Why Were So Many Darwin Defenders No-Shows at the World’s Premier Evolutionary Conference?

_{Thomas Cudworth

July 9, 2011

Intelligent Design}

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I have often wondered whether the loudness and aggressiveness of many culture-war defenders of neo-Darwinian evolution bears any relationship at all to the actual scientific contributions of those defenders to the field of evolutionary biology. As it happens, we have at hand some evidence, albeit of a rough and ready kind, relevant to that question.

From June 17 to June 21, 2011, at the University of Oklahoma (Norman) campus, the conference “Evolution 2011” was in session. It was co-sponsored by three scientific societies – The Society for the Study of Evolution, The Society of Systematic Biologists, and the American Society of Naturalists. It was billed by its promoters as “the premier annual international conference of evolutionary biologists on the planet.”

That billing may be somewhat hyperbolic, yet two things are clear: the conference was huge, with an expected turnout of 1400-1500 people; and many of the big names of evolutionary biology were to be there. Jerry Coyne was to give an address; H. Allen Orr was to chair a session; and Gunter Wagner and Sergey Gavrilets, cutting-edge biologists from the famed 2008 Altenberg conference, were to be there as well. Hundreds of papers were scheduled, and the research contributors to the various papers and presentations, according to the index for the conference, numbered something like 2,000.

It is interesting to make a mental list of the Darwin-defenders who have been most active in the culture wars, whether by publishing popular books defending Darwin, by appearing as witnesses against school boards in court cases, by working for the NCSE, by running pro-Darwinian blog sites, or by attacking Darwin critics throughout cyberspace, and to see which of them either read papers or at least contributed to the research and writing of papers for this premier conference.

Let’s start with those Darwin defenders who are actively anti-religious or show contempt for religion in their writings and internet remarks. Conspicuously absent from the list of conference contributors were evolutionary champions Richard Dawkins, P. Z. Myers, Larry Moran, and Eugenie Scott.

Among those who have not attacked religious belief, but have violently bashed ID and/or passionately upheld neo-Darwinian theory, Paul Gross (co-author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse) and plant scientist Arthur Hunt (who has debated ID people live and on the internet) were not listed as contributors to any of the papers.

Among those who were active in the Dover ID trial, as witnesses for the plaintiffs, the no-shows include Kevin Padian, Robert Pennock, and Brian Alters.

Among the prominent Christian Darwinists, i.e., theistic evolutionists/evolutionary creationists, only Ken Miller was going to be there, and not to read a scientific paper, but to issue a cultural manifesto on why evolution matters in America today. The leading figures of Biologos – Darrel Falk, Dennis Venema, Kathryn Applegate, David Ussery, David Kerk, Denis Lamoureux – who have so often been presented, explicitly or implicitly, as experts on evolutionary biology – produced no papers for this conference. British scientists Oliver Barclay and Denis Alexander, who have posted several guest columns on Biologos, are not mentioned. The frequent UD commenter and Quaker TE Allan MacNeill, who has penned hundreds of thousands of words on UD and on his own blogs, apparently couldn’t manage 5,000 or so words for an original research paper for the conference, nor could the belligerent Calvinist TE and almost as prolific anti-ID blogger Steve Matheson.

Now of course statistics of this sort don’t prove anything about the competence or incompetence of any particular individual. There are all kinds of good reasons why a competent evolutionary theorist might not contribute to a particular evolutionary conference. Maybe some of these people elected to attend another evolutionary conference later this year, or early next year, or maybe their travel budget was exhausted. Maybe personal matters prevented them from going. Maybe some of them attended the conference, to keep up with the field, even though they contributed no paper. But one wonders why such a large number of rabid pro-Darwinists would be non-contributors at the premier evolution conference in the world, if they are as competent in the field of evolutionary biology as they make out. Could it be that most of these people, though possessing degrees in the life sciences, are in fact not trained specifically in evolutionary biology, and therefore had no original work to contribute?

I would be interested in hearing from readers about this. Of the people I’ve named, how many have read a paper at, or at least co-written a technical paper for, any secular conference on evolutionary biology in the past ten years? Or published a peer-reviewed paper specifically on evolutionary biology in a secular scientific journal in the past ten years? Are many of the loudest defenders of neo-Darwinian orthodoxy in fact unqualified to talk at an expert level about the latest theoretical and experimental work in evolutionary biology? And if so, why do they set themselves up as the world’s teachers when it comes to evolution? Why do they write so many blogs, post so many comments, put up so many nasty book reviews on Amazon, participate in so many anti-ID debates on the Darwinist side, if they aren’t experts in the field? Why don’t they let the real experts in evolutionary biology – the Coynes and Orrs and Sean Carrolls – do the public cheerleading and debating for evolutionary biology, and stick quietly to their own specialties of cell biology, genetics, developmental biology, etc.?

In most scientific areas, non-experts don’t pretend to stand in for experts. You don’t see solid-state physicists rushing onto the blogosphere to defend the latest view on black holes from Stephen Hawking. They leave the defense of cosmology to the cosmologists. But for some reason every medical geneticist, soil scientist, biochemist, developmental biologist, cell biologist, anthropologist, part-time first-year biology instructor, undergrad biology teacher at a Christian college, etc., thinks himself or herself an expert on evolutionary theory, and competent to debate it with anyone, any time. Normal professional humility goes out the window when defending Darwinian theory is concerned. That’s why I think it’s important to ask the question: how many of the self-appointed defenders of Darwinian evolution have demonstrated competence, proved by research and publication, in the field of evolutionary biology?

