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 teeter
Mindfucked
 
Registered: 02/06/09
Posts: 1,081
Loc: Philadelphia PA
Last seen: 5 months, 19 days
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 CTMU
#10214287 - 04/22/09 02:33 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Zanthius posted a link the the CTMU in the spoof of his neural net thread and the theory looks like it could be really interesting, but the guy uses an assload of technical jargon and big words. Does anyone actually understand what this guy is saying? If so can you give a basic explanation of what hes saying, I'm really interested, but it would take me forever to gain an understanding of what hes saying, so I'm hoping someone can help me out.
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"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern." - William Blake
"Psychedelics helped me to escape.. albeit momentarily.. from the prison of my mind. It over-rode the habit patterns of thought and I was able to taste innocence again. Looking at sensations freshly without the conceptual overly was very profound." - Ram Das
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falcon
In the green
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 I think it's an assload because the guy is talking out of his ass, either that or he just doesn't want to be understood.
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 deimya
tofu and monocle
Registered: 08/26/04
Posts: 825
Loc: ausländer.ch
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But he has an IQ of 200, I mean come on man, come one, this the first thing you learn while reading his wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Langan . He must be right, right ?
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falcon
In the green
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 He could be, like teeter, I would like to have it explained in terms I can understand.
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teeter
Mindfucked
Registered: 02/06/09
Posts: 1,081
Loc: Philadelphia PA
Last seen: 5 months, 19 days
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It could go either way. Either hes a total bullshitter and he just tries to sound impressive with gigantic words, or he actually has some great ideas, but he has trouble expressing them due to his insane IQ.
Anyway, does anyone know what the fuck this guy is talking about?
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"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern." - William Blake
"Psychedelics helped me to escape.. albeit momentarily.. from the prison of my mind. It over-rode the habit patterns of thought and I was able to taste innocence again. Looking at sensations freshly without the conceptual overly was very profound." - Ram Das
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5HTSynaptrip
Dopamine Enthusiast
Registered: 09/14/08
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Just looking at that ctmu.org made me want to blow my brains out. What kind of an asshole would write something so fucking terribly? I mean, if you really think this explains everything I'm pretty sure you'd want everyone to understand it.
He rejects Darwinian evolution. 
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Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. - My hero, who will be forever remembered, Carl Sagan.
 
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C.M. Mann
subconscious explorer
Registered: 05/01/08
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teeter
Mindfucked
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Really, he rejects evolution and he has an IQ of 200? I guess hes so smart, that he doesn't function?
Quote:
5HTSynaptrip said:
...if you really think this explains everything I'm pretty sure you'd want everyone to understand it.
Exactly.
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"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern." - William Blake
"Psychedelics helped me to escape.. albeit momentarily.. from the prison of my mind. It over-rode the habit patterns of thought and I was able to taste innocence again. Looking at sensations freshly without the conceptual overly was very profound." - Ram Das
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Zanthius
Ideologist
Registered: 02/05/09
Posts: 1,159
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Quote:
5HTSynaptrip said:
Just looking at that ctmu.org made me want to blow my brains out. What kind of an asshole would write something so fucking terribly? I mean, if you really think this explains everything I'm pretty sure you'd want everyone to understand it.
Don't be so certain. Many individuals with a high intelligence seems to think that the only other individuals worth convincing are those individuals that also have a high intelligence. It can also be more precise to use a lot of complicated words.
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teeter
Mindfucked
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Zanthius, if your such a fan of Michael Langan (which I assuming because you defend him and because you are the one who introduced me to his work), could you please explain what the fuck hes talking about? I'm sure I can get through his work given enough time and a lot of time flipping through a dictionary, but I'm not really inclined to do so from what I've seen so far. Could you please give me a summary so I can decide if this guy is worth my time.
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"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern." - William Blake
"Psychedelics helped me to escape.. albeit momentarily.. from the prison of my mind. It over-rode the habit patterns of thought and I was able to taste innocence again. Looking at sensations freshly without the conceptual overly was very profound." - Ram Das
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5HTSynaptrip
Dopamine Enthusiast
Registered: 09/14/08
Posts: 3,824
Loc: Ohio
Last seen: 20 hours, 39 minutes
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Quote:
Zanthius said:
Quote:
5HTSynaptrip said:
Just looking at that ctmu.org made me want to blow my brains out. What kind of an asshole would write something so fucking terribly? I mean, if you really think this explains everything I'm pretty sure you'd want everyone to understand it.
Don't be so certain. Many individuals with a high intelligence seems to think that the only other individuals worth convincing are those individuals that also have a high intelligence. It can also be more precise to use a lot of complicated words.
Well man, my beef as a cellular biologist, is that dna evidence OVERWHELMINGLY supports natural selection and Darwinian evolution.
The GREATEST minds all agree upon it. I guess I'd have to see his "proof" but I've read the origin of species and studied quite a bit about genetics and organic evo to really take anything else seriously. It's like every sign points to one direction and that direction is a change in allele frequency in a given population in a given period of time.
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Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. - My hero, who will be forever remembered, Carl Sagan.
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teeter
Mindfucked
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Not to get off topic, but as a side note: I really don't see why there are only two sides to the coin (evolution and Intelligent Design). Honestly, couldn't they both be true? Couldn't evolution be God's "intelligent design"? The reason intelligent design people aren't taken seriously is because they don't face the proven facts and the reason evolutionists can't win them over is because they aren't willing to be "agnostic" about it. There wouldn't be a debate if the dumb ID people would realise the evidence for evolution and the dumb evolution people would admit the possiblity that God designed the evolution system.
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"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern." - William Blake
"Psychedelics helped me to escape.. albeit momentarily.. from the prison of my mind. It over-rode the habit patterns of thought and I was able to taste innocence again. Looking at sensations freshly without the conceptual overly was very profound." - Ram Das
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DavidW
Stranger
Registered: 04/23/09
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Actually Langan's theory does not discount evolution. It just says it's incomplete to explain life, just one piece of the puzzle. Since Darwin's evolution theory explains life based on the assumption of the preexistence of the universe and the laws that favor the possibility of evolution into humans, but it does not answer those more difficult questions.
But yeah, Langan's theory is confusing, even when there isn't a lot of technical jargon, the explanations seem almost intentionally vague and user-unfriendly.
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teeter
Mindfucked
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Welcome to shroomery, and coul you possibly offer more?
At this point I'm pretty much not reading his thing, I think the guy is essentially too smart for his own good.
1.) You can't mathematically prove the existance of god anymore than you can mathematically prove the existance of your computer. You can't just make math say "This exists."
2.) Watching some interviews with him, he looks like pretty much Grade A wacko stock. His father was a sadistic psycho and he got picked on at school. Hes got a total chip on his shoulder towards acedemia and hes ridiculously smart. Also, hes clearly not full functional at a practical level. Do you think a guy with an IQ 70-100 points higher than nearly everyone on earth would be working as a bouncer if he was able to function practically. Pretty much the profile for all these wierdos. He just uses random intellectual jargon instead of clever twisting of the bible to induce mass suicide.
