Questions in evolution: How do jellyfish, crustaceans and beetles just suddenly appear?

_{Denyse O'Leary

January 3, 2008

The Design of Life}

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Animals suddenly appear … and after that nothing much happens. Why? How?

Read the latest post, linked above, at The Design of Life blog and help me think about this. (Currently, I am learning to cope with the fact that Alley Oop has been lying to me for, like, tens of thousands of years, so I can use the help wth thinking.)

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Comments

(aiguy:) The definition of “quarterback” is fairly well articulated, so it is easy to evaluate the range of abilities required to qualify something as being a “quarterback”, and to see that skin color and gender are not relevant. But what, pray tell, are the qualifications for being an “intelligent agent”, and how do we evaluate them when there is no specific agent to examine Here was your original comment: You may call human beings “intelligent agents” if you’d like to, but that doesn’t somehow define what it means to be an “intelligent agent”, nor does it establish that intelligent agents can be anything other than biological organisms - the one and only type of “intelligent agent” that we know about. So somewhat confusingly you say "intelligent agent" has no meaning with which I somewhat agree, but then you imply only biological organisms can be intelligent agents, a term which you just said has no meaning. You imply it would have to be established or proven that something non-biological could be intelligent, and this seems analogous to someone saying, "until I actually see a black quarterback, I'll assume blacks can't play quarterback". Isn't the burden of proof on that individual to state to begin with the causal link between skin color and quarterback ability. It seems the burden of proof is on you to state the link between biological status and intelligence or design capability. The point was that the Design Inference does not just imply an “intelligent agent”, it implies “biological agent” just as strongly. Since it is logically impossible for a biological organism to have created the original biological organism, the Design Inference fails. OK I actually see your point, here - "In every instance in which the identity of the creator of a complex artifact was known, that creator was a biological organism." As for AI: AI seeks to answer the question “What level of competence can be achieved by a computer in some particular set of mental tasks?”. Nobody knows the answer in general, but most ID folks deny that computers can ever achieve “real” intelligence. They are instead supposedly nothing but “conduits” of the CSI from the programmer. I find this ridiculous: Computers can learn to perform complex behaviors (including design tasks), just like humans can. Why would we consider the human intelligent and not the computer? I quite agree. A computer and a human or both physical mechanisms, and we gauge their intelligence by the complexity of their behaviors. Whatever created us is a physical mechanism. Shouldn't we gauge its intelligence by the same standard? And just for the record for anyone else reading this, its not that I don't believe in a transcendent eternal God. But of necessity every physical entity is created by whatever physical conditions and natural laws preceded it. Of necessity we were all created by a physical mechanism, e.g. dna, cellular division, etc. But certainly there was a physical mechanism that preceded that, and so on. According to basic algorithmic information theory, if f(x) outputs y, then f(x) is an alternate encoding for y, i.e., f(x) and y are in a sense the same thing, and one cannot be more improbable or complex than the other. So just the fact that we exist is demonstrating that something directly analogous to us preceded us, imo. Though maybe this is vacuous, who knows. Just to articulate my position a little further, I think the original physical mechanism was a universe 50 billion light years across seething with energy. Its output: some very unusual activity on an incredibly miniscule little speck call the Planet Earth. If all that energy was not used for anything of significance, then why does it exist.JunkyardTornado_{January 6, 2008
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Nobody knows the answer in general, but most ID folks deny that computers can ever achieve “real” intelligence.
Do you have names or is a bald assertion the best you can do? It is true that IDists say the CSI in and generated by computers can be traced back to the programmer, but I have never read any IDists deny that computers will ever gain real intelligence. So perhaps you have a reference.
The point was that the Design Inference does not just imply an “intelligent agent”, it implies “biological agent” just as strongly.
That may be what YOU infer, but ID makes no such implication (about a biological agent).Joseph_{January 6, 2008
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aiguy, Thank you for proving that you are an intellectual coward: aiguy- one last question yes or no: Does it matter to an investigation whether or not that which is being investigated arose via agency involvement or nature, operating freely? Answer that so I know if you are connected to reality. A YES or NO question was asked to which aiguy responded with:
The answer is that it is important to determine if a human being caused something to happen, rather than something else causing it.
So it isn't important to know if some non-human agency caused something to happen? Not only is that wrong but just how can one tell if the agency was human or not without direct observation or designer input?
As for “agency”, and “counterflow” and “nature operating freely”, I think police detectives aren’t generally interested in these metaphysical concepts at all.
No one cares what you think. I happen to know for a fact that forensic scientists require the knowledge of what nature, operating freely is capable of. The same goes for archaeologists and fire investigators. Atchaeologists look for counterflow- they call it "work"- to make their determination. The same goes for any design-centric venue. Ya see neither "counterflow", "agency" nor "nature, operating freely" are metaphysical concepts. They are reality as they all exist and all can be accounted for during an investigation. And one more thing: The ONLY way to make ANY determination about the designer(s) or the specific process used, in the absence of direct observation or designer input, is by studying the deesign in question. IOW reality again demonstrates that one does not have to know anything about the designer(s) in order to first determine design and then study it. Therefore anyone saying that we must have knowledge of the designer doesn't know what they are talking about, Ya see if we had knowledge of the designer then we wouldn't have a design inference- design would be a given. Anyone asking for knowledge of the designer is NOT interested in science as they want proof. and the following really shows how detached from reality you are: And ONE MORE TIME- both IC and CSI can be tested empirically- just show that nature, operating freely can produce either.
When a human being generates CSI/IC, for all you can show, that is nature, operating freely, producing CSI/IC.
Only if it can be shown that humans arose via nature, operating freely. Which brings us back to refuting ID. Just show that living organisms can arise from non-living matter via purely tochastic processes and ID falls. We make cars and nature, operating freely cannot. IOW we go beyond what nature, operating freely is capable of.
When a lightning bolt strikes from a cloud, is that beyond what nature, operating freely, is capable of? Of course not, since clouds are part of nature, right?
It's because no agency involvement was required- THAT is why it is nature, operating freely.
Well, when a human makes a car, that is also nothing but nature operating freely, since humans are part of nature too.
Thank you for proving you are a waste of time. Humans are part of nature in that they exist in nature. However that is very different from nature,operating freely producing humans- which is what you need in order to say "nature, operating freely, produced cars".
You may disagree and wish to imagine that humans are not part of nature, but that is not something we can settle by looking at scientific evidence.
Let's look- Nope there isn't any scientific data which demonstrates that living organisms arose from non-living matter via purely stochastic processes. IOW we don’t have to know anything about the designers in order to infer design.
