no different to saying "God did it" - it isn't science, doesn't tell us anything, and is a dead end. That is why ID needs to come up with a mechanism. Gaz

PaulBurnett,

Yeah, everybody can be real proud of that. The reviews were running pretty negative until the Discovery Institute sent out a letter saying “Please write a review at Amazon.com,” after which the tone of the reviews, some from fellow Discovery Institute Fellows, improved markedly.

You should be working in political science in my opinion, all that seems to matter to you is what others think. Clive Hayden

Gaz, Are you telling us that you also need to know the mechanism of reasoning to explain anything that is the product of reason? Do you know the mechanism of human reasoning? If you don't, then according to your demarcation of science you actually don't know the mechanism that ultimately caused Mt. Rushmore. mullerpr

WJM (69), "For example, even though an intelligent designer might not be responsible for raising Mt. Rushmore from sea level, and really only “carved away” bits of rock, the faces on Mt. Rushmore cannot be sufficiently explained without including intelligent design." This is getting to the point I am trying to make. With Mt Rushmore we know exactly what mechanism the designer used - how it was desgined, and the tools and explosives that were used. But for ID and nature, not only do w not know what the ID had done, but there is not even any mechanism proposed for it. That's what ID is missing, and what needs to be done for it to be considered science. Gaz

Matteo, You rightly ask:

And what stands opposed to “arguments from incredulity”? Arguments from credulity? Moreover, when have the Darwinistas ever done any of the probability calculations that are truly necessary to back their “theory”?

The thing is that standard Darwinian argument regarding probability goes something like this: "Because a certain event did happen the probability for it to happen is 1." With this nonsensical view on probability theory you can actually conclude that Darwinians blatantly refuse to calculate the real slope of "mount improbable". mullerpr

"CannuckianYankee" (#66) wrote: "It’s interesting if you compare all the negative reactions to Meyer on youtube with all the positive and exceptionally detailed responses/reviews of his book on Amazon.com." Yeah, everybody can be real proud of that. The reviews were running pretty negative until the Discovery Institute sent out a letter saying "Please write a review at Amazon.com," after which the tone of the reviews, some from fellow Discovery Institute Fellows, improved markedly. There was also a review at BioLogos - at http://biologos.org/blog/signature-in-the-cell PaulBurnett

Gaz, Intelligent Design, at its most basic level, is the process of a deliberate agency manipulating forces and materials in order to achieve an end. For example, even though an intelligent designer might not be responsible for raising Mt. Rushmore from sea level, and really only "carved away" bits of rock, the faces on Mt. Rushmore cannot be sufficiently explained without including intelligent design. The pekingese cannot be sufficiently explained as an existant breed of dog without including a necessary reference to the deliberate manipulations of intelligent agents organizing materials and events towards the goal of developing and sustaining the pekingese breed. Whether the intelligent agency is generating specific mutations, or filtering random mutations for a specific goal, is irrelevent in regards to the necessity of the designer in the explanation. William J. Murray

CY: Point! Here is the page at Amazon, and here is a case in point (NB: look at the comments): ______________ >> 294 of 351 people found the following review helpful: 4.0 out of 5 stars Who's signature?, December 27, 2009 By David Marshall (Seattle area) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME) Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (Hardcover) I come to this book with two peeves, one pet, the other a stray that is beginning to wear out its welcome. My pet peeve is fanatics who attack ID out of ideological compulsion, rather than using the "think" cells hidden deep within their brains to evaluate and argue. That includes most of the reviewers who gave the book 1 or 2 stars so far. Meyer, we are told, is "lazy," a "creationist," "idiot," "fraud," and "liar" who hawks "error-prone" "snake-oil," "gobbledygook," "pseudo-science." We should read Richard Dawkins new Greatest Show on Earth instead (I did -- it isn't about the origin of life, you numbskulls). One "reviewer" blasts the book after reading four sentences, and gets 69 of 128 "helpful" votes. Another "reviews" the first few pages and calls Meyer a liar. Hardly any negative reviews even try to point to any scientific errors. Two exceptions: reviews by A Miller and K. M. Sternberg are worth reading. Sternberg's is particularly eloquent. (Though having written a couple books on the historical Jesus, I tend to wonder about the objectivity, awareness, and / or good sense of someone who thinks there is no evidence for the life of Jesus!) My second peeve is a growing dislike for the way Discovery Institute often packages its arguments. I visited DI a year ago when another ID book came out -- I won't name it, seeing no need to embarrass the author. His presentation essentially said, "Look at all the wonders of creation. How can evolution possibly explain all that?" When Q & A time came, I was the only one to ask any critical questions. "That sounds impressive, but why don't you engage the explanations evolutionary biologists offer for those features?" Like the talk, the book (he gave me a copy) simply ignored detailed arguments. This book does much better. Meyer's critics to the contrary, he does offer detailed scientific and philosophical arguments. Signature is NOT mainly about evolution per se - it is about the origin of life. It is, therefore, not strictly parallel to Dawkins' books or arguments -- ID is in a sense broader than evolution as a theory, since it seeks to explain things that evolution does not. My main beef is the book is too long. While many of Meyer's illustrations are interesting, he uses too many, and repeats himself too often. Meyer should chop out some of the remedial 7th Grade biology, cut some stories and the "I was in Akron when I thought A and in Baton Rouge when B occurred to me" stuff, and cut the book in half. The first-person auto-biographical is overworked. No one thinks you're neutral, Stephen -- so just argue! Don't pretend your conversion to ID was purely scientific -- reasonable people understand that people act under a mixture of motives, and the unreasonable ones are not worth arguing with. Dawkins, Behe, Stephen Hawking, and Darwin for that matter write serious arguments without losing ordinary readers; models that Meyer could profitably shoot for. But the issue here is the origin of life, and when Meyer finally gets to it, he argues it well, I think. The central chapters seem to cover most of the main issues well. He discusses different solutions, and explains fairly clearly why they do not work, and why some sort of design seems preferable. It is interesting that none of Meyer's critics here dispute those arguments. (Again, Miller and Sternberg come closest, but do not really engage his most important points.) I wish, however, that Meyer had expanded those central chapters, and discussed in more detail leading rival contemporary hypotheses. Many of his secondary arguments work, too. I suppose one can't complain if a philosopher of science writes a lot about the philosophy of science, and I suppose those arguments are made necessary by attempts to marginalize ID proponents through the sheer power of wordplay. Pardon the self-indulgence, but as I wrote in Truth Behind the New Atheism, in response to Dawkins' attempts to marginalize ID proponents: "David Bohm once defended science as 'openness to evidence.' The best scientist -- or theologian -- is not someone who shouts 'heresy!' when he hears strange views, but one who listens carefully and responds with reason and evidence. When it comes to ultimate questions, 'openness to evidence' is the definition that counts." The scientific evidence is what matters, and I would have liked to have seen more detail on that. Still, all in all, a strong ID perspective on the origin of life. >> ________________ Quite a contrast to the ranting at Youtube. I think that site needs to take a leaf from Amazon's policy. A "most helpful first" default presentation will be helpful, if it is coupled to a bar chart on patterns of comments. Not that Amazon is perfect, but our whole civilisation is in deep civility and reasonableness trouble just now. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

PPPS: I again invite the interested onlooker to read the introductory and summary remarks here, which will help give a balancing context to much of the above. kairosfocus

KF, Re: 25 and your response at 28 (excellent response, BTW). It's interesting if you compare all the negative reactions to Meyer on youtube with all the positive and exceptionally detailed responses/reviews of his book on Amazon.com - people who actually read books, rather than gather their information from internet hacks, who apparently don't. CannuckianYankee

PPS: Here is Meyer's key classic paper on demarcation and design vs descent. Let us see if the Youtube commenters will now show signs of having done some homework before spouting off rhetorical talking points. Helpful excerpts: ____________ >> Biologists, and scientists generally, assume the rules of science prohibit any deviation from a strictly materialistic mode of analysis. Even most physicists sympathetic to design would quickly label their intuitions "religious" or "philosophical" rather than "scientific." Science, it is assumed, must look for exclusively natural causes. Since the postulation of an intelligent Designer or Creator clearly violates this methodological norm, such a postulation cannot qualify as a part of a scientific theory. Thus Stephen J. Gould refers to "scientific creationism" not just as factually mistaken but as "self-contradictory nonsense." As Basil Willey put it, "Science must be provisionally atheistic, or cease to be itself." Most scientists who are theists also accept this same conception of science. As Raymond Grizzle wrote in a prominent evangelical scientific journal recently, "God cannot be part of a scientific description. . . . [Further], any description that implies a creator will probably also be looked at as improper by most scientists." Nancey Murphy, a philosopher and Fuller Seminary professor, agrees. She wrote recently in the same journal: "Science qua science seeks naturalistic explanations for all natural processes. Christians and atheists alike must pursue scientific questions in our era without invoking a Creator. . . . Anyone who attributes the characteristics of living things to creative intelligence has by definition stepped into the arena of either metaphysics or theology." Yet on what basis is this definition of science asserted? For Murphy and Grizzle the answer seems clear. A respect for the rules and practices of science as they have come down to us dictates that Christians should avoid invoking creative intelligence in their theories. In Murphy's words, "For better or worse, we have inherited a view of science as methodologically atheistic" (emphasis added) . . . . The use of what philosophers of science call "demarcation arguments "arguments that purport to distinguish science from pseudoscience, metaphysics or religion in defense of a favored theory has a long history. Darwin himself employed such arguments to defend his theory from idealist and creationist challenges. While philosophical arguments about what does or does not constitute science have generally been discredited within philosophy of science, they nevertheless continue to play a vital role in persuading biologists that alternative scientific explanations do not, and in the case of nonnaturalistic theories cannot, exist for biological origins. Indeed, various demarcation criteria are often cited by scientists as reasons for rejecting the very possibility of intelligent design . . . . The methodological equivalence of intelligent design and naturalistic descent will be suggested in three stages by three lines of argument. First, the reasons for the failure of demarcation arguments within philosophy of science generally will be examined and recapitulated. This analysis will suggest that attempts to distinguish the scientific status of design and descent a priori may well be suspect from the outset on philosophical grounds. Second, an examination of specific demarcation arguments that have been employed against design will follow. It will be argued that not only do these arguments fail, but they do so in such a way as to suggest an equivalence between design and descent with respect to several features of allegedly proper scientific practice that is, intelligent design and naturalistic descent will be shown equally capable or incapable of meeting different demarcation standards, provided such standards are applied disinterestedly. Third, design and descent will be compared in light of recent work on the logical and methodological character of historical inquiry. This analysis will show that the mode of inquiry utilized by advocates of both design and descent conforms closely to that evident in many other characteristically historical disciplines. Thus a more fundamental methodological equivalence between design and descent will emerge as a result of methodological analysis of the historical sciences. >> _____________ Much more there . . . kairosfocus