3.) He said that if he had dictatorial power over the world, he would make it illegal to have a child w/o permission. He would basically require you to have awesome genes in order to have kids. He also said that people with high IQs would function as the government. The way I see this going: 150+ IQers become ruling class. All female children given surgically removable birth control. Applications for non-high IQers to have kids are all denied. Non-genius level people die off and world falls to shit because people with 150+ IQs are generally less than 100% functional. Also, they would have an extreme sense of entitlement because they are the ruling class. Nobody would be there to take out the trash (metaphorically and literally).
I conclude: Langan = wacko
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"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern." - William Blake
"Psychedelics helped me to escape.. albeit momentarily.. from the prison of my mind. It over-rode the habit patterns of thought and I was able to taste innocence again. Looking at sensations freshly without the conceptual overly was very profound." - Ram Das
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Noteworthy
Sophyphile
Registered: 10/05/08
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Although I agree with (1), (2) would only follow if this guy had trouble living, whereas from the information that you have given, there is no reason to think he is not happy with his employment.
(3).. well since no person can really say which genes are better, this is impractical. Humans should not have so much power.
But as for intelligent people running the world.. I dont know where you get the idea that intelligent people are less functional. There is no reason to not desire mental capabilities in your leaders. It is just not a good measure of leading ability to run off primarily. Still, there would be nothing wrong if it happened that all the leaders were incredibly intelligent.
From what I have read so far, Langan seems like a very reasonable philosopher.
on one of the exerpts on this page http://www.ctmu.org/ he write about darwinism being unconvincing.
What I took from the article (indeed the language was a little hard to follow when in the state of mind that has been surfing the net) was that Natural selection does not contradict with Intelligent design and thus A theory that utilises Intelligent design theories as well as Natural selection theories has a stronger philosophical stance than taking merely natural selection alone.
For this reason I think it is important for serious natural philosphers to consider how science interacts with Intelligent Design theory and how both Intelligent design theory and Natural selection relate to various religious teachings across the ages.
I think people should take intelligent design theory seriously simply because it is the belief that most humans assent to and thus we need to know exactly why we feel it is unreasonable to suggest that the complexity of life and the interrelationship between consciousness and organic forms is the product of an 'intelligent' intervention.
The main answer to this is 'there is no justified reason to think it is true in the first place so we shouldnt have to prove it is wrong'.
But I say that human creativity is a powerful thing and ideas can come from it that end up being true, without our knowing exactly why this must be the case. Intuition generally defines our reality, and this is important in creative produce. I think if an idea comes about, it should not necessarily be assented to as knowledge simply because it appears to be true after being suggested. However, it should be taken as a serious possibility until it can be shown otherwise.
You cannot mathematically compare the likelihood that god interviened vs life arose from nothing. Anyone who suggests this needs a kick up the arse. The thing that seperates these two possibilities are the logical boundaries of their assumptions. Using god or an intelligent creator to explain life on earth leaves open a vast domain to be filled to explain that god or intelligent creator.
Believing that life simply arose due to the way the universe is ordered supposes less information that itself needs explaining. It abides by occams razor and thus is a more appropriate interpretation to take.
But as far as the concepts go, their likelihood are incompatible, they are both as likely as eachother because we have no source of information to feed our beliefs on the matter.
And langans proposal is that since there are certain reasons that suggest toward intelligent design, which do not contradict with any of the the processes celebrated by Darwinists, then taking those reasons into account, you merely strengthen your account of the world without denying Darwinist principles to occur. Thus pure darwinism is not fully convincing.
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Zanthius
Ideologist
Registered: 02/05/09
Posts: 1,159
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Quote:
5HTSynaptrip said:
Well man, my beef as a cellular biologist, is that dna evidence OVERWHELMINGLY supports natural selection and Darwinian evolution.
Well of course, but our understanding of evolution isn't necessarily complete.
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Zanthius
Ideologist
Registered: 02/05/09
Posts: 1,159
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Quote:
teeter said:
Zanthius, if your such a fan of Michael Langan (which I assuming because you defend him and because you are the one who introduced me to his work), could you please explain what the fuck hes talking about? I'm sure I can get through his work given enough time and a lot of time flipping through a dictionary, but I'm not really inclined to do so from what I've seen so far. Could you please give me a summary so I can decide if this guy is worth my time.
I don't think I can explain his theory even nearly as well as he does himself, and he talks about a lot of stuff in the introduction to the cognitive-theoretical model of the universe. Everything from cosmology to cognition.
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Drakion
Wo kommst du?
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From what I read on your link Christopher Langan is a brilliant nutjob.
I almost wretched when I read the end with his "God concept" part. He could have very well said "The gun concept can not be blamed for death by bullets, as men have always used the firearms for their own ends."
"A credible religion must contain elements of truth and undecidability".
What pray tell is a credible religion? One that merely survives, or one that teachings you find acceptable? How much truth and undecidability must be contained therein for it to be credible, 10%, 20%?
"So by design, religious beliefs generally cannot be refuted by rational or empirical means".
How very ambiguous and misleading. "by design" Men or God's design? "religious beliefs generally cannot be refuted by rational or empirical means". So something that can not be proven true (hence belief) is occasionally proven wrong by science and reason. Well that would only stand as logical. Something created can continuously be built further on even more outlandish explanations, in turn continually dodging any attempt made of rebuking the fiction for what it is.
The casual reader would take from that sentence that "God made religion irrefutable due to our limited understanding". I see most of his work as little more than a heavily veiled agenda. Regardless of his views though, still an interesting read.
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Choosing a religion is like playing the lotto, you can't get saved if you don't play! ~ Bill Maher
The efficiency of the truly national leader consists primarily in preventing the division of the attention of a people, and always in concentrating it on a single enemy. ~Adolf Hitler
10 years in an American prison right here folks, be careful!
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Zanthius
Ideologist
Registered: 02/05/09
Posts: 1,159
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Quote:
Drakion said:
I almost wretched when I read the end with his "God concept" part. He could have very well said "The gun concept can not be blamed for death by bullets, as men have always used the firearms for their own ends."
Or he could have said: "Science cannot be blamed for nuclear weapons, just like the God concept cannot be blamed for religious malevolence".
I love science, but I don't support the building of nuclear weapons. I also have a concept of a mono-holo-pantheistic God, but I don't adhere to any religion, and I certainly don't support religious malevolence.
Edited by Zanthius (04/24/09 02:08 AM)
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Noteworthy
Sophyphile
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look i just checked his youtube self-docco and I think he is just a guy who got the record IQ score and is trying to live up to that role. I think on the whole he has very good ideas but his criticism of academia seems to stem not only from academias faults but from his own inabilities to respect other people
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Zanthius
Ideologist
Registered: 02/05/09
Posts: 1,159
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Quote:
Noteworthy said:
look i just checked his youtube self-docco and I think he is just a guy who got the record IQ score and is trying to live up to that role. I think on the whole he has very good ideas but his criticism of academia seems to stem not only from academias faults but from his own inabilities to respect other people
Maybe. I don't care much about that. I think his cognitive-theoretical model of the universe is good, regardless of what he is as a person.
Newton was also an arrogant asshole, but he was a clever arrogant asshole.
