In a recent thread by Dr Sewell, AF raised again the Shallit-Elsberry list of eight challenges to design theory from a decade ago:
14 Alan FoxApril 15, 2013 at 12:56 am Unlike Profesor Hunt, Barry and Eric think design detection is well established. How about having a go at this list then. It’s been published for quite a while now.
I responded a few hours later:
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>>* 16 kairosfocus April 15, 2013 at 2:13 am
AF:
I note on points re your list of eight challenges.
This gets tiresomely repetitive, in a pattern of refusal to be answerable to adequate evidence, on the part of too many objectors to design theory:
>>1 Publish a mathematically rigorous definition of CSI>>
It has long since been shown, objections and censorship games notwithstanding, that reasonable quantitative metrics for FSCO/I and so for CSI, can be built and have been built. Indeed Durston et al have used such to provide a published list of values for 15 protein families.
>> 2 Provide real evidence for CSI claims >>
Blatant, all around you. But, a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.
Just to pick an example {–> from the list}, a phone number is obviously functionally specific (ever had a wrong number call?) and — within a reasonable context [though not beyond the 500 bit threshold] complex.
>> 3 Apply CSI to identify human agency where it is currently not known >>
FSCO/I is routinely intuitively used to identify artifacts of unknown cause, as IIRC, WmAD has pointed out regarding a room in the Smithsonian full of artifacts of unknown purpose but identified to be credibly human.
>> 4 Distinguish between chance and design in archaeoastronomy >>
The pattern of Nazca lines or the like, fit within the nodes-arcs pattern and collectively exhibit FSCO/I similar to other complex drawings. The 500 bit threshold is easily passed. If you want to contrast odds of a marker wandering randomly in a random walk, the difference will be trivial.
In short this is a refusal to use simple common sense and good will.
>> 5 Apply CSI to archaeology >>
Just shown, this is a case or repeating much the same objection in much the same context as though drumbeat repetition is capable of establishing a claim by erasing the underlying fallacies. Being wrong over and over and over again, even in the usual anti-design echo chambers, does not convert long since corrected fallacy into cogent reasoning.
>> 6 Provide a more detailed account of CSI in biology
Produce a workbook of examples using the explanatory filter, applied to a progressive series of biological phenomena, including allelic substitution of a point mutation. >>
There are book-length cogent treatments of CSI as applied to biology [try Meyer’s SITC for starts {{ –> . . . I know, I know, this was published 2009, six years after the “challenge,” but AF is raising it in 2013, TEN years after the challenge}}], and that is not enough for the objectors, there will never be enough details.
Similarly, the objection starts within an island of existing function and demands a CSI based explanation of a phenomenon known to be well within the threshold of complexity. This is a strawman tactic.
>> 7 Use CSI to classify the complexity of animal communication As mentioned in Elsberry and Shallit (2003: 9), many birds exhibit complex songs. >>
What?
Is there any doubt that bird or whale songs or bee dances for that matter are long enough and complex enough to be FSCI? That they function in communication? That we did not directly observe the origin of the capacities for such but have reason to see that they are grounded in CSI in the genome and related regulatory information expressed in embryological development that wires the relevant nerve pathways?
So, are you demanding a direct observation of the origin of such, which we do not have access to and cannot reasonably expect, when we do have access to the fact that we have indications of FSCO/I and so raise the question as to what FSCO/I is a known reliable, strongly tested sign of as best causal explanation?
>> 8 Animal cognition
Apply CSI to resolve issues in animal cognition and language use by non-human animals. >>
Capacity for language, of course, is biologically rooted, genetically stamped and embryologically expressed. So it fits into the same set of issues addressed under 7 just now.
Repetitive use of fallacies does not suddenly convert them into sound arguments.
Nor, can one reasonably demand solutions to any number of known unresolved scientific problems as a condition of accepting something that is already well enough warranted on reasonable application of inductive principles. That is, it is well established on billions of test cases without significant exception, that FSCO/I is a reliable sign of design as cause.
