Who’s the Designer?

“”"There is no scientific evidence (that I’m aware of) that would point us, even remotely, in the direction of the designer’s identity.”"”

I just presented a philosophy paper at a conference on Saturday addressing essentially this same question. I might post it to the IDURC group if you’d like to read it.

To put it shortly though, you can objectively assign certain characteristics to the “cause” of mathematical systems based on the “effects” we study in deductive reasoning. From this, we can then go to science (inductive reasoning) and assign more characteristics based on more causes, only these are more subjective empirical effects. Most subjectively is natural history, but it also allows us to examine the characteristics of the “cause.”

It is entirely necessary to identify characteristics of any cause involved in scientific research. The question is the extent of those characteristics which effect physical phenomena.

-Matthew

Actually I’m glad you made a post like this just now, because I’ve begun reading Dembski’s ‘The Design Revolution’. It’s thought-provoking, at the least.
Anyway, _if_, as ID claims, there exists in nature positive, conclusive evidence for design, I don’t think one has to know the identity of the designer per se. You don’t have to know whether it’s God or aliens or whatnot. What you do have to come up with, however (still assuming that the ‘design inference’ is really as conclusive as ID claims) is some testable claims about the way the designer operates. Otherwise, you have no way to distinguish between a designer and non-intelligent processes, known or unknown. It isn’t good enough to say, “All the natural processes we know of won’t explain this, so we’ve got to fall back on design.” If you don’t lay down some specific claims about methods and manner of design, you have no falsifiability, because design in general, especially of the supernatural variety, is compatible with any set of observations. That’s why, as Dembski points out, the non-optimal nature of many biological systems is evidence against scientific creationism, but not evidence against ID as it currently stands. At the moment, there are far too few specific predictions made by ID. Many ID ‘predictions’ are not only not exclusive to ID, but are at least equally likely under evolution. For instance, the Wiki article on ID predictions includes this:

“In general, vestigial organs will yield some function for the organism.”

Well yes, but evolution predicts the same thing. If an organ is completely useless, natural selection is likely to get rid of it. Vestigial organs are indicative of common descent not because they are without function, but because they perform *different* functions from analogous organs in related taxa.
This prediction is a little better:

“Much so-called “junk DNA” will turn out to perform valuable functions.”

This is perhaps more indicative of ID than common descent, but as it stands the great majority of the ‘junk DNA’ is still, as far as we know, junk. We’ll just have to wait and see just how much more turns out to have function.
Other predictions are more of this variety:

“Informational structures beyond the inherent abilities of blind natural forces and random chance will be found.”

Can someone please tell me what the *inherent* abilities of these processes are? As I’ve said to Nathan before, we’re extrapolating from much too small a sample set of here when we talk about the abilities and limits of natural processes and intelligence. We know of exactly one class of designer: humans. How can we tell which parts of our designs are indicative of design in general, and which indicative of specifically human design? How can we tell which aspects of natural processes are indicative of the limits of such processes everywhere, and which indicative of the limits of the specifically terrestrial variety?

First, Intelligent Design puts forth the “false dichotomy” that any evidence against natural selection is evidence for ID. This is a logical fallacy. There might be other alternatives—Rupert Sheldrake’s “morphological fields,” for example. If you take away the negative evidence, no one has put forth any positive scientific evidence at all to support ID.

Second, it is not possible to detect design without knowing at least sdome characteristics of the designers—and ID supporters refuse to do that. ID’s favorite example of design, Mt. Rushmore, would be seen as random rocks by the space aliens of Chrichton’s “Andromeda Strain,” for
example. Archeologists can detect human artifacts only because they know the capabilities and goals of human beings. ID merely assumes without evidence that the Designer is very much like a really advanced human being.

Third, ID theoretician William Dembski defines “intelligence” as the power to choose between available alternatives. Well, Darwinian natural selection can do that. When someone argued that point on Dembski’s blog recently, she was banned from the site. (So don’t look for it; it’s gone into the howling ether.)

Finally, when you see all the scientists who work in biological research support evolution, and essentially the only people in the ID camp are those who have no relevant background, you really have to wonder. Sure, a number of computer programmers and civil engineers sign up for ID—but they don’t know anything about biology. You’d think MDs might know a lot, but one of the big issues currently is how little actual biology is taught in med school. (My youngest daughter is an MD.)

Fom a logical or scientific standpoint, ID has no right to be considered a sceintific theory.

ID’s favorite example of design, Mt. Rushmore, would be seen as random rocks by the space aliens of Chrichton’s “Andromeda Strain,” for
example.

Exactly! How do we distinguish between what is characteristic of human design, and what is characteristic of design in general? Without more examples of designers, we have no way to do that.
The main prediction of ID, as I have heard it elucidated by Nathan and Matthew, as well as proponents like Meyer, Dembski, and Behe, is supposed to be that there exist structures that natural processes can’t explain. But this isn’t a prediction at all! It would be like saying, before relativity, that Newton’s theory of gravity couldn’t explain the orbits of galaxies, and thus intelligent falling must be responsible. If there’s something we don’t know, the answer is “We don’t know,” not “God did it”. ID has to be more than a fallback position when we can’t explain something with KNOWN processes.

George,

Maintaining that “design” is somehow an illegitimate classification of processes is, for lack of a better word, ridiculous. It would be like me saying that nuclear physics is wrong because we only observe it in certain types of physical systems, i.e. the nucleus of atoms, and I want to see it everywhere else before I believe it. That would be self-defeating to its causal link with the class of phenomena.

Furthermore, the continual suggestion that disproving (stochastic)/(simple deterministic) origins of biocomplexity doesn’t prove non-stochastic/non(simple deterministic) origins is logically absurd. Are you suggesting that besides “A” and “not A” there is a third option?

So, who’s the designer(s) … Irrelevant to the evidence of design. Do I need to know the designer of human artifacts? True, being human, I can see forms and functions that I can equate with design, since I have similar designing inclinations. It is possible to apply the same logic to biologic designs, since similar operational and formative features are found there. We designed a camera lense with similar features of a vertebrate eye, and would have employed those features without having seen the biologic one first. Since we have ourselves to view as a model of a designer, we have justification for postulating the same for biologic forms. It is a valid proposition, even without the existing negative evidence for macroevolution.

Matthew, you have set up a couple of strawmen. Knocking them down does not advance your argument.

First, no one said that “design” is an illegitimate classification of processes in general. The much more restricted statement made above is that no one has presented any positive scientific evidence for design _of_biological_organisms_ (other than through the intelligence of natural selection). The only evidence for ID (excluding natural selection as a form of intelligence) is that we do not yet know exactly how some aspects of evolution have occurred. Archeology and forensic science do classify some processes as designed—although only as designed by human beings.

Second, the “logically absurd” allegation rests upon an implied assumption that has no warrant. You equated “stochastic” with “evolution” for origins of biological complexity. While the sources of variation (mutation, duplication, frame-shifting, recombination, etc.) may have stochastic components, natural selection is directed toward the goal of increased fitness in the particular environment of an organism. Natural selection is thus not stochastic. In fact, natural selection may be considered a form of intelligence acting upon the choices presented by random variation.

To return to Brian’s original question, you have not shown that we can detect design without identifying characteristics and attributes of the designer.

Olorin,

Actually he did suggest that it is an illegitimate classification within science. Re-read his post.

Secondly, you continue to miss the point. When working with a closed system a deduction allows proof by contradiction, and this is what we are working with (unless you can demonstrate otherwise).