Edited by Zanthius (04/24/09 03:13 AM)
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teeter
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Noteworthy, I don't critisize him for wanting intelligent leaders (I fucking hated Bush), I critisize him because he is such an arrogant dick about it. He claims that he thinks hes equal to all of us despite his intelligence, but he decides that even extremely intelligent people (130+ IQs) aren't worthy of government jobs and he decides that he should be able to force birth control on 10 year old girls so that he can weed out undesirable traits. Also, in those youtube videos, when the guy asked him about his theories, he just keeps spewing all this shit about how people with normal IQs can't grasp the concepts. For such an intelligent human being, he really is a close-minded asshole. I feel confident that given time and patience, an 8 year old could understand a majority of complex philosophical ideas, but he believes that adults with near-genius level IQs won't be able to grasp his ideas...
Anyway, I honestly feel that if this theory was worth reading about, it would have gained some kind of publicity in the many years it has been around, and it would be translated into readable language. Like I said, I bet I can explain almost any concept to an 8 year old, given a reasonable amount of time. However, if I tried to explain a concept to a child, I wouldn't use words over 6 letters long. There is no good reason to stuff a paper full of techniqual jargon and intellectual lingo. If I have something to say, I say it as simply as possible. If i took the time, I could probaly stuff almost any sentence full of huge intellectual sounding words, but there is really no point when each of those words has a simple, commonly used synonym.
Langan is probably emotionally unstable in some way, and his social theories scream "Reincarnation of Hitler!!!" (picture all the people with IQs under 130 getting sent to the camps for menial labor) to me. All this aside, if his theories have merit, why does he shroud them in intellectual bullshit and why can nobody even begin to explain his theories to me?
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"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern." - William Blake
"Psychedelics helped me to escape.. albeit momentarily.. from the prison of my mind. It over-rode the habit patterns of thought and I was able to taste innocence again. Looking at sensations freshly without the conceptual overly was very profound." - Ram Das
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DavidW
Stranger
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teeter that is the mystery I have myself been trying to solve. On the one hand the little I do understand of his theory sounds innovative and logical, yet on the other hand the rest of it is so laced with narcissistic elitist intellectual diatribe you wonder if it's not simply some crackpot theory, like time cubed.
I've been trying to do due diligence and read through his theory line by line, looking up every word/concept I do not know, and it still seems intentionally and assholishly obfuscated. Now call me stupid, but I got fairly stumped early in his introduction to his theory, no less. Specifically, this line:
"The physical universe contains all and only that which is physical."
Of that line, Langan says this:
the predicate physical is being defined on topological containment in the physical universe, which is tacitly defined on and descriptively contained in the predicate physical, so that the self-definition of "physical" is a two-step operation involving both topological and descriptive containment.
Now can anyone explain how the hell the first statement gives any clue as the manner, method, or process by which the word "physical" descriptively contains "the physical universe"??? or what the F that even means and in what context it has relevance? Anyone? Zanthius?
This is the problem with the way the entire CTMU theory is written. Everything potentially has meaning to Langan, but it's not explicitly spelled out for the reader and for a theory that is supposedly this innovative it's like asking people to just ignore your theory.
So at this point I just don't fucking know.
Edited by DavidW (04/24/09 01:12 PM)
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deimya
tofu and monocle
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What I understand from this sentence is that that which is physical (predicate physical as in physical or not, no middle ground) is that which is the case such that that which is physical may be perceived (topological containment) and described/spoken (descriptive containment). I might be way off though, for sure he's dense.
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teeter
Mindfucked
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I honestly don't care anymore about this guy.
1.) IQ doesn't really mean that much, this guy is a self-important asshole. From my limited outside perspective, it seems like he has very few redeeming personality traits and he has accomplished nothing in his life. So what if he did amazingly on an IQ test. IQ tests only measure how well you see patterns and such. Should we really care about what some guy says just because he sees patterns and does semi-simple math more effectively than us.
2.) The time it would take to understand this guy's theory is not worth it to me. My best chance at understanding what he says would be to line by line translate what he says in his into into English and then re-read it in translated form. This alone would take several hours (and they wouldn't be fun hours, I wouldn't understand what I was translating until I read the final product). Under this method, I could gain an understanding of his theory, but I wouldn't even be sure if my translation was accurate. Not to mention, that intro is just an intro, the true theory is 56 pages in a MSWord document; that could take me a year to translate.
Its just not worth it. I'm going to send him an email (if he has a contact me section) that says that I am interested in his theory, but that his language used in describing it isn't conducive to understanding. I will suggest that he takes the time to rewrite his intro because a simpler version will help expose his theory to intelligent, but not genius level people. I took an IQ test, scored 132, if I stopped reading on the first page, so did at least 98% of everyone else.
I expect that he will reply something like:
Dear Matt,
I am authentically regretful that your endeavor to interpret the CTMU was futile. However, due to a fundamental failure in your [insert science jargon meaning brain] your endeavors will continue to yield you no results. Rephrasing my theories will only enable the infant brained people of our world twist my words into their own meanings. Please go back to wallowing in your own ineptness...retard.
IMO:  is to Jews as Langan is to anyone with sub 150 IQs.
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"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern." - William Blake
"Psychedelics helped me to escape.. albeit momentarily.. from the prison of my mind. It over-rode the habit patterns of thought and I was able to taste innocence again. Looking at sensations freshly without the conceptual overly was very profound." - Ram Das
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5HTSynaptrip
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Man, it just all boils down to action and producing something. What has this guy done? He went to shitty schools, has done shitty jobs, and comes up with theories written so terribly, I haven't read ONE single blog or article on him that lauds the CTMU.
You'd think that a genius would be producing PROFOUND masterpieces, in any type of field. This guys doesn't do that.
Even more importantly, is the fact that people take a man seriously because of some fucking score on a test that is some man-made bullshit to attempt to assess intelligence (which is fucking retarded since there are an almost infinite number of things a person could be VERY adept at and it would have nothing to do with an IQ).
The only thing Langan is qualified for is being a bull-shit artist and I feel stupid now that I even felt I had to comment on a "genius" who is an IDer. 
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Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. - My hero, who will be forever remembered, Carl Sagan.
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Noteworthy
Sophyphile
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Last seen: 1 month, 7 days
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Im just going to point out the reasoning in this thread and perhaps some of you will see the faults:
I dont understand Langan
I dont like Langan
therefor
Langan is wrong
...
I think people feel threatened by him. But hes just a dude with a high IQ and therefor a reason to motivate himself to go the full length with his theories
If his language is too heavy then he wont get fame. its as simple as that. But that has NO bearing on the validity of his arguments, which you cannot think to try and determine if you admit that you dont understand philosophical discourse.
eg "the predicate physical is being defined on topological containment in the physical universe, which is tacitly defined on and descriptively contained in the predicate physical, so that the self-definition of "physical" is a two-step operation involving both topological and descriptive containment"
Here he is saying that the predicate physical (what 'is' in the world) is defined on topological containment (ie. 3 dimensional space whereby each point in space is next to another and not the same as another), which itself is defined to us on the predicate level, so the definition of 'physical' is a two-step operation involving both a stale, meaningless topological identity of the universe and a meaningful but generalizable description of the universe
now I dont know for sure if this is what he means, but this makes sense to me and it seems he is just pointing out that even though we consider the universe as this sort of objective plane of existance, we know it and define it with description and predicate logic
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Mr. Mushrooms
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By Jove I think he's got it.