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To suddenly demand that design thinkers must solve any number of unsolved scientific questions or the evidence already in hand will be rejected, is a sign of selective hyeprskepticism and a red herring tactic led away to a strawman misrepresentation, not a case of serious and cogent reasoning. >>
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(*And yes, AF, I am modifying French-style quote marks to account for the effect of the Less Than sign in an HTML-sensitive context. No need to go down that little convenient side-track again twice within a few days. Especially, as someone by your own testimony apparently living in a Francophone area.)
NB: BA77’s comment at 17 is worth a look also. Let’s clip in modified French style, that he may clip and run that readeth:
>> Mr. Fox, it seems the gist of your eight ‘questions’ from ten years ago is that you doubt whether or not information, as a distinct entity, is even in the cell? In fact I remember many arguments with neo-Darwinists on UD, not so many years back, who denied information, as a distinct entity, was even in the cell. Is this still your position? If so, may I enlighten you to this recent development???,,,
Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram – Sebastian Anthony – August 17, 2012
Excerpt: A bioengineer and geneticist at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have successfully stored 5.5 petabits of data — around 700 terabytes — in a single gram of DNA, smashing the previous DNA data density record by a thousand times.,,, Just think about it for a moment: One gram of DNA can store 700 terabytes of data. That’s 14,000 50-gigabyte Blu-ray discs… in a droplet of DNA that would fit on the tip of your pinky. To store the same kind of data on hard drives — the densest storage medium in use today — you’d need 233 3TB drives, weighing a total of 151 kilos. In Church and Kosuri’s case, they have successfully stored around 700 kilobytes of data in DNA — Church’s latest book, in fact — and proceeded to make 70 billion copies (which they claim, jokingly, makes it the best-selling book of all time!) totaling 44 petabytes of data stored.
http://www.extremetech.com/ext…..ingle-gram
That DNA stores information is pretty much the mainstream position now Mr. Fox,,,
Venter: Life Is Robotic Software – July 15, 2012
Excerpt: “All living cells that we know of on this planet are ‘DNA software’-driven biological machines comprised of hundreds of thousands of protein robots, coded for by the DNA, that carry out precise functions,” said (Craig) Venter.
http://crev.info/2012/07/life-is-robotic-software/
That information is a distinct entity in the cell is pretty uncontroversial Mr. Fox, so why the list of eight questions? The only question that really matters is can purely material processes generate these extreme levels of functional information? Perhaps you would like to be the first Darwinist on UD to produce evidence that material processes can produce enough functional information for say the self assembly of a novel molecular machine?>>
The much underestimated and too often derided BA77 continues at 18:
>> Mr. Fox, as to the fact that a cell contains functional information, I would like to, since Dr. Sewell approaches this from the thermodynamic perspective, point out something that gets missed in the definition of functional information in the specific sequences of DNA, RNAs, and proteins. There is a deep connection between entropy and information,,
“Is there a real connection between entropy in physics and the entropy of information? ….The equations of information theory and the second law are the same, suggesting that the idea of entropy is something fundamental…”
Siegfried, Dallas Morning News, 5/14/90, [Quotes Robert W. Lucky, Ex. Director of Research, AT&T, Bell Laboratories & John A. Wheeler, of Princeton & Univ. of TX, Austin]“Bertalanffy (1968) called the relation between irreversible thermodynamics and information theory one of the most fundamental unsolved problems in biology.”
Charles J. Smith – Biosystems, Vol.1, p259.Demonic device converts information to energy – 2010
Excerpt: “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. “This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale,” says Jarzynski.
http://www.scientificamerican……rts-inform
And what is particularly interesting about this deep connection between information and entropy is that,,,
“Gain in entropy always means loss of information, and nothing more.”