PS: I have found a useful 101 lecture, here, by David Spurrett over in South Africa: ______________ >> The Demarcation Problem What the problem is 1. The ‘demarcation problem’ in the philosophy of science is, as the name of the problem suggests, one of drawing, or working out how to draw, a boundary. In particular, it concerns drawing a boundary between science, and everything else. 2. A particular version of the problem concerns drawing a boundary between science and pseudo-science, where pseudo-science is something that some advocates contend is science, but which isn’t actually science. 3. The standard way of providing a solution to the problem is to provide a criterion, or set of criteria, that something has to have to count as scientific, and then showing how some or other pseudo-science fails to meet the criteria. Why it’s important 1. Being counted as science is socially significant. That is to say, being recognised as a scientist means having preferential access to money, preferential input to policy, and relatively secure positions in most educational curricula. 2. So being better able to solve the demarcation problem means being better able to work out how to handle claims to significant slices of the social pie. 3. It may also enable us to work out whether the disproportionate allocation of goods to science is justifiable or not. What to hope for 1. Although some philosophers suggest that we can provide a list of necessary and sufficient criteria, had by all sciences and only sciences, this may be too much to expect. 2. Notice something about how arguments over demarcation typically proceed. Some ‘paradigm cases’ of science are taken as given, and then the question of what their distinctive features are is asked. The same is done with paradigm cases of non-science, or pseudo-science. This is a process of trying to make hunches we’ve supposedly already got more clear and explicit. (Perhaps we should be more suspicious of our hunches?) 3. If we’re not merely consolidating our prejudices, we should expect (or hope) to be surprised when thinking seriously about the demarcation problem. 4. What I mean by being surprised here, is either being surprised by the criteria that we end up recognising as important for something’s being, or not being, science (meaning that we found something we weren’t expecting when we examined our paradigm cases), or by what applying the criteria ends up saying is or is not science (meaning that our criteria led us to change our minds about one or more real cases). 5. We shouldn’t be too disappointed if we end up not being sure whether some things are or are not science. It could be that the issue is irreducibly difficult, or that some cases are truly indeterminate, or that a single set of criteria won’t enable us to decide all cases, and that there’s no simple way of working out what criteria to use in at least some cases. We’d only be reasonably disappointed if we had some justification for thinking, in advance, that one set of criteria (that were relatively simple to apply) should do the job in all cases. 6. Aristotle said it best: "It is a mark of the educated man and proof of his culture that in every subject he looks for only so much precision as its nature permits." (The Ethics of Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. J.A.K. Thomson, Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1955, p27-28.) ‘Scientific’ not the same as ‘true’ 1. Bear in mind here that trying to work out what counts as ‘science’ or ‘scientific’ is not the same thing as figuring out what is true. There are at least two reasons for this: 2. First, some parts of science are known to be false, but are not for that reason regarded as unscientific. Examples includes laws known to be only approximately true (i.e. strictly false) and theories regarded as empirically defeated, even though proposed or constructed in ‘the right sorts of way’ to be counted as parts of science. 3. Second, some proposition could be true and have nothing to do (either in how it was formulated, or in what considerations are relevant to its truth) with science. 4. Having said that, we might still think that science is a truth-seeking activity, and/or that by being ‘scientific’ we have a better chance of arriving at true beliefs and so forth. Fair enough, being ‘scientific’ and being ‘true’ aren’t the same thing. >> ________________ One hopes that his will at least give pause to those mindlessly parrotting evolutionary materialist talking points. kairosfocus

Laugh for the day: (Then, weep for our civilisation, then pray, then get up and do something for the good . . . ) One of the latest materialist rants over at Youtube, courtesy a certain Mr Rainer:

So, in the whole vid, Meyer just ranting that the standard of science is too strict for his ID to get in, so please soften up. *boohoo, crybaby* And he lie about the same stringency will also cut evolution out. The? mechanism of evolution is known and testable (and tested!), but the mechanism of design is? not known, thus untestable.

Mr Rainer clearly has not bothered to do the basic homework to understand that he is dealing with a PhD level philosopher of science, and that there is a real demarcation issue that has come down to the impasse that there is no set of rules or specifications that are each necessary for and jointly sufficient to mark out science and scientific methods as unique and distinct form other fields of serious investigation of our world. (Onlookers, a useful 101 that sensitises on the issue is here. Unfortunately, this is exactly the sort of topic that one should not trust Wikipedia on, so though they have an article, it must be taken with a large grain of salt.) Worse, Rainer is utterly unconcerned to deal with the implications of imposed a priori evolutionary materialism that perverts science from being an unfettered but responsible investigation of the truth about our world on empirical evidence and reasoned discussion among the informed. He compounds all this by then resorting to slanderous accusations of lying. And, Mr Rainer is content to parrot how evolutionary mechanisms are tested. As in, shown capable of de noveo creation of the biological information to create novel body plans that require upwards of 10 mn new base pairs? I think not. (Minor population shifts in peppered moths have nothing to do with spontaneous origin of functionally specific complex biological information on the scale needed to account for macro-level evolution. This points to the defects of one of the classic bait and switch misleading icons of evolution.) By contrast, we know a lot about the fact that design exists and we have demonstrated cases where designers routinely produce FSCI at and beyond the relevant threshold. We even have some clues as to how designers work and produce their artifacts: software engineering and engineering are major disciplines. So, Mr Rainer has indulged an exercise in turnabout distractive false accusation and denigration. ___________ Youtube needs to look carefully at its comment policies, as it is plainly facilitating Internet vandalism by utterly irresponsible and destructive enemies of the common civil peace of justice. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

A few notes: It seems Mr Burnett at least has come over. Mr Burnett: We are living in an era of ideologised science as documented by Richard Lewontin 13 years ago. In such an era of evolutionary materialist a priorism, "consensus" cannot be trusted. So, your appeal to consensus boils down to an inappropriate call for modesty in the face of claimed authority. It is also distractive and strawmannish, for the scientific nature of the intelligent design approach is readily apparent on simple inspection: 1 --> We routinely observe causal patterns in our world tracing to chance, mechanical necessity and/or art. 2 --> We notice that law-like necessity has peculiar signs: e.g. a dropped heavy object, reliably, falls at a certain rate near the earth's surface. Similarly, chance contingency has a characteristic statistically distributed, probabilistically controlled outcome: which face of a fair die will be uppermost. 3 --> By contrast, art often leads to complex, functionally specific organisation and associated information, e.g. posts in this thread. 4 --> So, we may readily identify a cluster of candidate generic signs of chance, necessity and design, and test them for reliability. 5 --> The test of natural regularity is sufficiently solid that this is a major occupation of the sciences. 6 --> Similarly, the field of statistics shows the utility of signs of chance. 7 --> Forensics, reverse engineering and other investigations that apply scientific methods to investigate art show how useful signs of intelligence are. And,t eh very existence of the vital field of information theory and e.g. the signal to noise ratio shows how useful quantitative signs of intelligence are. 8 --> It is readily seen that 1,000 or so bits worth of functionally specific complex information [config space 1.07*10^301 states, or about ten ties the SQUARE of the number of Planck time states of the 10^80 or so atoms of the observed universe across its thermodynamic lifetime] is a pretty good threshold where it is not empirically credible that chance could simply come across a functionally specific configuration. 9 --> So, this is a pretty reliable sign of intelligence, as the whole Internet is a good confirmation of. 10 --> So, when we see in the heart of the living cell, a complex functionally specific code and algorithm based information system that uses well beyond 1,000 bits of storage capacity to support metabolic action and self-replication, we have excellent grounds to infer scientifically that such an entity is an artifact of a technology. Gaz: The breeding of Pekinese is an exercise in ART-ificial selection. You know or should know that he argument made on that over at Youtube was that the origin of such cannot sufficiently be made, absent reckoning with that intervention of art, i.e design. And if you do not know that animal breeding is an art, then you are not ready for prime time. (Darwin, BTW, was a pigeon fancier and breeder of note.) As for distractive remarks on what Creationists may or may not have promised (who, when?), this is little more than a crude attempt at guilt by association with those who have already been successfully smeared; similar to the way that the false accusation "racist" is being tossed around like a live hand grenade these days. Design theory -- as the weak argument correctives you need to read and take seriously point out -- is simply not the same as Creationism. Period. If you keep on trying to make that fallacious association in the teeth of easily accessible corrective information [just like Engel et al at Youtube . . . ], that would only tell us that you are fundamentally intellectually dishonest. That ball is in your court. As tot he notion that pretty nearly any questions one may ask of ID cannot be answered, that is a fact of life about just about any endeavour worth trying. We are limited in what we know and any fool can ask more questions than the wisest scientists and philosophers can answer. On the pivotal question that ID sets out to answer on a scientific basis, the answer is plain: yes, there are empirically reliable signs of intelligence, and they highlight that certain key features of the natural world are best explained as artifacts of design. That is sufficient to effect a revolution in contemporary science, liberating it from the iron grip of ideological a priori evolutionary materialism and the sort of ruthless censorship that is becoming more and more evident. And, plainly, that is the real complaint of the sad ilk over at Youtube and elsewhere. For, they are in the grip of the sort of avant garde materialism that provides rhetorical cover for their amorality and abusive agendas: "the greatest right is might." As Plato warned against 2,300 years ago, the ruin of Athens at such hands being vividly stamped in his memory. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Clive Hayden (59), "From your many posts at UD, I can tell that bookshelf placement in bookstores, publishing affiliations, “larger numbers” and “consensus” are very important to you, which tells me that you let others do your thinking for you as to how you see things. I don’t. So yes, ID is scientific." I see what you are trying to say, but it doesn't really help the ID position. Larger numbers and consensus are often good pointers - though not infallible - to what is actually going on. Bear in mind also that in science it isn't just somoeone's opinion , it's their opinion based on the evidence, which is available to everybody else as well. Science is a discipline of human endeavour where people from all around the world - China, US, France, Cameroon, Laos, New Zealand, Paraguay, anywhere you care to think - can have the evidence, and come to the same conclusion based on it, without necessarily speaking to each other and often not even speaking the same languages. The general consensus is that ID hasn't yet come up with anyhting that could be called science. We don't even know the scope of it - what was designed and what wasn't designed? When were the first designs done? Did design stop? Pretty much any question you care to ask about ID can't be answered, and there's no indication of when we ever will get answers. I was hoping the Biologic Institute might get its teeth into it, but so far nothing that gets to the root of ID, only some tangential papers that may have a vague relation to the subject. It's all becoming reminiscent of the saga over baraminology, when Creationists said years ago (a decade?) they were going to come up with a list of created kinds, and since then nothing. Gaz