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Zanthius
Ideologist
Registered: 02/05/09
Posts: 1,159
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Quote:
5HTSynaptrip said:
Even more importantly, is the fact that people take a man seriously because of some fucking score on a test that is some man-made bullshit to attempt to assess intelligence (which is fucking retarded since there are an almost infinite number of things a person could be VERY adept at and it would have nothing to do with an IQ).
Well, I don't necessarily give you much credit just because you have a degree in cellular biology. I think getting a high score on this test is much more difficult than getting a degree in cellular biology: The Titan Test
Also, I think a lot of professors have little knowledge outside of their own fields of science. My biology professor didn't know a shit about quantum physics.
Edited by Zanthius (04/26/09 01:02 AM)
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quite true. An expert outside their field is, many times, just an amateur.
Methinks the real issue most people have with Langan is his stance on Intelligent Design--another theory that most do not understand.
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OrgoneConclusion
Pharoah & Balanced
Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 29,358
Loc: Luxor
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Quote:
Methinks the real issue most people have with Langan is his stance on Intelligent Design--another theory that most do not understand.
Methinks this poster hasn't a clue what a theory is. ID makes no predictions and is not falsifiable. Its only basis is one of incredulity.
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This is your drain on brugs.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quite true. An expert outside their field is, many times, just an amateur.
Methinks the real issue most people have with Langan is his stance on Intelligent Design--another theory that most do not understand.
But intelligent design isn't a theory. What's there to understand?
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Zanthius
Ideologist
Registered: 02/05/09
Posts: 1,159
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Quote:
zouden said:
But intelligent design isn't a theory. What's there to understand?
If the universe has a cosmic consciousness, and that consciousness is involved in determining how things evolve, would you consider that to be intelligent design?
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zouden
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Yes, I understand that perfectly - there's not much to intelligent design really, it's pretty straightforward. That's why I'm confused by MM's comment that ID is "another theory that most do not understand."
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quite true. An expert outside their field is, many times, just an amateur.
Methinks the real issue most people have with Langan is his stance on Intelligent Design--another theory that most do not understand.
But intelligent design isn't a theory. What's there to understand?
Claim: Intelligent Design is a theory.
Reasoning: Intelligent design seeks to explain empirical phenomena by positing the inference of design. It is a Theory of Information.
Quote:
William Dembski said:
For the scientific community intelligent design represents creationism's latest grasp at scientific legitimacy. Accordingly, intelligent design is viewed as yet another ill-conceived attempt by creationists to straightjacket science within a religious ideology. But in fact intelligent design can be formulated as a scientific theory having empirical consequences and devoid of religious commitments. Intelligent design can be unpacked as a theory of information. Within such a theory, information becomes a reliable indicator of design as well as a proper object for scientific investigation. In my paper I shall (1) show how information can be reliably detected and measured, and (2) formulate a conservation law that governs the origin and flow of information. My broad conclusion is that information is not reducible to natural causes, and that the origin of information is best sought in intelligent causes. Intelligent design thereby becomes a theory for detecting and measuring information, explaining its origin, and tracing its flow.
http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm
Whether one agrees with the theory is another thing. Some say it is the best theory we have.
zouden's claim: Intelligent design isn't a theory.
Reasoning: ?
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redgreenvines
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it's a terrible piece of work, everything he does not have an explanation for is mind or god or both.
this includes formulae that will stall due to lack of data, so things seem mathematically supported.
the whole thing is nothing.
but he's clever, so it becomes insidious -
it gnaws at the back of the mind, "am I missing something???"
- yes you left out god!
sheesh!
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deimya
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1. Babbles about information theory, forgetting that information is in the eye of the beholder
2. Can't be only chance, nor chance plus selection
3. I know nothing about self-organized and endogenous complexity
Therefore Quote:
CSI cannot be generated spontaneously, originate endogenously, or organize itself
although I restricted myself to spontaneously generated CSI and nowhere in my paper do I touch upon endogeneity and organization/self-organization.
In conclusion, I set out a false dilemma, followed by a non sequitur, hence the meaningless capital-Law of capital-Conservation of capital-Information.
For an interesting and refreshing take on the origin of life, see
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2009/2/the-origin-of-life/1
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zouden
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
zouden's claim: Intelligent design isn't a theory.
Reasoning: ?
Not falsifiable.
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falcon
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In the verbal anologies section of the titan test,
14. LEG : AMBULATE :: ARM : ?
? Is there any right answer for this?
Or do you get points for answering the ? with,
WTF?
What word exists that is as closely related with arm as ambulate is to leg?
I saw a whole lot of other questions that could have easily been answered by more than one correct answer and weighing the answers seems to me completely arbitrary. The example I used was the most obvious to me.
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DavidW
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Those verbal questions are bullshit. They require you to know specific vocabulary, and if you don't, you're screwed. It has nothing to do with intelligence, just how large your verbal repository is, like a more limited and boring version of jeopardy. And yeah, also there's multiple right answers.
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Noteworthy
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Actually, such a test is significant in most situations because your vocabulary is your toolbox with which you can use to create meaning and understand other people's meaning... amongst groups of similar vocabulary, such a test has significant validity as a test of cognitive ability.
Id say the correct answer is 'manipulate' but i agree it is a stupid question and has multiple correct answers.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
zouden's claim: Intelligent design isn't a theory.
Reasoning: ?
Not falsifiable.
Quote:
William Dembski said:
The most decisive way to falsify our argument as a whole would be to find a distant
and very different environment, which, while quite hostile to life, nevertheless offers
a superior platform for making as many diverse scientific discoveries as does our
local environment. The opposite of this would have the same effect—finding an
extremely habitable and inhabited place that was a lousy platform for observation.
Less devastating but still relevant would be discoveries that contradict individual
parts of our argument. Most such discoveries would also show that the conditions for
habitability of complex life are much wider and more diverse than we claim. For
instance, discovering intelligent life inside a gas giant with an opaque atmosphere,
near an X-ray emitting star in the Galactic center, or on a planet without a dark night
would do it serious damage. Or take a less extreme example. We suggested in
Chapter 1 that conditions that produce perfect solar eclipses also contribute to the
habitability of a planetary environment. Thus, if intelligent extraterrestrial beings
exist, they probably enjoy good to perfect solar eclipses. However, if we find
complex, intelligent, indigenous life on a planet without a largish natural satellite, this
plank in our argument would collapse.
Our argument presupposes that all complex life, at least in this universe, will
almost certainly be based on carbon. Find a non-carbon based life form, and one of
our presuppositions collapses. It’s clear that a number of discoveries would either
directly or indirectly contradict our argument.
Similarly, there are future discoveries that would count in favor of it. Virtually
any discovery in astrobiology is likely to bear on our argument one way or the other.
If we find still more strict conditions that are important for habitability, this will
strengthen our case.
So contemporary arguments for intelligent design in both biology and the physical
sciences are not only testable; they’re falsifiable. We have given only two examples here.
There are other design arguments in origin-of-life studies and paleontology that are also
falsifiable. Therefore, honest commentators should stop claiming that ID is unfalsifiable.