I disagree: There are no instances of anybody ever discovering “design” without having some knowledge or making some knowledge-based assumptions regarding what the “designer” was.
There are plenty of examples- Stonehenge- it took us years of investigation to come up with what little we have. Murders- there are many unsolved murders- meaning we don't know who did it. Nasca, Peru- again it took us years to make determinations about the designers. Easter Island- same thing- years of investigation before we figured out who did it. [quote]The conclusion that something was designed can be made quite independently of knowledge of the designer. As a matter of procedure, the design must first be apprehended before there can be any further question about the designer. The inference to design can be held with all firmness that is possible in this world, without knowing anything about the designer.—Dr Behe[/quote] [quote]As a scientific research program, intelligent design investigates the effects of intelligence and not intelligence as such.- Wm. Dembski page 33 of [i]The Design Revolution[/i][/quote]Joseph_{January 6, 2008
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Ai Guy: Just a quick note, re your comment in 62:
what, pray tell, are the qualifications for being an “intelligent agent”, and how do we evaluate them when there is no specific agent to examine?
Try for a 101-level starter my discussion here in my always linked, e.g.:
. . . First, let us identify what intelligence is. This is fairly easy: for, we are familiar with it from the characteristic behaviour exhibited by certain known intelligent agents -- ourselves. Specifically, as we know from experience and reflection, such agents take actions and devise and implement strategies that creatively [NB: key word!] address and solve problems they encounter; a functional pattern that does not depend at all on the identity of the particular agents. In short, intelligence is as intelligence does. So, if we see evident active, intentional, creative, innovative and adaptive [as opposed to merely fixed instinctual] problem-solving behaviour similar to that of known intelligent agents, we are justified in attaching the label: intelligence. [Note how this definition by functional description is not artificially confined to HUMAN intelligent agents: it would apply to computers, robots, the alleged alien residents of Area 51, Vulcans, Klingons or Kzinti, or demons or gods, or God.] But also, in so solving their problems, intelligent agents may leave behind empirically evident signs of their activity; and -- as say archaeologists and detectives know -- functionally specific, complex information [FSCI] that would otherwise be improbable, is one of these signs. This preliminary point immediately lays to rest the insistent assertion that inference to design is somehow necessarily "unscientific" -- as such is said to always and inevitably be about improperly injecting "the supernatural" into scientific discourse . . . For, given the significance of what routinely happens when we see an apparent message, this is simply not so; even though certain particular cases may raise the subsequent question: what is the identity of the particular intelligence inferred to be the author of certain specific messages? (In turn, this may lead to broader, philosophical; that is, worldview level questions. Observe carefully: such questions go beyond the "belt" of science theories, proper, into the worldview issues that -- as Imre Lakatos reminded us -- are embedded in the inner core of scientific research programmes, and are addressed through philosophical rather than specifically scientific methods.) . . . . the key insight of Cicero [C1 BC!] is that, in particular, a sense-making (thus, functional), sufficiently complex string of digital characters is a signature of a true message produced by an intelligent actor, not a likely product of a random process. He then [logically speaking] goes on to ask concerning the evident FSCI in nature, and challenges those who would explain it by reference to chance collocations of atoms. That is a good challenge, and it is one that should not be ducked by worldview-level begging of serious definitional questions or -- worse -- shabby rhetorical misrepresentations and manipulations . . .
Does that help just a bit, in the real world of intelligent thinkers who start from examples and look at family resemblances and other abstract inferences, to see what is entailed by the core of a concept? In particular, we have no reason to infer that embodiment in a material body is a requirement of intelligent agency or more broadly of mind. Indeed, see if you can spot the self-referential incoherence and its root in a "little error at the beginning" in this choice bit of evolutionary materialist thinking by Sir Francis Crick:
The Astonishing Hypothesis is that "You," your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. 1 Free Will is, in many ways, a somewhat old-fashioned subject. Most people take it for granted, since they feel that usually they are free to act as they please. While lawyers and theologians may have to confront it, philosophers, by and large, have ceased to take much interest in the topic. And it is almost never referred to by psychologists and neuroscientists. A few physicists and other scientists who worry about quantum indeterminacy sometimes wonder whether the uncertainty principle lies at the bottom of Free Will.2 ... Free Will is located in or near the anterior cingulate sulcus. ... Other areas in the front of the brain may also be involved. What is needed is more experiments on animals [The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, NY, 1993, pp. 3, 265, 268.]
If you can't spot it right away, think about what Phil Johnson said Sir Francis should preface his writings and Nobel Prize lecture with:
“I, Francis Crick, my opinions and my science, and even the thoughts expressed in this book, consist of nothing more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.” . . . “[t]he plausibility of materialistic determinism requires that an implicit exception be made for the theorist.”