WJM (45), "What I find interesting is how the anti-ID advocates cannot even allow themselves to admit that humans employ ID, or as TDG points out, that the pekingese and genetically modified crops are factual, empirical examples of biological features that cannot be sufficiently explained without reference to human intelligent design." Not entirely correct - pekinese were selected for certain traits, not actually "designed" to have them as GM plants are. In other words: the dogs had random mutations and humans selected those dogs with the features (generated by random mutations) that appealed to humans. As I understand it, the ID position is that the genes themselves had to have been made by humans. Or am I wrong? Gaz

PaulBurnett,

…as determined by whom? (Other than Meyer, Dembski, Axe, Gauger, Marks and Behe.) Has the American Association for the Advancement of Science or the National Academy of Sciences or any other actual science organization changed their long-standing official position (which agrees with Phillip Johnson’s stated 2006 position) that ID is not science yet?

From your many posts at UD, I can tell that bookshelf placement in bookstores, publishing affiliations, "larger numbers" and "consensus" are very important to you, which tells me that you let others do your thinking for you as to how you see things. I don't. So yes, ID is scientific. Clive Hayden

When all we see from the Intelligent Design Creationists are arguments from incredulity, demonstrations of scientific illiteracy, and bogus probability calculations that have nothing to do with real? biological systems, ridicule is the only rational response. IDC is a joke.

And what stands opposed to "arguments from incredulity"? Arguments from credulity? Moreover, when have the Darwinistas ever done any of the probability calculations that are truly necessary to back their "theory"? Matteo

Clive Hayden (#31) wrote: "...working out a positive theory is exactly what the scientific people like Stephen Meyer, William Dembski, Doug Axe, Anne Gauger, Bob Marks and Michael Behe have done…" ...as determined by whom? (Other than Meyer, Dembski, Axe, Gauger, Marks and Behe.) Has the American Association for the Advancement of Science or the National Academy of Sciences or any other actual science organization changed their long-standing official position (which agrees with Phillip Johnson's stated 2006 position) that ID is not science yet? PaulBurnett

"CannuckianYankee" (#26) wrote: "Never mind, It looks like Paul Burnett, of all people, invited him here. You're welcome. I also wanted him here. PaulBurnett

KF,

"For, we HAVE found the crashed spacecraft and are decoding a bit of its software systems, i.e. the living cell."

I find this illustrative and inspiring! --------------------- Phaedros @51, I agree. I'd like to see some evolutionary calculations, and some gaps filled in: How many novel features are evolved per 1000 generation for Bacteria (novel organelles)? Should we expect to see multicellular life evolve from unicellular life, in 50 years, 100, 1000, 10,000? How many generations should it take for a ground creature to evolve wings, given advantageous survival considerations for each explicit step? How would, say, two dozen or so primary intermediate forms confer positive selective advantage? How many generations did the flagellum likely take to evolve, and what is a plausible and verifiable pathway from a no-flagellum bacterium? How many cellular systems would be affected for a plausible transitional path, which would need mutations of their own in order to support the generation of novel organelles? In other words, which systems would need to change simultaneously in order to support new intracellular features, visible to NS? How large is the target space for functional proteins' amino sequencing? For example: for a 400 amino chain, how many functional targets are likely present in that ~10^520 config space? How dense would targets need to be in the config space for blind search to move from one to another given limited probabilistic resources? How did protein sequencing and folding evolve? What putative intermediate forms would need to exist to move from self replicators in which protein sequencing and folding were not present, to those in which they were? Does the fact that organelles responsible for translating and transcribing DNA are also proteins whose sequences are encoded in DNA present any unique challenges for evolution? Since proteins that fold amino acids are themselves encoded, transcribed, sequenced, and folded, does this require some measure of extraordinary evolutionary development, and how might this paradox be explained? How did self-replication evolve? How would a life form that could not self-replicate evolve into one which could? What would be some examples of functional intermediates with survivability advantages? Pardon my ignorance of evolutuion, but since there are a plethora of gaps to fill in regarding evolutionary explanations of species diversity development, why use a gap filler like random mutations to explain them away? Sounds like a science stopper. Apollos

blustering and bluffing** provide* Phaedros

kairosfocos- Thank you for explaining it. I want this peson, Oakran (?), to answer a simple question. Is he just throwing words like "bogus" around to unfairly attack these calculations or does he have any good mathematical support for his assertion that they are both "bogus" and that they do not apply to real biological systems? In other words, if he can't back it up then he should be honest and admit that or his blustering bluffing should be called out. If he really wants to provided a "reasonable response" then he should be honest and say that he does not really know that they are "bogus" and cannot prove it. Phaedros

Phaedros: Pardon a few remarks. You are looking at people who don't pause to notice that the calculations used above are on configuration spaces and that a simple comparison is being made to the number of states the observable universe would scan across its thermodynamically credible lifespan. That simple comparison -- not a calculation [Evolutionary materialist objectors suddenly start to object to he standard Bernouilli-Laplace indifference principle routinely used in Information theory and in statistical thermodynamics and broader probability and statistics when it does not suit where they wish to go . . . ] -- makes it all too blatantly plain that the observable universe does not have the search resources to credibly get to an island of function on blind chance and necessity, once we pass the rule of thumb threshold we have used, 500 - 1,000 bits of information storage capacity. 1,000 bits is 125 bytes, and we are basically dealing with what is required to get to a von Neumann replicator, to BEGIN self-replicating life. Unless you have self-replication and metabolic capacity, you do not yet have life as we know it, and you cannot argue for differential reproductive success. For, reproduction is not happening yet. And 125 bytes is manifestly vastly too small a storage capacity for a self-replicator. (Life forms start out at 100 - 500 kbases, i.e over 100 times the threshold!] In short, the still warm ponds, undersea vents and comets, etc are non-starters so that there is no credible root for the Darwinian tree of life; and indeed the metabolism firsters and genes firsters have ended up in mutual refutation. (Ever wondered why Darwinists so often insist that OOL is not part of their theory?) Then when it comes to getting new body plans, a comaparison of the 1 mn bases or so for a reasonable unicellular form, and the 10's - 100's of millions in typical multicellular body plans, tells us the problem just got compounded. Actually, exponentiated. In short, the Cambrian life revolution where dozens of body plans pop up in the record without credible antecedents, puts a solid roadblock: top level first, and the required explosion of bioinformation vastly exceeds the resources of our cosmos. Dozens of times over, 10s of millions of bases of novel bioinfo, and ont he usual timeline, in a 5 - 10 mn year window (not that 4.5 BN years would make a significant difference). To distract attention from those sorts of unmet challenges, too many Darwinist advocates try instead to indulge in distractive turnabout accusations. So, probability calculations routinely used in information theory [cf my notes here] are suddenly suspect and unacceptable. Selective hyperskepticism. If you want to get a feel for what is going on try my thermodynamically tinged discussion here, which scales down Sir Fred Hoyle's tornado in a junkyard to quasi molecular scale. read the context for more. (And, Darwinist objectors too often have the gall to try to dismiss a holder of a Nobel Equivalent prize on his thermodynamics and related probability calculations! News for such objectors: Sir Fred may be wrong on a technical subject [e.g. Steady State cosmology], but he isn't blundering simplistically, and he is going to teach you some lessons along the way. Learn a little respect, Wikipedia!!! For shame!) GEM of TKI kairosfocus

"bogus probability calculations that have nothing to do with real? biological systems" I'd really like to see this statement argued and supported otherwise this guy should stop using it. Phaedros

Oakram again:

"Ridicule is? never a rational response." When all we see from the Intelligent Design Creationists are arguments from incredulity, demonstrations of scientific illiteracy, and bogus probability calculations that have nothing to do with real? biological systems, ridicule is the only rational response. IDC is a joke.