The claim itself is falsifiable, and it has been falsified. It’s time to move on to other and
more pertinent aspects of the debate over intelligent design.
http://www.discovery.org/a/2812
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Poid
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Well I try my best to be just like I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them. -- Bob Dylan   fireworks_god said:It's one thing to simply enjoy a style of life that one enjoys, but it's another thing altogether to refer to another person's choice as "wrong" or to rationalize their behavior as being pathological or resulting from some sort of inadequacy or failing so as to create a sense of superiority or separation as yet another projection of a personal fear or control issue.
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falcon
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Quote:
Noteworthy said:
Id say the correct answer is 'manipulate' but i agree it is a stupid question and has multiple correct answers.
Good answer, if they would have use hand instead of arm. Nah, it is a good answer for this question.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Re: CTMU [Re: Poid]
#10239295 - 04/26/09 08:24 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
Poid said:
Yes, well I choose that particular answer because it parallels zouden's idea of that finding a fossil out of the historical timeline would falsify evolution. I don't think it's a particularly good answer.
This is a better answer in my opinion:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/04/is_intelligent_design_falsifia.html
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Poid
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Just to clarify, I think you owned zouden, not the other way around. 
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Well I try my best to be just like I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them. -- Bob Dylanfireworks_god said:It's one thing to simply enjoy a style of life that one enjoys, but it's another thing altogether to refer to another person's choice as "wrong" or to rationalize their behavior as being pathological or resulting from some sort of inadequacy or failing so as to create a sense of superiority or separation as yet another projection of a personal fear or control issue.
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zouden
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Quote:
Our argument presupposes that all complex life, at least in this universe, will
almost certainly be based on carbon. Find a non-carbon based life form, and one of
our presuppositions collapses. It’s clear that a number of discoveries would either
directly or indirectly contradict our argument.
That's not a feature of intelligent design that I've ever heard. Since when have ID proponents started saying "God created carbon-based life and nothing else"? Has anyone else here ever heard this argument?
And why would ID proponents make such a claim? What evidence is there that an intelligent designer would be restricted to carbon-based life? I find that even harder to believe.
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Edited by zouden (04/27/09 02:00 AM)
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Re: CTMU [Re: Poid]
#10240927 - 04/27/09 01:46 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
Poid said:
Just to clarify, I think you owned zouden, not the other way around.
Thanks, I knew that.
Just to clarify, I'm not interested in "owning" anyone, nor being "owned." I look at slavery as a thing of the past. 
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Poid
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However you look at it, it still goes on, but in different ways. 
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Well I try my best to be just like I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them. -- Bob Dylanfireworks_god said:It's one thing to simply enjoy a style of life that one enjoys, but it's another thing altogether to refer to another person's choice as "wrong" or to rationalize their behavior as being pathological or resulting from some sort of inadequacy or failing so as to create a sense of superiority or separation as yet another projection of a personal fear or control issue.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Quote:
Our argument presupposes that all complex life, at least in this universe, will
almost certainly be based on carbon. Find a non-carbon based life form, and one of
our presuppositions collapses. It�s clear that a number of discoveries would either
directly or indirectly contradict our argument.
That's not a feature of intelligent design that I've ever heard. Since when have ID proponents started saying "God created carbon-based life and nothing else"? Has anyone else here ever heard this argument?
And why would ID proponents make such a claim? What evidence is there that an intelligent designer would be restricted to carbon-based life? I find that even harder to believe.
I have no idea, but the argument has merit in its falsifiability. More importantly, I think it is important for all of us to familiarize ourselves with both sides of an argument. I've read as many books on evolution as I have the alternate view. Informing oneself by reading one side of an argument produces bias and ignorance. Which, in my view, is the part and parcel of all anti-ID arguments.
Still, as I said, the second link is the far better one in my view.
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zouden
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Sorry, but I think that second link is a waste of time. The author concludes by saying that "The falsification of intelligent design is Darwinism" which is irrelevant. You don't falsify one theory with another. You falsify it by testing the predictions that it makes, and finding evidence to the contrary.
ID makes no predictions that can be tested. It's intentionally that way, so that it can't be falsified.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Sorry, but I think that second link is a waste of time. The author concludes by saying that "The falsification of intelligent design is Darwinism" which is irrelevant.
Actually, the article says:
Quote:
Here Dr. Novella gets to the root of the issue, and characteristically does so in a way that destroys his own argument. Here's how. Darwin’s theory is this: all natural biological complexity arose by the mechanism of random non-teleological heritable variation and non-teleological natural selection. Intelligent design theory is this: some aspects of natural biological complexity show evidence of teleology. By teleology, I mean purpose, intelligent agency — design. It is on the question of evidence for intelligent design in biology that the ID-Darwinism debate turns.
Thus ID and Darwinism are merely two opposite conclusions drawn from the same question: is there teleology in biology? If there is, ID is true. If there isn’t, Darwinism is true. The falsification of intelligent design is Darwinism. The falsification of Darwinism is intelligent design. Either biology shows evidence of intelligent agency, or it doesn’t. Either intelligent design and Darwinism are both science, or neither is science. If you can’t test the hypothesis of intelligent agency in biology, then you can’t test Darwinism, and Darwinism is immune from evidence and must simply be accepted on faith.
Darwinism is intelligent design's doppelganger. So why would Darwinists like Dr. Novella claim that ID isn’t falsifiable, when their own theory is the falsification of ID? As it turns out, there’s a method and a reason. If ID isn’t falsifiable, then the question of design in biology can’t be adjudicated by science, and this renders Darwinism immune from evidence. Darwinism must then be accepted on faith.
The truth is that Darwinists aren’t concerned that intelligent design isn’t falsifiable. They’re concerned that it isn't false.
Quote:
zouden said:
You don't falsify one theory with another. You falsify it by testing the predictions that it makes, and finding evidence to the contrary.
ID makes no predictions that can be tested. It's intentionally that way, so that it can't be falsified.
Actually no, you can falsify one theory with another. Copernicus falsified Ptolemy. ID predicts that designed systems cannot arise from naturalistic causes.
I would like to add though that neither evolution nor ID are science. Both are historical research. It's a fine line but an important one.
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Noteworthy
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I would like to angrily grind my toe into a pebble and say that slavery is not a thing of the past. Our culture lives off cheap goods from overseas.. which are created because people in developing nations are born into a world where they have two options: work for shit all, or die.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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It all depends on how far we dilute the definition of slavery. Some are slaves to fashion.
By slavery I am referring to the common, or primary, definition.
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zouden
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Quote:
Actually no, you can falsify one theory with another. Copernicus falsified Ptolemy. ID predicts that designed systems cannot arise from naturalistic causes.
Well since evolution has shown that it can, ID has been disproved. QED.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Quote:
Actually no, you can falsify one theory with another. Copernicus falsified Ptolemy. ID predicts that designed systems cannot arise from naturalistic causes.
Well since evolution has shown that it can, ID has been disproved. QED.
Well since ID has shown that evolution cannot, evolution has been disproved. QED.
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zouden
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Right. This just proves my point - you can't disprove one theory with another. Copernicus's theory didn't disprove Ptolemy's. Rather, Copernicus used evidence to show that Ptolemy's predictions don't hold; that the theory doesn't match with observations of the real world.
To disprove ID, we'd have to show that its predictions don't match the evidence. But it makes no predictions that can be tested like that.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Right. This just proves my point - you can't disprove one theory with another. Copernicus's theory didn't disprove Ptolemy's. Rather, Copernicus used evidence to show that Ptolemy's predictions don't hold; that the theory doesn't match with observations of the real world.
