What if its True?

_{Barry Arrington

August 6, 2010

Intelligent Design}

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Warning: This post is intended for those who have an open mind regarding the design hypothesis. If your mind is clamped so tightly shut that you are unable to even consider alternatives to your received dogma, it is probably better for you to just move along to the echo chamber of your choice.

Today, for the sake of argument only, let us make two assumptions:

1. First, let us assume that the design hypothesis is correct, i.e., that living things appear to be designed for a purpose because they were in fact designed for a purpose.

2. Second, let us assume that the design hypothesis is not a scientific hypothesis, which means that ID proponents are not engaged in a scientific endeavor, or, as our opponents so often say, “ID is not science.”

From these assumptions, the following conclusion follows: If the design hypothesis is correct and at the same time the design hypothesis may not be advanced as a valid scientific hypothesis, then the structure of science prohibits it from discovering the truth about the origin of living things, and no matter how long and hard researchers operating within the confines of the scientific method work, they will forever fail to find the truth about the matter.

Now let us set all assumptions aside. Where does this leave us? No one can know with absolute certainty that the design hypothesis is false. It follows from the absence of absolute knowledge, that each person should be willing to accept at least the possibility that the design hypothesis is correct, however remote that possibility might seem to him. Once a person makes that concession, as every honest person must, the game is up. The question is no longer whether ID is science or non-science. The question is whether the search for the truth of the matter about the natural world should be structurally biased against a possibly true hypothesis. When the question is put this way, most people correctly conclude that we should not place ideological blinkers on when we set out to search for truth. Therefore, even if it is true that ID is not science (and I am not saying that it is), it follows that this is a problem not with ID, but with science. And if the problem is with science, this means that the way we conceive of the scientific enterprise should be changed. In other words, if our search for truth excludes a possibly true answer, then we should re-conceive our search for truth.

