Probability

Part two of my series looking at Jeffrey Koperski’s paper ‘Two Bad Ways to Attack Intelligent Design and Two Good Ones’ is now up on my blog. This one is quite in depth, but a couple of interesting issues come up along the way. I examine the concept of soft and hard anomalies in scientific theories and how they might affect theory change. I then look at the claim that ID’s scientific core is too meagre to be considered serious science. The final objection I analyse is the claim that ID violates a metatheoretic shaping principle known as scientific conservatism. In part one of this series looking at Jeffrey Koperski’s paper, Two Bad Ways to Attack Intelligent Design and Two Read More ›

Recently a criticism was leveled against Dembski’s 2005 paper Specification: the pattern that signifies intelligence. As is often the case, if you read the criticism carefully, you will realize that, even though he says Dembski is wrong, it turns out that the more exacting answer would favor Dembski’s conclusion more strongly, not less.
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That is, why inferring design on functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information, e.g.: and equally: . . . makes good sense. Now, overnight, UD’s Newsdesk posted on a Space dot com article, Is Our Universe a Fake? The article features “Philosopher Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University.” I think Bostrom’s argument raises a point worth pondering, one oddly parallel to the Boltzmann brain popping up by fluctuation from an underlying sea of quantum chaos argument, as he discusses “richly detailed software simulation[s] of people, including their historical predecessors, by a very technologically advanced civilization”: >>Bostrom is not saying that humanity is living in such a simulation. Rather, his “Simulation Argument” seeks to show Read More ›

I want to draw readers’ attention to a great debate that recently took place at the University of Texas at Dallas, between Blake Giunta, the founder of a recently-developed online apologetics resource called “TreeSearch“, and Justin Schieber, the host of the Reasonable Doubts radio show and podcast. Blake posted a postmortem review of the debate at his website. That, along with a video of the debate itself, can be found here. I highly recommend watching this debate for yourself and reading the summary over at the TreeSearch website. Blake is an up-and-coming intellectual who is supportive of ID (this comes out in the debate) and has shown himself to be widely read, thoughtful and reflective, and winsome in his approach. I am sure we Read More ›

In the How is ID Different thread, we can see a very significant exchange well worth headlining as it lays out what is at stake: MF, 28:  . . . Why is my prior for a Christian God effectively zero? Because I see zero evidence for it. What is the probability of something existing for which there is no evidence? I would say that it is effectively zero given the infinite range of things that might exist but for which there is no evidence. By effectively zero I mean that rationally it should be discounted as a possibility and that it is lower than any number you can give – although it is conceivable so I am reluctant to say Read More ›

Here. (HT: VJT, also, Charles Babbage.) Video: [vimeo 17960119]