To disprove ID, we'd have to show that its predictions don't match the evidence. But it makes no predictions that can be tested like that.
Wrong. What you're saying is that design cannot be tested. Of course it can. There are whole fields of science that rely on testing for design.
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zouden
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Can you elaborate further?
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Can you elaborate further?
No, you've stumped me.
Many fields of historical research, under the rubric of science, test for design, e.g. cryptology, forensics, SETI, etc.
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zouden
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And none of the tests for intelligent design have been positive, have they? But that doesn't disprove ID, it just means we haven't found evidence for it yet. In the same way that we haven't found evidence for invisible dragons living in orbit above the earth.
We can't disprove a theory until it makes predictions that can be tested and falsified. This is a crucial feature of a scientific theory, to the extent that any claim that doesn't make falsifiable predictions isn't really a theory at all.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Can you elaborate further?
No, you've stumped me.
Many fields of historical research, under the rubric of science, test for design, e.g. cryptology, forensics, SETI, etc.Quote:
zouden said:
And none of the tests for intelligent design have been positive, have they? But that doesn't disprove ID, it just means we haven't found evidence for it yet. In the same way that we haven't found evidence for invisible dragons living in orbit above the earth.
We can't disprove a theory until it makes predictions that can be tested and falsified. This is a crucial feature of a scientific theory, to the extent that any claim that doesn't make falsifiable predictions isn't really a theory at all.
I think we've covered the fact that ID makes falsifiable predictions. It does and hasn't been falsified. All of the tests for ID have given evidence for design.
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zouden
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Are you talking about the carbon-based life prediction? I'm extremely dubious about that one, for several reasons.
1. I've honestly never heard that one before, in all the discussions I've had about ID.
2. It doesn't make any sense at all. Finding non-carbon-based life does not in any way falsify the idea that life was designed by a higher being, since such a being would not be limited to carbon.
3. It's very difficult to falsify, since you'd need to go into space and find some silicon-based life.
I believe that it is a duplicitous claim by someone who probably doesn't represent the majority thought of ID proponents. I think that whoever wrote that page is intentionally trying to make ID appear like a legitimate theory, by presenting a claim that, on the surface, is falsifiable. But it's pretty obvious that in the (unlikely) case that we do find non-carbon-based life, the proponents of ID can very easily point out that there's no reason the Creator would have been limited to carbon.
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OrgoneConclusion
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Behe's claim of irreducible complexity was clearly falsified at the Dover School, PA trial. His best example of the bacterial flagellum was shown to have functions other than motility in other bacterium using a similar mechanism with fewer parts.
That should have put this nonsense to rest, but there is no accounting for illogic and belief.
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zouden
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Oh yeah, if we're talking about evidence for design... man, an opponent of evolution should never attempt to go down that path. They'd be going up against the accumulated knowledge of the biggest field in the whole spectrum of science. Every single piece of 'evidence' for irreducible complexity has been debunked thoroughly and then meticulously archived on Talk Origins for anyone to read (or quote, as I have done in the past).
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OrgoneConclusion
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I guess you have to give creative points for the whole ID alien life-form falsifiability scenario, but it certainly has nothing to do with science unless you include science fiction.
Quote:
Every single piece of 'evidence' for irreducible complexity has been debunked thoroughly and then meticulously archived on Talk Origins for anyone to read (or quote, as I have done in the past).
If one is locked into a religious belief system, no amount of facts counter to the belief (even when they call for them) has any effect whatsoever. 
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zouden
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Which is why I maintain that ID is not a scientific theory at all. It's thinly-disguised religious doctrine.
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OrgoneConclusion
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Less than a micron of disguise.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Are you talking about the carbon-based life prediction? I'm extremely dubious about that one, for several reasons.
1. I've honestly never heard that one before, in all the discussions I've had about ID.
2. It doesn't make any sense at all. Finding non-carbon-based life does not in any way falsify the idea that life was designed by a higher being, since such a being would not be limited to carbon.
3. It's very difficult to falsify, since you'd need to go into space and find some silicon-based life.
I believe that it is a duplicitous claim by someone who probably doesn't represent the majority thought of ID proponents. I think that whoever wrote that page is intentionally trying to make ID appear like a legitimate theory, by presenting a claim that, on the surface, is falsifiable. But it's pretty obvious that in the (unlikely) case that we do find non-carbon-based life, the proponents of ID can very easily point out that there's no reason the Creator would have been limited to carbon.
The author is William Dembski, one of the two creators of intelligent design. Evidently you haven't heard of him. Similiarly, on the surface, your claim that finding a fossil out of the time line would falsify evolution. That is entirely untrue. Why? Because a naturalistic theory, i.e. evolution, cannot look for evidence outside nature. Evolution is hoist by its own petard.
I've been reading TalkShit.org since the year it was created. I give it about as much credence as I would my cat. The articles on irreducible complexity are fraught with error.
Synoptical reading FTW
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
OrgoneConclusion said:
If one is locked into a religious belief system, no amount of facts counter to the belief (even when they call for them) has any effect whatsoever.
Quote:
blewmeanie said:
I've yet to see anything that would lead me to consider [intelligent design] a topic of scientific inquiry rather than religious faith.
Argument from incredulity anyone?
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zouden
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Quote:
I've been reading TalkShit.org since the year it was created. I give it about as much credence as I would my cat.
Then why do you keep reading it? And why would you give Dembski any more credence than your cat?
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Quote:
I've been reading TalkShit.org since the year it was created. I give it about as much credence as I would my cat.
Then why do you keep reading it? And why would you give Dembski any more credence than your cat?
I keep reading it because I like to be informed from both sides of an argument. It's called synoptical reading. For example, if you're going to read Dawkins, read Dembski and vice versa. To be fair I must admit that some of the biology on TalkOrigins is factual. It is what they do with those facts, i.e. interpretation, that is faulty.
Why Dembski?
I find the idea of intelligent design compelling on the grounds that it dovetails nicely with certain philosophical ideas, for one, the immateriality of the mind. Having said that, I take issue with TalkOrigins in many areas, for one, the bacterial flagellum. When you run the flagellum through the explanatory filter, you'll find it was designed in a way that methodological naturalism cannot account for. It's fine to tell a story about what could have happened, but it doesn't correlate well with the facts. The flagellum has roughly 40 parts, only 10 of which are found in nature. Where are the other 30? Vanished from sight, apparently. If someone's going to tell me a story I at least like to see real, physical, quantifiable entities that back up their claim. Jack and the Beanstalk doesn't cut it for me. Then there is the issue of co-option. It isn't enough to have all the parts, they must be assembled in the right order. You can't build a house by erecting the roof first. There is a sequence. The orders of magnitude to get all of this right in terms of probability safely put the flagellum within the range of design after running it through the explantory filter. In other words, if you saw a mechanical flagellum you would immediately hypothesize a designer and builder.
Back to synoptical review. For those that like video I would suggest Unlocking the Mysteries of Life by the Discovery Institute and Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial by Nova. An explanation and critique of the bacterial flagellum is found in each. I found them both highly entertaining and fun to watch.
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OrgoneConclusion
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why would you give Dembski any more credence than your cat?
Methinks you answered your own question.