Hope that helps . . . GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{January 6, 2008
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ari-freedom, No contradiction. AI research is aimed at answering questions, and our ability to conduct AI research is not predicated on the truth of functionalism (or any particular theory of mind). If functionalism is true, cognition is algorithmic. In that case, "strong AI" could be achieved in digital computers. But maybe thought requires some special non-algorithmic quantum effects, so we would have to harness that same physics in order to build an artificial thinking machine. Or, maybe there is a non-physical component that isn't even part of the physical universe at all, and we can never capture that property in anything we build. Nobody knows the answer. But the Design Inference attempts to reason from our experience, and in our experience, all intelligent agents are biological organisms. There is no empirical evidence that anything but living animals can think. If you are going to base your reasoning on our experience, then the Design Inference implies that biological organisms must have been responsible for creating original life, which isn't possible. So the Design Inference must not be a reliable way to reason about the causes of complexity based on our experience.aiguy_{January 6, 2008
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62 aiguy aren't your 2nd and 3rd paragraphs contradictory?ari-freedom_{January 6, 2008
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Q, BarryA Intelligence, and its relationship to cause and effect, can be studied without directly studying a specific agent. First, I don't understand what it means for intelligence to have "a relationship to cause and effect". I thought "intelligent causation" was a type of cause. In any event, I'm also not sure what you mean by studying intelligence without studying actual intelligent agents. Can you give me an example of what you mean?aiguy_{January 6, 2008
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JunkyardTornado, ...nor is it established that quarterbacks can be anything other than white men... The definition of "quarterback" is fairly well articulated, so it is easy to evaluate the range of abilities required to qualify something as being a "quarterback", and to see that skin color and gender are not relevant. But what, pray tell, are the qualifications for being an "intelligent agent", and how do we evaluate them when there is no specific agent to examine? Would AI even exist if the assumption were made that only biological organisms could be intelligent. Nobody is making this assumption. The point was that the Design Inference does not just imply an "intelligent agent", it implies "biological agent" just as strongly. Since it is logically impossible for a biological organism to have created the original biological organism, the Design Inference fails. As for AI: AI seeks to answer the question "What level of competence can be achieved by a computer in some particular set of mental tasks?". Nobody knows the answer in general, but most ID folks deny that computers can ever achieve "real" intelligence. They are instead supposedly nothing but "conduits" of the CSI from the programmer. I find this ridiculous: Computers can learn to perform complex behaviors (including design tasks), just like humans can. Why would we consider the human intelligent and not the computer? Because the computer was designed by a human? Does that mean humans are not intelligent if they are designed by a Designer?aiguy_{January 6, 2008
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We make the ID reference on living things *precisely* because we can describe molecular machines in the language of engineers. We're not saying "oh, look at that amazing geewhiz thing in that cell that does who knows what." We know exactly how to recognize the structure because we've already designed similar structures. Design is design whether it is from 5 days ago or 500 million years ago. Darwin on the other hand inferred evolution out of ignorance because in his day, the cell appeared to be nothing more than a blob of jello. It is ID that is based on what we do know instead of what we don't know and just assume to be the result of blind forces, really tiny changes and millions and zillions of years.ari-freedom_{January 5, 2008
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Q: "Intelligence is a property of the agent - as you said, it is an intelligent agent. Intelligence, and its relationship to cause and effect, can be studied without directly studying a specific agent." Agreed.BarryA_{January 5, 2008
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(aiguy:) ... nor does it establish that intelligent agents can be anything other than biological organisms - the one and only type of “intelligent agent” that we know about. ... Simply knowing that all designers in our experience are biological creatures provides a wealth of information about what might be responsible for interesting things we find in the world. Suppose some time in the seventies, out on a front porch late one evening in Tupelo MS, the following statements were made in response to someone who said he had heard the new QB in Tampa, Doug Williams, was black: ...nor is it established that quarterbacks can be anything other than white men - the one and only type of “quarterback” that we know about. Simply knowing that all quarterbacks in our experience are white men provides a wealth of information about what might be responsible for interesting things we find in the world. Good argument? No offense, and you probably think its a softball question anyway. (I believe I read it somewhere before.) Would AI even exist if the assumption were made that only biological organisms could be intelligent.JunkyardTornado_{January 5, 2008
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A mountain climber has his arm trapped under a pile of rocks that collapsed on him. He cuts his arm off to get free. "Evolution" in action.ari-freedom_{January 5, 2008
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Jerry, What about when an archaeologist offers an explanation of design? Does that make Stonehenge more understandable? Can you make heads or tails out of that structure now that it has been determined to be an artifact? You seem reluctant to take this point about archaeology: You can look at every archaeology paper ever published, and not a single one will ever mention anything about "intelligent agency" or "an intelligent designer". Instead, archaeologists study the artifacts of human beings. You may call human beings "intelligent agents" if you'd like to, but that doesn't somehow define what it means to be an "intelligent agent", nor does it establish that intelligent agents can be anything other than biological organisms - the one and only type of "intelligent agent" that we know about. More bald assertions. We learn what designing agencies can do and we learn what nature, operating freely can do and we couple that knowledge. No, we learn what specific organisms do, not "designing agencies". We have knowledge of what humans do, and other animals, but there is no scientific knowledge of "designing agencies". Philosophers endlessly debate what it means to be an "agent" (as they have for thousands of years), but there is no scientific knowledge regarding "agents". All science knows about is specific animals and their particular mental abilities. JERRY: For example it [design] tells me that perhaps the genomes are readable codes- just like the codes humans design. AIGUY: I think it became evident that DNA carried a code without any notion of “design” or “intelligence”. JERRY: Are being purposely obtuse? No one has yet deciphered any genome. We do not know what makes a cat a cat other than a she-cat mates with a tom. You've missed the point, which was that everybody understood that DNA did in fact encode information for proteins even before they deciphered how transcription and translation worked, and what each of the codons meant. Nobody needed to assume an Intelligent Designer to know that they were looking at a genetic code. IOW we don’t have to know anything about the designers in order to infer design. I disagree: There are no instances of anybody ever discovering "design" without having some knowledge or making some knowledge-based assumptions regarding what the "designer" was. Simply knowing that all designers in our experience are biological creatures provides a wealth of information about what might be responsible for interesting things we find in the world. Let me put this as clearly as I can: You divide the world into two types of causation that are fundamentally, qualitatively, and even ontologically distinct: One type of cause is physical (what you call "nature operating freely") and the other type of cause is mental (what you call "agency" or "intelligence" or "counterflow"). This is a metaphysical stance that philosophers call "dualism", and there is no scientific evidence that it is true. It might be true, and it might not be, but nobody has ever figured out a way to test it, and so it remains the subject of philosophical and religious debate. Any theory that relies on the truth of dualism (as your view of ID does) therefore cannot be supported by empirical data; it is just a metaphysical belief. And ONE MORE TIME- both IC and CSI can be tested empirically- just show that nature, operating freely can produce either. When a human being generates CSI/IC, for all you can show, that is nature, operating freely, producing CSI/IC. We make cars and nature, operating freely cannot. IOW we go beyond what nature, operating freely is capable of. When a lightning bolt strikes from a cloud, is that beyond what nature, operating freely, is capable of? Of course not, since clouds are part of nature, right? Well, when a human makes a car, that is also nothing but nature operating freely, since humans are part of nature too. You may disagree and wish to imagine that humans are not part of nature, but that is not something we can settle by looking at scientific evidence. aiguy- one last question yes or no: Does it matter to an investigation whether or not that which is being investigated arose via agency involvement or nature, operating freely? Answer that so I know if you are connected to reality. The answer is that it is important to determine if a human being caused something to happen, rather than something else causing it. As for "agency", and "counterflow" and "nature operating freely", I think police detectives aren't generally interested in these metaphysical concepts at all.aiguy_{January 5, 2008
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jerry:
I suggest you read Behe’s book, The Edge of Evolution. When you do you will understand the issue of triviality.
If your explanation of it is anything to go by, then I'm not sure it would be worth my time to be reading about specious claims of triviality. As I said, it's merely a semantic argument that is devoid of any real substance.
It is discussed in detail. Behe uses the analogy of the Arms Race and trench warfare. The Arms Race builds to get an advantage while the trench warfare destroys to get an advantage.