Comments

Thomas:
Elizabeth: By the “Arts” subjects I meant the Humanities and Social Sciences, not the creative arts.
For some reason this made me laugh! But do you think that academics in Humanities and Social Sciencies do not publish papers in peer-reviewed journals? That they only write books? Really?
The place to argue the details of Dembski and Behe is not on this thread. You will have to raise your objections in some other thread on Behe or Dembski when their arguments come up.
I agree. That's why I suggested a different thread.
However, from what you tell me, your undergraduate degree was in Music and your graduate study was in neurology or neurological imaging technology. That does not give me confidence that you have enough knowledge in the field of Probability Theory (in which Dembski holds two Ph.D.s, one from a Philosophy Department, one from a Math Department) or Information Theory (which Dembski has been working on for years now in collaboration with several specialists in that field) to be sure that you have refuted or even fully understood Dembski’s arguments.
And so it should not. You should wait for my refutation, and evaluate it on its merits, not take it on trust, whatever my credentials. But, FWIW, my first bachelors was in Music,and my second in a slightly more quantitive subject (or at least with quantitive parts), architecture. I took various programs in linguistics (an important aspect of information), and my masters was an application of linguistic theory to urban design and semiotics. My PhD was in Cognitive Psychology, and of course required statistical training. I currently work in neuroscience, which is heavily statistical (an fMRI brain image is in fact a statistical map, the result of, usually, a set of General Linear Models). My work also includes writing statistical programs, including bootstrapping/Monte Carlo algorithms, as well as stochastic computational models of cognitive processes. So I do have a bit of expertise, as it happens, in probability theory. But it certainly does not rule out the possiblity that I may have misunderstood Dembski's arguments.
The mere fact that you are a scientist doesn’t make you any more than a layman in scientific specialties that are not close to your own area of research.
Well, it does a little. I can read the equations. And, as I say, I compute probabilities daily. But obviously that does not mean you should take my word for it that I have refuted Dembski.
But in any case, if you do have knowledge enough to refute Dembski, you are free to publish your arguments. Let us know when and where. Until you do produce such a publication, I disregard your claim to have found fatal flaws in any of his work. Claims like this are a dime a dozen on the internet.
Sure, that's why I suggested a thread. But you are probably aware that some refutations have already been published?
By the way, in No Free Lunch Dembski applies his math to Behe’s flagellum example. It is likely that you will find most of your objections to Behe’s discussion of the mousetrap and other things answered by Dembski’s treatment. Another advantage of reading book-length treatments.
Well, I trust Dembski to apply his math correctly. What I dispute is that it's the right math.
“But IDists do not seem to find it necessary to acquaint themselves with the whole of modern biology before deciding it is fundamentally flawed, so why should we do differently with ID?” This is wrong, and I’ve already refuted it another reply to you. ID does not say that the whole of modern biology is fundamentally flawed. ID proponents think that 90% of modern biology is entirely sound. But the evolutionary gloss which is attached to it is in their view unsound.
But modern biology does not have a "evolutionary gloss". Evolutionary theory is fundamental to modern biology.
If a Cambrian rabbit were found tomorrow, 90% of empirical biology would go on as if nothing had happened.
Well, no. Or rather, yes, because that Cambrian rabbit would almost certainly be either a fake, or an extraodinary example of convergent evolution. But the fact is it doesn't exist. But to put your point differently: if it could be shown that some feature (the bacterial flagellum for instance) really is unevolvable - that some features of biology really are not just irreducibly complex (which isn't a problem) but cannot be reached by any incremental pathway that does not involve a fatal intermediate step, then, yes, empirical biology would be fundamentally shaken.
The honorific evolutionary glosses in the last couple of paragraphs of the writeups would simply be dropped from future articles; but those glosses are inessential to scientific progress anyway. Give me a good empirical knockout experiment which determines actual gene function over some hypothetical evolutionary origin story of that gene any day.
You underestimate just how great the debt is that modern biology owes to Darwin. Sure, you could continue to write papers on biochemistry and genetics, and biological functions, but they would no longer make much more than proximal sense. There would now be a huge new force at the heart of biology, the properties of which would be completely unknown, and render predictive hypotheses useless. And without predictive hypotheses, science is impotent.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth: By the "Arts" subjects I meant the Humanities and Social Sciences, not the creative arts. The place to argue the details of Dembski and Behe is not on this thread. You will have to raise your objections in some other thread on Behe or Dembski when their arguments come up. However, from what you tell me, your undergraduate degree was in Music and your graduate study was in neurology or neurological imaging technology. That does not give me confidence that you have enough knowledge in the field of Probability Theory (in which Dembski holds two Ph.D.s, one from a Philosophy Department, one from a Math Department) or Information Theory (which Dembski has been working on for years now in collaboration with several specialists in that field) to be sure that you have refuted or even fully understood Dembski's arguments. The mere fact that you are a scientist doesn't make you any more than a layman in scientific specialties that are not close to your own area of research. But in any case, if you do have knowledge enough to refute Dembski, you are free to publish your arguments. Let us know when and where. Until you do produce such a publication, I disregard your claim to have found fatal flaws in any of his work. Claims like this are a dime a dozen on the internet. By the way, in No Free Lunch Dembski applies his math to Behe's flagellum example. It is likely that you will find most of your objections to Behe's discussion of the mousetrap and other things answered by Dembski's treatment. Another advantage of reading book-length treatments. "But IDists do not seem to find it necessary to acquaint themselves with the whole of modern biology before deciding it is fundamentally flawed, so why should we do differently with ID?" This is wrong, and I've already refuted it another reply to you. ID does not say that the whole of modern biology is fundamentally flawed. ID proponents think that 90% of modern biology is entirely sound. But the evolutionary gloss which is attached to it is in their view unsound. If a Cambrian rabbit were found tomorrow, 90% of empirical biology would go on as if nothing had happened. The honorific evolutionary glosses in the last couple of paragraphs of the writeups would simply be dropped from future articles; but those glosses are inessential to scientific progress anyway. Give me a good empirical knockout experiment which determines actual gene function over some hypothetical evolutionary origin story of that gene any day.Thomas Cudworth_{July 17, 2011
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gpuccio:
Elizabeth: Not that paper, please. Many of us have difficulties with it. The fact that it is more recent does not mean that it is the best.
Really? So a paper that Dembski regards as reviewing, extending and clarifying his earlier work, including those of his two books, The Design Inference and No Free Lunch is not his best? Where do you think he goes wrong?
I suggest instead that we discuss the design inference as we have many times presented here (especially with kairosfocus, Stephen B and others), based on a much simpler concept and on more direct biological arguments.
But this is the problem, gpuccio! The goal posts are constantly moving! Nobody seems to agree with anyone else about what Information is, or what even what Design is! And yet people seem sure that ID is a valid inference. To tackle this properly, it seems to me that what we (or you, with or without me!) have to do is to take each argument, individually, and see whether it has merit. Some may, some may not. For example, I think the best ID argument, frankly, is probably Meyer's - it's an application, as I understand it of Behe's concept of Irreducible Complexity to the OOL problem (a much more sensible place to locate it - IMO). It's not an anti Darwinian argument though, it's an anti abiogenesis argument. So it seems to me it would be useful, at least, to establish whether other arguments (e.g. that macroevolution cannot occur by Darwinian means, just microevolution; that random mutations cannot create information; that rm+ns cannot be creative; that GAs involve smuggled information; that the genome must have been frontloaded) have intrinsic merit. My view is that they do not. I think it is readily demonstrable that they do not. However, I think it is less readily demonstrable that an organism capable of Darwinian evolution could emerge from non-self-replicating entities, or that even if it could, that that it could evolve to be as complex as a modern-type cell (with ribosomes). But that would involve being selective (heh) - finding out which ID arguments and theories have merit and which do not. It is my view that many do not. I'm intrigued that one of the most prominent is one you would rather not suject to critique. *evil grin* But can you imagine better evidence for the integrity of the ID movement for a group of ID proponents to subject a key paper to critical scrutiny, and conclude that it does not hold water? Or, even better, conclude that it does, having openly subjected it to intense cross-examination? Because it seems to me that the ID movement suffers from what is called the "faggot fallacy" - that a bunch of weak sticks is as strong as a strong stick (actually it can be, but that's a fault with the metaphor, not with the definition of the fallacy!) In other words, that several weak arguments amount to a strong one. They don't, and they especially don't if they actually contradict each other as IMO many ID arguments do. So a good place to start in restoring the reputation of ID, is not to lambast Nick, but to subject the body of argumentation itself to rigorous debate, throw out what doesn't work, face the truth wherever it may lead (not to atheism - very few arguments lead inescapabley to atheism and certainly not Darwinism), and make it clear that whatever its theological implications, ID is rigorous science not religion. By doing rigorous science.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth: Again, not that paper. We can easily define functional specification empirically, for all that is needed in our scientific debate about ID and evolution. there is no need of other definitions.gpuccio_{July 17, 2011