1 --> Again, he begins with a slanderous false accusation intended to achieve guilt by association. As he could learn from the Weak Argument Correctives (or simply by asking he Creationists) Design theory is not to be equated with Creationism as currently understood. 2 --> Al we see are . . . Is of course false, and a strawman distortion in the teeth of easily accessible corrective information. (Remember Engel's refusal to simply read SITC, on the handiest slander-laced excuse.) What has been discussed is an inference to best explanation on known, observed signs of intelligence [that is, an appeal to what we do know, not to incredulity], supported by the problem of searching for specific targets in a vast config space on the gamut of resources of the observed universe. Let us put it directly: we routinely observe the source of functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information, e.g. posts in this thread: intelligence. 3 --> Demonstrations of scientific illiteracy is a deliberate personal insult, to one who holds graduate level qualifications int he sciences, and who has successfully taught same at High School and College levels. This is a case of insistence on a lie, for the incorrect claim was already corrected, not just for myself, but for Dr Puccio and others, including a great many who are highly qualified in the sciences. Repeating a lie in the teeth of correction, is an even worse offence. 4 --> The objector has not even paused to understand the difference between analysing the scope of a configuration space and then showing how a search that would use up the resources of the observable universe would not begin to scratch its surface, and a probability calculation. (Not to mention, the "bogus" probability calculations he objects to are essentially those used to ground say the statistical form of the second law of thermodynamics.) 5 --> As the asserted irrelevance of such search space challenges to biology, the point is that the DNA for a given life form is highly specific. But, for a DNA strand of length n, the number of possible 4-state configs is 4^n, ie, 4 * 4 * 4 . . . n times over. So, for a dna of just 500,000 bases [towards the bottom end of the viable life form range], we have a space of 9.9 * 10^301,029. The whole observed universe of 10^80 atoms or so, changing state every Planck time, would access something like 10^150 states across its thermodynamically credible lifespan. So, the cosmos is not going to be able to credibly BEGIN to search the relevant space. 6 --> So, what is really goig on is that, having failed to address the issue ont he merits, Oakram resorts to red herring distractors led out to strawman caricatures soaked in denigratory dismissals, which he lights up to try to cloud, confuse, polarise and poison the atmosphere. 7 --> So, the "joke" is not as he imagines. Ridicule, then, is not his rational response, it is his retort to the patent reduction to absurdity of Oakram's favoured theories on the origin of the cosmos and of life including our own, once the issue of the credible explanation for the origin of complex, functionally specific bio information is on the table. A sad spectacle. But one that tells us much about what has gone wrong with our civilisation, and points out what we need to do to begin to correct the rot before it is too late. G'day. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

07: Design theory studies signs of intelligence, and on the grounds of identifiable markers of chance necessity and intelligence, infers from sign to signified. Consequently, it has concluded that certain features of the natural world are best explained -- per the above considerations -- as the product of art, as opposed to blind chance and/or mechanical necessity. Since the living cell shows abundant signs of design [discrete codes, storage media used to control processes that are algorithmic, associated machinery, organisation, synchronisation and information . . . ], we may conclude that it is designed. A heaped pile of rocks at the foot of a hill may have been designed, but because its features are easily explained on the hypothesis of an avalanche, i.e. chance + necessity, it would infer the best explanation (absent further evidence) of such a rock pile would be chance plus necessity. For we don't need more than that to account for it. (Just like Paley's rock in a field. By contrast, the self-replicating watch that Paley envisioned in Ch II of his book, would SCREAM design. A cell is far more sophisticated than a watch, and its metabolic and replication mechanisms are integrated in a complex information system.) But if the hill were on the Welsh border and we were to see stones arranged to say Welcome to Wales, we would infer that the arrangement is most likely designed. Even though the particular config is a possible result of chance and necessity. (Cf my discussion of lucky nose in App 8 my always linked notes). In short we see inference to best explanation as a matter of empirically based warrant in action. Is everything designed? Possible. Is everything blind chance and necessity? Possible. But, what are the relevant signs and where do they point on a best reasonable explanation basis . . . ? At another level, some designs use chance processes as a component. Yes, but if the design leaves behind markers that point to design, then we are still warranted to infer to design. Finally, the cosmos shows fine tuning, and that points to the physics of the cosmos being set up to found a universe that supports carbon chemistry cell based life. But that does not mean that there are not a lot of specific processes that are necessity and/or law. As to specific mechanisms of design, the first thing is that in a quantum world with sensitively dependent nonlinear dynamical processes at macro levels, the Laplace perfect clockwork cosmos is a non-starter. So, any cosmos-generating program would have to have control elements integrated into it, it won't just start form an initial point and roll and snowball downhill from there. Life probably has front-loading in it as a sort of neo-Lamarckian mechanism where there are robust responses to radical environmental shifts or niches. (Some of that is by a pretty well observed mechanism. When multiple genes contribute to an effect, isolation of sub populations will lead to breeds that can be quite diverse, e.g people and dogs.) Some of it will be small-d darwinian, i.e. small random changes allow wandering around within islands of function, i.e populations of malaria parasites can do a few mutations to resist selection pressure by new drugs. But, at a global fitness cost, similar to hospital superbugs and insect resistance to insecticides etc. And so on. But that does not explain where body plans came from. That could be in part front loaded, and in part guided or initiated or even injected by viri etc. Mechanism is an interesting speculation and onward investigation. So is whodunit. But, such are secondary to the issue of grounding inference to design on empirically reliable signs thereof. We need to confidently know that design before we can focus on who and how, then reverse engineer. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

I have some questions that continue to puzzle. Does ID hold that some things (eg the cell) are designed, and some things are not designed? Or is everything designed? Did the designer create the the forces we observe around us and then leave them to do their thing (therefore introducing an element of randomness, or non-design into the process)or is the process controlled every step of the way? zeroseven

Looks like the "game" over at Youtube is winding down. kairosfocus

WJM: You are plainly right. kairosfocus

What I find interesting is how the anti-ID advocates cannot even allow themselves to admit that humans employ ID, or as TDG points out, that the pekingese and genetically modified crops are factual, empirical examples of biological features that cannot be sufficiently explained without reference to human intelligent design. Unless one is going to argue that a finding that some such feature likely required such teleological intelligence (even lacking known human designers) cannot be rigorously exculpated from the evidence, then there is simply no rational reason to deny that ID is both a scientific fact and theory. The alternative, as TDG points out, is that we must eternally try to explain any alien spacecraft or artifact in terms of unintelligent (natural) forces. This is indicative of the absurd lengths that anti-ID advocates will go to avoid examining ID via basic logic; they cannot answer simple questions in a straightforward manner, because they know they will not be able to escape the inevitable conclusions. William J. Murray

Worth adding: TDG's onward reply: _______________ >> TDG: Let's say we find what appears to be an abandoned alien spacecraft on an otherwise desolate planet. By what rigorous, scientific methdology could we determine that the artifact was indeed the product of some alien intelligence? According to many here, there is no (and can be no) such rigorous means and, unless we appeal to intuition, we must? be regulated to trying? to find non-intelligent (natural) explanations for the object - regardless of what mechanisms we find inside.>> ______________ The reductio ad absurdum of evolutionary materialist a priorism is evident. For, we HAVE found the crashed spacecraft and are decoding a bit of its software systems, i.e. the living cell. kairosfocus

PPS: This exchange is symptomatic: ___________ >> TDG: @wpengel "There is every reason to assume we are? the only intelligence in the universe? capable, other than dolphins; because we have no evidence that suggests? there are other intelligences out there. " Lack of evidence that a thing exists is not evidence that a thing doesn't exist. Unless one is going to? make a case that intelligence is somehow unique to humans (and dolphins), there is no reason to assume there are no other forms of intelligence. Engel: @ThreeDivineGifts "Lack of evidence that a thing exists is not evidence that? a thing doesn't exist." That's exactly what it is and why ID fails, you cannot prove Intelligent Design in Biology or in the Universe itself (part of your definition). And despite your attempts to avoid admitting it your theory does require an Intelligent Designer on a cosmic scale. ? You are proposing a theory based on nothing but inference and wishful thinking. @ThreeDivineGifts "Lack of evidence that a thing exists is not evidence that? a thing doesn't exist." That's exactly what it is and why ID fails, you cannot prove Intelligent Design in Biology or in the Universe itself (part of your definition). And despite your attempts to avoid admitting it your theory does require an Intelligent Designer on a cosmic scale. ? You are proposing a theory based on nothing but inference and wishful thinking. >> _________________ TDG is pointing out that we have no good grounds for limiting the circle of possible intelligences tot he circle of those we have already observed. For the sake of argument he accepts that there is no [direct?] evidence of other intelligences just now, and observes that our finitude, fallibility and the progressive nature of our knowledge means that we cannot close our minds to indirect evidence of intelligence, on empirically reliable sign. Engel, who already found any handy slander-filled excuse to refuse to inspect a serious presentation of actual evidence for such design, then commits precisely the fallacy TDG warned against. He has also failed to learn the lesson Newton taught in 1704 in Opticks, Query 31: inductively based knowledge claims are provisional and subject to correction in light of further evidence. For, that is what he nature of things forces. So, proof beyond all doubt on set premises acceptable to all is simply not on the cards, once we address the world of experiences. In short, selective hyperskepticism rears its head. But it has nothing to do with what has plainly long since been shown: we observe causes tracing to chance, necessity and intelligence or art. We see that each has characteristic signs that may be empirically investigated using generally scientific and certainly responsible approaches, yielding results that are comparably trustworthy and useful as in science as a whole and many other fields of consequential endeavour. When we do so, cell based life shows strong signs of being designed, and so does our cosmos. But that is utterly repugnant to the evolutionary materialist establishment, and it seems ludicrous to those they have indoctrinated. But to reject the evidence, they have had to resort to inconsistencies, via selectively hyperskeptical fallacies, which again tells us that we are on the right track. For, those who reject are forced to be inconsistently skeptical between what they wish to accept and what they try to reject. Such an intellectual double standard is all too revealing on the evolutionary materialist a priorism that was already pointed out above. kairosfocus