Argument by analogy is a poor substitute for basic scientific research. Unfortunately, it seems to be all that ID has to offer. There is no positive evidence, or at least it seems nobody cares to actually address this key issue. It's fine to make a distinction between arms races and trench warfare, but unless you can demonstrate that this distinction in inherent in biological change, then the application of the analogy is arbitrary and fallacious.
Your nylon example is definitely in the trench warfare domain where some function in the genome is modified for the worse but has a temporary advantage in some other area. The anti freeze modification certainly did not build anything but did have an advantage for this particular environment but that is all. There was no building on it.
Here, I have to question your basic understanding of evolution. As I said earlier, it's naive to assume that any modification must be purely advantageous in all possible contexts. The nylonase-containing Flavobacteria may only have a selective advantage in a certain situation, but that is in fact the point. Natural selection is dependent on the environment! To address your second point, I have to say it once again shows a lack of understanding. I hope for ID's sake that Behe doesn't reflect this same lack of understanding. It's absurd to say that the mutations responsible for the novel anti-freeze protein did not "build" anything. Of course something was "built", unless by that mean that it is not a structural protein. Proteins do not have all have to be structural proteins to be of any importance to the organism. In fact, it is incorrect to assume that the "purpose" (for lack of a better word, since such a term can only be applied post hoc) of evolution is to build things. The "purpose" is to offer a survival advantage to organisms. You cannot assume that evolutionary mechanisms must exist to satisfy Behe's aesthetic sensibilities.
Biology is full of complex systems. How were they built? No explanation is forthcoming and Intelligence could definitely build them so that is why we accept it as a possible explanation if no other empirically based argument is available. We do not accept assertions or speculations.
May I amicably point out the hypocrisy of your last statement? You are perfectly willing to make unsubstantiated assertions about "triviality" and to speculate on the existence of an intelligent agent, and yet your claims are pathetically devoid of any experimental evidence. To say there are no forthcoming explanations is a baseless assertion. The explanations are there. They may not be complete or perfect, but they cannot be discounted. To say that "Intelligent could definitely build them" is an utterly vacuous claim. If you can point to any positive experimental evidence that conclusively shows that "Intelligence" (whatever that may be) actively participates in generating biological novelty, then I will graciously retract my statement. Thus far, all that ID has offered is an argument from ignorance. It is meaningless for ID proponents to say that the presence of Design in nature is positive evidence for ID, because the distinction between apparent design and "Intelligent" design is currently untestable and unverifiable.
There are various levels of complexity and your examples are at the bottom of the scale. If you cannot understand this then the debate is hopeless.
This debate may be hopeless, only for the fact that I cannot fathom the need to impose artificial and arbitrary restrictions on biological change. Your arguments seem primarily based on how you think evolution ought to function, rather than how it does function. Of course, if you can reliably demonstrate that nature respects the limits that Behe invokes, then I'm all ears. In this case, it is the ID proponents who are doing all the asserting without the required scientific evidence.
The fossil record argues against the small change paradigm,
How can it? Each geological layer is a snapshot of millions of years of evolutionary history. How can you possibly deduce what has happened in a few short generations? I should also remind you that punctuated equilibrium is NOT saltationism. Nonetheless, where is the positive evidence for ID?
every study of highly reproductive organisms argues against gradualism.
How so? And again, where is the positive evidence for ID from these studies? Thus far, you're simply creating a false dichotomy between a strawman version of gradualism and ID, in the hopes of supporting your position simply by attacking the strawman.
As I have said there is no evidence for it and is only accepted because Darwin said it and all the faithful who pray at Darwin’s feet must accept it or else be excommunicated. It looks like you are trying to avoid excommunication by spouting the doctrine of the Darwin faithful. Keep the faith.
???xcdesignproponentsists_{January 5, 2008
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BarryA, in 20, posted "ID posits that certain effects are best explained as the result of acts by an intelligent agent. It does not go further than that to study the intelligent agent itself. Therefore, to say that ID has no idea what intelligence is is beside the point." (emphasis added) I agree with you that ID has limits in how far it can probe into the nature of some causality. However, I think it is a limitation on investigating the agent, and not of investigating intelligence. Intelligence is a property of the agent - as you said, it is an intelligent agent. Intelligence, and its relationship to cause and effect, can be studied without directly studying a specific agent. My point is that ID can investigate and explain what is intelligence without being able to describe the agent that elicits that intelligence. It might even be that the principles of ID depend upon having a strong idea of what intelligence is.Q_{January 5, 2008
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One wouldn’t investigate a murder if natural causes were found.
Perhaps the victim was killed by a chimpanzee - that would not be a murder, but would it be “natural causes”?
Stop changing what I post and focus on what I post. Once a natural cause is found then no one investigates a murder. Got it. What about when an archaeologist offers an explanation of design? Does that make Stonehenge more understandable? Can you make heads or tails out of that structure now that it has been determined to be an artifact?
Again, we can learn to recognize what human beings make (or what beavers or bees or termites make), and we don’t mistake what a human might make for what a bee might make. We don’t identify “intelligence” this way, we simply apply our knowledge of what different sorts of things various entities build, so we can recognize their work.
More bald assertions. We learn what designing agencies can do and we learn what nature, operating freely can do and we couple that knowledge. Who cares what it tells YOU? It tells me quite a bit. For example it tells me that perhaps the genomes are readable codes- just like the codes humans design.
I think it became evident that DNA carried a code without any notion of “design” or “intelligence”.
Are being purposely obtuse? No one has yet deciphered any genome. We do not know what makes a cat a cat other than a she-cat mates with a tom. aiguy of design detection:
Sorry, you missed my point. They DO infer that humans are or are not responsible for various events. They do NOT infer that humans are anything but natural systems, and they do NOT make the more general inference that “intelligent agents” (rather than specifically human beings) are responsible.
1- with a beaver dam humans were not respoinsible. however upon first encountering one we may make that mistake. SETI- again no humans involved with the transmitting signal. IOW we don't have to know anything about the designers in order to infer design. And ONE MORE TIME- both IC and CSI can be tested empirically- just show that nature, operating freely can produce either. That is instead of continuing to argue from ID ignorance. That is why when someone demonstrates that living organisms can arise from non-living matter via purely stochastic processes ID will be falsified.
I don’t understand this either - ID could be true even if living organisms can arise from non-living matter via stochastic processes. A designer could choose to design some things and let these processes design other things, no?