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Thomas, I absolutely agree with you that Dembski, Behe, Meyer and others do not incorporate theological arguments or anti-atheist polemic into their scientific works. I have not said that they do! It was precisely my point to Nick that they do not. However, that does not infirm my other point, regarding some quite extrordinarily own-foot-shootings by IDists when it comes to the culture wars, Pandas being one, the Wedge being another, and Expelled being a third. That is what I mean when I say that IDists bear a large share or responsibility for any misunderstandings about their project. But I must re-emphasise, it seems: I do not fault ID science because it is couched in polemic. Mostly it isn't. In fact, I don't think there's any polemic in any of Dembski's papers that I have read. And Meyer's book (what I have read of it so far) is a model of even-handed clarity. My issue is solely with the argument itself. In the abstract of Specification: The Pattern That Signifies Design, Dembski writes:
Specification denotes the type of pattern that highly improbable events must exhibit before one is entitled to attribute them to intelligence. This paper analyzes the concept of specification and shows how it applies to design detection (i.e., the detection of intelligence on the basis of circumstantial evidence). Always in the background throughout this discussion is the fundamental question of Intelligent Design (ID): Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause? This paper reviews, clarifies, and extends previous work on specification in my books The Design Inference and No Free Lunch.
This seems to me to make it clear that the content of the paper a) addresses "the fundamental question of Intelligent Design" as perceived by Dembski and that b) it covers (indeed, extends and clarifies) the essentials of his two books, The Design Inference and No Free Lunch. And this paper seems to me to be fundamentally flawed. I am happy to discuss it here, or on a purpose-built thread :)Elizabeth Liddle_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth: Not that paper, please. Many of us have difficulties with it. The fact that it is more recent does not mean that it is the best. I suggest instead that we discuss the design inference as we have many times presented here (especially with kairosfocus, Stephen B and others), based on a much simpler concept and on more direct biological arguments. We can do it here, or kairosfocus could start a new thread. I would willingly start with my empirical definition of the design inference, and the others could give their version. And you are free to debate what we say.gpuccio_{July 17, 2011
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Well, how about someone starts a thread about one of Dembski's papers (I suggest this one, as it is relatively recent, and seems to be key: http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.06.Specification.pdf) and we can have a kind of journal club on it? Obviously the best person to do so would be Dembski, but maybe kf would do it?Elizabeth Liddle_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth: "The scientific output that I have read, including key papers by Dembski, and Behe’s first book, I find deeply flawed, logically. But that doesn’t make them not-science, it just makes them bad science." Still waiting for the details.gpuccio_{July 17, 2011
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Thomas Cudworth - no problem about the misunderstanding. What matters is that we understand each other now :)
Even if you had not identified yourself as a scientist, your remarks about “books vs. articles” would give you away as one. No “Arts” professor would ever utter the words that you did. In the Arts, articles are great, but books are the currency. It’s books, not articles, that get you jobs and tenure in most cases.
Indeed. My first degree was in music, and what got most people tenure was musical composition or performance :) But the entire point of this discussion is not whether ID is good Art, but whether it is good science, isn't it?
Second, I completely disagree with you when you suggest that that you should not expect to find things in Dembski’s books that aren’t in his online articles. This is partly for the reason given above: books are a different thing from articles, something scientists often don’t seem to appreciate. In a book you make a sustained argument that involves the intricate interconnection of many different things; in an article you write up the results of one experiment or criticize one particular idea. Scientists’ bread-and-butter is publishing scores or even hundreds of very focused articles, but you can’t achieve integratation of a broad range of questions at article length.
Oh, sure. But it means that if I find a flaw in the argument when cast as a scientific article, it's not much of a defense to say: "oh, but you need to read the book". The argument should stand alone, right?
That’s why Darwin wrote *The Origin of Species* and not a 15-page journal article. The ID people, in their books, are trying to present a broader synthesis of some previously unrelated ideas, and for that, book-length is often necessary.
Yes, sometimes it is. But it would be perfectly possible to condense the argument in Origins to the length of a scientific article. It is already structured in that way.
So it’s unreasonable to expect that Dembski should accommodate you by making sure that his entire argument in *No Free Lunch* (which I’ve read in its entirety, very carefully) is available in article form. It’s still less reasonable to expect that it should be available in articles that are accessible via the internet! You must be from a younger generation that expects everything to be electronically accessible.
Well, no :) But I do expect that his scientific reasoning should stand alone in his scientific articles, and I also expect that his key argument should be expressible in that format. Indeed, I'd hope it could be expressible in abstract format.
But in fact many of the most important books and even articles are not available online and must be read in the old-fashioned way, between paper covers. Anyone who is serious about learning what ID argues will read the key ID sources that are not available online, as well as those that are.
But what if what is available online contains serious logical flaws? My issue is not with paper versus pixels, it's whether the papers, with titles like "Specification: the pattern that signifies intelligence", which Dembski himself has cited as encapsulating his latest thinking on how Intelligence can be detected, actually survives critical review. And, from this site: "In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection — how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose". So why would I not expect to find the essence of the ID argument in a paper,by Dembski, entitled: "Specification: the pattern that signifies intelligence"? Sure, there may be other interesting related matters that would be interesting to read, but if there is a flaw in a paper that purports to answer the very issue at the heart of ID - how to detect intelligence - why should I read further?
Third, you mention only Dembski. I asked you about ID authors generally. Are you saying that the only ID author you have read (as opposed to read about) is Dembski, and even there, only those parts of his work that are available online? If so, you are hardly going to have a good first-hand knowledge of ID thinking.
Fine. If there are ID scientists who make better founded claims, cool. But if one major, highly cited argument bites the dust, highly cited, moreover, by those other authors, then why should I pursue ID further? But FWIW, I've read Behe's Darwin's Black Box, and also found it deeply flawed. I have not read his latest, but I see no evidence that he has addressed the flaws of DBB. Indeed, I was somewhat appalled to see an interview with him, where he went right back to his original "mousetrap" concept, despite at one point having modified it considerably in responses to critiques to include degrees of irreducibility, as though there had never been a problem. There is a limit to the number of chances I will give a theory when everything I've read so far seems to have glaring holes. So let's at least start with what I think are holes - if they aren't, then sure, I'll go further. But IDists do not seem to find it necessary to acquaint themselves with the whole of modern biology before deciding it is fundamentally flawed, so why should we do differently with ID?
And it hardly fits in with this claim: “I am a trained academic, like many here, and I try where possible to go to primary sources for my information.”
Yes, it does.
If the only ID person you have read is Dembski, and only that portion of his works which is available online, you are not behaving “like a trained academic” when you post opinions about ID for all the world to see. A trained academic would have spent a great deal of time in the library (or at the bookstore) acquiring books, essay collections, photocopied articles, etc., before making a judgment about what ID says and what its weaknesses are.
No, you are conflating two different things. If I was claiming to be an expert on ID, I would indeed be expected to have read the vast majority of literature on the subject. However, I am not. I am merely claiming that a large number of arguments made for ID are flawed. I do not accept, as a counter-argument, the excuse that I have not read enough articles. At a journal club, we evaluate papers on their merits. If the paper doesn't make sense, it makes no difference that the authors have published books and other papers that do. The whole format of scientific publishing is that you make a self-sufficient argument. If that argument fails, it fails, it is not compensated for by some book chapter elsewhere that may not.
Fourth, pertinent to this, on another thread you make this comment: “Not only is it bad science, but there has been an extraordinary reluctance on the part of most IDists even to respond to the criticisms of it as science.” Again this makes me wonder how much ID material you have read, even online mateial. For example, we have here at UD an archive of all of Behe’s responses to the scientific critics of *The Edge of Evolution*. They are focused on the science of ID, and Behe answers in detail, often citing science journal literature in his discussions. Have you read any of those responses?