Gilbert Newton Lewis – preeminent Chemist of the first half of last century
And yet despite the fact that entropic processes tend to degrade information, it is found that the thermodynamic disequilibrium of a ‘simple’ bacteria and the environment is,,,
“a one-celled bacterium, e. coli, is estimated to contain the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Expressed in information in science jargon, this would be the same as 10^12 bits of information. In comparison, the total writings from classical Greek Civilization is only 10^9 bits, and the largest libraries in the world – The British Museum, Oxford Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Harvard Widenier Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library – have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.” – R. C. Wysong
http://books.google.com/books?…..;lpg=PA112Moleular Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: – Setlow-Pollard, Ed. Addison Wesley
Excerpt: Linschitz gave the figure 9.3 x 10^12 cal/deg or 9.3 x 10^12 x 4.2 joules/deg for the entropy of a bacterial cell. Using the relation H = S/(k In 2), we find that the information content is 4 x 10^12 bits. Morowitz’ deduction from the work of Bayne-Jones and Rhees gives the lower value of 5.6 x 10^11 bits, which is still in the neighborhood of 10^12 bits. Thus two quite different approaches give rather concordant figures.
http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~a…..ecular.htm
Moreover we now have good empirics to believe that information itself is what is constraining the cell to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium:
Information and entropy – top-down or bottom-up development in living systems? A.C. McINTOSH
Excerpt: 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=420Does DNA Have Telepathic Properties?-A Galaxy Insight – 2009
Excerpt: DNA has been found to have a bizarre ability to put itself together, even at a distance, when according to known science it shouldn’t be able to.,,, The recognition of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science. There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_…..ave-t.html
In fact, Encoded ‘classical’ information such as what Dembski and Marks demonstrated the conservation of, and such as what we find encoded in computer programs, and yes, as we find encoded in DNA, is found to be a subset of ‘transcendent’ (beyond space and time) quantum information/entanglement by the following method:,,,
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/re…..134300.htm
And yet, despite all this, we have ZERO evidence that material processes can generate even trivial amounts classical information much less generate massive amounts transcendent ‘non-local’ quantum information/entanglement,,,
Stephen Meyer – The Scientific Basis Of Intelligent Design
https://vimeo.com/32148403Stephen Meyer – “The central argument of my book is that intelligent design—the activity of a conscious and rational deliberative agent—best explains the origin of the information necessary to produce the first living cell. I argue this because of two things that we know from our uniform and repeated experience, which following Charles Darwin I take to be the basis of all scientific reasoning about the past. First, intelligent agents have demonstrated the capacity to produce large amounts of functionally specified information (especially in a digital form). Second, no undirected chemical process has demonstrated this power. Hence, intelligent design provides the best—most causally adequate—explanation for the origin of the information necessary to produce the first life from simpler non-living chemicals. In other words, intelligent design is the only explanation that cites a cause known to have the capacity to produce the key effect in question.”
Verse and Music:
John 1:1-4
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.The Afters – Every Good Thing – Lyric Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY2ycrpbOlw >>
Joe puts in a good knock at 25:
>>Earth to Alan Fox,
Neither you, Shallit, Elsberry nor the NCSE need concern yourselves with CSI. That is because all of you can render CSI moot just by stepping up and demonstrating that blind and undirected processes can account for what we call CSI.
It is that simple- demonstrate blind and undirected processes can produce CSI and our argument wrt CSI, falls.
However seeing that you all are nothing but cowards, you won’t do that because that means actually having to make a positive case. And everyone in the world knows that you cannot do such a thing.
The point being is that your misguided attacks on ID are NOT going to provide positiove evidence for your position. And only positive evidence for blind and undirected processes producing CSI is going to refute our arguments. >>
I picked back up from BA77 at 26:
>> BA77: The connexion between entropy and information is indeed important. I like the expression of it that runs like: the entropy of a body is the average missing info to specify the exact microstate of its constituent particles, that exists if what one knows about the system is the thermodynamic macrostate defined by its macro-level thermodynamic properties. This of course implies the degree of freedom or lack of constraint on the particles, and links to the situation where a rise in entropy is often linked to a rise in disorder, a degradation of availability of energy. >>
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And, dear Reader, what do you think AF’s answer is, several days later on this the 19th of April in this, The Year of Our Risen Lord, “dos mil trece” [= 2013]?
Dead silence, and heading off to other threads where he thought he could score debate points.
(In short, he raised dismissive talking points and stayed not for an answer. Sad.)
Let us hope that headlining the above will at least allow others who need and want such, to find a reasonable summary answer to the NCSE talking points. END
PS: Dembski and Luskin have responded at one time or another to the S-E team, try here and here (part II here; complete with with AF popping up here at no 3).