And lastly, the claim that natural selection is not stochastic. It is an undirected physical system, so it is a combination of stochastic variation and deterministic selection. The point is that the nature of the deterministic selection itself is stochastic, so it cannot work towards a specified outcome. I.e. natural selection selects for lowest energy state (for equivalent efficiency), but efficiency is determined by a functional relationship with a stochastic environment – thus the stochastic selection.

-Matthew

Matthew:

It would be like me saying that nuclear physics is wrong because we only observe it in certain types of physical systems, i.e. the nucleus of atoms, and I want to see it everywhere else before I believe it.

It strikes me that is rather like what you are saying, when you contend that it is unreasonable to extrapolate observed evolutionary processes to explain the whole diversity of life.

Furthermore, the continual suggestion that disproving (stochastic)/(simple deterministic) origins of biocomplexity doesn’t prove non-stochastic/non(simple deterministic) origins is logically absurd. Are you suggesting that besides “A” and “not A” there is a third option?

No, I am suggesting that you are extrapolating a small and not necessarily representative subset of “A” to stand for all of “A”, and likewise for “not A”. I am suggesting that proving the inability of known natural processes to generate biochemical complexity (which I do not concede has been done) does not prove the inability of ALL such processes to do the same.

BTW, Matthew, I think we got off to a bad start. I found the tone of your guest article condescending, and responded in kind; but I admit I probably took your intentions wrongly. I’m sure if Nathan gets along with you I can too.

Lee:

Do I need to know the designer of human artifacts? True, being human, I can see forms and functions that I can equate with design, since I have similar designing inclinations. It is possible to apply the same logic to biologic designs, since similar operational and formative features are found there. We designed a camera lense with similar features of a vertebrate eye, and would have employed those features without having seen the biologic one first. Since we have ourselves to view as a model of a designer, we have justification for postulating the same for biologic forms.

I don’t believe we can apply the same logic to biology. First, it begs the question of how we know an artifact is human-made. Do we identify features that signify design in general? Or do we look for features that are specifically human, relying on context? I would argue it’s the latter, and I believe most archaeologists would agree with me. They don’t look for complex specified information. If they found a stone with the letter “B” on it, they would no doubt conclude it was human-made. But why? It’s fairly specific, but not very complex. We can identify the artifact because we know it’s the sort of thing humans make. Such an artifact is in no way characteristic of intelligence, at least not devoid of context; perhaps on another planet insects trace the same symbol blindly in a mating dance. Here’s what ID proponents seem unwilling to ask: how do we distinguish between features typical of design in general, and those typical specifically of human design? How do we distinguish between the limits of natural processes we know, and the limits of natural processes in general? Is the letter “B” signifying of intelligence *because* it signifies humans, or does it signify intelligence on its own? I argue that we can tell ‘human design’ from non-’human design’, not design in general from non-design.

Matthew:

Secondly, you continue to miss the point. When working with a closed system a deduction allows proof by contradiction, and this is what we are working with (unless you can demonstrate otherwise).

But we aren’t working with a closed system. Unless you claim we know the full range of creation possible to all natural processes?

And lastly, the claim that natural selection is not stochastic. It is an undirected physical system, so it is a combination of stochastic variation and deterministic selection. The point is that the nature of the deterministic selection itself is stochastic, so it cannot work towards a specified outcome. I.e. natural selection selects for lowest energy state (for equivalent efficiency), but efficiency is determined by a functional relationship with a stochastic environment – thus the stochastic selection.

But biological systems are *only* specific with respect to their environment in the first place (unless of course they were in fact designed, in which case they are specific in the sense that they are pre-specified- but we can’t assume this specificity if we wish to prove they were designed in the first place). Natural selection only causes small, temporary increases in efficiency for any given population relative to the environment, because the environment *itself* (I’m speaking here of living competitors in the environment, not such things as weather or other non-biological environmental factors) increases in efficiency with respect to this population. We humans, or any other modern ‘higher’ lifeforms, are hardly more suited to our present environment than the most primitive ancient single-celled ancestor. The specificity of biology is relative.

Lee Bowman asks, “Do I need to know the designer of human artifacts” in order to know that they were designed? He might not need to know whether Mike or George designed them, but he does need to know that some human being designed them.

Finding similarities between human artificats and biological systems is spurious. A vertebrate eye has similarities to a camera lens because of the laws of optics. But there are still many differences. The eye’s lens changes shape to accommodate various distances, while a camera lens varies lens distance to the film. The eye’s lens focuses over its diameter by optical-index gradients over its surface, while the camera lens has a constant index and relies upon a highly accurate shape. Oh—and biological systems can’t seem to organize multiple-lens systems, such as cameras use to great advantage in zoom lenses. Then, of course, an insect’s compound eye does away with lenses entirely. And a pit viper’s infrared “eye” has only a pinhole instead of a lens.

Humans have a brain component that psychologists call the HAPD–the hyperactive pattern detector. That’s what makes you see faces in clouds and optical illusions. From an evolutionary perspective, survival favors ducking out when you see a pattern that is not actually there over sitting still when you don’t see a pattern that is there. Humans are too good at matching patterns.

Lost in all this argument is the fact that humans do in fact design artifacts quite differently from the way biological systems are built. Michael Behe’s favorite example of irreducible complexity is a mousetrap with base, spring, bait holder, and wire loop. I can tell you right away why mousetraps are designed: I have never been able to find any reproductive organs in any of the mousetraps that I have studied. No reproduction, no evolution. Simple as that. Here’s another example. Suppose you walked into your Audi dealer (my favorite, obviously), and said you want an S4 sedan, but you’d like it a couple inches longer. Before the salesman tosses you out, you explain that if you wanted a girlfriend a couple inches taller, you could easily find one. In fact, you have seen human beings grow from very tiny infants to six-foot adults. Try manufacturing a car that way.

No, picking and choosing only certain preselected similarities between human artifacts and biological systems is just like shooting arrows at a wall and then drawing targets around where they hit. You can get a bullseye every time that way, but it proves nothing. You need to know the designer before you can detect design.

Nathan asks, “Who’s Brian? Did I miss something?”

Sorry, Nathan. I meant you. Never was any good with names.

We may be wandering away from your original question, which I’ll rephrase here as: Is there such a thing as “design” in the abstract, or can we detect design only in relation to a particular designing entity or class of entities? My answer is still that there is no such thing as design in the abstract. Intelligent designers are Platonists; I’m not, and Platonism has pretty much gone by the boards in post 17th Century science.

Not to start another topic, but I’ll also back a rrelated proposition that there is no such thing as “meaning” in the abstract, that meaning applies only to a particular organism (or other system) to which a phenomenon means something. So, for example, when intelligent design people claim that life—or design, or the universe—is meaningful, they are correct only to the extent that life has meaning to us.

Sorry, Nathan. I meant you. Never was any good with names.

I assume you meant Matthew when you said Mike, as well?

I want to address the principle concern here though. Can we detect design without knowing the identity of the designer. It could be accurately argued that one could determine some limited basic characteristics of the designer by studying the design itself.

But that assumes the design was created by intelligence in the first place! The entire argument is whether we can detect design without knowing anything about the designer, so you can’t very well say that you can discover things about the designer by studying the design when we haven’t agreed that the design had a designer yet!

Gah. Wording that sentence made my brain hurt.

Anyway, no I don’t believe we need the identity of the designer. I do however believe that you need to make some specific predictions about how the designer operates; then we can go and test more biological systems to see if they match that prediction. Otherwise, ID is nothing more than a fallback for anything evolution purportedly cannot explain.