I do concede that I was primarily talking about Dembski's arguments. I'm better qualified to evaluate those than Behe's, as I am not a biochemist.
You will also find numerous responses to alleged scientific criticisms of ID on the Discovery web site, written by many different ID supporters, and in many ID books (by Wells, Dembski, etc.) which are not available online. Behe has refuted Miller regarding the flagellum in many places, including in his essay in the Dembski/Ruse collection (a volume which anyone purporting to offer an informed opinion on ID should have read).
Fair enough. As I said, I was primarily talking about Dembski's thesis, not Behe's. I don't think much of Behe's either (from reading DBB) but I haven't kept up with the discussion about The Edge of Evolution.
Your insinuation that somehow the movie *Expelled* is to be taken as one of ID’s main scientific defenses — when it was made by Ben Stein and some independent filmmakers, not by ID scientists — is ludicrous. That film did not purport to be a work *of* science, but a work about the implications of science and about the politics of science. Whatever its flaws, it doesn’t bear on the question you raise about ID’s scientific defense.
It bears on the question as to why IDists get accused of being all about religion, which was my point. I don't quite know why this is such a difficult point to get across, but I'll try again: I have no problem with the idea that ID is science. The scientific output that I have read, including key papers by Dembski, and Behe's first book, I find deeply flawed, logically. But that doesn't make them not-science, it just makes them bad science. I have also no problem with the idea that people should not condemn ID science on the grounds that it is religion/creationism in disguise. They shouldn't. However: I would lay a heavy burden of responsibility for this unfortunate state of affairs on ID proponents themselves, for tying their science to ideological projects (the Wedge), for trying to write a high school textbook about ID by editing a Creationist one, in places using no more than Find and Replace, and for allying themselves with a movie like Expelled, in which the science of origins and a stance on God are made to appear one and the same.
Be aware, also, that ID people cannot always get their scientific responses published. Some of Behe’s letters to major science journals, rebutting false claims about his work in reviews, have not been published by those journals.
Which is why I did not include formal peer-review as an absolute criterion. If someone can't get a paper published, fortunately the internet allows them to post it online. This is a huge advance in terms of freedom of speech. But that does not mean they will escape peer-review (and formal peer-review is only part of the peer-review process anyway). Ultimately, a scientific argument stands or falls on its merits. My view is that all the scientific arguments for ID that I have read, which clearly is not exhaustive, fall. I will however readily concede that there may be arguments for ID that I have not read, that do not fall. I am currently half way through Meyer's Signature in the Cell. I have some fairly serious issues so far, but will hold off until I see whether he resolves them, as it is a book, not a paper. I think he has a better point than most. But if a stand-alone article does not stand up to scrutiny, and I have found none of Dembski's that do, then it doesn't make me optimistic that I will find a better argument in one of his books.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 17, 2011
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Thomas: And I think you agree with me there. Absolutely! :)gpuccio_{July 17, 2011
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Dr Cudworth: There is another issue, that has been on the table since Plato in The Laws, Bk X gave a clear warning: evolutionary materialist factionism and its amoral principle that the highest right is might. When I point this issue out and call for a principled defense of our civilisation, I am not being merely hot under the collar, I am pointing to a wider worldviews issue that is credibly a danger to our civilisation, and which motivates some pretty serious willful manipulation and even outright thuggery, internet and otherwise. And while I of course am strongly in favour of focussing on the scientific issues [cf here today], I also have to bear in mind this side. Especially given recent direct threats made against my family by some of those internet thugs, cheered on by all too many of the darwinism defenders. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 17, 2011
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Dr Liddle: Pardon, but how many times have we had to go over misreadings of the design filter, the sequence of its nodes, and the point that the inferences are (1) hi/lo contingency then (2) presence/absence of FSCI? GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle re 220: Thank you for correctly representing the ID position regarding miracles to Nick. I am glad to see that you have not *completely* swallowed the propaganda of ID's critics. :-) Nick should know better, as he has been one of the major and vocal ID critics for years. He shouldn't be criticizing ID if he doesn't grasp the basic point you made. You are right that some ID proponents go overboard in *equating* Darwinism with atheism. However, there are strong thematic and historical connections between Darwinian arguments and atheism. Darwin himself was not an atheist (rather, at the end of his life, apparently a muddled agnostic), but there is no doubt that, as Dawkins says, Darwin's uncompromising naturalism, and more important, his uncompromising antiteleology, was a gift to atheists. And if you are predisposed to be an atheist, *something like* Darwinism must be the truth about the origin of species (and *something like* Carl Sagan's molecules to man picture must be the truth about the universe overall). The atheist thus has a very strong reason to endorse Darwinian evolution or some modified version of it. I'm all in favor of examining the science of ID "without ideological priors" as you put it. The difficulty is that the loudest culture-war critics of ID, who have been poisoning the well against ID (with charges of miracles, God of the Gaps, etc.) are loaded with ideological priors. Shallit, Rosenhouse, Chu-Carroll, Myers, Moran, Dawkins, Coyne, Lewontin, Provine, Weinberg, Dennett, Forrest, Eugenie Scott -- the list goes on and on. These people, along with a legion of atheist bloggers who are generally too cowardly to reveal their names as they utter base and vile personal insults to Behe, Dembski, etc., have sought to shape the public image of ID from the beginning, to portray it as religion with little or no scietific content, while themselves explicitly or implicitly pushing a non-neutral, materialistic, antiteleological understanding of nature. If you would read some of the ID books I have asked you to read -- Behe's two books, The Design of Life by Wells and Dembski, No Free Lunch by Dembski, Signature in the Cell by Meyer, Nature's Destiny by Denton, etc. -- you would find that these ID people write with great politeness, great calm, and attempt to base their arguments on scientific data, not on theology or metaphysics. They don't name-call their opponents or fulminate against alleged connections between Darwin or the Holocaust or anything of the sort. I am not saying that the scientific arguments in these books are flawless or beyond criticism. I am saying that they are written in the way that you are calling for, with theoretical detachment. If you compare these books with the anti-ID literature -- Miller's two books, Pennock's book, Gross and Scott's book, etc. -- you will find a huge difference in tone and attitude. The ID books are much closer to the tone and attitude we expect from scientists; the anti-ID books read in many places like fiery tracts. they are loaded with indignation, accusation of bad motives, etc. So I don't accept your conclusion that ID people have brought most of their trouble upon themselves. Yes, some people on ID blog sites such as this one get hot under the collar and rage against atheism and spout Christian holy war against modern materialism and immorality and so on; but if you want to know the heart of ID as theory, read the books I've indicated. You may be pleasantly surprised.Thomas Cudworth_{July 17, 2011
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To sum up the people who know the most about ID and Creation know and understand the differences between the two. And teh only people who try to conflate ID with Creation are the people with an agenda. ALL formal definitions of "Creationism" state it relies on the Bible. OTOH if the Bible were falsified today ID would not be phased. Creationism satnds and falls with the Bible. ID stands and falls with the scientific data. But of course Nick Matzke exposes his ignorance of ID when he said:
Even the mildest forms of ID depend on insertion of miracles into biological history, even if it’s just to tweak the DNA a little bit.
Wrong again Nick, as usual. No miracles needed unless you are saying that Dawkins "weasel" program was written by and runs on a miracle.Joseph_{July 17, 2011