PS: A measure of what is going on in the Youtube thread. This by TDG, was flagged as "spam," plainly by a censorship-minded evolutionary materialist Internet vandal:

This has been flagged as spam show hide @wpengel: "Saying that human's use Intelligent Design does not prove that anything does. " Are you saying humans do not intelligently design things? @wpengel "Your words, by this I guess you mean? that we can assume there is an Intelligent? Designer. Are we to assume there is evidence for the Intelligent Designer as well?" Humans are intelligent designers. Are you claiming that humans do? not intelligently design things?

TDG is dead right: the known existence of human beings who design things with intelligence and purpose proves that such are possible as causes. Further, on evidence -- cf 5 above in this thread -- inferring from empirically reliable signs of intelligence to acts of intelligence as their cause, is an act of reasonable induction. One that is prior to the question of the identity and nature of the particular designer implicated. It is to be noted thsat in the case of life, right from the outset of the modern design movement in The Mystery of Life's Origin, 1984, it has been well understood and publicly pointed out that identifying carbon chemistry, informational macromolecule using cell based life as credibly a technology is not grounds for inferring the identity or nature of the source of that technology. It is the level of the finetuning and complex functional organisation of the observed cosmos that the candidacy of an intelligence that is beyond our cosmos becomes a relevant consideration. And, since the design of the cosmos facilitates and is fine tuned for life, it is then plausible to argue that the intelligence behind the cosmos is the intelligence behind life as we observe it. but, such a wider argument (important as it is) is a worldview level argument, not a scientific one, strictly speaking. The vandalism exerted against TDG is all too revealing, all too sadly so. kairosfocus

PS: Discovery Institute's rebuttal to the scare-mongering and strawman-ising on the Wedge Document is here. kairosfocus

Onlookers: Sigh . . . Oakram, 33 mins ago, Youtube:

Review the history of the Intelligent Design Creationism movement, from the Wedge? document through the Dover trial and the rampant and obvious scientific illiteracy demonstrated at "premiere" IDC sites like Uncommon Descent? and you'll find that ridicule is the only rational response. IDCers certainly aren't willing to learn about science.

1 --> Starts with slanderous namecalling intended to project guilt by association in the teeth of easily ascertainable facts. Design theory is not Creationism, as can easily be shown, and as is shown in the weak argument correctives that this commenter ignores in his rush to spread a slanderous falsehood. Unwillingness to acknowledge such a basic and easily accessible fact shows a truthfuloness-challenged status. Credibility shot in the foot coming out the start gate. 2 --> Since I am an obvious focus of the slanders, I can speak on my behalf: I have a triple major science first degree and a graduate degree in the sciences. Many other mere commenters have similar qualifications, and the leading design theorists are by and large graduate trained in the sciences and other relevant fields, many holding doctorates. So, the cheap Parthian shot that design thinkers are not willing to learn about science is blatantly false and defamatory. Our sin is that we will not swallow materialist censorship of science that frustrates it from being an unfettered, responsible pursuit of the truth about our world based on empirical studies and reasoned discussion. For that, we face slander and career busting. 3 --> As to the notion that I and others are scientific illiterates, that falls of its own weight as an outright lie in the teeth of obvious facts to the contrary. 4 --> Oakram owes me and others an apology for slander. Not that I expect such to have the decency to respond to standards of civil conduct and even basic broughtupcy as we call it here in the Caribbean. 5 --> The Wedge document is of course routinely distorted into a claimed theocratic agenda. Just look above folks to see the real, evolutionary materialistic agenda and censorship that are being exposed and corrected, and that in large part on building a new scientific research programme, design theory; which is what the Wedge document proposed. (Wikipedia's domination by ideological materialists makes it utterly unreliable on this subject. As for the Darwinist advocacy sites that are obviously being used as a basis for comments as cited, the Weak Argument Correctives are enough to show their fundamental inaccuracy, unreliability and in some cases, frankly, blatant dishonesty.) 4 --> Judge Jones' decision, insofar as it spoke to Design Theory first is a blind copy of a post trial submission by the ACLU/NSCE complete with gross and slanderous blunders of fact. Methodological naturalism is not the centuries old definition/rule of science. ID-friendly papers have long been published in peer reviewed literature (and Judge Jones had a stack of such papers submitted to him in the trial), Scott Minnich testified to ID research right there in open court, and more. 5 --> So the resort to personal attack and attempted ridicule in the teeth of evident facts shows itself for what it is: an implicit admission that the balance on the merits is on the other side. 6 --> No wonder those who so gleefully spread falsehoods and slanders as cited above are unwilling to come over and defend their record in a forum where facts and reasoning can be adduced at reasonable length. (And observe, in the course of the past 24 hours, how the design side focussed on facts and evidence and those who tried to trash Mr Meyer have tried to distract, distort, demonise denigrate and dismiss.) _________ A sad commentary on the true state of civil discourse on important matters in our civilisation today. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Just to add weight to the argument, this is hot off the press: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10598926 It says that plants signal, remember, compute and use encripted information. Exatly what one would expect when unintelligent, unguided natural processes are given enough time :) Alex73

F/N: P Burnett at Youtube, 7 hrs ago: ". . . the fight against the scientific illiteracy and willful ignorance of intelligent design creationism." This is of course exactly a case of slanderous, false accusatory willful ignorance that design theory and Biblical Creationism (what is usually meant by "Creationism") are not at all the same. I suggest Mr Burnett needs to read the weak argument correctives 1 - 8, top right. And then, he needs to consider Ms Scott's record in the case of Dr Sternberg and other similar incidents, and think again about just what the "fight" he so lauds is, and how it proceeds: suppression of unwelcome truth by resort to the nastiest forms of personal attack, unjustified career busting and willful misrepresentation of the truth and the right. kairosfocus

Pardon duplication, please remove. kairosfocus

Weird reaction at UD to submission. Trying again: Gaz: Years ago, Wm A Dembski pointed to TRIZ as a key illustration of the dynamics of technological evolution. (And if the root of biology is a technology, then technology evolution is a very relevant consideration for biology. The same would hold for cosmology. On this view, science is a form of reverse engineering, a view that dominated from Bacon, before the days of Newton; to the days of Einstein.) Remember, design theory is an information/organisation origination theory, and as such it does not have the same zone of applications as Darwinian Evolution. It is for instance in principle applicable to cryptanalysis, steganography etc. So, there are multiple fronts for ID to advance on, including identification of design (as opposed to natural patterns manifesting effects of chance and mechanical necessity), identification of dynamics of technological evolution [with applications to tech futures markets and investing . . . ], and of course systematisation of identification of most credible agent responsible for a given instance of intelligent action [i.e. an onward systematisation of forensics]. All of these can be and are being developed on an empirical, scientific evidence basis, some under the name ID, others, not. Again, the key issue is the centrality of seeking, discovering and validating of truth about our world based on empirical evidence to science. Once truth is seen as central, evolutionary materialistic censorship of scientific investigations will be exposed as utterly unjustifiable. A capital illustration of that censorship is of course the notorious remarks by Lewontin in his review of Sagan's The Demon-haunted World, in the January 1997 NYRB: __________ >> . . . to put a correct view of the universe into people's heads we must first get an incorrect view out . . . the problem is to get them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth [NB: this is self-refuting, as the claim that science is the only begetter of truth is a philosophical claim to truth] . . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists, it is self-evident that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality, and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test . . . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [“Billions and Billions of Demons,” NYRB, January 9, 1997. >> ___________ One who assumes evolutionary materialism as an a priori like that, has abandoned the open minded, empirically based search for truth and has instead taken science captive to an ideology. Which is precisely what Mr Engel et al have shown us so plainly over at Youtube. Prof Philip Johnson's rebuke is apt and well-deserved:

For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them "materialists employing science." And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) "give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." . . . . The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses. [Emphasis added.] [The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]