Comments

So, you think that your intellect, will, and consciousness are derived from your experience, do you? You would have us believe that experience precedes the existence of the human attributes that makes experience possible? You tell him, guy. I, for one, know I didn't evolve from any lower life form like a monkey.San Antonio Rose_{August 11, 2010
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To Petrushka, I have a couple of questions for you. First of all, upon what basis do you ascribe truth to anything? Is it experience only? I tried this once before several months ago. On or about post number 30 something I opined that materialists, in my experience, were unwilling to make serious intellectual commitments. I was immediately castigated by one of them for being rude. I offered an apology if only she would prove me wrong by making said commitments, i.e. first principles or whatever passes for such in their worldview. At post 400 I retired with no commitments in hand. (others posted too, it wasn't just us, in case anybody hadn't figured that out) So, Petrushka, the challenge to you is to come out and say, like a grown up, what your fundamental metaphysical commitments are. What are the basic assumptions you make that allow you to conclude the things you do? The reason I don't think you will do this is simple. Because once you do it you are doomed, and you know it. That's why you won't do it. Your worldview is self-contradictory. Therefore, you can never, ever, make your assumptions, or axioms, explicit. Once you do, the walls come tumbling down. Prove me wrong.tgpeeler_{August 11, 2010
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---Petrushka: "Attribute of existence are derived from experience." So, you think that your intellect, will, and consciousness are derived from your experience, do you? You would have us believe that experience precedes the existence of the human attributes that makes experience possible? ---"Concepts like time or entropy or beginning to exist are all derived from experience." So, now it is "concepts" is it. A moment ago, it was "attributes." Do you not understand that a concept, which is associated with our perceptions, is not the same thing as an attribute, which is the thing perceived. Whatever books you might be reading, please, for your own sake--please, before it is too late-- burn those books and start reading something by G. K. Chesterton or C. S. Lewis. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.StephenB_{August 11, 2010
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vividbleu @ 173 Good advice. I'm going to give it one more try, though! :-)tgpeeler_{August 11, 2010
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Have you not looked at the motor of the flagellum?
The motor of the flagellum uses no more than two proteins not known to exist in other microbes. The proteins comprising the flagellum are used in various subsets for less capable cilia, and for various other functions unrelated to locomotion. The simple fact is that complex structures are made of bits and pieces that are severable, and which are used in subsets for other purposes.Petrushka_{August 11, 2010
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Petrushka,
Everything in biology is consistent with incremental change.
Not by a long shot.
There are no designs in biology mirroring the kinds of engineering that humans do
Have you not looked at the motor of the flagellum? The turbine engine written about by Jonathan Wells? The data storage in DNA? Even things as simple as the ball and socket configuration of our bones? Veins as a pipeline? The eye as a camera? Hair as a coat or jacket?
The designer of life operates in a way that makes all living things look like they are related by descent, with tiny, incremental modifications along the way.
Not even close. The banana tree and the oyster do not look related by tiny incremental modifications along the way.Clive Hayden_{August 11, 2010
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PS: I should point out on Electronics that the above timeline is a little skewed. Vacuum tubes -- A, K, cathode and canal rays etc, were research toys, but the real wave of practical electronics is turn of century.kairosfocus_{August 11, 2010
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Onlookers: After seeing a client . . . It seems Petrushka is unwilling and/or unable to acknowledge the seriousness and incivility of what he has said, much less apologise. (And in trying to get in yet another ill-advised dig, he seems to have overlooked how I passed over 200 years from the 1680's to 1880's with barely a reference [the era in which inter alia electricity, physical optics, [valve] electronics, energy and atoms began to emerge to prominence . . . but these are second tier issues], that I highlighted the two major revolutions in Physics, and that I have pointed the single most serious effort that could have yielded a general "theory of everything" in the past 80 years.) Sadly, the behaviour is unsurprising. But, it underscores the basic incivility problem. By now, too it should be clear that he resort to slanders and distortions is a sign that the evolutionary materialist case has actually already been lost on the merits, once the implications of information have increasingly come to bear. Diehards and Magisteria may fulminate all they want, but the real issue on the merits is over. All that is left is for the wedge of truth to act with full force. And, that is begining to tell, especially as more and more people wake up to how science has increasingly become an ideologised academic welfare programme; including science. Sacrificing integrity for power has a consequence and that day of not choices but consequences is now at hand. (It's like 1979 with the Marxists: the last to know that the grand charge has peaked and failed are those caught up in it. My question is: who are today's Walensas, Woytilas, Thatchers and Reagans?) GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{August 11, 2010
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I realize that, as the myth of evolution would like to claim. But in reality there still is a watch that is being worked towards being made.
If nothing else we've arrived at the place where mainstream biology and ID part ways. Everything in biology is consistent with incremental change. There are no designs in biology mirroring the kinds of engineering that humans do, in which parts are brought together from distant branches of the tree. You can see this in industrial design, in which an invention in home entertainment will show up in automobile entertainment. You can see it in genetic engineering, where animal genes are spliced into plants or bacteria. Evolution can't do that. The designer of life operates in a way that makes all living things look like they are related by descent, with tiny, incremental modifications along the way.Petrushka_{August 11, 2010