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gpuccio @ 216: I agree with what you say here, subject to the qualifications you've carefully put in. Yes, ID can probably infer *something* on each of the points you raise. My point was that ID methods (the application of notions such as information and irreducible complexity) do not commit ID from the outset to any decision regarding supernatural vs. natural causes. And I think you agree with me there.Thomas Cudworth_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle @ 217: Sorry I misunderstood your intent. Please understand the reason. 99% of the people who have ever referred to the Dembski quotation about the Logos-theology of John have misused it for polemical purposes, i.e., to prove that ID improperly confuses religion with science, or to prove that ID rests on theological arguments. So when I saw it in your post, I jumped to the conclusion that you were doing the same. (Especially when your remarks about the Pandas books and the Dover Trial seemed to indicate that you had been reading the sort of internet sources that regularly draw that conclusion about Dembski.) I agree with you that ID people are more likely to draw explicit theological conclusions from their theory than evolutionary biologists are. As a side point, however, I'd add that this means little; as a point of fact surveys have shown that biologists lean very strongly towards atheism/agnosticism and that "elite" biologists (NAS members) have among the strongest inclinations toward atheism/agnosticism of all elite scientists. (Noticeably higher than, say, elite mathematicians.) And of those who hold full-time positions *specifically in evolutionary biology*, I suspect that the numbers would be 95% or higher atheist/agnostic. Outside of paleontology (Conway Morris and one or two American TEs), I can't think of a full-time evolutionary biologist who is a religious believer. So it's not as if there isn't a religious connection; it's just that the biologists don't openly talk about it as much. The fact that only a small proportion of biologists is loudly and aggressively atheist about evolution doesn't mean that evolution hasn't quietly influenced many more to the same conclusion. Of course, I'm not drawing a necessary logical connection between *any* form of evolution and atheism. But the neo-Darwinian form of evolution has proved very friendly to it. Regarding what you read, a few quick points: Even if you had not identified yourself as a scientist, your remarks about "books vs. articles" would give you away as one. No "Arts" professor would ever utter the words that you did. In the Arts, articles are great, but books are the currency. It's books, not articles, that get you jobs and tenure in most cases. Second, I completely disagree with you when you suggest that that you should not expect to find things in Dembski's books that aren't in his online articles. This is partly for the reason given above: books are a different thing from articles, something scientists often don't seem to appreciate. In a book you make a sustained argument that involves the intricate interconnection of many different things; in an article you write up the results of one experiment or criticize one particular idea. Scientists' bread-and-butter is publishing scores or even hundreds of very focused articles, but you can't achieve integratation of a broad range of questions at article length. That's why Darwin wrote *The Origin of Species* and not a 15-page journal article. The ID people, in their books, are trying to present a broader synthesis of some previously unrelated ideas, and for that, book-length is often necessary. So it's unreasonable to expect that Dembski should accommodate you by making sure that his entire argument in *No Free Lunch* (which I've read in its entirety, very carefully) is available in article form. It's still less reasonable to expect that it should be available in articles that are accessible via the internet! You must be from a younger generation that expects everything to be electronically accessible. But in fact many of the most important books and even articles are not available online and must be read in the old-fashioned way, between paper covers. Anyone who is serious about learning what ID argues will read the key ID sources that are not available online, as well as those that are. Third, you mention only Dembski. I asked you about ID authors generally. Are you saying that the only ID author you have read (as opposed to read about) is Dembski, and even there, only those parts of his work that are available online? If so, you are hardly going to have a good first-hand knowledge of ID thinking. And it hardly fits in with this claim: "I am a trained academic, like many here, and I try where possible to go to primary sources for my information." If the only ID person you have read is Dembski, and only that portion of his works which is available online, you are not behaving "like a trained academic" when you post opinions about ID for all the world to see. A trained academic would have spent a great deal of time in the library (or at the bookstore) acquiring books, essay collections, photocopied articles, etc., before making a judgment about what ID says and what its weaknesses are. Fourth, pertinent to this, on another thread you make this comment: "Not only is it bad science, but there has been an extraordinary reluctance on the part of most IDists even to respond to the criticisms of it as science." Again this makes me wonder how much ID material you have read, even online mateial. For example, we have here at UD an archive of all of Behe's responses to the scientific critics of *The Edge of Evolution*. They are focused on the science of ID, and Behe answers in detail, often citing science journal literature in his discussions. Have you read any of those responses? You will also find numerous responses to alleged scientific criticisms of ID on the Discovery web site, written by many different ID supporters, and in many ID books (by Wells, Dembski, etc.) which are not available online. Behe has refuted Miller regarding the flagellum in many places, including in his essay in the Dembski/Ruse collection (a volume which anyone purporting to offer an informed opinion on ID should have read). Your insinuation that somehow the movie *Expelled* is to be taken as one of ID's main scientific defenses -- when it was made by Ben Stein and some independent filmmakers, not by ID scientists -- is ludicrous. That film did not purport to be a work *of* science, but a work about the implications of science and about the politics of science. Whatever its flaws, it doesn't bear on the question you raise about ID's scientific defense. Be aware, also, that ID people cannot always get their scientific responses published. Some of Behe's letters to major science journals, rebutting false claims about his work in reviews, have not been published by those journals.Thomas Cudworth_{July 17, 2011
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kf:
Time and again, you have been taken step by step through the design inference process, and have been forced to say you agree with the corrections. Then, equally repeatedly we see some little while later, the sort of false claims above.
Please show me what corrections I have been forced to say I agree with.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth: You choose where and when (sounds like a duel, doesn't it? :) )gpuccio_{July 17, 2011
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Dr Liddle: I am disappointed:
if we conclude that our hypothesis of Design is supported by our data, then the first thing we should ask is: is there an alternative hypothesis that could generate these data? This, incidentally is the first scientific error Dembski makes – he sets up his hypothesis incorrectly, and so finds himself in a position where no other hypothesis, by definition, can account for the data.
Time and again, you have been taken step by step through the design inference process, and have been forced to say you agree with the corrections. Then, equally repeatedly we see some little while later, the sort of false claims above. In brief summary, with reference to say here at UD and here in my online IOSE draft course. Let us observe: 1: It is long since well established that causal patterns exist and have reliable empirically tested signs. If we see deer tracks and droppings in the snow, whether Osti looking for what he probably did not know would be his last meal [Red Deer, it seems] 5,000 YA, or today, we infer from sign to signified: I:[signs] --> Objective state of affairs O, on a warrant W 2: In particular we routinely observe that causes come in patterns assignable to chance and/or mechanical necessity and/or design. (When an arrow head was found in Osti's corpse, suddenly the nature of his demise was clarified: probable murder.] 3: In the design inference process, the first default is that a given aspect of an event -- and notice the per aspect focus highlighted since a few years ago, we are not back in 1998 here -- is by necessity and so will exhibit low contingency under sufficiently similar initial conditions. 4: If there is high contingency, then chance and/or choice are the credible causal factors for the relevant aspect of an object, phenomenon or process. 5: In that context, if there is a statistically dominated pattern, i.e we are coming from what seems to represent a random variable driven distribution, the obvious conclusion is that chance is at work. 6: But, if on the other hand we see events E coming from an independently describable set T, which is a narrow and UN-representative zone in a set of possibilities W, then that -- as Dembski has argued ever since NFL -- is a strong sign of intelligently directed choice not chance as the material factor. 7: Text in this thread is highly contingent, but obviously distinct from random finger walking on a keyboard:fuiwjsgvbfhlirmsd4ronzsejkv 8: Said text is an observable cluster of events that come from a zone T of remarks in English relevant to a context of discourse, and are sufficiently long [beyond 500 - 1000 bits] that it is utterly unlikely that such would occur by chance dominated processes of trial and error on the gamut of our solar system or observed cosmos. 9: And yet, we intelligent posters have been churning them out routinely. 10: The same holds for DNA etc. The best explanation is the process of design, not chance based random walks, for reasons already gone over in details. So, please, do better next time. Dembski was on teh right track, and by updating to incorporate a per aspect analysis, we have captured the matter adequately. It has even been reduced to a mathematical expression, here on a solar system scope: Chi_500 = I*S - 500, bits beyond the solar system threshold. If you think that chance and necessity without intelligence can beat that threshold, then please provide concrete examples. And if you are doing a simulation, do so in a way that does not raise the question of active information being fed in by the back door, by mistake. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 17, 2011
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gpuccio:
But again, I would ask you to express in detail your problem with Dembski. I don’t understand what you mean, and I suppose that I would like to debate a little the design inference with you in more detail.
I'm more than happy to, but possibly on a different thread :)Elizabeth Liddle_{July 17, 2011
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of interest: While neo-Darwinian evolution has no evidence that material processes can generate functional prescriptive information, Intelligent Design does have 'proof of principle' that information can 'locally' violate the second law and generate potential energy: Maxwell's demon demonstration turns information into energy - November 2010 Excerpt: Until now, demonstrating the conversion of information to energy has been elusive, but University of Tokyo physicist Masaki Sano and colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating it in a nano-scale experiment. In a paper published in Nature Physics they describe how they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a "spiral-staircase-like" potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-maxwell-demon-energy.htmlbornagain77_{July 17, 2011
