Stephen Meyer on ID’s Scientific Bona Fides

_{William Dembski

July 13, 2010

Intelligent Design}

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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_{July 27, 2010
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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_{July 27, 2010
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The simplest known replicator has about 50 nucleotides and evolves. We shall see where this goes.Petrushka_{July 27, 2010
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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 TKIkairosfocus_{July 27, 2010
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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_{July 27, 2010
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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_{July 27, 2010
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"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. Vividvividbleau_{July 27, 2010
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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_{July 27, 2010
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For it is now obvious that evolutionary materialism desperately requires magical miracles
Good to hear that ID renounces miracles.Petrushka_{July 27, 2010
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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_{July 27, 2010
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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_{July 27, 2010
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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 TKIkairosfocus_{July 27, 2010
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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 TKIkairosfocus_{July 27, 2010
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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.phpPetrushka_{July 26, 2010
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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_{July 26, 2010
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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_{July 26, 2010
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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 Vividvividbleau_{July 26, 2010
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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_{July 26, 2010
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---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_{July 26, 2010
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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 TKIkairosfocus_{July 26, 2010
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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 TKIkairosfocus_{July 26, 2010
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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_{July 26, 2010
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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_{July 26, 2010
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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 TKIkairosfocus_{July 26, 2010
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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 TKIkairosfocus_{July 26, 2010
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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_{July 26, 2010
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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_{July 26, 2010
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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 TKIkairosfocus_{July 26, 2010
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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_{July 26, 2010
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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_{July 26, 2010
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