Good point. I guess I should have said that we can determine design by studying the systems in question. If said system is determined to possess indicating qualities, you can determine the testable characteristics of the designer by studying the nature of the system in question.

That’s reasonable. Provided we can come up with and agree on a reliable indicator of design, IF we find that biology possesses this indicator and then conclude biology is designed, we can certainly then determine aspects of the designer from the design.

But to determine whether biology is designed or not, we’re going to have to make some specific predictions about the designer’s operation. They can be fairly arbitrary predictions. No, wait, let me rephrase that. You can come up with an arbitrary hypothesis of what the designer was like, so long as it doesn’t contradict current observations, but the predictions made from that hypothesis have to be consistent within the framework of your hypothetical designer. Then if those predictions are falsified, your hypothesis is falsified; but it doesn’t falsify design in general, only the specific sort of designer you postulated.
Of course in practice you won’t want to just make up any sort of designer. You’ll want to have good reasons for your hypothesis. And obviously, the predictions can’t be things evolution already predicts-its a pet peeve of mine when creationism or ID proponents claim as evidence observations biologists had already predicted as consequences of evolution, and they do it fairly frequently.
So no, I don’t think we can detect design in general, at least not without a sample of designers and their designs that we can be reasonably certain is representative, but we certainly can detect the hallmarks of a specific designer, just as we detect the hallmarks of specifically human design.

George says, “to determine whether biology is designed or not, we’re going to have to make some specific predictions about the designer’s operation…. Then if those predictions are falsified, your hypothesis is falsified; but that doesn’t falsify design in general, only the specific sort of designer you postulated.”

Exactly right. So how _can_ you falsify “design in general”? By postulating every possible kind of designer, including those that we have no knowledge of? Even then, how do we know that the hypothesized designer was not merely made up to fit the evidence? We’re back to drawing bullseyes around the arrows in the wall. You can’t falsify a designer that you made up to fit the evidence exactly. On the other hand, if someone finds a 3 billion year old rabbit munching on a bed of trilobites, evolution has pretty well had the course.

George,

“”"It strikes me that is rather like what you are saying, when you contend that it is unreasonable to extrapolate observed evolutionary processes to explain the whole diversity of life.”"”

Not similar at all. Also, the suggestion that evolution is merely “extrapolat[ing]” to explain life demonstrates that you do not understand the nature of biology at all. I know that sounds like an insult, and I don’t mean it to, but you simply can’t understand it and suggest that. Biology so frequently has demonstrated that the direction of evolution is informationaly negative, so to suggest that it is informationaly positive is not an extrapolation but a full contradiction of processes.

“No, I am suggesting that you are extrapolating a small and not necessarily representative subset of “A” to stand for all of “A”, and likewise for “not A”. I am suggesting that proving the inability of known natural processes to generate biochemical complexity (which I do not concede has been done) does not prove the inability of ALL such processes to do the same.”

This is a valid concern. However, the classifications of “random, simple deterministic, and directed” are not small examples – they are large scale classes. All phenomena are (to date) believed to be explicable as subsets and interactions of these classes.

While you may certainly propose that some kind of process may exist which is neither random, nor simple deterministic, nor directed, it would be a radical knew kind of reality.

“”"BTW, Matthew, I think we got off to a bad start. I found the tone of your guest article condescending, and responded in kind; but I admit I probably took your intentions wrongly. I’m sure if Nathan gets along with you I can too.”"”

Because I suggest that atheism is a subjective belief system that leads to blatant rejection of reality? Please don’t take that as an insult – it is actually quite the compliment, because I am amazed at how intelligent many atheists (like yourself) are… Which further compounds my confusion as to how you can reject logic so profusely.

Also, please keep in mind I am quite the jovial friendly fellow. I just tend to write quite emphatically.

“”"But we aren’t working with a closed system. Unless you claim we know the full range of creation possible to all natural processes?”"”

Either natural processes fall under these behavioral classes (stochastic, deterministic, etc), or they don’t. I think you are forgetting that mathematical models don’t require unlimited experimental support; just as with physics, when we determine how to classify the phenomena, we can then make deductions on further subphenomena based on these properties.

“”"The specificity of biology is relative.”"”

Exactly. The informational content does not reflect the specificity of the selection, suggesting that this deterministic selection was not responsible for the final specificity.

-Matthew

Matthew, I must take issue with your statement that “Biology so frequently has demonstrated that the direction of evolution is informationally negative….” This is a shell game fostered by ID theoreticianr William Dembski. He defines information differently from the way physics defines it (see, e.g., “Intelligent Design as a Theory of Information”, at http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm), but then he proceeds to manipulate it as though he were using the same definition. His redefinition may have been prompted by the Kolmogorov theorem of algorithmic complexity theory, which says that a system having maximum information content is in a completely random state. This is not what he wanted to hear.

Despite Dembski’s so-called “law of conservation of information,” information tends naturally to grow with time. One of the major unsolved mysteries of cosmology concerns why the universe had such a tiny amount of total information content at the big bang, compared to what it has now. In the biological field, evolutionary mechanisms increase the information of biological organisms; every mutation, every duplication, every frame shift, every transposition, every gene swap produces new information, in the sense that scientists use that term.

ID proponents have precipitated such a fogbank about this concept that it is very easy to become disoriented. Just remember that (real) Information = — k log (p), and don’t confuse “information” with “knowledge.”

Olorin:

Exactly right. So how _can_ you falsify “design in general”?

I think I was fairly clear in stating that I don’t believe you can.

Even then, how do we know that the hypothesized designer was not merely made up to fit the evidence?

Because it would not only have to fit current evidence, but make specific and unique predictions about exactly what evidence we should discover in the future.

Matthew:

This is a valid concern. However, the classifications of “random, simple deterministic, and directed” are not small examples – they are large scale classes. All phenomena are (to date) believed to be explicable as subsets and interactions of these classes.

You are again assuming that the samples of undirected processes we know of are representative of all undirected processes. Show me a proof that such processes simply cannot mathematically produce CSI. You may be interested in David Wolpert’s refutation of Dembski’s application of the No-Free-Lunch theorem (of which Wolpert is one of the developers). This is the most relevant bit to our discussion:

Perhaps the most glaring example of this is that neo-Darwinian evolution of ecosystems does not involve a set of genomes all searching the same, fixed fitness function, the situation considered by the NFL theorems. Rather it is a co-evolutionary process. Roughly speaking, as each genome changes from one generation to the next, it modifies the surfaces that the other genomes are searching. And recent results indicate that NFL results do not hold in co-evolution.

Put in simpler and more general terms, your criticisms would apply if natural selection was supposed to allow populations to rise to ever greater heights of efficiency and complexity relative to a static environment. But the environment is not static; populations tend to react to increases in efficiency by other populations in ecological niches relevant to themselves by increasing their own efficiency (speaking as though this was a conscious process is merely a way of making it easier to address the subject). Populations are able to increase complexity and function only because they leapfrog off each other.

Exactly. The informational content does not reflect the specificity of the selection, suggesting that this deterministic selection was not responsible for the final specificity.

But the informational content itself is only relative to the environment! DNA is only information insofar as it performs a function; remove it from an environment, and it is nothing more than a long string of gibberish. Complex, yes, but hardly specific.

Because I suggest that atheism is a subjective belief system that leads to blatant rejection of reality? Please don’t take that as an insult – it is actually quite the compliment, because I am amazed at how intelligent many atheists (like yourself) are… Which further compounds my confusion as to how you can reject logic so profusely.