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Falsification of neo-Darwinism; First, Here is the falsification of local realism (reductive materialism). Here is a clip of a talk in which Alain Aspect talks about the failure of ‘local realism’, or the failure of reductive materialism, to explain reality: The Failure Of Local Realism – Reductive Materialism – Alain Aspect – video http://www.metacafe.com/w/4744145 The falsification for local realism (reductive materialism) was recently greatly strengthened: Physicists close two loopholes while violating local realism – November 2010 Excerpt: The latest test in quantum mechanics provides even stronger support than before for the view that nature violates local realism and is thus in contradiction with a classical worldview. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-physicists-loopholes-violating-local-realism.html Quantum Measurements: Common Sense Is Not Enough, Physicists Show – July 2009 Excerpt: scientists have now proven comprehensively in an experiment for the first time that the experimentally observed phenomena cannot be described by non-contextual models with hidden variables. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090722142824.htm (of note: hidden variables were postulated to remove the need for ‘spooky’ forces, as Einstein termed them — forces that act instantaneously at great distances, thereby breaking the most cherished rule of relativity theory, that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.) And yet, quantum entanglement, which rigorously falsified local realism (reductive materialism) as the complete description of reality, is now found in molecular biology on a massive scale! Quantum Information/Entanglement In DNA & Protein Folding – short video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5936605/ Quantum entanglement holds together life’s blueprint – 2010 Excerpt: When the researchers analysed the DNA without its helical structure, they found that the electron clouds were not entangled. But when they incorporated DNA’s helical structure into the model, they saw that the electron clouds of each base pair became entangled with those of its neighbours (arxiv.org/abs/1006.4053v1). “If you didn’t have entanglement, then DNA would have a simple flat structure, and you would never get the twist that seems to be important to the functioning of DNA,” says team member Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford. http://neshealthblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/quantum-entanglement-holds-together-lifes-blueprint/ The relevance of continuous variable entanglement in DNA – July 2010 Excerpt: We consider a chain of harmonic oscillators with dipole-dipole interaction between nearest neighbours resulting in a van der Waals type bonding. The binding energies between entangled and classically correlated states are compared. We apply our model to DNA. By comparing our model with numerical simulations we conclude that entanglement may play a crucial role in explaining the stability of the DNA double helix. http://arxiv.org/abs/1006.4053v1 Quantum Information confirmed in DNA by direct empirical research; DNA Can Discern Between Two Quantum States, Research Shows – June 2011 Excerpt: — DNA — can discern between quantum states known as spin. – The researchers fabricated self-assembling, single layers of DNA attached to a gold substrate. They then exposed the DNA to mixed groups of electrons with both directions of spin. Indeed, the team’s results surpassed expectations: The biological molecules reacted strongly with the electrons carrying one of those spins, and hardly at all with the others. The longer the molecule, the more efficient it was at choosing electrons with the desired spin, while single strands and damaged bits of DNA did not exhibit this property. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110331104014.htm Information and entropy – top-down or bottom-up development in living systems? A.C. McINTOSH Excerpt: This paper highlights the distinctive and non-material nature of information and its relationship with matter, energy and natural forces. It is proposed in conclusion that it is the non-material information (transcendent to the matter and energy) that is actually itself constraining the local thermodynamics to be in ordered disequilibrium and with specified raised free energy levels necessary for the molecular and cellular machinery to operate. http://journals.witpress.com/paperinfo.asp?pid=420 i.e. It is very interesting to note that quantum entanglement, which conclusively demonstrates that ‘information’ in its pure ‘quantum form’ is completely transcendent of any time and space constraints, should be found in molecular biology on such a massive scale, for how can the quantum entanglement ‘effect’ in biology possibly be explained by a material (matter/energy space/time) ’cause’ when the quantum entanglement ‘effect’ falsified material particles as its own ‘causation’ in the first place? (A. Aspect) Appealing to the probability of various configurations of material particles, as neo-Darwinism does, simply will not help since a timeless/spaceless cause must be supplied which is beyond the capacity of the energy/matter particles themselves to supply! To give a coherent explanation for an effect that is shown to be completely independent of any time and space constraints one is forced to appeal to a cause that is itself not limited to time and space! i.e. Put more simply, you cannot explain a effect by a cause that has been falsified by the very same effect you are seeking to explain! Improbability arguments of various ‘specified’ configurations of material particles, which have been a staple of the arguments against neo-Darwinism, simply do not apply since the cause is not within the material particles in the first place! ,,,To refute this falsification of neo-Darwinism, one must falsify Alain Aspect, and company’s, falsification of local realism (reductive materialism)! ,,, As well, appealing to ‘non-reductive’ materialism (multiverse or many-worlds) to try to explain quantum non-locality in molecular biology ends up destroying the very possibility of doing science rationally; BRUCE GORDON: Hawking’s irrational arguments – October 2010 Excerpt: For instance, we find multiverse cosmologists debating the “Boltzmann Brain” problem: In the most “reasonable” models for a multiverse, it is immeasurably more likely that our consciousness is associated with a brain that has spontaneously fluctuated into existence in the quantum vacuum than it is that we have parents and exist in an orderly universe with a 13.7 billion-year history. This is absurd. The multiverse hypothesis is therefore falsified because it renders false what we know to be true about ourselves. Clearly, embracing the multiverse idea entails a nihilistic irrationality that destroys the very possibility of science. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/1/hawking-irrational-arguments/ ,,,Michael Behe has a profound answer to the infinite multiverse (non-reductive materialism) argument in “Edge of Evolution”. If there are infinite universes, then we couldn’t trust our senses, because it would be just as likely that our universe might only consist of a human brain that pops into existence which has the neurons configured just right to only give the appearance of past memories. It would also be just as likely that we are floating brains in a lab, with some scientist feeding us fake experiences. Those scenarios would be just as likely as the one we appear to be in now (one universe with all of our experiences being “real”). Bottom line is, if there really are an infinite number of universes out there, then we can’t trust anything we perceive to be true, which means there is no point in seeking any truth whatsoever. “The multiverse idea rests on assumptions that would be laughed out of town if they came from a religious text.” Gregg Easterbrook ================= Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger by Richard Conn Henry – Physics Professor – John Hopkins University Excerpt: Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the “illusion” of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism (solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist). (Dr. Henry’s referenced experiment and paper – “An experimental test of non-local realism” by S. Gröblacher et. al., Nature 446, 871, April 2007 – “To be or not to be local” by Alain Aspect, Nature 446, 866, April 2007bornagain77_{July 17, 2011
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Nick states: 'Even the mildest forms of ID depend on insertion of miracles into biological history, even if it’s just to tweak the DNA a little bit. It’s still a violation of conservation of mass/energy, and it’s still just inserting God into the gaps in our understanding…' No Nick, a violation of conservation of mass/energy would mean that MORE mass or energy was put into the universe than was already present in the universe, moreover the big bang itself represents the most blatant violation of the conservation of mass/energy that one could have since the entire temporal 'energy/matter' universe was brought into being instantaneously from a transcendent spaceless/timeless realm. In fact the only violation of conservation laws that is going on here is the blatant violation of the conservation of information law that Darwinism requires i.e. evolution of the gaps; LIFE'S CONSERVATION LAW: Why Darwinian Evolution Cannot Create Biological Information William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II http://evoinfo.org/publications/lifes-conservation-law/ ,,,Encoded classical information, such as what we find in computer programs, and yes as we find encoded in DNA, is found to be a subset of 'transcendent' quantum information by the following method:,,, This following research provides solid falsification for Rolf Landauer’s contention that information encoded in a computer is merely physical (merely ‘emergent’ from a material basis) since he believed it always required energy to erase it; Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy – June 2011 Excerpt: No heat, even a cooling effect; In the case of perfect classical knowledge of a computer memory (zero entropy), deletion of the data requires in theory no energy at all. The researchers prove that “more than complete knowledge” from quantum entanglement with the memory (negative entropy) leads to deletion of the data being accompanied by removal of heat from the computer and its release as usable energy. This is the physical meaning of negative entropy. Renner emphasizes, however, “This doesn’t mean that we can develop a perpetual motion machine.” The data can only be deleted once, so there is no possibility to continue to generate energy. The process also destroys the entanglement, and it would take an input of energy to reset the system to its starting state. The equations are consistent with what’s known as the second law of thermodynamics: the idea that the entropy of the universe can never decrease. Vedral says “We’re working on the edge of the second law. If you go any further, you will break it.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110601134300.htm ,,,And here is the empirical confirmation that quantum information is 'conserved';,,, Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.htmlbornagain77_{July 17, 2011