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Petrushka,
Inferred things are subject to error. Time, as studied by physicists, has non-intuitive characteristics. I’s not even certain whether time is continuous or discontinuous.
Then everything observed in the physical world is subject to error, which I would agree with. But first principles are not subject to error. Laws of reason and logic are not subject to error, (we may make an error when reasoning, but we can only determine it as an error by comparison to good reasoning, but this can never be used as an argument against reason) but observations of the natural world which are made intelligible by inference are subject to error because the external world is a mystery. We do not possess knowledge of the reasonableness of it's inner synthesis as we do a logical axiom. That one thing follows another in reason, we can full well understand the necessity of why it must, that one thing follows another in the physical world, we cannot understand why it must in the same way, all we can say is that in our observations it does. But observations of nature do not amount to knowledge of a proscription of why it must be the way it is. And intuition really has nothing to do with it.Clive Hayden_{August 11, 2010
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Petrushka,
No, the “blindness” refers to lack of foresight.
I realize that, as the myth of evolution would like to claim. But in reality there still is a watch that is being worked towards being made. And so here, there is something that is being worked towards, otherwise it is not actually making anything.
evolution operates by hindsight, evalutating products after they’re made.
So it's not blind? Hindsight is a type of sight....
That’s the basis of the joke: Good judgement comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgement.
The basis of the "joke", which isn't really a joke, is that we learn from our experiences, but if we were building something based from this knowledge, we must have something in mind, otherwise the good judgments and bad experiences would be utterly meaningless.Clive Hayden_{August 11, 2010
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They are, in the last resort, an inference. All experience is sensory perception specially arranged and made intelligible by inference.
Inferred things are subject to error. Time, as studied by physicists, has non-intuitive characteristics. I's not even certain whether time is continuous or discontinuous. At any rate, the concept that things "begin to exist" is based entirely on observation, and rather limited observation at that. There's no first principle or law of physics that prevents the existence of a viewpoint from which time is a static dimension.Petrushka_{August 11, 2010
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That would mean that the watchmaker was not blind.
No, the "blindness" refers to lack of foresight. evolution operates by hindsight, evalutating products after they're made. That's what it means to learn by trial and error. (Although that's not a particularly apt phrase.) That's the basis of the joke: Good judgement comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgement. It's quite possible to accumulate information without having foresight.Petrushka_{August 11, 2010
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Petrushka,
Variation plus selection comprise a learning algorithm, and are therefore an instance of “intelligence.”
That would mean that the watchmaker was not blind. And secondly, it would have to have something to be intelligent about, and that would necessitate information, the kind that Dembski and Marks evidence in their Evolutionary Informatics Lab. This is straightforward ID research.Clive Hayden_{August 11, 2010
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Petrushka,
If one uncaused caused exists, then one cannot logically assert that causation is necessary.
Sure one can, the alternative is an infinite regress, and that is impossible. It is most certainly logical that the buck stopped somewhere.Clive Hayden_{August 11, 2010
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Petrushka,
My point is that your axioms are not derived from first principles, but are intuitions based on experience, and could be wrong.
All observations of nature could be wrong, but this is all that someone like you has to go on, observations of nature. You really do hang your hat on them, thus you really would be committed to many sinking ships. "It is not, as some seem to fancy, that we think there is anything particularly Christian about electrons, any more than there is anything essentially atheistic about atoms. It is not that we propose to base our philosophy on their physics; any more than to base our ancient theology on their most recent biology. We are not “going to the country” with a set of slogans or party-cries, like Electrons for the Elect, or For Priest and Proton. The catastrophic importance for Catholics, of this collapse of materialism, is simply the fact that the most confident cosmic statements of science can collapse. If fifty years hence the electron is as entirely exploded as the atom, it will not affect us; for we have never founded our philosophy on the electron any more than on the atom. But the materialists did found their philosophy on the atom. And it is quite likely that some spiritual fad or other is at this moment being founded on the electron. To a man of my generation, the importance of the change does not consist in its destroying the dogma (which was after all a detail, though a very dogmatic dogma), “Matter consists of indivisible atoms.” But it does consist in its destroying the accepted, universal and proclaimed and popularised dogma: “You must accept the conclusions of science.” Scores and hundreds of times I have heard, through my youth and early manhood, the repetition of that ultimatum: “You must accept the conclusions of science.” And it is that notion or experience that has now been concluded; or rather excluded. Whatever else is questionable, there is henceforth no question of anybody “accepting” the conclusions of science. The new scientists themselves do not ask us to accept the conclusions of science. The new scientists themselves do not accept the conclusions of the new science. To do them justice, they deny vigorously that science has concluded; or that it has, in that sense, any conclusion. The finest intellects among them repeat, again and again, that science is inconclusive.” G. K. Chesterton, The Well and the Shallows http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/Well_And_Shallows.txtClive Hayden_{August 11, 2010