Hmm, what logic would this be? I’ll assume for the moment that you are correct and life provides conclusive evidence for intelligence, and thus evidence for a deity of some sort. Most atheists are not scientists, just as most theists are not scientists. They thus would not fully understand the claims of either the Darwinists or the IDists, and as IDists are only a tiny (though vocal) minority in the science community, they would have no reason to accept ID’s claims. Therefore, as far as they are concerned, there is no evidence for any sort of deity. How then is it a rejection of logic, based on what they know, for them to conclude that there is no God?

Olorin,

There are lots of different definitions for “information.” That is largely irrelevant for our conversation. Yes of course, “information” in the broadest sense does grow with time. Randomization itself may even expand multiplicity, thereby expanding a potential information field.

That says nothing though, because we are not discussing information content strictly as a measure of sequence complexity.

It appears you buy into Dawkin’s (hilarious) use of sequence randomization as a means of “increasing information.” As R. Truman has already pointed out though, this is again entirely irrelevant to biology. It is much the same as the Darwinist argument that “hey, ice crystals can form by temperature fluctuations, therefore: life” – it is not the same phenomena, and this has been pointed out again and again.

As my original guest article pointed out, this is how Darwinism continues to survive: ignore the dichotomy between reality and fiction, then keep pretending you are representing reality.

George,

“”"You are again assuming that the samples of undirected processes we know of are representative of all undirected processes. Show me a proof that such processes simply cannot mathematically produce CSI. “”"

Are you now conceding that the past was not remotely similar to the present? You are welcom, of course, to concede this, but you will have lost your entire grounds for using experimental approximation for natural history.

The quote from Wolpert is, in large part, good. What is being ignored is that the variable fitness function is not just selection “towards a goal”, it is also deselection for competive efficiency.

I would be the first to defend a model if we could succesfully produce one demonstrating information generation through a stochastic/deterministic process, so please don’t think that some “ID bias” would lead me to deny such a model. Nathan can testify from our IDURC conversations that I have even been working towards classifying “intelligence” as a possible sto/det subset algorithm…

I just haven’t seen such a model, and arguments like the one you are making are forgetting a vital component: that the stochastic environment will DEselect at least as rapidly as it “pro”selects. Sadly, this has been one of the great illusions that Darwinists have held for a century and a half.

“”"How then is it a rejection of logic, based on what they know, for them to conclude that there is no God?”"”

There certainly are atheists (lots of them), who are just as ignorant as many Creationists are, and I would not blame them for being unintelligent/gullible enough to be convinced by “scientific” shows like NOVA, which are so convinced themselves of Darwinism’s truth that they will present self-contradictory evidence as support.

But I have a hard time believing you are that unintelligent. Would you also have fallen for Geocentrism back when most of the great Greek minds believed it? On the contrary, you would have (I hope) actually put them up to critical reasoning.

…Perhaps not.

Are you now conceding that the past was not remotely similar to the present? You are welcom, of course, to concede this, but you will have lost your entire grounds for using experimental approximation for natural history.

That’s not what I meant at all. I simply meant that science is very far from assembling a list of all natural phenomena currently operating on Earth, and we have no way to be certain that those we do know of are truly representative in terms of their abilities and limits. Were natural selection never discovered, even the results that you concede to it might be attributed to supernatural intervention, as its abilities are radically different from those of most other processes we know of. Unless you can exhaust all natural phenomena, and I mean all, you can’t very well conclude design on the basis that said phenomena are insufficient as explanations.

It is much the same as the Darwinist argument that “hey, ice crystals can form by temperature fluctuations, therefore: life” – it is not the same phenomena, and this has been pointed out again and again.

That example, however, is used only to illustrate a very limited point. I have never heard it used against the more formal ID arguments; rather it is typically used against less… informed creationist arguments of the type ‘order can’t come from disorder’. It’s just a very general illustration of a point which simply wouldn’t come up in the first place in a discussion between educated IDists and evolutionists.

As my original guest article pointed out, this is how Darwinism continues to survive: ignore the dichotomy between reality and fiction, then keep pretending you are representing reality.

Yeah, see it’s exactly this sort of condescension from you that ticks me off. I realize this is the internet and intent is easily muddled, but I’d appreciate it if you’d refrain from that sort of content-free accusation.

There certainly are atheists (lots of them), who are just as ignorant as many Creationists are, and I would not blame them for being unintelligent/gullible enough to be convinced by “scientific” shows like NOVA, which are so convinced themselves of Darwinism’s truth that they will present self-contradictory evidence as support.

I think you’ll have to admit that, at least if one has little education in genetics or relevant mathematics, evolution seems quite logical, whether its right or wrong. Indeed, considering that the majority of those who do have training in said fields do accept evolution, I don’t see how you can argue that you have to be unintelligent or gullible to accept evolution. If it’s wrong for the reasons you say it is, then you only have to be very, very slightly ignorant on the subject to reject ID.

George,

“”"Yeah, see it’s exactly this sort of condescension from you that ticks me off. I realize this is the internet and intent is easily muddled, but I’d appreciate it if you’d refrain from that sort of content-free accusation.”"”

If Bob was one of my students in a physics lab I am lecturing to or the mathematics lab here at the university and I continued to point out something very obvious to him about his misunderstanding (and yet he continued), I would not refrain from suggesting that it was intentional. To suggest that it was somehow unintentional would suggest poor intelligence, yet to suggest that it was intentional would suggest disingenuous behavior (something Bob would be offended at). Sadly, one of the two has to be the case.

Now I am not suggesting that all Darwinists are either stupid or deceptive – there are some genuinely interested people out there who merely don’t understand things. But there are instances where it is appropriate to point out blatantly illegitimate behavior in science, be it ignorant ID arguments or ignorant Darwinist arguments, and I apologize if describing the truth hurts your feelings (or those of the IDers/creationists).

“”"I think you’ll have to admit that, at least if one has little education in genetics or relevant mathematics, evolution seems quite logical, whether its right or wrong.”"”

!?!? I’ve had to argue with a bio professor before just to convince him that SOME mutations are beneficial, because in all his decades of bio research he had seen so many that were LETHAL. If you come out of a bio class believing in Darwinism then you have spent too much time studying conjecture and not enough time actually doing research.

“”"Indeed, considering that the majority of those who do have training in said fields do accept evolution, I don’t see how you can argue that you have to be unintelligent or gullible to accept evolution.”"”

This is a very good point. Until you actually talk to these people who “have training in said fields.” I know you probably don’t believe me, but it is quite a fun experiment: actually ask them how they explain increases in bio-complexity from what they have researched in their field. I’ve done it, and you will very quickly find that they do NOT believe Darwinism because their research confirms it – they believe it because they were taught it, and the other guys in the other department believe it.

They then teach it to you and you believe it.

This is exactly why I am challenging highly intelligent people like yourself to actually practice critical reasoning rather than being gullible.

Au contraire, Matthew #26. The definition of “information” is unitary in science. I hope you will not be designing the predictive trellis code algorithm for my next hard disk drive.

The reason we are not discussing “information content strictly as a measure of sequence complexity” is that, first, you didn’t say we were, and, second, because there is no such-a thing. This is how ID snows clueless non-scientists, by a blizzard of scientific-sounding terms with foggy definitions—or with multiple or conflicting meanings. (Please point me to your reference. The only citation Google gives me for “Dawkins” and “sequence randomization.” is to the International Journal of Impotence Research. Now that _is_ “hilarious”

As to “ignor[ihg] the dichotomy between reality and fiction,” ID pretends to ignore a Mt. Everest of facts. It becomes risible when the Discovery Institute disputes scientific evidence that would be far more than ample to sentence a criminal to death: “Yes, yer honor, there are a hundred routes the defen-dant could easily have traveled between points A and B, but we don’t know which specific combination of streets he actually did take, or whether he stopped to tie his shoes. So he probably isn’t guilty.” Uh-huh.

