The argument from incredulity vs. The argument from gullibility

_{William Dembski

May 27, 2006

Intelligent Design}

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On another blog, the following quotes from Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement are listed approvingly:

Ã¢â‚¬Å“Evolutionary biology certainly hasnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t explained everything that perplexes biologists, but intelligent design hasnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t yet tried to explain anything at all.Ã¢â‚¬Â Ã¢â‚¬â€œDaniel C. Dennett, Philosopher

“Not only is ID markedly inferior to Darwinism at explaining and understanding nature but in many ways it does not even fulfill the requirements of a scientific theory.” Ã¢â‚¬â€œJerry A. Coyne, evolutionary biologist

“The geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously declared, Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.Ã¢â‚¬Â One might add that nothing in biology makes sense in the light of intelligent design.” Ã¢â‚¬â€œJerry A. Coyne, evolutionary biologist

“The supernatural explanation fails to explain because it ducks the responsibility to explain itself.” Ã¢â‚¬â€Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist

“What counts as a controversy must be delineated with care, as we want students to distinguish between scientific challenges and sociopolitical ones.” Ã¢â‚¬â€Marc D. Hauser, evolutionary psychologist

“Incredulity doesnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t count as an alternative position or critique.” Ã¢â‚¬â€Marc D. Hauser, evolutionary psychologist

Leaving aside ID, the subtext of these quotes is, “We’ve got a theory that has vast gaping holes, we don’t have a clue how the theory might fill the holes, but we still believe the theory accounts for what actually happened.” To challenge this is to be guilty of “an argument from incredulity,” in other words, of refusing to believe despite overwhelming evidence. Isn’t it rather that to accept this is to be guilty of “an argument from gullibility,” of believing despite the overwhelming absence of evidence?

Comments

Re #3 above. I have just finished reading the 2005 paper on specification. A couple of minor points and one deeper concern: On page 11 (and elsewhere) "because (R) was constructed by flipping a coin, it is very likely that this is the shortest description of (R)" i.e. for most bits strings the shortest description is simply to copy the string. This isn't true. Virtually all bit strings can be compressed using an algorithm such as Huffman compression (http://www.prepressure.com/techno/compressionhuffman.htm) - that is how computer compression algorithms work. On page 22 credit and ATM card numbers actually have a more redundancy than simply specifying the system number - so the number of possible numbers is a lot less than 1 in 10^14 e.g. the last digit is a check digit. The deeper concern. In section 2 Fisherian hypothesis testing - the rejection area is *not* necessarily defined as an area where the pdf is below a certain level or above a certain level. This is easily seen by considering the case of one-tailed testing. The deeper point here is that the null hypothesis is defined in relation to an alternative hypothesis which might give a better explanation of the results in the rejection area. That is how we decide between one-tailed and two-tailed tests. The alternative hypothesis is just ignored in section 2. This problem turns up again in appendendum 2. The addendum claims that Bayesian analysis is parasitic on the Fisherian approach, but actually it is the other way round. CheersMark Frank_{May 29, 2006
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Just to point out, the plant builds itself. Last time I checked, if you purchase a solar panel, it won't make new ones just by sitting it outside in the sun.johnnyb_{May 28, 2006
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Sorry about the split infinitive in the last post. I just want to boldly go where no one has gone before...Collin DuCrÃƒÂ¢ne_{May 28, 2006
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"Where's the Beef?" - The Little People. I sense a collective desire on this blog to move beyond doctrinal debates and show some results of efforts in ID theory. I would certainly donate some time to a seti@home type of distributed computing project based on measuring "conservation of information" in genome data. seti@home http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ I found some genome@home type projects, but they seem to all be RM+NS predictors. genome@home http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/genome/ folding@home http://folding.stanford.edu/ rosetta@home http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/ The results of such a project could be very revealing indeed.Collin DuCrÃƒÂ¢ne_{May 28, 2006
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Mung: "Why is a 1% efficiency in photosynthesis wasteful? What, precisely, is being wasted, and how?"