You don't understand it because you refuse to read any pro-ID literature. Dembski goes of this, as does Behe. Ya see once it is shown that living organisms can arise from non-living matter via stochastic processes Occam's Razor slices off the requirement for a designer. And if you can't understand that simple and basic fact then debating this with you is more useless than I thought. Except that we have first-hand accounts of agencies tracending nature, operating freely. IOW no speculation required.
I can’t imagine what you are referring to here. Do you mean psi phenomena such as telekenesis or something? How else do you think we can demonstrate this sort of contra-causal free will in action? Are you familiar with the research into volition?
We make cars and nature, operating freely cannot. IOW we go beyond what nature, operating freely is capable of. Main Entry: tran·scend Pronunciation: \tran(t)-?send\ Function: verb Etymology: Middle English, from Latin transcendere to climb across, transcend, from trans- + scandere to climb — more at scan Date: 14th century transitive verb 1 a: to rise above or go beyond the limits of b: to triumph over the negative or restrictive aspects of : overcome c: to be prior to, beyond, and above (the universe or material existence) 2: to outstrip or outdo in some attribute, quality, or power intransitive verb : to rise above or extend notably beyond ordinary limits aiguy- one last question yes or no: Does it matter to an investigation whether or not that which is being investigated arose via agency involvement or nature, operating freely? Answer that so I know if you are connected to reality.Joseph_{January 5, 2008
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xcdesignproponentsists, I suggest you read Behe's book, The Edge of Evolution. When you do you will understand the issue of triviality. It is discussed in detail. Behe uses the analogy of the Arms Race and trench warfare. The Arms Race builds to get an advantage while the trench warfare destroys to get an advantage. Your nylon example is definitely in the trench warfare domain where some function in the genome is modified for the worse but has a temporary advantage in some other area. The anti freeze modification certainly did not build anything but did have an advantage for this particular environment but that is all. There was no building on it. Biology is full of complex systems. How were they built? No explanation is forthcoming and Intelligence could definitely build them so that is why we accept it as a possible explanation if no other empirically based argument is available. We do not accept assertions or speculations. There are various levels of complexity and your examples are at the bottom of the scale. If you cannot understand this then the debate is hopeless. No one is denying that changes cannot happen. It is just that you or no one else in evolutionary biology have ever presented anything but the trivial. You do not build complex systems with these trivial changes even with billions of years. You have to show the changes can be built and not just speculate. All your doing is asserting. And by the way that is nearly all that evolutionary biology has are assertions or just so stories. No empirical evidence. If you want to justify the doctrine of small changes or gradualism then you have to provide examples where small changes did something that is non trivial. We have asked for such evidence here for years and we are still waiting. The fossil record argues against the small change paradigm, every study of highly reproductive organisms argues against gradualism. As I have said there is no evidence for it and is only accepted because Darwin said it and all the faithful who pray at Darwin's feet must accept it or else be excommunicated. It looks like you are trying to avoid excommunication by spouting the doctrine of the Darwin faithful. Keep the faith.jerry_{January 5, 2008
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jerry (part 3):
I am sorry but this is a fabrication. You just cannot make an assertion and expect we will accept it. The fact that all you came up with are the nylon enzyme and the anti freeze protein proves the point.
My statement is true, unless you are using an arbitrary definition of "novelty". The examples I brought up were just that - examples - and so are not meant to be an exhaustive summary.
The standard evolutionary framework cannot account for anything that is not trivial. The best you could provide was trivial so we will stick to the best explanation we know, intelligence.
Unfortunately, your usage of the word "trivial" here is rather er, trivial, as I pointed out in my first response to you. Furthermore, it's laughable to say that "intelligence" is the best explanation we know, as thus far you've been unable to offer any serious evidence to show that it is responsible for any biological evolution.
The standard argument is that deep time will cure everything but you need examples not just assertions. What evidence is there that changes happened over deep time? I will give you a hint, there is none. Only assertions and just so stories. So don’t resort to deep time unless there is some corroborating examples.
The issue of geological time scales is definitely pertinent to understanding evolution, and I'm not using time simply as a meaningless buzzword like "intelligence". I find it rather ironic that you've implied that. I'll ask once again: what prevents progressive small-scale changes from resulting in large-scale changes over time? Unless you believe that this process of gradual evolutionary change was non-existent for large periods of time, then it is inevitable that small cumulative changes will result in large-scale changes. For experimental evidence of how gradual changes can bring about novelty over large periods of time, please refer to the paper by Ortlund et al. in the Sep 14 issue of Science.
Hey this is my pet hypothesis but I would never use the word “only” which your included. If I used it then I retract it. This hypothesis makes sense according to neo Darwinian processes which will eliminate genes from the gene pool over time and fix other alleles over time. That is standard modern synthesis. So I am just extrapolating it to say that it might explain a lot of the sub species seen in many species or genera.
I apologize if I put words in your mouth. I agree that the loss of genes does occur, in some sort of "pruning" process. However, I take issue with your belief that the standard evolutionary mechanisms cannot account for novelty. In fact, a large number of the genes within your own body are presumably the result of gene duplications and divergence. Would you go as far as to say that none of these have contributed in any signficant way to our evolution?
I consider these one mechanism, namely neo Darwinian processes. I am making the point that there is much more than neo Darwinian processes involved and that neo Darwinism accounts for only the trivial. If you can, show us otherwise. We are all ears and eager to learn. But so far all you are doing is making our case by not being able to show anything that is not trivial.
I've already addressed this issue twice, so will not go into detail again. The two examples I have provided are not the only examples. I could, for example, mention the evolution from monochromatic to colour vision, but there's a possibility that you will reject it as being a non-trivial novelty.xcdesignproponentsists_{January 5, 2008
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jerry: (part 2):
How did insects, birds and bats get wings to fly.... {snip}.....ID is mainly interested in the area of macro-evolution where new systems arose and has less of an interest in how specific families of species arose. Though there is an interesting hypothesis that could support ID that applies to this latter problem which I have mentioned above.
Some of the questions you have raised are undoubtedly on the minds of evolutionary biologists, and I doubt you'd find any of them making any definitive statements of exactly how certain novelties arose. However, I must address this issue of speculation. Indeed, there is a lot of speculation as to how certain systems may have evolved, but it is not "pure" speculation in the nature of a just-so story. We have reliable evidence suggesting that mutation and selection can result in evolutionary change - most ID proponents will concede that. We know that these mechanisms are capable of producing novel alleles, proteins and species. It has not been clearly demonstrated that these mechanisms are incapable of producing the types novelty you are proposing. It is therefore reasonable to infer that these said mechanisms play a part in their evolution. However, it is unreasonable to invoke an unfalsifiable mechanism such as an "intelligent agent" in order to explain these novelties. That in my opinion is pure speculation.