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kf: I agree with you that the relevant distinction is between "natural" and "artificial" when it comes to design question. "Did he fall or was he pushed?" is a classic design question. An "artefact" is one that is made by a living thing (usually a human being, but not always). But that does not mean that the designers themselves (the living things) are not "natural". In other words, there are not two kinds of things: natural things and artificial things. Rather there are two kinds of explanations - one that accounts for a thing in terms of the intentions of another thing, and one that does not. For instance, as you know, I do not think the Intelligent Design hypothesis for living things stands up to scrutiny. However, that is not because I do not countenance explanations in terms of the intentions of living things. My computer is clearly an artifact - it was designed by a living thing. A hollow in a log, with a neighbouring stone, may be an artefact by a chimp, designed for cracking coconuts. A bird's nest is an artefact, made by birds, from twigs, in order to lay their eggs. A caddis fly larva-case is an artefact, made by the larva, from anything to hand, to protect itself. A coral reef is a kind of artefact, made by coral polyps, in which to live. Dental placque is a kind of artefact, made by bacteria, to protect themselves from your toothbrush. Indeed you could argue that living things are artefacts, made by themselves, in order to go on living, as their offspring are artefacts, made by their parents, in order to perpetuate their pattern. So where does "natural" diverge from "artificial"? I'd argue that it doesn't. The really important cleavage IMO is not between natural things and artificial things, or even between explanatory levels, but between intentional processes and unintentional processes. It is my contention that living things are the result of unintentional processes. It is the contention, as I see it, of IDists that living things are the result of intentional processes. Our differences do not lie in my prior commitment to "Naturalism" which you are free of, but in the fit of the model to the data. I do not think there is any evidence that intentional processes gave rise to living things. But I'm perfectly prepared to change my mind if presented with such evidence :)Elizabeth Liddle_{July 17, 2011
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PS: Cf my response to Dr Matzke here, which documents what happened several years ago at Telic Thoughts.kairosfocus_{July 17, 2011
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Onlookers: Apparently Dr Matzke is not able to see the key issue, in his search for talking points and in his obsession with words that to him are red flags and hooks to hang those talking points on:
In general, our society has answered yes, condoning the expression of naturalism and many of its companion ideas. We are not in conflict with this. We are opposed to the censorship of ideas. But here is the crux of the present problem. Though our U.S. Constitution provides for free expression of ideas — even those diametrically opposed such as naturalism and theism — it seems that the champions of naturalism want to take that Constitutional freedom of expression away from theists instead of allowing the ideas of each view to coexist in an academically free system. [ --> As in cf. Gaskell, Sewell, and many others in recent months and years and so on back.] This is why there is a conflict between naturalism and theism, between evolution and creation in the public schools. It is the intent of a relative few naturalists to supplant theism through the exclusive teaching of evolution in our schools.
Given what I have just had to clip, that tells us a lot. And none of it reflects well on Dr Matzke. To date, Dr Matzke seems unable to accept that many people have thought long and hard on nature, for centuries, from various perspectives, and have made contributions to science and its worldviews analysis context. A significant number of such were design thinkers, and even theists or even Bible-believing creationists. Perhaps it has escaped his notice that among the latter were: Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton. Men who believed that the strong appearance of design in our world was so for the very good reason that it speaks the truth. Thaxton et al, and those who have followed them over the past generation now, have re-looked at the evidence, starting with the evident fine-tuning of the cosmos, and the evident design of life from its ultimate origin on our planet. In particular by 1984/5, TBO published a major technical monograph that launched a new paradigm and research programme, now known as Intelligent Design. They did so, not by parsing Genesis 1 -2, but by examining on the usual timelines and evidence, the circumstances of a pre-life earth, and the formation of the precursors for life. They then applied not only geological knowledge but chemical kinetics on thermodynamics and polymer chemistry. It was patently obvious that the hoped for prebiotic soup was a myth, as the concentrations of relevant precursors would not work, as well, the hoped for reducing atmosphere was not plausible. So, even the monomers were in question -- a result that has continued to be underscored ever since the mid 1980's. We now see speculations on undersea volcanic vents -- which do not work, and hopes pinned to moons orbiting Jupiter and/or to comets. Those are marks of desperation, a desperation that has led to the two leading schools of thought on OOL coming to mutual destruction, as the exchange between Orgel and Shapiro amply documented a few years ago. TBO took time to grant a generous scenario, then looked at the reaction kinetics on thermodynamics, to see the result if such a prebiotic soup could somehow exist, despite its problems. They came up with a devastating result: a conc of 10^-338 molar is by many orders of magnitude, less than one molecule in our whole observed cosmos of some 10^80 atoms. Prebiotic soup models are simply dead. And it is TBO who put in the knife. That is why they concluded that while the work of what I have called clumping can be accounted for on reasonable reaction kinetics -- i.e tars made of long but uncontrolled chains of molecules form all the time in organic chemistry exercises that go out of control, but that of configuring functionally specific information-rich polymers cannot be so easily accounted for apart from investigator action. While we have updated some to the approaches and the terms used, since those pioneering days, the result is the same: the only empirically credible source of the highly specific configuring work required to make and arrange the molecules of the living cell into a functional whole, is information-controlled, step by step processes. The manufacture of proteins in teh cell in the ribosomes is the classic instance of this, and the precursor tRNA, m-RNA and r-RNAs are likewise produced by step by step informationally controlled processes based on stored coded digital information in DNA. The only empirically warranted source for codes, storage in data structures, algorithms based on use of coded information etc etc, is design, by intelligence. So, as a matter of basic scientific and epistemological integrity, the inference to design is a well warranted player in the discussion on OOL. But plainly Dr Matzke and ilk do not want that to be known, so they have again resorted to trying to brand the design theory movement with the term they and their predecessors have already poisoned, creationism. But it is quite plain that the discussion summarised above does not depend on anyone's worldview for its warrant. Geology, chemistry, thermodynamics and the like are open to all, and the arguments stand on their own merits on a vast body of empirical facts. Nor are these "creationist" facts, they are scientific facts. So, Thaxton et al were right in 1983, and we are right today, to highlight the agenda that seeks to censor our thoughts on science, substituting a radical materialism in the place of science with empirically warranted integrity. So, let us again cite Lewontin's summary of the game that is -- and has long been -- afoot:
. . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists, it is self-evident [[actually, science and its knowledge claims are plainly not immediately and necessarily true on pain of absurdity, to one who understands them; this is another logical error, begging the question , confused for real self-evidence; whereby a claim shows itself not just true but true on pain of patent absurdity if one tries to deny it . . ] that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality, and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test [[i.e. an assertion that tellingly reveals a hostile mindset, not a warranted claim] . . . . 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 [[another major begging of the question . . . ] 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 [[i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [NYRB, Jan 1997. If you think that the following clip from Beck makes a difference that turns this into quote-mining, kindly read the notes here; they only dig in deeper into the hole of a priori censorship and willfully misguided misrepresentation of alternatives.]
Well did Philip Johnson rebut, in Nov that year in First Things:
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.]
At this stage, Dr Matzke owes us all not only a serious explanation, but patently, an apology and retraction for what he and his ilk have done. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth: What should, of course, happen, once you make an inference is that you ask, something like: “If our design inference is indeed correct, what kind of design process would produce the patterns of design that we observe?” – and this is where you and I converge again! But that conditional “if” is vital – we must always be prepared to revisit our earlier inferences. Major paradigm shifts are rare, but they must not be ruled out a priori. I have never thought or said differently. The provisional status of any scientific hypothesis is one of the foundations of my epistemology. When I say: "Once we infer design" I just mean that those who don't agree with the inference will not be motivated to inquire further :) But again, I would ask you to express in detail your problem with Dembski. I don't understand what you mean, and I suppose that I would like to debate a little the design inference with you in more detail.gpuccio_{July 17, 2011