All processes have less than 100% efficiency. This observation is formalized as the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Plants absorb light in the 400 to 700 nm range, or about 45% of the available light. Quantum considerations require the absorption of eight to ten photons to fix each CO2 molecule with an efficiency of 25%, for an 11% theoretical efficiency. However, other factors such as reflection, respiration and less than optimal lighting conditions, results in a practical efficiency of about 3% to 6%. Much of this is utilized by the plant itself. If you measure fixed carbon, efficiency is only about 1% (wheat) to 3% (sugarcane).

The rest of the energy is lost, mostly as residual heat.
I read that sugar cane is 8% efficient at fixing carbon. This isn't comparable to solar cell efficiency as that is the raw electrical output. The electricity must be stored in order to be comparable and there will be losses incurred there. If, for instance, using lead-acid battery, one must also calculate the energy required to manufacture the battery as the photosynthetic competition has to manufacture its own storage device. -ds Zachriel_{May 28, 2006
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...it should be kept in mind that biological designs are often far from optimal. For example, photosynthesis has an efficiency of roughly 1% while recent prototypes of solar panels reach efficiencies exceeding 30%. Makes one wonder why oh why is the designer so wasteful?
Why is a 1% efficiency in photosynthesis wasteful? What, precisely, is being wasted, and how?Mung_{May 28, 2006
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Re #31. We can never prove that there isn't some bizarre advantage to an apparently poor design in an organism - but some features really do seem bizarrely inefficient. I like the example that Jerry Coyne gives in the book that started this thread. The nerve that connects the brain to the larynx loops round the aorta. Furthermore - it does this in the giraffe - a journey of fifteen feet to go the one foot from the giraffe brain to the giraffe larynx.
some features really do seem bizarrely inefficient That sounds like an argument from incredulity to me. -ds Mark Frank_{May 28, 2006
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Raevmo: "Tinabrewer, no doubt you are right that there is much engineering to be learned from biological examples, but it should be kept in mind that biological designs are often far from optimal. For example, photosynthesis has an efficiency of roughly 1% while recent prototypes of solar panels reach efficiencies exceeding 30%. Makes one wonder why oh why is the designer so wasteful?" So many of these "disteleological" arguments, such as the one above, suffer the same flaw; "optimization" is considered solely in terms of a single variable. The same sort of tunnel vision (no pun intended) can be seen in the complaint that the eye is "wired backwards". A plant that is only one percent efficient photosynthetically seems to survive and reproduce just fine, thank-you. Maybe a higher efficiency would produce unsustainable levels of toxins, or require an inordinate amount of input nutrients to sustain the higher level. Plants must exist under a vast range of conditions (such as the level of sunlight, as DS has noted) and compete against each other, insects and animals. It is not the leaf's sole purpose to do photosynthesis (though, admittedly, it is a (and perhaps the)major one). The idea that we could have done it better is laughable. The eye would likely be blind, and the plant dead in a week, given the "improvements" that have been suggested. The proper question is not "is the design optimal", but "is it designed".SCheesman_{May 28, 2006
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On the issue of optimal design, I have often heard it said that all design is a matter of trade-offs which take into account the basic goal of the machine and the constraints of materials and environment. it seems to me so one-sided and artificial to isolate a particular function, (say, photosynthesis) and use our own particular desires in replicating that system as some sort of gold standard by which we feel entitled to judge that the design is "sub-optimal".tinabrewer_{May 28, 2006
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Also, when considering optimal designs, consider other things the plants are doing. Therefore, increasing photosynthesis may degrade other processes further, which would not be ideal.ajl_{May 28, 2006
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ds, I guess the 35% your biochemistry book refers to is the theoretical maximum yield of the chemical reaction: 2H2O+CO2+8ph->CH2O+O2+H2O. If CH2O~112kcal/mol and a red light photon~42kcal/mol, then 112/(8*42)=0.33. But there are practical factors such as photorespiration that reduce the efficiency in reality way below that maximum (see link posted before)
Apparently, maximum efficiency occurs at 20% of full sunlight. That might be good for plants under dense canopies, but it doesn't seem that great for all plants/algae.
The efficiency of the primary chemical reaction is close to 100%. Only about 43% of the energy in sunlight is in usable wavelengths which brings down the chemical efficiency to 35% (stored as ATP). The 1% number you refer to is calories in food crops. Even so, sugar cane is 8% efficient which is far more than 1%. Furthermore, your comparison to solar cells does not include losses in transmission and storage but you are including those for photosynthesis. Immediately available energy from either (the best) photovoltaics or photosynthesis appear to be quite comparable. -ds Raevmo_{May 28, 2006
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My sources for efficiency photosynthesis: personal communication (Freeman Dyson, yes that one) and this lecture note here:

patzek.berkeley.edu/E11/Photosynthesis.pdf

Which says it is based on:

Energy, Plants and Man by David Walker, Oxy Graphics, England, Second Edition, 1993,
Distributed in North America by University Science Books, 20 Edgehill Road, Mill Valley.

Wikipedia gave me the 30% on protoype solar panels.

Of course it might still be argued that the 1% of natural photosynthesis represents a local optimum, which would not be entirely unexpected from an evolutionary NS+RM viewpoint.
I found a number of references saying photosynthesis efficiency is almost 35% in optimal conditions. The maximum acheived for solar cells is about 20%. One thing to keep in mind about photosynthesis is that its efficiency grows as light intensity diminishes. This is critical for plants that grow under dense forest canopies. Solar cells do not exhibit that characteristic. -ds Raevmo_{May 28, 2006
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A few comments on the material covered so far. Let us assume that doubters are guilty of an argument from incredulity. How does one explain this incredulity in a Darwinian world? Surely it must offer some reproductive advantage, as it seems to be a very widespread phenomenon. People seem to have missed one of my points in questioning the Dawkins argument. Since when is "it could have just happened by chance" an adequate and satisfying explanation? Since when does "by chance" explain anything at all, much less offer an adequate and satisfying explanation? At what point is "chance" no longer an adequate and satisfying explanation? Is Dawkins unwittingly validating the EF? If Dawkins feels chance is an adequate and satisfying explanation for our existence, why does he need chance plus natural selection, and why are creationists wrong to use chance arguments against evolution? Why can we chance be an adequate and satisfying explanation for our existence, while anti-chance arguments are disqualified? Dawkins does not practice what he preaches, and that more than anything should cause us to question the validity of his argument and the rationality of his position. For any feature of the biological world, we should be able to state that it exists, and given that it exists, and that there are billions and billions of planets, we have an adequate and satisfying explanation for that feature. Who needs evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologists, and therefore, who needs Richard Dawkins?Mung_{May 28, 2006
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Tinabrewer, no doubt you are right that there is much engineering to be learned from biological examples, but it should be kept in mind that biological designs are often far from optimal. For example, photosynthesis has an efficiency of roughly 1% while recent prototypes of solar panels reach efficiencies exceeding 30%. Makes one wonder why oh why is the designer so wasteful?
What is the source of the efficiency numbers for photosynthesis and solar cells? -ds Raevmo_{May 28, 2006
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tinabrewer: I'm constantly reading articles about how scientists have "discovered" some biological working that helps them in some sort of design - for example, the bonding strength of some organism to a leaf or tree branch. What typically happens is that a scientist is studying the organism and then says "hey, thats interesting, it seems to work just like a ...[insert human made machine here].. only better". These are great discoveries, but possibly too few and too far between. What if, however, rather than stumbling on design, scientists went in with a design bias and said at the outset: - since the human circulatory system is designed, what can we learn from it to build more resilient water distribution systems, or cooling systems for factories. - since the electrical circuitry in the brain are designed, what can we learn from it to build more resilient electrical distribution systems to recover during catastrophic failure (hurricane, terrorism, other). - since the bacterial flagellum is designed, what can we learn from it to build more efficient motors that are self powering, and change direction in an instant. The reality is, if the BF runs at a really high RPM, and then can change direction is about 1 or 2 revolutions, shouldn't we be asking the question: what can we learn from this to build better motors ourselves? It's like all those funny science fiction movies where the military finds a crashed spaceship and tries to figure out how the aliens built it - and then discover velcro LOL! Well, in a somewhat similar way, what if we changed our perspective and said that the biological systems are designed, and made for exploration and reverse engineering. We might make alot more progress in some really useful and cool inventions.ajl_{May 28, 2006
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Colin DuCrane, "If we believe that genetic code is designed by an intellect, then shouldnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t we be looking for the copyright information?" I believe that some compyright information has already been detected. Denton presents the near perfect phylogenic tree that is rendered in the cytochrome C gene. A response to this annomoly was the molecular clock hypothesis. Yet recent studies of the molecular clock hypothesis show that, though the hypothesis offers some vailidity in dating, it cannot come close to explaining why the cytochrome C in an insect is different from that of a tree by the same amount as a man is. According to molecular clock theory, the cytochrome C in the insect should be drifting more rapidly than in man. The cytochrome C seems to have other surprises. "Despite these corrections, the rattlesnake cytochrome c sequence still more closely resembles human cytochrome c than it does that of any other protein we know." Biochem J. 1991 Mar 15;274 ( Pt 3):825-31 I find this particular annomoly particularly interesting especially in light of the role that the snake plays in the Geneis account. I believe that if we look for such signatures of the inventor, we will find them.bFast_{May 28, 2006
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Life arising at random is more like the card player in your example getting 100 Royal Flushes in a row. One is a fluke. 100 in a row means, to any objective person, the hands arenÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t random