It is time to set the philosophical house in order, so that science can be freed from ideological captivity to evolutionary materialism. When the materialistic blinkers are taken off, it will at once be obvious that, whatever the outcome at length, the question of whether one may identify and develop a theory of signs of intelligence is obviously -- and even self-evidently -- a scientific issue. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Gaz: Years ago, Wm A Dembski pointed to TRIZ as a key illustration of the dynamics of technological evolution. (And if the root of biology is a technology, then technology evolution is a very relevant consideration for biology. The same would hold for cosmology. On this view, science is a form of reverse engineering, a view that dominated from Bacon, before the days of Newton; to the days of Einstein.) Remember, design theory is an information/organisation origination theory, and as such it does not have the same zone of applications as Darwinian Evolution. It is for instance in principle applicable to cryptanalysis, steganography etc. So, there are multiple fronts for ID to advance on, including identification of design (as opposed to natural patterns manifesting effects of chance and mechanical necessity), identification of dynamics of technological evolution [with applications to tech futures markets and investing . . . ], and of course systematisation of identification of most credible agent responsible for a given instance of intelligent action [i.e. an onward systematisation of forensics]. All of these can be and are being developed on an empirical, scientific evidence basis, some under the name ID, others, not. Again, the key issue is the centrality of seeking, discovering and validating of truth about our world based on empirical evidence to science. Once truth is seen as central, evolutionary materialistic censorship of scientific investigations will be exposed as utterly unjustifiable. A capital illustration of that censorship is of course the notorious remarks by Lewontin in his review of Sagan's The Demon-haunted World, in the January 1997 NYRB: __________ >> . . . to put a correct view of the universe into people's heads we must first get an incorrect view out . . . the problem is to get them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth [NB: this is self-refuting, as the claim that science is the only begetter of truth is a philosophical claim to truth] . . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists, it is self-evident that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality, and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test . . . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [“Billions and Billions of Demons,” NYRB, January 9, 1997. >> ___________ One who assumes evolutionary materialism as an a priori like that, has abandoned the open minded, empirically based search for truth and has instead taken science captive to an ideology. Which is precisely what Mr Engel et al have shown us so plainly over at Youtube. Prof Philip Johnson's rebuke is apt and well-deserved:

For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them "materialists employing science." And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) "give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." . . . . The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses. [Emphasis added.] [The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]

It is time to set the philosophical house in order, so that science can be freed from ideological captivity to evolutionary materialism. When the materialistic blinkers are taken off, it will at once be obvious that, whatever the outcome at length, the question of whether one may identify and develop a theory of signs of intelligence is obviously -- and even self-evidently -- a scientific issue. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Gaz said: But what they haven’t done is come up with any mechanism for ID. Until they do that, ID won’t be taken seriously in the scientific community. Of course they have; the putative "intelligent designer" uses the same materials and forces (i.e., "mechanisms") that are otherwise described as the lawful and random interactions of the materials present, only it does so purposefully - teleologically. Your strange challenge is like claiming that no "mechanism" has been offered for how computers or battleships come into existence; it is via a purposeful manipulation of materials and forces that otherwise cannot, on their own, construct the artifact in question. William J. Murray

Gaz, What your write is the usual excuse the Darwinist scientists use. Darwinism is indeed an all-encompassing theory that attempt to explain the biological diversity around us. It does have a proposed mechanism and natural history deeply embedded into the basic idea. ID, on the other hand, states that it is possible to distinguish between natural causes and patterns that intelligent agents leave behind, and it is strikingly true for biology and cosmology. ID, consequently, opposes the very mechanism behind Darwinism, but does not offer in itself an alternative world history. It also does not tell us what methods the Designer used at the drawing board or in the lab. However, we can still tell that radio signals were sent by intelligent agents even if we do not know who they are or what they are trying to tell us. Just ask anyone at Seti... Yes, I understand that ID in itself would create a mighty vacuum for some in natural history, but just because Darwinist evolution gives cosy feeling for some people we cannot ignore that it is completely bankrupt at its very core. And by the way, what do you say when someone asks for a detailed, step-by-step, mutation-by-mutation explanation for the natural formation of the flagellum? More research is needed? Well, then remove this double standard and allow others also to do some "more research"! Alex73

Clive Hayden (31), "Ummm, working out a positive theory is exactly what the scientific people like Stephen Meyer, William Dembski, Doug Axe, Anne Gauger, Bob Marks and Michael Behe have done…." But what they haven't done is come up with any mechanism for ID. Until they do that, ID won't be taken seriously in the scientific community. Gaz

PaulBurnett,

There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove…

Ummm, working out a positive theory is exactly what the scientific people like Stephen Meyer, William Dembski, Doug Axe, Anne Gauger, Bob Marks and Michael Behe have done.... Clive Hayden

Onlookers: Mr Engel has now presented the sad spectacle of one who loudly demands evidence for the scientific grounds of design theory and thought, then when presented with a current summary of such evidence, finds the first slanderous side track he can to avoid the evidence. CY's call to him to take the time to do his homework is entirely in order. If he does not have a copy of SITC handy, I suggest that there is now more than enough material online for him to learn the other side of the story, e.g. through IDEA center (assuming him to be of HS/General audience level). My own beta form independent survey course, here, may also be useful, as well as the weak argument correctives and glossary top right this and every UD page. Of course clicking on my handle -- accessible through every comment I have ever made at UD -- will lead Mr Engel to my online research notes on the subject. But also, since he tried to trash the PBSW paper, it is worth pausing to give a key summarising excerpt of its main argument, from my research notes, section C, on the roots of body plan level biodiversity: ____________ >> The Cambrian explosion represents a remarkable jump in the specified complexity or "complex specified information" (CSI) of the biological world. For over three billions years, the biological realm included little more than bacteria and algae (Brocks et al. 1999). Then, beginning about 570-565 million years ago (mya), the first complex multicellular organisms appeared in the rock strata, including sponges, cnidarians, and the peculiar Ediacaran biota (Grotzinger et al. 1995). Forty million years later, the Cambrian explosion occurred (Bowring et al. 1993) . . . One way to estimate the amount of new CSI that appeared with the Cambrian animals is to count the number of new cell types that emerged with them (Valentine 1995:91-93) . . . the more complex animals that appeared in the Cambrian (e.g., arthropods) would have required fifty or more cell types . . . New cell types require many new and specialized proteins. New proteins, in turn, require new genetic information. Thus an increase in the number of cell types implies (at a minimum) a considerable increase in the amount of specified genetic information. Molecular biologists have recently estimated that a minimally complex single-celled organism would require between 318 and 562 kilobase pairs of DNA to produce the proteins necessary to maintain life (Koonin 2000). More complex single cells might require upward of a million base pairs. Yet to build the proteins necessary to sustain a complex arthropod such as a trilobite would require orders of magnitude more coding instructions. The genome size of a modern arthropod, the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster, is approximately 180 million base pairs (Gerhart & Kirschner 1997:121, Adams et al. 2000). Transitions from a single cell to colonies of cells to complex animals represent significant (and, in principle, measurable) increases in CSI . . . . In order to explain the origin of the Cambrian animals, one must account not only for new proteins and cell types, but also for the origin of new body plans . . . Mutations in genes that are expressed late in the development of an organism will not affect the body plan. Mutations expressed early in development, however, could conceivably produce significant morphological change (Arthur 1997:21) . . . [but] processes of development are tightly integrated spatially and temporally such that changes early in development will require a host of other coordinated changes in separate but functionally interrelated developmental processes downstream. For this reason, mutations will be much more likely to be deadly if they disrupt a functionally deeply-embedded structure such as a spinal column than if they affect more isolated anatomical features such as fingers (Kauffman 1995:200) . . . McDonald notes that genes that are observed to vary within natural populations do not lead to major adaptive changes, while genes that could cause major changes--the very stuff of macroevolution--apparently do not vary. In other words, mutations of the kind that macroevolution doesn't need (namely, viable genetic mutations in DNA expressed late in development) do occur, but those that it does need (namely, beneficial body plan mutations expressed early in development) apparently don't occur.6 >> ____________ Let us see what Mr Engel has to say on the merits. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Cable: Thanks, deeply appreciated. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

CY: Mr Engel plainly, sadly, does not wish to face inconvenient truth, evidence and argument. So, he finds the first slander-loaded excuse he can find to avoid having to deal with what is now emerging as a leading presentation of the case for Design thought in science. Then, he resorts to parrotting talking points that are often dishonest at source, based on slanderous caricatures and deliberately weakened forms of the actual case for design. (The leading anti-ID advocates know or should know better so -- pardon a few frank words -- they are morally responsible for the misleading and polarising rhetoric they so brazenly spew forth. I suggest a reading of the weak argument correctives top, right hand side this and every page at UD, as a first corrective. Unfortunately, straightening out misconceptions and distortions is very hard. Which is precisely what is being exploited by those leading evolutionary materialist advocates, who are teaching what they should know is misleading and polarising error.) In fact, one may find out the rest of the story here. On the controversy, regarding the PBSW paper in question, on an OSC special investigation, was found to have passed "proper peer review," by "renowned scientists." It was published with adjustments after that review. Mr Sternberg, on a clear harassing effort initiated by the NCSE and perpetuated through several officers at the Smithsonian, was subjected to the worst kind of unjust career busting. Unfortunately, peculiarities of his employment circumstances meant that the case could not be properly prosecuted as an administrative/legal matter. Ms Scott et al have a lot to answer for. A lot. After this shameful episode, which included things like false accusations of being a thief [change our locks . . . !] etc, the BSW executed an obviously political retraction of the paper. So, Mr Engel is indulging in the sad tactics of blaming the victim and refusing to listen to what the accused has to say in his defence. Kangaroo court tactics, in short. In addition, he has used the tactic of the distractive red herring, led out to the strawman soaked in slanderous misrepresentations, ignited to cloud, confuse, polarise and poison the atmosphere, frustrating following up the clues that point down the track of the truth. This all too common rhetorical resort of evolutionary materialistic advocates and fellow travellers is utterly cynical and dishonest. Mr Engel, when you stand up to declaim on an important matter in public, you have a duty of care to do your homework, and to be fair and accurate in your representations of those you oppose and what they have to say, as well as their underlying evidence. Mr Engel therefore should be ashamed of himself, but he may very well be following the worldview that -- as Plato pointed out 2300 years ago in The Laws Bk X -- radically relativises one's approach to both knowledge and morality, ending up in the utterly inexcusable and indefensible, destructive notion that "the highest right is might": ___________ >>Ath. . . . [The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as to the bodies which come next in order-earth, and sun, and moon, and stars-they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them-of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only. [In short, evolutionary materialism premised on chance plus necessity acting without intelligent guidance on primordial matter is hardly a new or a primarily "scientific" view! Note, as he introduces the discussion, Plato is careful to subtly distance himself from the peculiar myths of the gods in Athens, hinting at a concept that approaches ethical Monotheism while being careful not to cross the lines that Socrates did] . . . . [Thus, they hold that t]he Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.- [Relativism, too, is not new.] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might, and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions, these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others, and not in legal subjection to them . . . >> ____________ In addition, there is a growing list of peer-reviewed (and peer-edited, the older approach that has worked for centuries) works in the scientific literature from an ID perspective. And of course, the revelations of the Climate gate scandal (and the cover-ups and whitewashes that are passing under the names of being investigations) are telling us much the same: something is radically wrong with the state of early C21 institutional science, science-based policy advocacy, formal science education and popular science education and journalism. Something that we had better correct now, or face horrendous consequences. Just as Plato warned, 2300 years ago. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