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Petrushka,
Concepts like time or entropy or beginning to exist are all derived from experience.
They are, in the last resort, an inference. All experience is sensory perception specially arranged and made intelligible by inference. Experience doesn't create first principles. If you didn't already have first principles, you couldn't make sense out of experience. The external world is only an intelligible world because one has the ability of inference in the first place. You remove the powers of inference and you remove any ability to make sense out of the external world. So what are the powers of inference based on? First principles. Clive Hayden_{August 11, 2010
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Petrushka,
Perhaps your 20 year prediction will be added to the Imminent Demise list, assuming anyone notices.
I always find it amusing when folks on your side make statements about "anyone noticing" or "anyone caring" anything that may happen by folks that support ID. You notice. Everyone at After the Asylum Closes notices what may happen here, yet every once in a while, I see an argument from your side implying that "no one will notice" or that "no one will be aware". But the folks making the argument are aware, and they do notice. Just go look at their site as how much they notice, they're positively obsessed with us here at UD. What's interesting is that we talk about ideas here, they talk about us there. I had a friend tell me once that great minds discuss ideas, small minds discuss other people.Clive Hayden_{August 11, 2010
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It seems to be against the rules here to say that someone is deficient in historical perspective. Even with evidence. You keep making five and ten and twenty year plans, and refuse to confront the fact that this has been going on since the nineteenth century. But why would you make it twenty, when the current UD prediction only has four more years to go?Petrushka_{August 11, 2010
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Vivid: You are right, it is time P took a little trip to Coventry. G TGP: Thanks Gkairosfocus_{August 11, 2010
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Petrushka: This is enough. No-one who had any common decency or respect would address me as you did in 143 above. I cite you, so all can see exactly what you have done, and in what arrogant and utterly disrespectful, disdainful tone of voice and manner:
. . . You have a bottomless ignorance of the history of science and absolutely no perspective. Anything that takes longer tha ten seconds is beyond your attention span. How many years passed between Copernicus and Newton? Newton and Einstein?
Similarly, you have added to your slanders and disrespect above now the false accusation of lying. Sorry, you have now removed yourself from the circle of civil discourse. Even if you did not consciously intend the above directly as an embarrassing demand from the presumed ignorant, the tone and context sink you. You know or should know that you can have no right to speak to another person like that, much less in what is a public forum. (In a seminar room, you would be asking to be invited to strip off your coat and glasses and step outside.) Shame on you. I hope you can find it in yourself to apologise when you come to your senses. Good day, sir. Onlookers: let the record reflect that on substance Petrushka has shown himself utterly unable to reasonably address either the matter in the main, or the significant incidental matters that have come up. It is the uncivil attitude, rudely arrogant tone and inability to address the merits that we see so exemplified that will with high probability go that one step too far within the next two decades [if so long], that will finally sink the credibility of Darwinism-dominated science institutions. Sustained cover ups are no longer possible in an Internet age [so history is speeding up dramatically, again]; and sooner rather than later, persistently slanderous mischaracterisations of dissenters will predictably backfire. Sadly, the above attitude is far too typical [cf the Weak Argument Correctives], and it is time for the ordinary person to weigh in and say decisively, enough is enough. G'day GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{August 11, 2010
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tgpeeler "Petrushka – I continue to be amazed. No, really, I do. It’s stunning." At some point all of us have to believe what we see not what we hope is there. I have come to the conclusion that Petrushka is either 1) To stupid to understand the arguments presented to him or her in which case we are wasting bandwidth engaging him or her. 2) Since he or she has abandoned reason we cannot expect Petrushka to be swayed by arguments based on reason. If this is the case then we are wasting bandwidth engaging him or her. 3) Petrushka is a troll in which case we are wasting bandwidth engaging him or her. Bottom line we are wasting bandwidth engaging him or her. My suggestion is “don’t feed the troll” Perhaps for onlookers someone can put some kind of boiler plate, including links, that is an automatic response every time Petrushka says something stupid, which in Petrushkas case is every time he or she posts. Vividvividbleau_{August 11, 2010
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But all of that is just to show flow of ideas. P is simply being rude to suggest by insinuation that I do not know any physics of consequence.
I would think the definition of rudeness would include lying about what other people have said. What I said is you have no perspective on the history of science. You look at failed conjectures and conclude that problems cannot be solved. Perhaps your 20 year prediction will be added to the Imminent Demise list, assuming anyone notices.Petrushka_{August 11, 2010
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First principles are, by definition, based on reason, not experience.
Attribute of existence are derived from experience. Concepts like time or entropy or beginning to exist are all derived from experience.Petrushka_{August 11, 2010
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GEM - I continue to be amazed. Petrushka - I continue to be amazed. No, really, I do. It's stunning.tgpeeler_{August 11, 2010