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zouden
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Quote:
I find the idea of intelligent design compelling on the grounds that it dovetails nicely with certain philosophical ideas, for one, the immateriality of the mind. Having said that, I take issue with TalkOrigins in many areas, for one, the bacterial flagellum. When you run the flagellum through the explanatory filter, you'll find it was designed in a way that methodological naturalism cannot account for. It's fine to tell a story about what could have happened, but it doesn't correlate well with the facts. The flagellum has roughly 40 parts, only 10 of which are found in nature. Where are the other 30? Vanished from sight, apparently. If someone's going to tell me a story I at least like to see real, physical, quantifiable entities that back up their claim. Jack and the Beanstalk doesn't cut it for me. Then there is the issue of co-option. It isn't enough to have all the parts, they must be assembled in the right order. You can't build a house by erecting the roof first. There is a sequence. The orders of magnitude to get all of this right in terms of probability safely put the flagellum within the range of design after running it through the explantory filter.
But it sounds like you didn't even read TalkOrigins' explanation.
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# The claim is simply false. Of the twenty proteins in the archetypal Salmonella bacterial flagellum which appear to be required in all bacterial flagella, only two have no known homologies, that is, are "unique". It is at least plausible that homologies for those will be discovered later. At least nine flagellar proteins are homologous to proteins of the Type-III secretion system (T3SS), suggesting the two evolved from a common ancestor. Regardless, the existence of many homologous proteins shows that the parts of the flagellum can function for purposes other than motility (Pallen and Matzke 2006).
# There is no such thing as "the" bacterial flagellum. There are thousands, perhaps millions, of varieties among different bacteria, not to mention other very different kinds of flagella on archaebacteria and eukaryotes. The Salmonella flagellum, for example, has 22 additional proteins which some other bacteria lack in their flagella.
The ATP synthase is a another simpler form of the flagella motor. The concept of creating rotational torque by exploiting an electrochemical gradient is used a few times in unicellular life. I did my honours thesis on the ATP synthase of green algae.
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
In other words, if you saw a mechanical flagellum you would immediately hypothesize a designer and builder.
Of course. But that doesn't mean it's the correct hypothesis.
Edit: Also, I asked why you'd give Dembski any more credence than your cat, by which I mean: TalkOrigins. You haven't answered that yet, other than saying that you're dissatisfied by TalkOrigins' explanation of the flagella and you find ID more satisfying from a philosophical perspective. But one's satisfaction of a theory has no bearing on the validity of it. I find it quite sad that you are more willing to believe someone just because they say things that you like.
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Edited by zouden (05/01/09 06:24 PM)
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Mr. Mushrooms
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zouden said:
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I find the idea of intelligent design compelling on the grounds that it dovetails nicely with certain philosophical ideas, for one, the immateriality of the mind. Having said that, I take issue with TalkOrigins in many areas, for one, the bacterial flagellum. When you run the flagellum through the explanatory filter, you'll find it was designed in a way that methodological naturalism cannot account for. It's fine to tell a story about what could have happened, but it doesn't correlate well with the facts. The flagellum has roughly 40 parts, only 10 of which are found in nature. Where are the other 30? Vanished from sight, apparently. If someone's going to tell me a story I at least like to see real, physical, quantifiable entities that back up their claim. Jack and the Beanstalk doesn't cut it for me. Then there is the issue of co-option. It isn't enough to have all the parts, they must be assembled in the right order. You can't build a house by erecting the roof first. There is a sequence. The orders of magnitude to get all of this right in terms of probability safely put the flagellum within the range of design after running it through the explanatory filter.
But it sounds like you didn't even read TalkOrigins' explanation.
That would be because I hadn't read their entire rebuttal.
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zouden said:
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# The claim is simply false. Of the twenty proteins in the archetypal Salmonella bacterial flagellum which appear to be required in all bacterial flagella, only two have no known homologies, that is, are "unique". It is at least plausible that homologies for those will be discovered later. At least nine flagellar proteins are homologous to proteins of the Type-III secretion system (T3SS), suggesting the two evolved from a common ancestor. Regardless, the existence of many homologous proteins shows that the parts of the flagellum can function for purposes other than motility (Pallen and Matzke 2006).
# There is no such thing as "the" bacterial flagellum. There are thousands, perhaps millions, of varieties among different bacteria, not to mention other very different kinds of flagella on archaebacteria and eukaryotes. The Salmonella flagellum, for example, has 22 additional proteins which some other bacteria lack in their flagella.
The claim is clearly true. A homology is merely a circular argument. We are speaking of the exact same parts. While some flagellum have more and some less, the worst case scenario is missing the 30 parts. Where are they? They don't exist. Just because some homology is floating around doesn't make it that part.
Is there a section that addresses the co-option factor?
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zouden said:
The ATP synthase is a another simpler form of the flagella motor. The concept of creating rotational torque by exploiting an electrochemical gradient is used a few times in unicellular life. I did my honours thesis on the ATP synthase of green algae.
Congratulations, that's very impressive.
I have to ask though. Natural selection favors mutations that have some advantage given environment pressures or some founder effect. Where is the story that gives these hypotheses?
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zouden said:
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
In other words, if you saw a mechanical flagellum you would immediately hypothesize a designer and builder.
Of course. But that doesn't mean it's the correct hypothesis.
That's the beauty of the explanatory filter. It gives ample evidence for design, making it the correct hypothesis.
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zouden said:
Edit: Also, I asked why you'd give Dembski any more credence than your cat, by which I mean: TalkOrigins. You haven't answered that yet, other than saying that you're dissatisfied by TalkOrigins' explanation of the flagella and you find ID more satisfying from a philosophical perspective. But one's satisfaction of a theory has no bearing on the validity of it. I find it quite sad that you are more willing to believe someone just because they say things that you like.
It isn't the case of satisfaction at all, other than which argument has the correct facts and uses proper logic. TalkOrigins fails on both accounts. I hardly believe someone just because they say things I like. If that were true I'd be a mark for every slick-ass salesman who offered me some trinket, including the bauble of natural selection for irreducible complex entities.
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zouden
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Let me get this straight: TalkOrigins fails to use the correct facts and proper logic, but William Dembski does?
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While some flagellum have more and some less, the worst case scenario is missing the 30 parts. Where are they? They don't exist.
I don't understand, sorry. What parts are you talking about?
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Mr. Mushrooms
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zouden said:
Let me get this straight: TalkOrigins fails to use the correct facts and proper logic, but William Dembski does?
In the cases I am referring to, yes.
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While some flagellum have more and some less, the worst case scenario is missing the 30 parts. Where are they? They don't exist.
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zouden said:
I don't understand, sorry. What parts are you talking about?
The parts that make up the bacterial flagellum, the proteins.
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Comprised of 40 parts that self-assemble into a true rotary engine, the biochemistry and genetics of these systems has revealed an unanticipated complexity.
http://www.discovery.org/a/2181
Why don't you read the PDF at the bottom of the link and critique it. I would love to hear your view.