@kairosfocus Okay I linked to it. You are not allowed links so used tinyurl and replaces used 'DOT' instead of '.' Cable

Never mind, It looks like Paul Burnett, of all people, invited him here. wpengel, if you're reading this and the above post, I suggest that you read SITC without your bias shades on. On YouTube you keep asking for the evidence, but apparently that's not what you're really looking for. If so, I think you could tolerate Meyer's writing despite the alleged lies. Read it for the argument, rather than ignore it in light of the negativity that has been hashed out against Meyer by his opponents. CannuckianYankee

KF, I tried to post on youtube for wpengel to come here. Unfortunately, for some reason my posts don't work. Just for your information, here's what wpengel stated about SITC: "Sorry, tried to read it but couldn't get past the massive dishonesty in the introduction when he lies about the publishing of his paper in The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. If you can't be honest I'm not reading anything you have to say.?" So he doesn't even read the important literature. How can we expect that he's getting the right information? CannuckianYankee

Meyer apparently disagrees with Phillip Johnson, who is quoted as saying: "I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove… No product is ready for competition in the educational world." – quoted by Michelangelo D’Agostino in an article, "In the matter of Berkeley v. Berkeley," Berkeley Science Research, 10, Spring 2006 (http://sciencereview.berkeley.edu/articles.php?issue=10&article=evolution) So if intelligent design is scientific, as Meyer claims, when exactly (since 2006) did it become "scientific"? PaulBurnett

Oh right. Thanks. :) Phaedros

It's the Type III Secretory System. Hence, TTSS. ;) tragic mishap

PS: The Youtube thread is now descending into dishonest namecalling and spouting of Darwinist talking points as though they are gospel truth. Sad, but predictable. kairosfocus

Also: Turns out the TTSS is a derivative of the flagellum, not the other way around. It even apparently has the complement of genes, just some are not operative. And all along the biggest IC entity of all, the core life functions (especially self-replication on programmed information), is going a begging. Then, when we come to diversity of body plans, the problem is that the most likely to be lethal mutations are those that would affect at random the core architecture and are expressed early in the embryological development. Late acting mutations don't change body design, and are less likely to be lethal. We see the latter, not the former, save perhaps as spontaneous abortions or otherwise failed embryological development. Guess why we see a bursting out of dozens of body plans in the strata generally called Cambrian and conventionally dated to about 540 MYA? Darwin knew about it, and could only hope that later investigations would reverse the evident trend. With 1/4 million fossil species and millions and millions of specimens (and billions more of the same in the ground), we are seeing the same pattern: discrete appearance, interpreted as sudden emergence, stasis, and disappearance and/or continuation to the current time. (The Coelecanth shows how a "vanished" form can be around in our current world.) So, the only actual record is not supportive of the Darwinian story -- chance variations among populations and culling out by extinction of the less fit forms. Somewhere along the line, the necessities of closely integrated, complex and coordinated, information rich function are trying to tell us we don't quite have it right. And that does not begin to address the issue of the worldview level destructive implications and consequences of evolutionary materialism. Does Mr Engel, for instance, understand the issues raised by Plato in The Laws Bk X, in light of the career of Alcibiades and co? Perhaps,then, in addition to the above, he should read this, on the implications for society. It did not start with Nietzsche or the Darwinist Eugenicists or the Social Darwinists (of whom Darwin himself was one of the first, as chs 5 - 7 of his Descent of Man will make painfully plain)! Time to clean house. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

We should take a moment and consider that Irreducible Complexity fits right in with Darwinism. Early on, organisms that contained irreducibly complex functionality had a survival advantage over those that didn't, and won out in the end. Natural selection is powerful stuff! ;-) Apollos

Wasn't Ken Miller's supposed refutation of irreducible complexity the existence of the Type I Secretory System? I guess you're pretty committed if that's all it takes to convince you. Phaedros

Footnote: I see a dismissal that every case of irreducible complexity proposed by Behe has been refuted. This is nonsense, all it means is that the commenter is taking objectors as gospel, and viewing Behe with contempt. To then infer or imply that Behe is an idiot etc, is inexcusable. When one stands up in public, one has a duty to have done his or her homework, and to treat people with some reasonable degree of civility. Especially where they are speaking in their field of Doctoral level expertise and you have not got anywhere near the same qualifications or basic competence in analysis and research. Indeed, the very first irreducibly complex entity is the information system that makes for self-replication in the very first metabolising, self-replicating life form. Without codes, algorithms, storage media, machines to interpret and implement and the right ports to take in the right raw materials and energy sour5ces, all organised correctly, it will not work. Indeed, this should be no surprise. Once we have complex function based on properly organised and synchornised components, disorganising or breaking synchronisation are going to break function. Just look around you at the world of technology. Then, understand that the cell is a world of even higher technology. Not to mention, higher level systems. Here is Denton, 1985 in His Evo, a theory in Crisis: ______________ >>To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter [[so each atom in it would be “the size of a tennis ball”] and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. We would see endless highly organized corridors and conduits branching in every direction away from the perimeter of the cell, some leading to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others to assembly plants and processing units. The nucleus itself would be a vast spherical chamber more than a kilometer in diameter, resembling a geodesic dome inside of which we would see, all neatly stacked together in ordered arrays, the miles of coiled chains of the DNA molecules. A huge range of products and raw materials would shuttle along all the manifold conduits in a highly ordered fashion to and from all the various assembly plants in the outer regions of the cell. We would wonder at the level of control implicit in the movement of so many objects down so many seemingly endless conduits, all in perfect unison. We would see all around us, in every direction we looked, all sorts of robot-like machines . . . . We would see that nearly every feature of our own advanced machines had its analogue in the cell: artificial languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices used for quality control, assembly processes involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction . . . . However, it would be a factory which would have one capacity not equaled in any of our own most advanced machines, for it would be capable of replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours . . . . Unlike our own pseudo-automated assembly plants, where external controls are being continually applied, the cell's manufacturing capability is entirely self-regulated . . . . [[Denton, Michael, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Adler, 1986, pp. 327 – 331.] >> ________________ And, when we look at particular cases commonly objected to, we see too many rhetorical side tracks and strawman arguments to be mere coincidence. BTW, genetic knockout studies are premised on the principle of irreducible complexity: knock out a gene, see what breaks, restore it, see what works again. Should be easy to follow for anyone who has had to search for a core car part without which the car does not start up or will not run or is uncontrollable. And that a car can work with some parts broken does not mean that no parts are vital. See what passes for science education and critical thinking education today? We need to clean house folks, and break the monopolies that have driven prices up and quality down. Which is what monopolies normally do. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Cable Can you link? Or, maybe say where the discussion is: e.g. Uncommon Descent, Stephen Meyer on ID's bona fides, July 14th, comment no 5? GEM of TKI PS: 372 characters does not lend itself to any serious discussion. Maybe that is why the sort of comments we see are there. kairosfocus

@kairosfocus Would add your comment to Youtube but it only allows 372 characters. Anything in particular you would like posted? Tried my best to comment but I am no where near as intelligent or as knowledgeable as you. Cable

Wag, Good points. With an embed though the comments do not track over to the blog, like above in the original post. G kairosfocus

Phaedros I agree with you. The arguements being made are not rational nor productive. Which is why your voice would so strongly stand out and perhaps knock the cobwebs loose. I do rehab. What that means is that I help peoples pain go away. Do you know how many times I've heard this: "I'm not coming in today because I'm too sore/painful." That isn't rational either but after I discuss with them the rational side of things they usuallty come around and from then on come to me to help their pain. This I think is what can be done intellectually with those who are not IDers. Call me niave but that's what I believe. Don't get me wrong I realuize the path is "narrow" and few will follow. wagenweg

Wagenweg- Please show me an example of a productive, rational debate in the youtube comments section. I'd like to see it. I think generally it's true that that kind of thing is rare on youtube especially concerning this topic. Phaedros

Right and that's my point. If we are all watching the video and reading the comments, then they all probably aren't "hoardes of middle school kids". So why not respond in the comments section? I don't think it woudll be "futile". wagenweg

Wag: Youtube is probably the easiest base for embedding, to a blog or a wiki etc. That is how I mostly view Youtube. G kairosfocus