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I disagree with Nick (Brits will appreciate the reference....) Nick, you write:
Even the mildest forms of ID depend on insertion of miracles into biological history, even if it’s just to tweak the DNA a little bit. It’s still a violation of conservation of mass/energy, and it’s still just inserting God into the gaps in our understanding...
No, they don't. And that's why they are so angry with you for implying they do. They go to enormous lengths NOT to do precisely what you have alleged they do! What they do instead is to say: the pattern of life must, because of these equations, be designed. No law of Necessity explains it, and for it have happened by chance is so unlikely that the probability is vanishingly small even if we factor in the entire number of events in the history of the universe. And the only alternative is Design. They do not call that Design a miracle. They occasionally even mention aliens, although that is deeply illogical, because, asssuming that the aliens are members of that self-same universe they cannot, clearly, be invoked as the cause of their own existence. So what must be posited instead is a Designer that is beyond our own universe. It need not be miraculous - presumably, one solution is that our universe is merely a construction by intelligent designers within a much larger universe of supra-universal boffins, whose origins may possibly have arisen by Chance, given a much larger number of total events. I just made that up, and I'm sure no IDist here would embrace it, but I give it as an example of a non-miraculous theory that could account for the inferred signature of Design in terrestrial living things. And just as some scientists, faced with evidence of the Big Bang, say: "Therefore, God" while others say: "Therefore existence appears to be a fundamental property of reality", yet both can work happily in the same lab, so the fact that ID people tend to equate the Designer with the Abrahamic God (even the Logos of John) does not imply that that is the only philosophical conclusion. Now, I completely agree with you that they have brought the problem on their own heads, by constantly equating "Darwinism" with atheism, by presenting ID as the restorating of theism into the American worldview, by condemning scientists for ruling out "Design" a priori (which we do not) or "the supernatural" a priori (which is simply a direct consequence of the scientific method), by, as you point out, making a High School textbook an early vehicle for the idea, and moreover, not writing one from scratch, but converting a creationist ready-made, initially, and crassly, by means of a find-and-replace button. So I think their anger is wildly misplaced. Nonetheless, every time someone like you (or me) accuses them of positing miracles to account for data, then it draws the fire back on us, not their own number. And we deserve it, for not listening properly! What is wrong with ID, fundamentally, is not that it is religion, or creationism, or not-science, but that it is bad science. Not only is it bad science, but there has been an extraordinary reluctance on the part of most IDists even to respond to the criticisms of it as science. Instead we see a paranoia, expressed in films like Expelled, in which the claim is made that if anyone dares to question thenaturalist orthodoxy,their careers are doomed. Ben Stein bangs on to Dawkins not about the science of ID, but about God. If, as IDists protest, ID is science, and theology is merely the inevitable conclusion from the science - why accuse scientists of excluding theology from science? Sure we do. That's exactly our point, and now, it's exactly the point Thomas Cudworth is, oddly making - that ID is science, not theology, and should therefore not dismissed as theology-not-science. So this has been a very enlightening thread! If we can take it from henceforth that the merits of ID are entirely those of its science, divorced from any theological implications, then let the accusations that ID is just religion dressed up as science stop, but equally let the accusations that "Darwinism" or "neo-Darwinism" is the expression of an ideological faith in naturalism stop too. Science can do no more than make naturalistic hypotheses. That's how the methodology works. It can lead us to astonishing hypotheses with profound philosophical and even theological implications, but it cannot test those implications. If ID is science, then it should stand or fall on the science. If the data support it, then yes, we may find ourselves faced with some fairly worldview-shattering implications, not least being the possibility that we are merely a kind of Matrix, controlled by a super-universe of perhaps benign, perhaps malign, super-organisms. Another possiblity is God. But first, let's figure out whether the science works, without mutal accusations of ideological priors, because in both cases they are, or should be, irrelevan. That's what makes science so glorious.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 17, 2011
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Pardon me, Dr Liddle: I cannot help but notice that we are here dealing with those "few" who control major institutions and are busily trying to redefine the actual meaning of science, turning science itself into applied atheism. I particularly note what the US National Science Teachers Association, for a decade now, is on record (cf the above linked) on:
The principal product of science is knowledge in the form of naturalistic concepts and the laws and theories related to those concepts . . . . [[S]cience, along with its methods, explanations and generalizations, must be the sole focus of instruction in science classes to the exclusion of all non-scientific or pseudoscientific methods, explanations, generalizations and products . . . . Although no single universal step-by-step scientific method captures the complexity of doing science, a number of shared values and perspectives characterize a scientific approach to understanding nature. Among these are a demand for naturalistic explanations supported by empirical evidence that are, at least in principle, testable against the natural world. Other shared elements include observations, rational argument, inference, skepticism, peer review and replicability of work . . . . Science, by definition, is limited to naturalistic methods and explanations and, as such, is precluded from using supernatural elements in the production of scientific knowledge. [[NSTA, Board of Directors, July 2000. ]
That is highly significant. Especially, as ever since Plato in The Laws, Bk X, 2350 years ago, it should have been plain that he relevant contrast is not natural vs supernatural but natural vs artificial. Where the artificial leaves empirically reliable and rouinely used traces that we infer on. So, there is here a willfully misleading caricature of design thought, and there lurks the "creationism in a cheap tuxedo" smear. And, the above is thus highly revealing of an extremely radical and question begging institutionally entrenched atheistical worldviews agenda, which becomes all the more evident when we realise that to such "science" is the gold standard of knowledge. Remember, already our children are being taught this sort of radical and patently unjustifiable redefinition as the "true" definition of science. Sorry, but -- painful as this may sound -- that sounds to me uncommonly like the problem of handing over the administration of the asylum to its inmates. It is time to fix the chaos. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 17, 2011
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gpuccio @216: I entirely agree. You write:
As you may know, I have a position which is slightly different. While I agree with you that there are certainly many aspects on the problem of the designer which are of pertinence of philosophy and theology, I b elieve, and have always stated here, that ID must not necessarily stop at the design detection, but has the possibility and the duty, as a scientific paradigm, to go beyond as much as possible.
Exactly. Moreoever, the failure to do so is what brings it into disrepute as science, not its potential theological or philosophical implications. Big Bang theory had huge potential philosophical and theological implications, and yet that didn't stop it being regarded as science, nor of people going on to try to understand it ever more deeply.
I will be more clear. Once we infer design, the design can be observed, analyzed and evaluated. ID gives us a way to identify, as much as it is possible with present data, specific deseign inputs (for instance, the emergence of protein superfamilies). There are many aspects, observabble aspects, facts, about design input which are in the range of science.
Yes, indeed, except for a rather important quibble. you say: "Once we infer design...." That is not how science works. All our inferences are provisional. Indeed all our inferences are hypotheses, that should generate further predictions. So, if we conclude that our hypothesis of Design is supported by our data, then the first thing we should ask is: is there an alternative hypothesis that could generate these data? This, incidentally is the first scientific error Dembski makes - he sets up his hypothesis incorrectly, and so finds himself in a position where no other hypothesis, by definition, can account for the data. What should, of course, happen, once you make an inference is that you ask, something like: "If our design inference is indeed correct, what kind of design process would produce the patterns of design that we observe?" - and this is where you and I converge again! But that conditional "if" is vital - we must always be prepared to revisit our earlier inferences. Major paradigm shifts are rare, but they must not be ruled out a priori.
Those aspects can certainly give at least some information about: a) The nature of the designer b) If only one desiner ot many designers can be reasonably inferred c) The nature, structure, and possibly some of the pusposes of the design (while the whole purpose of biological design is probably a philosophical subject, specific sub purposes and strategies can certainly be inferred form the observed design). d) The modalities of implementation of design in natural history, such as cronological properties (gradual, sudden), and possible implementation strategies (guided mutation, intelligent selection, direct writing, etc.) All these things, and probably others, are IMO perfectly in the range of ID as science.
Absolutely.
It is true that the existing data can shed only a very partial light on these problems, but data are increasing, and our scientific mind must be open and try to build reasonable inferences and explanations whenever possible.
Yes. Bravo!Elizabeth Liddle_{July 17, 2011
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