So now I hope you have a better understanding of what ID calls novelty. I hope you see that nylon eating eukaryotes and anti freeze genes don’t make the cut. More later.
Unfortunately, it seems as though your definition "novelty" is a circular one that you do not believe "Neo-Darwinism" can account for. I've already expressed my disagreement with ID proponents discounting the nylon-digesting bacteria and notothenioid anti-freeze protein as examples of biological novelty, so I won't say much about that again. I will simply conclude by saying that (i) my request for positive evidence for ID's solution to the questions raised in the original blog post remains unfulfilled; (ii) many of the arguments raised so far are simply semantic ones which impose arbitrary rules on what constitutes "novelty" or "gain of information", which may have little relevance to the real world.xcdesignproponentsists_{January 5, 2008
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jerry:
Thank you for supporting my case despite the bold lettering. Usually I add the comment trivial to what neo Darwinism can do in terms to making constructive improvements in a genome. You, alas, have provided trivial examples so it looks like you are in sync with my usual comments that neo Darwinism cannot do anything except the trivial. Sometimes the trivial has some good effects and you point out two such cases, the nylon enzyme due to a frame shift and the anti-freeze protein that seems to be due to some added codons to a normal protein.
I apologize for accidentally bolding my previous response to you in it's entirety. I will also apologize for respectfully declining your gratitude, because the examples I have provided do not lend support to your position. I don't know by what objective criteria you are deeming the two examples I have provided as being "trivial". If I were a notothenioid fish (who could think like a human) living in Antarctic waters, an anti-freeze protein would be far from "trivial". This is not an issue about aesthetics; you do not need to be awed by these evolutionary novelties in order to recognize their biological signficance. They both indicate that evolutionary mechanisms CAN bring about novelty.
1. The bug went from 100% efficiency to 2% efficiency to metabolize.
To metabolize what?
2. The bug lost genetic info as a result of a frameshift.
Which bug are you referring to here? The Flavobacterium or the Pseudomonas strain? Either way, even if genetic information was lost there is a clear gain of genetic information from the novel nylonase enzymes. (Assuming of course, that we are defining information in a way that is relevant to biological change.)
3. The bug has a lower reproductive rate and efficiency. 4. The bug cannot survive amongst the parent species.
The beneficial nature of any mutation is dependent on the context. So with regards to point 4, it would be important to indicate whether you mean they cannot survive amongst the parent species in sewage drains from nylon factories or in a lab petridish with a nutrient medium. Also, it is perfectly understandable that any biological novelty can have its drawbacks. It's overall benefit is determined by the organism's environment. Place a winged creature in a zero-gravity environment, and the benefits of its wings would be diminished. It is both absurd and naive to assume that evolution on any scale occurs with purely beneficial changes.
5. The bug acquired no functional divergence. An increase of information requires functional divergence without information loss. Going from metabolic function to metabolic function is not considered functional divergence. Going from, say, a sequence that codes for a metabolic function to a sequence that codes for oxygen transport would be considered ‘functional divergence.’ ”
Why must an "increase in information" require functional divergence, as you define it? More importantly, how is this superfluous jargon relevant to begin with in actual biological systems? My point is that you can create all sorts of criteria for what constitutes "an increase in information" without it having any actual relevance to real world biological systems. Your argument is unfortunately spilling into the murky waters of semantics. I could claim that the evolution of wings is an example of functional divergence from "non-flight" to "flight", but I could just as easily point out that the evolution of wings offers no functional divergence, as it is simply going from one form of "locomotion" to another. Nonetheless, the evolution of the anti-freeze protein in notothenioids should presumably satisfy your definition of "functional divergence".
The changes made are common types of changes but are classified as trivial because it is still a simple protein.
Once again, what is "trivial" or "non-trivial" is not about aesthetics. With respect to real biological systems, it is about a survival advantage within a given environmental context. Calling anti-freeze proteins "trivial" merely amounts to shifting goalposts or handwaving. Ultimately, Behe's position still reverberates a lack of positive evidence for ID. Can he or any other proponent of ID demonstrate conclusively that standard mechanisms of mutation can NOT result in large protein complexes like haemoglobin?xcdesignproponentsists_{January 5, 2008
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I think that JunkyardTornado and aiguy should go off to their own little room together and they can decide if anything such as intelligence exists of if a definition for intelligence exist. This presumes that either one of them is intelligent or has intelligence and if they do, how would they know?. It seems that to ID, intelligence is a nonmaterial attribute, a binary property not attributable to the physical world. Either you have intelligence or you don't. So both Einstein and an autistic severly retarted child have this essential attribute. But what about animals? It seems either ID must marginalize the accomplishments of animals and claim they don't really produce CSI, or attribute animal behavior as well to this mysterious non-physical attribute "intelligence". Others have observed that in the ID ontology, intelligence is really just a special category of chance, because the output of intelligence cannot be predicted based on any laws, natural or otherwise, and thus is by defintion random. Anything determined by natural laws is not intelligent according to ID. The question arises, if intelligence is non-physical, then how do we measure differences in intelligence. How can a person have more of something that is not physical. If you're talking about animals I personally would define intelligence as merely the complexity of behavior. The more complex an animal's behavior is the more intelligent it is. I would also directly tie this definition to the size of algorthmic description of an entity. The more complex an entity's behavior, the larger a program it takes to describe it. At any rate, I would tie intelligence to physical things that can be measured. If you're talking about the God of the Bible who fills the universe and is infinite, it seems ridiculous to talk about him having "intelligence" as if we could measure his I.Q. Oh well, I don't really feel like I'm completely on my game here.JunkyardTornado_{January 4, 2008
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xcdesignproponentsists, You said: "Let’s not forget that the standard evolutionary framework can in fact account for novelty, and examples are documented in the literature." I am sorry but this is a fabrication. You just cannot make an assertion and expect we will accept it. The fact that all you came up with are the nylon enzyme and the anti freeze protein proves the point. The standard evolutionary framework cannot account for anything that is not trivial. The best you could provide was trivial so we will stick to the best explanation we know, intelligence. you said "Over geological time scales, the apparent “tinkering” that we are able to observe in real time over a much shorter period of time would not be mere “tinkering”. Obviously the rate of evolution is probably not constant, but unless you are implying that populations are not continually evolving, then what is preventing any large-scale changes from occurring over a period of time?" The standard argument is that deep time will cure everything but you need examples not just assertions. What evidence is there that changes happened over deep time? I will give you a hint, there is none. Only assertions and just so stories. So don't resort to deep time unless there is some corroborating examples. You say "“Devolution”? Can you support your assertion that the modern synthesis only results in devolution? " Hey