If the demographic is merely middle school kids on youtube then why post the video on such a website to begin with? Why not post it on a website where the demographic would be more suited for this type of content? Beside, middle aged minds need the truth too. wagenweg

PPPS: now you know why Wikipedia is so often utterly untrustworthy. A shame, as it spoils the general credibility of often quite good information put up by honest and public spirited people who do know what they are talking about. Wiki needs a system that stops that kind of contributor and -- worse -- moderator led -- vandalism and deception. kairosfocus

PPS: Could someone with a Youtube account --maybe, God's iPod? -- please point Mr Engel to the above? Thanks. kairosfocus

I generally agree, and I don't usually comment on youtube videos. But I read through some and one really bugged me. He basically said Stephen Meyer was in it for the money. That always bugs me because of course he's in it for the money. If he's not using his degrees for that, he would have to result to something else to take care of his family. Money really has got nothing do to with good arguments, and I'm tired of people on youtube using that to excuse ID. Anyhow, mean comments just help youtube vids get views. Above, I've never tried to add anything to wiki, but I know atheists love the site. They're always sending me links to it. I try to stick to conservapedia or theopedia. Pevensie15

Okay: Let's take up the current latest comment at the Youtube site, by a certain wpengel, for a little overdue correction:

So you? think he is correct? That ID should not have to follow the rules of every other scientific discipline, but still be allowed to be called science? I invite you to present one single piece of verifiable evidence in support of Intelligent Design. A piece of evidence that can be independently confirmed by anyone interested in doing so. The people interested in redefining science are the IDers, so that their pet hypothesis can be called science.

1 --> This commenter, first, clearly has not done enough homework to understand that there is no one-size-fits-all scientific method (just as Mr Meyer, a PhD Philosopher of science who has published on the demarcation problem stated). 2 --> Further, he does not understand that here are no one size fits all rules of science that suffice to neatly identify what is and what is not science. 3 --> In particular, there is a world of difference between operational sciences that operate in the here and now world where direct observations check our proposed explanatory models, and origins sciences that try to plausibly reconstruct a remote, unobserved deep past. 4 --> Further to all this, the best we can say about science is -- roughly -- that, at its best, it is an unfettered (but intellectually and ethically responsible) progressive pursuit of the truth about our world based on observation, experiment, modelling, analysis and discussion among the informed. Of which Mr Engel is clearly not one. 5 --> Mr Engel -- probably thanks to Judge Jones et al and to the media that have consistently distorted the issues for over a decade now, and to his own failure to do even basic investigations before spouting off dismissively -- is equally ignorant on the evidence that supports the inference that certain features of the natural world are best explained as the product of intelligence and intent, not of blind chance and mechanical necessity. (He might find the UD weak argument correctives, top right on every UD page, a basic place to begin.) 6 --> For instance, a commonly encountered feature of our world is functionally specific, complex organisation and associated (often discrete state) information. Of such J S Wicken classically said:

'Organized’ systems are to be carefully distinguished from ‘ordered’ systems. Neither kind of system is ‘random,’ but whereas ordered systems are generated according to simple algorithms [i.e. “simple” force laws acting on objects starting from arbitrary and common- place initial conditions] and therefore lack complexity, organized systems must be assembled element by element according to an [originally . . . ] external ‘wiring diagram’ with a high information content . . . Organization, then, is functional complexity and carries information. It is non-random by design or by selection, rather than by the a priori necessity of crystallographic ‘order.’ [“The Generation of Complexity in Evolution: A Thermodynamic and Information-Theoretical Discussion,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, 77 (April 1979): p. 353, of pp. 349-65.]

7 --> In our experience and direct observation, functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information are the product of design. Wicken hoped that natural [undirected, environmental] selection [by extinction of the relatively less fit] acting on random variations would adequately account for the biological case, but of course the actual observed case of artificial selection to get breeds shows us that there tend to be sharp limits to such selection, and the issue comes down to the existence of credible engines of variation to create the data strings in dna to be selected from; especially once the issue on the table is the origin of body plans. (Starting from the first one.) 8 --> The further evidence starting from OOL is that one would have to explain how a von Neumann-type self-replicating automaton with codes, algorithms to guide assembly, machines to read and effect the codes, and further machines to couple to available energy sources and raw materials/components came about by chance and necessity without the possibility of differential reproductive success being on the table. For, that is one of the key features to be explained. 9 --> We do know from direct observation and experience where codes, algorithms and executing machines come from. Art, not chance and necessity. 10 --> This is backed up by the mathematics of getting even just 1,000 bits worth of such functionally specific complex information, which is hopelessly too short a length of code [125 bytes]: 1.07*10^301 possible configurations. That is over ten times the SQUARE of the number of Plack-time states of the 10^80 atoms of our observed cosmos across its thermodynamically credible lifetime (about 50 mn times the 13.7 By said to have passed since the big bang). 11 --> In short, prebiotic soups or comets or thermal vents simply do not have the credible resources to accidentally hit on the right configs, on the gamut of our observed universe. (And multiverse speculations are after the fact philosophical postulates, not science.) 12 --> But, we routinely observe sources for such FSCI: intelligence. So, on inference to best explanation, the best explanation for the complex information systems in the biological natural world is the same as that for the technological world; especially where codes and algorithms are concerned. (Just, we are not far enough along yet to have self-replicating computers etc. Though, the much mocked Paley was already considering the implications of seeing a self-replicating watch over 200 years ago. Bet the strawman Paley you heard of was not doing that!) 13 --> So, on the fundamental epistemological pattern of reasoning used in science, inference to best current explanation across factual adequacy, coherence and explanatory power, we do have a world full of evidence that points to design, in the biological world. Every cell that uses DNA is a case in point! 14 --> Going beyond that, for decades, it has been an open secret that he cosmos shows every sign of functionally specific, finely balanced complex organisation, to achieve a cosmos in which carbon chemistry based intelligent life is possible. On dozens of factors. For this, there is quite literally a universe full of evidence. 15 --> As for the turnabout, deceptively and maliciously false accusation Mr Engels parrots, that it is design thinkers who are "redefining science," let us first listen to Newton (who was by the way most definitely a design thinker), 1704, in Opticks, Query 31:

As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, but such as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. For Hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental Philosophy. And although the arguing from Experiments and Observations by Induction be no Demonstration of general Conclusions; yet it is the best way of arguing which the Nature of Things admits of, and may be looked upon as so much the stronger, by how much the Induction is more general. And if no Exception occur from Phaenomena, the Conclusion may be pronounced generally. But if at any time afterwards any Exception shall occur from Experiments, it may then begin to be pronounced with such Exceptions as occur. By this way of Analysis we may proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from Motions to the Forces producing them; and in general, from Effects to their Causes, and from particular Causes to more general ones, till the Argument end in the most general. This is the Method of Analysis: And the Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discover'd, and establish'd as Principles, and by them explaining the Phaenomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations.

16 --> This is precisely what we find summarised in the sort of dictionary definitions used in schools before the imposition of a definition that boils down to a priori evolutionary materialism force-fitted unto science under the name "methodological naturalism" by today's reigning orthodoxy, over the past 25 or so years:

Science The investigation of natural phenomena through observation, theoretical explanation, and experimentation, or the knowledge produced by such investigation. [American Heritage Science Dictionary, 2005] Scientific methods are the principles and processes of discovery and testing scientists use, “generally involving the observation of phenomena, the formulation of a hypothesis concerning the phenomena, experimentation to demonstrate the truth or falseness of the hypothesis, and a conclusion that validates or modifies the hypothesis.” [American Heritage Dictionary.]

17 --> This of course sharply contrasts with the sort of ideologically loaded, materialistic redefinitions that have been imposed in recent years by various magisteria of evolutionary materialism. For instance, we may see the one first forced on the students of Kansas in 2001 by the radical materialists and their fellow travellers: “Science is the human activity of seeking natural explanations of the world around us.” 18 --> The trick in that is the implicit question-begging in the slippery term "natural explanations," which boils down to: only evolutionary materialistic explanations need apply. That is, in the teeth of the known possibility of intelligent action into the world, censorship is used to block considering explanations that do not fit with the materialistic agenda. 19 --> This is ideology, agenda, indoctrination and propaganda, not science or science education. _______________ So, Mr Engel shows the impact of the manipulation he has been subjected to, and his lack of ability to carry out enough independent research to critically review what he has been told. He has been indoctrinated, not educated. A telling sign of where our world is today. GEM of TKI PS: Mr Engel, if you come over and read this, why not start re-examining your views with the weak argument correctives above, right hand column, and also you may find some help here, as a 101 survey. kairosfocus

Like Phaedros said, it's pointless. Youtube is just a collection of anti-intellectual and highly emotional kids. I don't bother with the comments section to be honest. Incidentally, while slightly off topic, last week I took the time to go on wikipedia and read up on the section on 'atheism' and 'criticism of atheism'. A lot of the stuff that was said there was obviously very bias so I decided to add several parts to provide a more objective view, all of which were backed with specific citations. Within minutes they were all deleted. So I decided to redo them and again within minutes they were deleted. This back and forth went on for about 4-5 times until I got bored and left. Has anyone else had a similar experience on wiki? above

God's IPOD- I fear that doing so would be futile. You'll get called a creationist/fundamentalist christian (or some variation thereof) and that'll be that according to the standards of youtube with its hordes of middle school kids. Phaedros

Boy oh boy this is getting slammed in the comments on YouTube. Please go there and leave some good comments. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy0_Mn1s1xo Gods iPod

Lots more of these please !!! NZer