No, you haven't understood my point. It would be like someone getting 100 Royal Flushes in a row. Yes, very unlikely, but if there are enough people, it will happen.

I wanted to correct the logical fallacy, without getting into what the numbers actually are: it wan't my main point, and it's obvious that I will disagree with most readers here. Any discussion of the actual numbers would have quickly degeneated into insults and mud-slinging.

Bob
I understood your point. You don't understand the difference between very large numbers and infinity. The universe is finite in size and age. You're right that if there are enough people, it will happen. The point is that there aren't enough people because even though the number might be very large, it is finite and it isn't big enough. -ds Bob OH_{May 28, 2006
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"he same argument goes for intelligent life. If intelligent life arose at random, and there are enough planets where it could happen, then it will happen. That it happened on this planet, rather than any other, would be unlikely, but if intelligent life is going to appear, it has to appear somewhere. Your confusion is a common one: itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s called the ProsecutorÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s fallacy. Bob . True to a point; on the other hand as a defense of abiogenesis it relies on the specifics of the maths - and complexity mulitplies up a lot faster than suitable planets add. This creationist (http://origins.swau.edu/papers/life/chadwick/default.html) argues that it would take in the order of 10 to the 186th power years for the spontaneous generation of life on earth to become a better than even chance. Assuming those figures you're going to need more suitable planets than there are atoms in the universe before a 'lucky break' scenario becomes reasonable. To refute him you're either going to need a mechanism to bridge the probability gap or be able to show that his odds are wrong (estimates for the odds against the spontaneous generation of a cell from a 'prebiotic soup' have varied but have all been in the hundred+ orders of magnitude). Also, you'd have to concede that simply accepting fluke against enormous odds would have to be the biggest 'science stopper' of all. Surely once we're aloud to say of things, 'oh well, far out chances have to come up _somewhere_' the quest for understanding has ended?BenK_{May 28, 2006
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How do you get 10^700? I get 5.3 times 10^582Raevmo_{May 28, 2006
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johnnyb: i will read the link when I get a chance today. I appreciate it. As I said, I don't agree that ID is scientifically unfruitful; I was only meaning to say that as far as the public knowledge about the ID movement goes, the weakest link is definitely the sense of "so where does this help us scientifically". To listen to some of the bigwigs who publicly oppose ID, all interest in nature and its mechanisms will close down and a new intellectual dark age will enter if anyone in school gets a whiff of the idea that we are not an accident...tinabrewer_{May 28, 2006
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DS - I just realised by response to your comment on Royal Flushes was wrong. Publish it if you want. The chances of 100 Royal Flushes are of course 10^700 not 10^9.Mark Frank_{May 28, 2006
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"Life arising at random is more like the card player in your example getting 100 Royal Flushes in a row. One is a fluke. 100 in a row means, to any objective person, the hands arenÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t random." Interesting - the chances of getting a Royal Flush are roughly 1 in 3 million (http://www.indepthinfo.com/probability-poker/royal-flush.shtml) i.e. 1 in 10^7. So the chances of getting 100 Royal Flushes in a row are 1 in 10^9 i.e. about 1 in a billion. The Hubble space telescope estimates there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe each of which contains billions of stars (http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/021127a.html). Assuming at least one planet/star on average then if the probability of life arising by chance on an randomly selected planet in the period since the universe began are about the same as 100 Royal Flushes in a row - then it has almost certainly arisen many, many times. :-)Mark Frank_{May 28, 2006
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tinabrewer:

Actually the way in which ID is scientifically fruitful is that it has you asking questions which are _more pertinent_ to the phenomena. While knowing the creation mechanism might be interesting, when something is designed it shifts the research focus to different (and more applicable to the phenomena) questions, such as (but not limitted to):

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&program=CSC%20Responses&id=259

Now, a lot of scientific research already occurs under this set of questions. However, they are only warranted from a design inference, not from a Darwinian assumption. So, to the degree that these questions are being used in biology, the ID position is already being used without recognition.

I presented an overview of what I thought of as the ID research program here:

http://crevobits.blogspot.com/2006/04/what-is-intelligent-design-research.html
johnnyb_{May 28, 2006
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Is Richard Dawkins still bitter that his mother laughed when as a 5 year old he asked her "Who made God?" Richard fails to realise that not knowing where God came from, when God is not ruled by the Cosmos, is not the same as asking where natural life came from that is ruled by the Cosmos.idnet.com.au_{May 28, 2006
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correction/ changed 'inference' to 'challenge' in second sentence. Richard Dawkins thinks that the Ã¢â‚¬ËœDesign InferenceÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ requires the aserter to then proceed to Ã¢â‚¬ËœexplainÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ the designer. Failing that, the challenge is invalid. Oh, and letÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s not forget, Ã¢â‚¬Å“who then made God?Ã¢â‚¬Âleebowman_{May 28, 2006
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"Evolutionary biology certainly hasnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t explained everything that perplexes biologists, but intelligent design hasnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t yet tried to explain anything at all.Ã¢â‚¬Â Not so. Rather than 'ad hominem' attacks, critics invoke 'ad logicum' attacks, by branding them as an arguments from incredulity, which they are not. Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not only is ID markedly inferior to Darwinism at explaining and understanding nature but in many ways it does not even fulfill the requirements of a scientific theory.Ã¢â‚¬Â Darwinists (and lay people) equate the plethora of biologic data as evidence of evolution (based on ns/rm). 'Understanding nature' is not the same as establishing a mechanism for macroevolution. Ã¢â‚¬Å“The geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously declared, Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.Ã¢â‚¬Â One might add that nothing in biology makes sense in the light of intelligent design.Ã¢â‚¬Â Dobzhansky's proclamation is a good example of an argument from personal incredulity. The second part, which presumes the impossibility of an entity apart from our direct knowlege, is in effect, a statement of a negative, and therefore conjectural, untestable and therefore false. Ã¢â‚¬Å“The supernatural explanation fails to explain because it ducks the responsibility to explain itself.Ã¢â‚¬Â Richard Dawkins thinks that the 'Design Inference' requires the aserter to then proceed to 'explain' the designer. Failing that, the inference is invalid. Oh, and let's not forget, "who then made God?" Ã¢â‚¬Å“What counts as a controversy must be delineated with care, as we want students to distinguish between scientific challenges and sociopolitical ones.Ã¢â‚¬Â ID is a theory based on complexity, synergy, order, purposeful rather than survival causations, aesthetics, and more. The 'social and political' challenges are man made, and rather than being made based on logic traceable by science, are based on personal edicts.leebowman_{May 28, 2006
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Mung (point 5): You're confusing two different things. One is the probability that a Royal Flush is ever observed, and the other is that the Royal Flush is observed in that hand. Dawkins' point is that intelligent life has been observed somewhere (i.e. here), but he isn't saying that there's any prediction about where it will happen. The person who gets a Royal Flush will sit there and think "Wow! What is the probability of that happening!". Of course, the probability of it happening at all is very high, the probability that it's them is very low, but it has to happen to somebody.