this is my pet hypothesis but I would never use the word "only" which your included. If I used it then I retract it. This hypothesis makes sense according to neo Darwinian processes which will eliminate genes from the gene pool over time and fix other alleles over time. That is standard modern synthesis. So I am just extrapolating it to say that it might explain a lot of the sub species seen in many species or genera. Behe is saying that the more reproductive events one can add to an analysis the more one will have information on the ability of neo Darwinian processes to add to a gene pool or not. I am just hypothesizing that there won't be much and in fact most sub species will represent loss information from the population and not new information. In the near future there will be ways to answer this as more and more genomes get sequenced with multiple members of a population. You said: "Of course, and most evolutionary biologists would acknowledge that. The only question is with respect to the relative importance of each mechanism e.g. natural selection or genetic drift in accounting for evolutionary change. " I consider these one mechanism, namely neo Darwinian processes. I am making the point that there is much more than neo Darwinian processes involved and that neo Darwinism accounts for only the trivial. If you can, show us otherwise. We are all ears and eager to learn. But so far all you are doing is making our case by not being able to show anything that is not trivial. Sorry everybody for the long posts.jerry_{January 4, 2008
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xcdesignproponentsists, You said: "What do you mean by “novelty?" I have a standard answer that is a little long but here goes because it will lead into my next post which is a follow up to it. After the Cambrian there is a lot of macro evolution and it is purely speculation as to how it occurred. A lot of the debate in the popular press is how did one species arise from another species when there are substantial functional differences between them. This is the major league of macro evolution. How did insects, birds and bats get wings to fly, how did land creatures develop oxygen breathing systems or how did man get such a big brain and why such a long time for children to develop and where did consciousness come from. How did 4 chamber hearts and warm vs. cold blooded arise. How did birds develop their unique oxygen transport system. Dembski and Wells offers what they call major adaptive systems that require the coordinated development of several systems such as are in a giraffe to enable its long legs, long neck etc to function together. A human has over 220 different cell types and only about 40 existed during the Cambrian era. Where did all these new cell types come from. There is a lot more but this gets to the issue. There is lots of speculation but no evidence, only a series of “just so” stories. An occasional fossil is brought up to show the progression ignoring the fact that there had to be tens of thousands of other steps for these progressions of which only a handful have been found. In other words how did unique functional systems arise. There is another part of this discussion which I call macro-evolution light. This is how did a lot of the orders and families develop? For example, within Carnivora how did all the families arise? ID seldom cares about this area but evolutionary biology does. I don’t think ID would care much if someone showed how all the family canidae or felidae arose by gradualistic approaches but yet the evolutionary biologists would claim that would be a major verification of their theory. ID is mainly interested in the area of macro-evolution where new systems arose and has less of an interest in how specific families of species arose. Though there is an interesting hypothesis that could support ID that applies to this latter problem which I have mentioned above. So now I hope you have a better understanding of what ID calls novelty. I hope you see that nylon eating eukaryotes and anti freeze genes don't make the cut. More later.jerry_{January 4, 2008
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xcdesignproponentsists, Thank you for supporting my case despite the bold lettering. Usually I add the comment trivial to what neo Darwinism can do in terms to making constructive improvements in a genome. You, alas, have provided trivial examples so it looks like you are in sync with my usual comments that neo Darwinism cannot do anything except the trivial. Sometimes the trivial has some good effects and you point out two such cases, the nylon enzyme due to a frame shift and the anti-freeze protein that seems to be due to some added codons to a normal protein. Here is a post by Patrick, one of the moderators on this site, earlier this year about the nylon eating enzyme "Sounds a lot like the nylon bug always being touted. In the case of the nylon bug, information was lost and the new enzyme was many times less efficient than its precursor, making the minor advantage null. 1. The bug went from 100% efficiency to 2% efficiency to metabolize. 2. The bug lost genetic info as a result of a frameshift. 3. The bug has a lower reproductive rate and efficiency. 4. The bug cannot survive amongst the parent species. 5. The bug acquired no functional divergence. An increase of information requires functional divergence without information loss. Going from metabolic function to metabolic function is not considered functional divergence. Going from, say, a sequence that codes for a metabolic function to a sequence that codes for oxygen transport would be considered 'functional divergence.' " Something can be said also for the anti freeze gene you touted. It was covered in detail in Behe's book, the Edge of Evolution. This gene does in fact represent a change in a protein that has the effect of preventing water from freezing. So it allows fish to survive in sub freezing temperatures of Antarctic waters. There is a similar change in Arctic waters. But both changes are changes in an original protein that added certain sequences to the protein that enabled it to prevent freezing. The changes made are common types of changes but are classified as trivial because it is still a simple protein. Behe describes it like adding lubricant to a machine when there are proteins such as hemoglobin which have very complex functions or multi-protein systems that are common in nature. You see ID does accept trivial changes by neo Darwinian mechanisms. That is what the Edge of Evolution is all about, how much can neo Darwinian processes change a genome. It is just that these changes are limited. This post is long so I will answer your other questions in further posts. But thanks again for supporting our point of view.jerry_{January 4, 2008
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Jerry, I don't think we'll progress much beyond this point. To you, the words "intelligent agency" seem like a perfectly reasonable scientific theory all by themselves. To me (and to most scientists) it sounds perfectly vacuous for scientific purpose, unless and until you provide at least some sort of information about what you mean. If there is some testable, canonical definition of "intelligent agency" that ID will stand behind, then we could evaluate the claims of ID.aiguy_{January 4, 2008
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BarryA: Thank you for your response. However, as you expected I will have to say that you are not offering anything about the ID position itself, but merely attacking Darwinian evolution. I would even contend that you are merely attacking a caricatured version of Darwinian evolution. You have created a false dichotomy between this version of Darwinian evolution and Intelligent Design with the hopes that attacking the strawman will lend support towards your position. That's not the case. Even if gradualism were not the rule, this does not imply that ID is correct since saltationism could occur by naturalistic means. Nonetheless, I should point out that punctuated equilibrium is not the same as saltationism. In fact, it would be difficult to make that conclusion going by the fossil record since it represents geological time scales.xcdesignproponentsists_{January 4, 2008
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jerry:
In the Design of Life, Dembski and Wells argue there are two types of evolution, creative evolution and evolution that is consistent with the modern synthesis. I believe the first accounts for novelty, variation in the gene pool and what we observe in the fossil record when a new species shows up. The second accounts for fixed morphologies that is called stasis in the fossil record.