Here’s an analogy: Suppose you are an auto mechanic with several years of technical school, twenty years of experience, and grease up to your elbows. A computer programmer saunters in and demands that you assuage the combustion genie in his engine. He explains that a car engine can run at 6,000 rpm, much faster than he thinks any natural ignition and flamefront can possibly operate—no, an (unidentified) supernatural combustion genie has to inhabit his engine. Substitute biology researcher for auto mechanic and you might begin to understand why real scientists get hot under the collar about ID. It’s not defensiveness, it’s not arrogance, it’s not intransigence. What runs through their crania is a maxim that goes all the way back to Jeremiah: “There are none so blind as those who will not see.”

PS: Look up “confirmation bias” in Wikipedia. This is why real scientists try to reproduce each others’ work and to tear apart their colleagues’ reasoning.

Matthew:

I apologize if describing the truth hurts your feelings (or those of the IDers/creationists).

It’s not that my feelings are hurt, it’s merely that such generalizations contribute nothing to a rational discussion, and in fact hinder it. I imagine you feel similarly when Olorin makes statements of this variety:

This is how ID snows clueless non-scientists, by a blizzard of scientific-sounding terms with foggy definitions—or with multiple or conflicting meanings.

These blanket statements only serve to infuriate everyone. If you think evolutionists ignore data, point to specific instances. If Olorin thinks IDists muddle concepts, he should give examples. I’m not saying you haven’t done so, I’m just saying that it doesn’t reinforce your point to then generalize like that.

This is a very good point. Until you actually talk to these people who “have training in said fields.” I know you probably don’t believe me, but it is quite a fun experiment: actually ask them how they explain increases in bio-complexity from what they have researched in their field.

Actually, I do believe you, and have even experienced similar things with one of the biology professors at my school; several times throughout the semester, he simply lambasted creationism without spending a second discussing with the class why it was wrong. If there were any creationists/IDists in the course, he would have done nothing more than confirm their suspicions about ‘evolutionist suppression’. But while in that case it does represent a willful disregard for discourse, in most cases the problem is simply this: Evolution is a massive, massive field, with a huge number of subdisciplines. Most scientists in the field will know their own discipline thoroughly, but be comparatively vague on the details of the rest. That’s why the average biologist would find debating a leading ID proponent daunting: the majority are not credentialed in the relevant fields and likely wouldn’t have a detailed grasp of any given subdiscipline, but would have an understanding of the subject as a whole, and be armed with knowledge of perceived flaws; and our average biologist might be unable to respond to those drawn from a different portion of the theory.

!?!? I’ve had to argue with a bio professor before just to convince him that SOME mutations are beneficial, because in all his decades of bio research he had seen so many that were LETHAL. If you come out of a bio class believing in Darwinism then you have spent too much time studying conjecture and not enough time actually doing research.

That’s quite a claim, when the VAST majority of research scientists in the relevant fields do in fact believe in Darwinism.
To clarify, I’m not arguing that makes them right. I am arguing, however, that that indicates those evolutionists with relevant credentials doing relevant research must have good reasons to accept the theory. Maybe the reasons are wrong, but they must have reasons that are good at least up to a very deep evaluation.

I’ve done it, and you will very quickly find that they do NOT believe Darwinism because their research confirms it – they believe it because they were taught it, and the other guys in the other department believe it.

Right- but that’s true with most things. Every single scientist studying a theory so broad can’t possibility spend their time evaluting every single argument for and against. And their are a large number of scientists who are still doing research to confirm it- many more than there are IDists doing the opposite.

Olorin:

PS: Look up “confirmation bias” in Wikipedia. This is why real scientists try to reproduce each others’ work and to tear apart their colleagues’ reasoning.

I think you’ve set yourself up for a fall here. Matthew could easily argue, and be correct to at last some degree, that confirmation bias is exactly what the science community has succumbed to so far as evolution is concerned.

Nate:

2. Does ID need knowledge of the identity of the designer to be considered a researchable origins theory? discuss

As I said before, it doesn’t need explicit knowledge of the designer’s identity, so long as it can put forward a plausible and coherent model of the designing process which makes sufficient predictions that are both specific and unique. But if it doesn’t do so, it can’t be considered a theory by the accepted definition of the term. Nate, it seems like you agree with this; Matthew, how about you?

Aha. Another question. Nathan’s question 1 asks whether Darwinism is plausible.

First we need a definition of “Darwinism.” The Free Dictionary seems to be both comprehensive and manageably short: “A theory of biological evolution developed by Charles Darwin and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual’s ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.” Then, because the word “plausible” has several meanings, I would propose the American Heritage Dictionary’s “1. Seemingly or apparently valid, likely, or acceptable; credible.”

The next inquiry is: plausible to whom? ID’s most frequent attack on Darwinism is that it violates “common sense”—by this they seem to mean the worldly experience of the average person on the street. But a lot of scientific theories violate this sort of common sense.

Stand outside early in the morning. You will see (unless you live in Seattle) the sun rise over the horizon, travel across the sky, and descend below the horizon in the west. Yet scientists tell us that the sun does not actually move, that the earth revolves instead. This obviously violates common sense. You can’t feel the earth move. Even if it did rotate, the resulting 700mph wind would destroy everything on the earth’s surface. True, there is a prevailing wind direction—but it is in a direction opposite to that which would be caused by the earth’s rotation! Before you say that you find the earth’s rotation to be very plausible, think of a person who lived 500 years ago, before your particular common sense had had time to evolve. (And also remember that the earth’s rotation was commonly accepted by the man in the street by 1650; yet the experiments that conclusively showed this rotation were not performed until 1850—two hundred years later.) Another violation of common sense: Massive objects are attracted to each other by an unseen force without any material connection between the objects. Rubbish..

More modern theories still seem implausible. One of two twins can leave earth on a spaceship and return younger than his brother? C’mon. Yet satellite-borne atomic clocks unequivocably demonstrate this effect. Light can be both a particle and a wave at the same time, and can “know” at the time of measurement whbich form to take? Incredible. Most of the universe consistes of dark matter and energy that can’t even in theory be seen or felt? If common sense were an accurate guide to the world, we wouldn’t need scientific research.

Therefore, I think the acceptable maeasure of “plausibility” is acceptance by those whose knowledge is sufficient to evaluate the relevant physical evidence. That is, plausibility is in the eyes an an expert in the legal sense: “One who by reason of education or special experience has knowledge respecting a subject matter about which persons having no particular training are incapable of forming an accurate opinion or making a correct deduction.” (Black’s Law Dictionary, 6th Ed.)

Of course, not all experts agree on any given point. So we can only ask for a consensus among experts in biology. (No, MDs are by no means experts in this field.) The source of the following definition is not immediately to hand, but a consensus on a scientific theory is commonly understood as the point at which “the magnitude of the evidence makes it perverse to withhold assent.” Lord Kelvin was at the beginning of the 20thC perhaps the most outstanding physicist in the world; yet he refused to accept the existence of atoms until he died, several decades after a consensus had been reached. He was perverse. The Health Minister of Souith Africa refuses to accept that HIV causes AIDS. He is perverse.