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All of which are signs of collapse looming ahead. Probably within 20 years, it will all be over.
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/demise.html You keep those predictions coming.Petrushka_{August 11, 2010
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---Petrushka: "My point is that your axioms are not derived from first principles, but are intuitions based on experience, and could be wrong." First principles are, by definition, based on reason, not experience. Second, the law of non-contradiction is not something that is "derived from a first principle," it is, itself, a first principle from which reasonable conclusions may be derived. Sadly, you don't even understand the position that you trying to argue against, which explains why you posit that theists believe in a God which "came out of nowhere." Its really quite remarakable.StephenB_{August 11, 2010
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If the universe was eternal, a maximum state of entropy would have been reached by now.
Ignoring my proposition regarding the meta-universe, and ignoring most of the last half century of physics. It's fairly common for physicist to regard the sum of all energies in our visible universe as equal to zero. One possible implication is that universes are transient phenomenta, much as are particles formed from virtual particles. The "Laws" of thermodynamics are derived from observation, not from any first principles. My point is that your axioms are not derived from first principles, but are intuitions based on experience, and could be wrong.Petrushka_{August 11, 2010
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F/N: on an insinuation with a little trap in it. Just to set P's heart at ease . . . Most physicists do not keep a lose memory of precise dates for scientists (and prof D, I never did memorise the list of Physics Nobel Prize winners . . . ), but instead think on the flow of ideas and evidence. (If I need dates I can consult the Sci History works in my library.) Copernicus resurrected Aristarchus' heliocentric view, cutting down the number of cycles in the Ptolemaic scheme from about 80 to about 40, publishing in 1543 as I recall. (On the Revolution of heavenly bodies, which is the source of our historical-political term revolution, due to its impact.) By the turn of the 1600's Tycho Brahe and Kepler were making and analysing observations which led to the three Keplerian laws about 1609 - 19 or so. Brahe had a 1/2 way house theory and Kepler was a full copernican; some have accused K of foul play to get the data he used, Probably case not proved. Galileo, same general time, heard of a telescope from Holland, then made his own Galilean [diverging ocular], and used it to look at heavenly bodies. His view of the Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter made the Heliocentric system much more plausible. For that matter, even the erroneous estimate of the sun's relative distance and size from Aristarchus was it c 200 BC made heliocentrism more reasonable than geocentrism, but ran against the tide of prevalent opinion among the learned as much as the common folk: earth as the SUMP of the universe, with perfect heavens. (Cf my remarks here.) Newton's annus mirabilis [Latinists, help?] in the mid 1660's and publication of Principia [funded by I think Halley] mid 1680's cemented the new system of the world. Across C18 - 19, it was built upon, with Laplace's Celestiasl Mechanics being perhaps the crowning achievement. Then turn of 1880's with Michelson-Morley and onwards other issues over spectroscopy etc, the Newtonian Synthesis with augmentation of maxwell's c 1870 Electromagnetism, began to falter. From 1900 with Planck and 1905 with Einstein, to c, 1930 with the Copenhagen synthesis, with 1919's Eddington observations that confirmed GTR on gravitational lenses along the way, the modern framework was born. Perhaps as important was the 1911 - 13 Hertzprung-Russell study of stars on magnitude vs colour/temp, and the exposition of GTR into cosmology by Friedman of Russia and Fr Lemaitre of Belgium, backed up by Hubble's observations on the 100 inch Wilson scope. Across the period to the late 1940's atomic and particle physics emerged, and of course onward we had the 4-forces view and the joining of electroweak, rise of Quantum Chromodynamics, recent issues on strings and branes, etc etc. But all of that is just to show flow of ideas. P is simply being rude to suggest by insinuation that I do not know any physics of consequence. I think he will easily confirm from the always linked note that the particular perspectives on information (including my insistence on adapting the Shannon system model, which will be instantly familiar to my former students -- much more easily adapted to analysing how protocols and modulations work; just as how I never bothered with hand rules but simply went straight to the Lorentz force and used an old CRO on XY mode to show how a bar magnet would pull the electron beam's screen-spot around with it as it rotates . . . CRT TV's, Motors, generators, galvanometers, Hall effect devices etc in one go . . . actually simpler than the hand rules, and opens the door to pointing out that magnetic field effects are relativistic [why is a force associated with a SPEED of charges? --check out Yavorsky, Pinsky and Detlaf on that]) and the significance of signal to noise ratio and on the particular view of the significance of Clausius's first canonical example are mine. That is, I am synthesizing for myself the links from key issues to the question now on the table, the value and credibility of the inference to design on signs. Whether or not P likes it, a new view on the physical significance of complex functional information and associated organization is emerging. And, physics has somewhat to say to it. Brillouin was a harbinger, and so was Maxwell with his little demon; as Jaynes and Harry Robertson remind. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{August 11, 2010
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PS: I forget MF's usual excuse -- he "never" looks at comments I have made, as in his opinion they are too long. So, he has no right to dismiss the argument on claimed grounds that it has not looked at the relevant issues and factors. (And I hope the above point by point allows the onlooker to see why it is that posts of a certain length are often required at UD to deal with issues on substance, in the teeth of superficially persuasive but specious objections.)kairosfocus_{August 11, 2010
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