What do you mean by "novelty"? Do you not consider the evolution of nylon-digesting bacteria, evolution of anti-freeze protein in notothenioid fish, etc to be forms of novelty? There are several mechanisms ranging from simple point mutations to exon shuffling to gene duplications that are capable of generating novelty. Hence, why the need to create this dichotomy between the modern synthesis, and what ID proponents term "creative evolution"?
The mechanism of creative evolution is unknown but the best explanation is some form of intelligence was involved.
If the mechanism is unknown, then why create an arbitrary distinction. Let's not forget that the standard evolutionary framework can in fact account for novelty, and examples are documented in the literature. I am not denying that unknown mechanisms for evolutionary change may exist - however, there is no evidence to suggest that they are necessarily intelligent processes.
The second form of evolution is the tinkering of the gene pool of a species by natural processes that allows adaptation to environmental changes and keeps a species from becoming extinct and adds to the variety of life we see on earth with minor differences between varieties of species. When observed in the fossil record there is no substantial morphological change but more than likely there were small differences that allowed the species to persist for longer periods of time as environmental conditions changed. We see the same thing today in the number of varieties of birds and fishes that thrive in different environments.
Over geological time scales, the apparent "tinkering" that we are able to observe in real time over a much shorter period of time would not be mere "tinkering". Obviously the rate of evolution is probably not constant, but unless you are implying that populations are not continually evolving, then what is preventing any large-scale changes from occuring over a period of time?
More than likely the modern synthesis represents a devolution of the gene pool over time as species adapt to new environments while the mechanism of creative evolution was able to substantially add to the gene pool with major novelty.
"Devolution"? Can you support your assertion that the modern synthesis only results in devolution? As I've mentioned above, there are documented cases of beneficial mutations in the literature.
So more than one mechanism is at work in evolutionary biology.
Of course, and most evolutionary biologists would acknowledge that. The only question is with respect to the relative importance of each mechanism e.g. natural selection or genetic drift in accounting for evolutionary change. Even if these mechanisms cannot account for the degree of evolution evident in the fossil record, it would be a false dilemma to claim that this supports the ID position.xcdesignproponentsists_{January 4, 2008
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I think that JunkyardTornado and aiguy should go off to their own little room together and they can decide if anything such as intelligence exists of if a definition for intelligence exist. This presumes that either one of them is intelligent or has intelligence and if they do, how would they know? The rest of us can wait till someone else raises an intelligent question and try to answer it. Remember my comment here is not intelligence based but the product of natural laws and chance so should anyone try to reply to it they should understand they are just talking to the wind generating stuff like a hillside, a 747 or a random comment.jerry_{January 4, 2008
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JunkyardTornado, So does than mean that whatever built the lifeforms of this earth was a living animal. I guess you would say that life wasn’t designed, but isn’t a hill shaped or “designed” by wind and erosion and whatever other natural causes to which we attribute its shape. I think we are in agreement: ID cannot logically say life was originally created by a living organism, but living organisms are the only thing we know of (discounting evolutionary mechanisms) that can generate complexity such as we see in living things. ID attempts to generalize humans into a class of "intelligent agents", and suggest there may be other members of this class. But there is no empirical support for this, neither in terms of operationalized definitions of intelligent agency nor in terms of actual examples. Joseph, Except that we have first-hand accounts of agencies tracending nature, operating freely. IOW no speculation required. I can't imagine what you are referring to here. Do you mean psi phenomena such as telekenesis or something? How else do you think we can demonstrate this sort of contra-causal free will in action? Are you familiar with the research into volition? That is why when someone demonstrates that living organisms can arise from non-living matter via purely stochastic processes ID will be falsified. I don't understand this either - ID could be true even if living organisms can arise from non-living matter via stochastic processes. A designer could choose to design some things and let these processes design other things, no? I have already defined agency, ie intelligence, as that which can create counterflow... (And what does “nature operating freely” mean?) What nature can do without agency involvement. Ok, let's see if I have your view straight here. "Agents" act by means of "intelligence". "Intelligence" is defined as that which can create "counterflow". "Counterflow" is defined as "other than nature operating freely". And "nature operating freely" means "not caused by agency". The problem is that you have defined all of these terms with respect to each other, but none of these concepts can actually be accessed empirically. Here is what I mean: You claim that only "intelligent agents" can create CSI/IC. Now, how can we decide if you are right or not? Say I have something (called "X") next to me, and I observe that X is capable of creating CSI/IC. In order to test your claim, I'd like to use your definitions to decide if X is intelligent. In order to decide that, I need to see if X is capable of "counterflow", right? OK, how do I go about deciding if X is capable of "counterflow"? (And please don't tell me that it must be capable of counterflow, since that would be a perfectly circular argument). AIGUY: None of these specialists ever actually infers anything about “nature operating freely”, nor do they ever infer anything about “intelligent agency” in the abstract. JOSEPH: That is EXACTLY what they do. Do you think they flip a coin? Sorry, you missed my point. They DO infer that humans are or are not responsible for various events. They do NOT infer that humans are anything but natural systems, and they do NOT make the more general inference that "intelligent agents" (rather than specifically human beings) are responsible. Who cares what it tells YOU? It tells me quite a bit. For example it tells me that perhaps the genomes are readable codes- just like the codes humans design. I think it became evident that DNA carried a code without any notion of "design" or "intelligence". What about when an archaeologist offers an explanation of design? Does that make Stonehenge more understandable? Can you make heads or tails out of that structure now that it has been determined to be an artifact? Again, we can learn to recognize what human beings make (or what beavers or bees or termites make), and we don't mistake what a human might make for what a bee might make. We don't identify "intelligence" this way, we simply apply our knowledge of what different sorts of things various entities build, so we can recognize their work. One wouldn’t investigate a murder if natural causes were found. Perhaps the victim was killed by a chimpanzee - that would not be a murder, but would it be "natural causes"?aiguy_{January 4, 2008
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What does it mean to “intelligently design” something? To you, it apparently means transcending physical causation, operating outside of “nature operating freely”.
To design something can mean several things- one is to bring something from nothing. That is to build a car where no car existed before. It is to use nature in ways nature could not.
And what does “nature operating freely” mean?
What nature can do without agency involvement. Perhaps you should start at the beginning and read "Nature, Design and Science: The Status of Design in Natural Science" by Del Ratzsch. Then get back to me.Joseph_{January 4, 2008
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