Unless you and I can sift through all the scientific evidence and evaluate it as a whole for ourslves, the original question then becomes whether a consensus of experts in biological experts accepts the theory that all organisms develop through natural selection of small, inherited variations.

I think you have only to look at the numbers to decide this question. Even though appeal to scientific authority is not ultimately a valid basis for a scientific theory, it is a very strong warrant for an inference in this situation. We as laymen probably have no other recourse than to listen to what the biologists say. And the score here is on the order of 100,000 to 6..

There are reasons that scientists might lie. But such a massive preponderance of numbers makes that pretty much of a far-out conspiracy theory. What is their motivation? They’re trying to create new drugs, to build new kinds of nano-machines, to advance the state of knowledge. How long could such a structure endure if it were built on a false foundation? Scientists who find evidence against different aspects of Darwinism do not hesitate to publish it. Haekel’s ontogeny theory was destroyed around 1900. Barbara McClintock’s evidence for “jumping genes” revolutionized understanding in an entire area of biological theory. So evolution evolves. And the evidence grows daily—I read the research articles themselves in “Science”.

To turn about, ID professional proponents might lie. If you read some of their conflicting statements to different audiences, deliberate logical fallacies, suppression of contrary aruments in thier blogs, and out-of-context-quotations of scientists, this seems more likely. The main ID backer, the Discovery Institute, does indeed have a non-scientific motivation. Although they keep trying to disavow the Wedge Document, their aim then, now, and always is to replace the principle of methodological materialism in science with theistic principles. Their only research program is “secret.” No one has any idea what they’re doing. They try to convince only to laymen, and do not address scientists. That’s like Einstein taking out newspaper ads to promote his theory of relativity.

Darwin once said, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge;
it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who assert
that this or that problem will never be solved by science.” ID’s only argument is that some evidence is still out on Darwinian evolution; in the end, ID always reverts to a theory of gaps and a false dichotomy. Having looked into this question myself, coming from a background as both a graduate-degree engineer and a lawyer, having done some professional work in biotech, and being a passable Minnesota Lutheran, I personally find Darwinism an entirely comfortable fit—”plausible,” you might say. How long until everyone does? Unfortunately, probably another few decades.

==30==

George #31 responded to my comment “Look up “confirmation bias” in Wikipedia. This is why real scientists try to reproduce each others’ work and to tear apart their colleagues’ reasoning.” with his opinion that “I think you’ve set yourself up for a fall here. Matthew could easily argue, and be correct to at last some degree, that confirmation bias is exactly what the science community has succumbed to so far as evolution is concerned.”

That potential argument is what prompted the my second sentence. Researchers always try to expose the confirmation bias of their colleagues. Kim Suk Woo published amazing stem-cell results that others immediately tried to reproduce. They couldn’t. His confirmation bias (outright fraud, actually) was quickly uncovered. I worked professionally with a number of research faculty members. They love to contest a another researcher’s interpretaion of data, or to find countervailing hypotheses to explain the data. This process is what flattens confirmation bias in science—up to and including the entire Darwinian panoply, if they found any credible evidence to contradict it. The Neo-darwinian synthesis of the 1930s and ’40s resulted from just such an area-wide struggle over the mechanism of natural selection en grosse.

They love to contest a another researcher’s interpretaion of data, or to find countervailing hypotheses to explain the data. This process is what flattens confirmation bias in science—up to and including the entire Darwinian panoply, if they found any credible evidence to contradict it. The Neo-darwinian synthesis of the 1930s and ’40s resulted from just such an area-wide struggle over the mechanism of natural selection en grosse.

Fortunately, this is usually true. But not always. There is precedence for the sort of widespread confirmation bias ID advocates claim the scientific community displays towards evolution. Between the late eighteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community was that the volume of a person’s brain and their intelligence had a close positive correlation, and furthermore that ‘inferior’ races had, on average, smaller brains and thus lower intelligences. None of this is true, but the idea survived, agreed upon by virtually every respected scientist of the day, for three reasons:

1. The field of statistics had not yet been formally developed, and the math used was often either simply wrong, or improperly applied;
2. There was an utter lack of control for extraneous variables. This ties into the first problem, as well; for instance, some researchers’ samples consisted predominantly of men for ’superior’ races and predominantly women for ‘inferior’ races. Men have, on average, significantly larger brains, but this has nothing to do with intelligence. Men simply have generally larger bodies as well, and brain size does correlate to a degree with body size. Other researchers used groups such as the Pygmies for their sample of ’savage’ populations and, say, Germans for their sample of whites. Obviously the average German is much larger than most Pygmies, and thus has a larger brain. It has nothing to do with intelligence;
3. The first two reasons are simple ignorance; they are excusable, if reprehensible. But the third, and probably main, reason for this awful black mark on the history of science is that scientists everywhere simply knew that ’savages’ were not as smart as those of European stock. No one bothered to question the measurements and calculations because they agreed with what everyone thought.

Now, I’m not saying that is the case with the consensus on evolution; indeed I do not believe it is. But it is worthwhile to keep in mind how wrong we have gone in the past, that we may be on guard against the same mistakes in the future.

If anyone wants to read more about the history of Craniometry, the study of intelligence based on brain size, I strongly recommend Stephen Jay Gould’s excellent The Mismeasure of Man.

To the comment of IDers using books and newspapers to further their agenda, you must seriously be joking. ID isn’t allowed in mainstream journals, no matter how good the science.

Keep in mind, though, that it wasn’t until rather recently that any ID proponents even tried to do so; yet long before then there was a stream of pro-ID books, newspaper and magazine articles, (plus a century of creationist and ’scientific’ creationist publications before that) most of them aiming at the layman. This could be interpreted as a concern that they would not be published in scientific journals leading them to seek other media to appeal their case, but it could as easily be seen as a devious way of convincing the public without having to be judged by the scientific community.

It’s rather like the case of the boy who cried wolf. ID may be perfectly legitimate science, but you’re going to have a hard time convincing scientists of that after well over a century of creationist blather (I realize that sounds awfully like the generalizations that irritate me so much, but I think we’re all agreed here that ‘creation science’ is perfectly useless nonsense). How are you going to convince anyone that this time it’s different, when the first scientific creationists claimed the same thing to put themselves in a better light than their forbears? Especially when the IDists are still funded by the same people (I grant that if you expect to get anything done, you need funding, and the same groups who funded creationist institutes are the logical choice for that; I’m just pointing out that others won’t see it that way). I’m willing to see it either way, but things like the Wedge Document, or Behe and Dembski’s tutelage of Ann Coulter (Behe and Demsbki advised her on evolution for her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism, which is among the more disgusting pieces of tripe I’ve ever had the displeasure to read), seem to be good reasons to take the side that ID is nothing more than creationism in a new cloak. Certainly you must admit there are a good number, perhaps even a majority of IDists who see it that way? Meyer, Demsbki, and Behe may be honest scientists. I don’t know. Wells I rather doubt, and the scientific creationists to a man must be either liars or morons (there I go again, making generalizations; but the young-Earth, catastrophism, baraminology, etc., claims are so thoroughly, easily refutable by anyone with a passing knowledge of the relevant fields that I don’t believe I need waste my time on them).
Of course the motives of the proponents of any given idea don’t actually change the validity of the idea, and in a perfect world ID would be given a thorough and balanced investigation by the scientific community. But the situation is rather like if a group arose saying, “No, see, we have positive data showing the alignment of the stars really does affect one’s personality!” (That analogy was meant as a judgment of the political situation of ID, not it’s scientific validity). Except IDists are in an even worse position, because they’ve inherited a history of concentrated, repeated attacks on science by creationists besides which the most fervent of astrology proponents pales. Whether or not they deserve to inherit this history is besides the point; in the eye of the science community they have inherited it, and that does crippling damage to ID before its claims are even evaluated. If reseachers did claim to present evidence for astrology’s legitimacy, funded not by government or university grants but by astrology groups, would any of you bother to investigate their data? What if there were two groups, one calling themselves “scientific astrologers” and one calling themselves “stellar cartographists” were around at the same time, the “cartographists” claiming that no, astrology as traditionally practiced was unscientific, but THEY had developed a rigorous scientific way to show the positions of the stars really did affect people’s lives? Again, I am not comparing the validity of ID to the “stellar cartographists” in this analogy, merely the political situation. But I ask: would any of you take them seriously? Would you bother to objectively evaluate their data, or would you write them off as old loonies learning new tricks? Be honest, please.