The same argument goes for intelligent life. If intelligent life arose at random, and there are enough planets where it could happen, then it will happen. That it happened on this planet, rather than any other, would be unlikely, but if intelligent life is going to appear, it has to appear somewhere.

Your confusion is a common one: it's called the Prosecutor's fallacy.

Bob

Life arising at random is more like the card player in your example getting 100 Royal Flushes in a row. One is a fluke. 100 in a row means, to any objective person, the hands aren't random. Your confusion is a common one. It stems from a psychological defense mechanism called denial. I hold out hope for you to come out of denial though since I almost got you to admit that, if it rains hard, bits of your arms won't wash off and grow into new Bobs. :-)
Bob OH_{May 28, 2006
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Re #5. Dawkin's argument is reasonable. If there are only a few planets in the universe that have life then it is only on those planets that anything will be ask the question "what is the probability of a planet supporting life". An analogy - suppose I programmed a computer to randomly generate poker hands and to stop and attract my attention (perhaps by a sound)whenever it dealt a royal flush. The buzzer goes and I wander over to the screen. I have an excellent explanation of why I see a royal flush and should not be at all surprised even though the chances of any given hand being a royal flush are tiny.
Dawkin's argument works if life arose on many planets or arose on just one planet. The argument explains everything thus it explains nothing. On the computer card dealer what if every hand was a royal flush would you think a) the odds of this are very small but not impossible b) the computer isn't generating hands at random -ds Mark Frank_{May 27, 2006
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ID is the only theory under which certain research could be validated. For example, it is observed that introns ('junk' to RM+NS) have Functional Sequence Complexity (FSC) of the same order as human langauge. Studies have revealed that unexpressed introns are informationally more dense than exon expressions. Anyone who has designed any sort of code knows the importance of embedding documentation in the source. When the code is compiled the documentation does not appear in the resulting binaries. Similarly, introns are not trascribed. Source code documentation contains information about the algorithms such as: - Meta-data (ontological descriptions) - Pseudo code (methodological descriptions) - Copyright information (intellecutal property notifications) If we believe that genetic code is designed by an intellect, then shouldn't we be looking for the copyright information? This intellect would probably have considerable legal abilities, not to mention foresight. Exam question: What impact would this have on genetic patents?Collin DuCrÃƒÂ¢ne_{May 27, 2006
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Darn. I was reading comments in the admin view (I don't see the article there), I read Bill and Tina's comments about incredulity, and I was just about to make a comment saying to keep in mind the opposite of incredulity is gullibility. Then I see the title and whadaya know... Bill beat me to it. :-)DaveScot_{May 27, 2006
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