I finally found the phrase “Specified Improbability” in Bill’s recent writings: The design inference, as I developed it, looks to a marker of design, what I call specified complexity or specified improbability, and from there reasons to a designing intelligence as responsible for this marker. – See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/design_inferenc064871.html#sthash.Af6bmEbu.dpuf I thought he used the phrase in a letter he wrote to me a long time ago which he gave permission to publish. He did not use the phrase in that letter, so my recollection was wrong. But the letter was interesting in its own right. The letter was trying to resolve 2 questions. Here is what I said: >There are 4 different diagrams of the EF: > >http://www.arn.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=13;t=001726#000034 > Read More ›

From Design Inference by Bill Dembski, page 36: The principal advantage of characterizing design as the complement of regularity and chance is that it avoids committing itself to a doctrine of intelligent agency…Nevertheless, it is useful to separate design from theories of intelligence and intelligent agency. There has been some disagreement about whether AI can be categorized as intelligence or not. In terms of a design inference, the question is formally separate.

It seems like every day one of the denizens of The Skeptical Zone whines about what they perceive to be heavy handed moderation tactics here at UD. They say no one is ever banned at The Skeptical Zone and everyone is free to say whatever they like. I decided to test that and signed up to comment at The Skeptical Zone. All of my comments – every single one of them – were deleted. They effectively banned me after my very first attempt to post there. Here is what KN said to justify the deletion: I am more than willing to be a bully in order to prevent a bully from taking over a space that I enjoy using for Read More ›

Here: The greatest intellectual divide is not between those who believe one thing and those who believe another, but between those who have an emotional need to believe something fervently and those who can say, “I don´t know.” . . . Next, consider evolutionary psychologists. They believe that our behavior is determined by adaptations selected for tens of thousands of years ago. Yes, no, and maybe. A lot of our behavior is clearly biological in nature, which is not quite the same as evolutionary (note the discovery by adolescent boys that girls are not as yucky as they had previously supposed). Yet a lot of behavior isn´t explainable in evolutionary terms. Examples abound: what is the reprocuctive value of suicide, Read More ›

It seems necessary — in the teeth of too much obfuscatory rhetoric spread out like a squid escaping behind a cloud of ink — to lay out some basics of reasoning in general and about morality in particular for record, yet again. This time, by clipping, slightly adapting and highlighting an in-thread comment here: ________________________ >> Try (as a first example and slice of the cake with all the key ingredients): 3 + 2 = 5 ||| + || = ||||| This is self evident, as one who understands what it asserts (in light of conscious experience of the world) will see it to be true and that it must be true on pain of immediate, patent absurdity. Similarly, for Read More ›

In my second post on physicist Sean Carroll’s recent video, Is God a Good Theory?, I’d like to respond to his criticisms of the fine-tuning argument. As we’ll see, Carroll misconstrues the evidence for this argument, leading him to incorrectly conclude that the multiverse hypothesis explains that evidence just as well as the hypothesis that there is a God. Carroll also argues that the early universe’s low (but non-zero) entropy renders the existence of God vanishingly unlikely. I would argue that on the contrary, there is a special reason why the entropy of the early universe has the low, non-zero value it has, and that this can be best explained by the highly plausible hypothesis that God not only wants Read More ›

Mark Frank: “PVH is surely right that it is always possible you are wrong about an objective belief.” Barry:  “Mark, is it possible that that statement is wrong?” Mark Frank:  “Yes”

My neo-Darwinian friend, Francis Smallwood, has now written a response to my previous instalment in our dialogue. If you want to read it, go here. Below is a small excerpt of the response by Francis. You can read his full response by going to his blog. Follow the link at the bottom of the page. I think that his latest reply is considerably better than his previous writings. Over the past year or so his critique of ID has become sharper and more substantive, and I think he makes some very good points. I still happen to think he is largely mistaken though. It is well worth engaging with this one, so please do discuss some of his points either Read More ›