Nathan #36 said “Let’s not be under any delusion that confirmation bias doesn’t exist, in high numbers, in the scientific community.”

I have been overzealous in denying any confirmation bias in science in general, and in biology in particular. However, I still teke issue with “high numbers” as a general statement.

One factor in confirmation bias among scientists depends upon the amount of evidence already available to support it. The more the evidence, the less likely a scientist is to believe that a new piece of evidence might contradict the theory. As to whether evolution actually happened, the evidence is alrerady overwhelming, and new confirmations pour in every week. As to Darwinian evolution, the evidence is of course circumstantial, but again lies in the category of ‘huge’. As to aspects of Darwinism, such as trhe ways that variability occurs and the mechanisms by which they are selected, acceptance ranges from almost universal to not at all—look in at the controversy over “group selecction,” for example.

Another factor concerns the usefulness of a theory. Scientists, like everyone else, accumulate a bias toward something that has worked for a long time. We wouldn’t ever get on an airplane if we thought Bernoulli might possibly have been wrong, or wrong in some cases, or wrong about certain airflows. There may be less confirmation bias here; probably any biologist would at least seriously question evolution if someone found a rabbit in a 3 billion year old trilobite bed. On the other hand, less clear evidence may prompt amendments or other explanations. When Newtonian gravitation failed to predict the orbit of Uranus accurately, asronomers did not dump Newton in the trash—instead, they looked for the source of the anomaly, and found Neptune. On the other hand, when Newtonian gravitation failed in the precession of Mercury’s orbit and they failed to find the planet Vulcan, astronomers swapped out Newton for Einstein without much ado.

A third factor involves consistency with other theories. Despite the overwhelming evidence for Einsteinian general relativity, almost every cosmologist believes it is flawed in a fundamental way. Even though there is no evidence that relativity breaks down as the Planck length approaches, it does not take quantum effects into account. Therefore, researxchers are even actively looking for disconfirming evidence.

Have scientific consensuses been wrong in the past? Yes, and the factors above apply. The calorfiic theory of heat persisted until advances in fluid dynamics showed that the hypothetical caloric would have impossible properties—but then it was abandoned rather quickly. Plate tectonics was rejectd, not because the evidence wasn’t there, but because Wegner proposed only wind and currents as driving forces. The discovery of tectonic plates blew away that objection in short order; I personally lived through that one. I guess my major brief with ID is this: the only “evidence” they have found against Darwinian evolution is nothing more than an extension from “we have not yet found a specific and detailed natural process for every facet of evolution” to “science cannot in principle ever find any natural process for some aspects of evolution.” There is no warrant for this assumption; they have not even proposed any way to test it.

Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” contains examples of theories that were overthrown. Although I can’t vouch for every instance, I believe that no paradigm was overthrown in vacuo. In every case, the paradigm was _replaced_ with another paradigm, by positive evidence that fit the new paradigm but did not fit the old one. ID could attempt to overthrow Darwin by adducing positive physical evidence of their own theory that differs from Darwin, as Wegner did, and Einstein did, and Dalton (atoms) did, and other scientists have done. But so far they have not even attempted to do so.

I think you’re right about ID inheriting baggage. But at the same time, it could be argued that Darwinism carries baggage as well, what with the numerous hoaxes in the last 100 years. People are skeptical of the “missing links” because of this baggage, and this Darwinism itself. Just to be fair.

Which “numerous hoaxes in the last 100 years”? I can think of one in the last century (Piltdown), and one more before that (Haeckel). There were a number of other honest mistakes (though these do count as examples of confirmation bias), but most of these were revealed, BY evolutionists, within at most a few years. Not one of the hoaxes or mistaken “missing links” was revealed by a creationist, mind you. Evolutionists certainly didn’t go on using them as evidence decades later, unlike some creationist organizations I can think of.

George #40 lists Haeckel’s drawings as one (of only two) major hoaxes involving evolution. Although the Discovery Institute contnually harps on Haeckel as a hoax, scientists’ opinion is more muted; his “law” has been refuted, but most of the controversy was over interpretation of the (by hand) drawings, and Haeckel’s intent has never been demonstrated to be fraudulent. Panda’s Thumb has a recent post on this topic at http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/02/the_haeckelwell.html.

The other DI charge levied against embryonic drawings in textbooks is that they do not show the earliest stages, at which major differences appear. There is an excellent refutation of this charge, but the cite is not to hand at the moment. To summarize, the early stages are the “blastula,” before the cells begin to differentiate under genetic control. Different blastula configurations depend upon the physical characteristics of their eggs: large/small yolk, shell/no shell, and so forth. The differences at this stage need have no relationship to ancestry.

As to the other “evolutionary hoax” trumpeted by Discovery Institute, Piltdown Man was not conceived as evidence for evolution as such. The weight of opinion is that it was an elaborate practical joke to expose the overweening desire of British archeologists to prove that fair Albion antedated France and Germany as abodes of humankind. (French priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin remains a leading suspect.) When some others also fell for the ruse, the author(s) apparently feared to expose it. But many, if not most, researchers in the field challenged the authenticity of the Piltdown skull from its discovery in 1912 onward. The exposure in 1953 was by mainstream archaeologists, and certainly not by critics of the theory of evolution.

Again I must recommend reading what Gould has to say on the subject of Piltdown. He was very thorough in his critiques of historical events in science, and despite his boisterous support of evolution, in this matter he can be considered unbiased by all sides; Gould never had a problem placing fault where fault was due, even when it came to errors made by those supporting theories or positions he held dear. Indeed, I consider Gould an exemplary model of critical thinking.

Anyway, as Gould makes clear in The Panda’s Thumb, Olorin is correct that Piltdown serves as evidence of confirmation bias, but not as regards the theory of evolution itself. Piltdown Man was never a critical piece of evidence for evolution; what it represented was wishful thinking on the part of British anthropologists hoping to discover that the human population of Britain predated that of elsewhere in Europe.

If I can get Matthew’s opinion on;

“As I said before, it doesn’t need explicit knowledge of the designer’s identity, so long as it can put forward a plausible and coherent model of the designing process which makes sufficient predictions that are both specific and unique. But if it doesn’t do so, it can’t be considered a theory by the accepted definition of the term.”

I would be obliged. If we all agree on this, I think we can consider the specific point of Nathan’s original post settled, and move on to other points of contention.

Wow. I didn’t even realize this conversation was continuing so steadily. I guess I’ll put up a brief response:

Olorin: the definition of information is unitary? This is much like claiming there is only one metric for General Relativity. Sure, one metric will work for some cases; just as a bare complexity def of information (or a simple telecom logarithmic scale like Shannon information theory) will suffice for some cases. It only describes a limited set of phenomena though – this is why there are multiple metrics in relativity and this is why there is NOT a single definition of information.

Re: confirmation bias. The point here is not that the research of evolutionary biologists is by and large wrong – some Darwinists seem to believe non-darwinists dismiss all of their research, when we really accept essentially all of it. The point is that their research unanimously confirms biocomplexity degradation, and a breakdown in quantitative and qualitative reasoning has lead them to overlook this.

George,

If a generalization does not apply to you, ignore it. Generalizations are exactly that – generalizations. Generalizations serve to reveal a lot: for instance, if I say that most ID proponents in the public are ignorant of its claims, that would probably be true. False generalizations, like those made by Olorin, serve another purpose: they reveal the ignorance and/or bias of the speaker.

The more I converse with you, however, I am convinced that you are probably the most stoic, rational atheist I have dealt with to date. I appreciate it. Let the generalizations (which are generally intended for those who SHOULD no better) fall to the rest of the crowd for whom it is appropriate.

-Matthew

George said:

“”"“As I said before, it doesn’t need explicit knowledge of the designer’s identity, so long as it can put forward a plausible and coherent model of the designing process which makes sufficient predictions that are both specific and unique. But if it doesn’t do so, it can’t be considered a theory by the accepted definition of the term.””"”

The criteria for “a plausible and coherent model” of the process would hardly even go over within the Darwinist camp. I would have loved to try that on evolutionary biologists Prum & Brush in their revolutionary work on the evolution of feathers! But alas, this is natural history, and that isn’t how it works. It works more like “other evolutionists have had no luck in developing lizard skin into feathers, so we’re proposing a brand new new process: we have no clue how it works, but it produces feathers.”

Ideally, of course, all natural history paradigms should be at least partially reconstructed in experimental setup. Can this be done for design? Yes. Do we know if it mirrors the “design event(s)” in natural history? No. That is why natural history is not science.

Finally, though, getting back to the question of IDing the IDer. As I originally said: the question is how much we want to know. We could follow, for instance, just material causality; this might get us by with limited knowledge of the IDer. But if we want to analyze something like the large scale phenomena tendencies (i.e. anthropologically inclined environments), we might be studying telic causality; this would involve a more “personal” identification of the designer’s characteristics.

For those who haven’t, I would suggest a quick reading of Aristotle’s Four Causes – it mirrors the problem of “how much do we need to know about the IDer.”

I bet Nathan knew all along this would have no short answer!

-Matthew

“For those who haven’t, I would suggest a quick reading of Aristotle’s Four Causes – it mirrors the problem of “how much do we need to know about the IDer.””

Can you recommend a translation? I read it in A New Aristotle Reader, and wasn’t at all impressed with the quality of the translation- though of course I haven’t read asny other versions to compare it to.

My only wish is that more people would have chimed in. Currently, there were 4 of us involved in the conversation (welcome to Olorin, I’m glad you stuck around to comment on a pro-ID site. It can be hard to jump in the lion’s den, and I’m glad you did. I’m sure George enjoys the company

I would have liked to get more people from FES over here, but the only one who showed any interest was Ubuntu. Of course there are a lot of members who wouldn’t have contributed anything useful, but members like Erasmus, beast, or skeptical scientist could have brought valuable insight.

Re: confirmation bias. The point here is not that the research of evolutionary biologists is by and large wrong – some Darwinists seem to believe non-darwinists dismiss all of their research, when we really accept essentially all of it.

Small quibble- you or Nate, or even Behe and Dembski, may accept most of evolutionary biology, but I think a fair majority of ID experts do not, and a far larger proportion of IDist laymen certainly do not. There are many fine gradations running the gamut from theistic evolutionist to strict YEC, and it is often difficult to separate them.

George,

It is (sadly) true that many ID supporters think that their platform actually rejects most of biology research. It is nonsense, and they are ignorant.

Even young-earth creationism itself does not oppose the majority of it. That is why organizations like AIG have to start by saying “you should NOT use the following ignorant creationist arguments____”.

Ahh, ignorance. Not so blissful!

-Matthew

So would you say that there was not necessarily intelligent intervention in, say, the evolution of modern apes and humans from a common ancestor? We have about the same number of genes, same complex molecular as well as macroscopic systems- I don’t see that the human genome represents higher CSI.

“”"So would you say that there was not necessarily intelligent intervention in, say, the evolution of modern apes and humans from a common ancestor? We have about the same number of genes, same complex molecular as well as macroscopic systems- I don’t see that the human genome represents higher CSI.”"”

I’m not sure what this relates to in this conversation…

But, since you asked: first, I’d with sequences as similar as chimp and human genomes it would require a lot of hard calculation work to determine the net difference.

Keep in mind though that it is not just a quantitative comparison of complexity between subsets: i.e. if you could show that an onion has as much CSI as a human, it would be insignificant (for Darwinist hopes) if it was different CSI – because you’d still have to generate the human gemone with its own CSI (thus the total CSI would be the CSI of the human plus the CSI of the onion).

Not sure if I explained that very clearly or not!

Matthew #46 cavils that claiming the definition of information is unitary is like claiming there is only one metric for general relativity. But there is only one metric in Einstein’s field equations: g(mu, nu), a tensor which specifies the length of a line element ds^2=g(mu,nu)ds(mu)dx(nu). The form that the metric takes may vary, depending, e.g., upon the presence or absence of mass (Schwarzschild, Minkowski), but their meanings are equvalent, just as the solution to a problem in cartesian coordinates is equivalent to a solution of the problem in polar coordinates.

In the same way, the definition of inforemation is unitary in science. The information of communications theory is defined the same as in algortithmic complexity theory, and as in any other field.

Here’s one small example I found in “The Design Inference” just now. On p. 118, he states that “information measures are complexity measures in more than just name…. Complexity is always a measure of difficulty…. For information measures … how difficult it is to represent events by means of bit strings, the difficulty being identified with the length of bit strings.” That is, “information” is “difficulty” here. However, a complexity theory does not measure difficulty, but rather the difference in length between a bit string and a the shortest algorithm that can generate that bit string, and the information in the algorithm that measures complexity is determined according to the Shannon metric –log(p), not by some other definition. The Shannon definition does not describe, in your words, “only…a limited set of phenomena”; it describes every phenomenon for which “information” is relevant. If that definition is not appropriate to a particular phenomenon, then a different term should be used. (Sorry, that’s a bit elliptical.)

The point is that Dembski’s “complex specified information” (CSI) builds upon multiple definitions of information and upon unsupported assumptions of probabilities.

Olorin,

It’s kind of funny how far off topic this conversation has run – that now we are arguing over General Relativity Tensor Metrics…. It is interesting to me that you claim that there is still only one metric – whether you call it different forms or forms of a single metric, some authors still call it different “metrics.” And, as my point still stands, some metrics are incomplete in describing certain sets of phenomena (i.e. the Robertson-Walker metric cannot take into account important phenomena in a Euclidean signature).

Hmm… I’ll try to jump to the bottom of the misunderstanding over “information.” Shannon information theory is a great basis for general telecommunications – and it does provide a means of calculating sequence complexity. Sequences often are characterized by a larger set of characteristics, and the full properties of those sequences cannot be described by only quantifying a SINGLE characteristic… This is why Dembski does not speak simply of “information” – but of “complex-specified information.” The specificity of the sequence is a major additional characteristic that cannot be ignored.

-Me