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zouden
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My view is that it's non-peer-reviewed propaganda. Anyone can write a paper saying that the flagella is so complex it had to have been designed by God, but that doesn't make it correct. The author himself admitted that paper isn't peer-reviewed. That, in my eyes, makes it scientifically worthless. I'd give more credence to my cat.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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zouden said:
My view is that it's non-peer-reviewed propaganda. Anyone can write a paper saying that the flagella is so complex it had to have been designed by God, but that doesn't make it correct. The author himself admitted that paper isn't peer-reviewed. That, in my eyes, makes it scientifically worthless. I'd give more credence to my cat.
Interestingly, the idea that the bacterial flagellum came before the Type-III secretion system (T3SS) (the argument is reversed at TalkOrigins) IS peer-reviewed.
Nguyen L, Paulsen IT, Tchieu J, Hueck CJ, and Saier MH Jr. Phylogenetic analyses of the constituents of the Type III protein secretion systems. J. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 2:125-144. 2000.
If their idea is correct, it makes the flagellum purported "evolution" a blast of hot air. I know about this because a friend of mine actually came up with the original hypothesis and gave it to Dembski. If you'd like, I can dig the paper up.
So much for ID never being peer-reviewed or tested, eh?
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zouden
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>If their idea is correct, it makes the flagellum purported "evolution" a blast of hot air.
Sure, but that doesn't mean it was designed. There are many competing theories for how things evolved, but there are no scenarios where intelligent design is the only explanation.
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OrgoneConclusion
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I am very curious as to why you thought renaming the website 'talkshit.org' in any way contributed to the debate? Is this not the sort of tactic that you often decry? It is merely a group personalism to all of the contributors/authors on that website. Even though you disagree with their conclusions, how does this sort of attack add to the civility and content of the conversation?
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zouden
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Perhaps his cat is actually called 'Talkshit' and he was merely emphasising how he gives them equal credence.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
>If their idea is correct, it makes the flagellum purported "evolution" a blast of hot air.
Sure, but that doesn't mean it was designed. There are many competing theories for how things evolved, but there are no scenarios where intelligent design is the only explanation.
Competing theories other than natural selection? I'm intrigued because I haven't seen any in reference to the flagellum. (because there are none) Showing that the Type-III secretion system came after the flagellum--the claim of the peer-reviewed article--pretty much shoots down Miller's et al idea of the flagellum evolving from the Type-III secretion system.
It isn't necessary to shred every possible naturalistic explanation to give evidence for design. The design filter does that quite well enough.
I should mention that the peer-reviewed article I posted came from the article you dismissed out of hand.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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OrgoneConclusion said:
I am very curious as to why you thought renaming the website 'talkshit.org' in any way contributed to the debate? Is this not the sort of tactic that you often decry? It is merely a group personalism to all of the contributors/authors on that website. Even though you disagree with their conclusions, how does this sort of attack add to the civility and content of the conversation?
I didn't think it contributed to the debate; it was a mere subjective opinion. I allow myself those now and again as I allow others. Group personalism? Perhaps. What do you call religious groups? Nutters, isn't it? While those appellations do not in any way contribute to the substantive portions of any discussion, they do reveal a certain animus held by the poster for those groups or individuals. I don't remember decrying the use of negative adjectives in reference to groups. Using negative adjectives or calling names directly to the person you are discussing something with is a bit different in my view.
In this discussion, I'm proud to say, zouden has conducted himself as a gentleman. In that, I'm more than impressed. He and I vehemently disagree and yet hold a civil conversation in spite of our disagreement. I think it's awesome.
I won't participate in a long discussion on side issues, but since you brought it up I've changed my opinion on Albert Einstein this past week, a man I revered for all of my life. After reviewing the way he used people and his moral code I think he was an utter asshole. I wouldn't stick out my hand for him to kiss, let alone shake. What an utter, fucking creep. The video was Nova's Einstein Revealed. If they wanted to tear down an icon they did a splendid job. He abandoned his daughter, Lieserl Einstein, for the sake of a job. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
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zouden
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
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zouden said:
>If their idea is correct, it makes the flagellum purported "evolution" a blast of hot air.
Sure, but that doesn't mean it was designed. There are many competing theories for how things evolved, but there are no scenarios where intelligent design is the only explanation.
Competing theories other than natural selection? I'm intrigued because I haven't seen any in reference to the flagellum. (because there are none) Showing that the Type-III secretion system came after the flagellum--the claim of the peer-reviewed article--pretty much shoots down Miller's et al idea of the flagellum evolving from the Type-III secretion system.
It isn't necessary to shred every possible naturalistic explanation to give evidence for design. The design filter does that quite well enough.
I should mention that the peer-reviewed article I posted came from the article you dismissed out of hand.
Well, I'm not familiar with the current theories regarding the development of the flagellum, but I think there's something deeply suspicious about a non-peer-reviewed paper written by a well-known shill for the Discovery Institute. I don't think it matters that he cites articles that have been peer reviewed. To me it seems like he's just picked articles that agree with his viewpoint and presented them as evidence for intelligent design, but, well... anyone can do that. Which is why his article wasn't reviewed. He said it was just a 'conference paper', but if he thought he could get it in a proper journal I'm sure he would have tried. I see no reason to consider this paper as a compelling argument for intelligent design.
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johnm214
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
I think we've covered the fact that ID makes falsifiable predictions. It does and hasn't been falsified. All of the tests for ID have given evidence for design.
What are they, please.
I've seen you quote people several times but I've never seen what the predictions are.
What physical consequences does it have that can be tested?
The whole notion of intelligent design seems an entirely post hoc rationalization, which is part of why I say its not science. What physical evidence could we ever discover that validates it or rejects it?
In answering please indicate what prediction it would make that could be observed that would support it, particularly, as opposed to simpler models (models that make less presumptions) and briefly why these observations would support or refute I.D. Please briefly describe what I.D. model you think this would support or reject, to avoid confusion (as these discussions often encounter misunderstandings).
---
All I've seen in your quotes are some guy that says if predictions are wrong that the theory would be falsified, which isn't helpful.
I didn't understand the first paragraph and what it had to do with anyting (finding a place conducive to scientific discovery, wtf?) and the others seem to unclearly related to intelligent design.
What does carbon based life have to do with anything, for example?
I don't understand what that quote is trying to say nor how it provides what you claim it provides, so please break it down for me.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
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zouden said:
>If their idea is correct, it makes the flagellum purported "evolution" a blast of hot air.
Sure, but that doesn't mean it was designed. There are many competing theories for how things evolved, but there are no scenarios where intelligent design is the only explanation.
Competing theories other than natural selection? I'm intrigued because I haven't seen any in reference to the flagellum. (because there are none) Showing that the Type-III secretion system came after the flagellum--the claim of the peer-reviewed article--pretty much shoots down Miller's et al idea of the flagellum evolving from the Type-III secretion system.
It isn't necessary to shred every possible naturalistic explanation to give evidence for design. The design filter does that quite well enough.
I should mention that the peer-reviewed article I posted came from the article you dismissed out of hand.
Well, I'm not familiar with the current theories regarding the development of the flagellum, but I think there's something deeply suspicious about a non-peer-reviewed paper written by a well-known shill for the Discovery Institute. I don't think it matters that he cites articles that have been peer reviewed. To me it seems like he's just picked articles that agree with his viewpoint and presented them as evidence for intelligent design, but, well... anyone can do that. Which is why his article wasn't reviewed. He said it was just a 'conference paper', but if he thought he could get it in a proper journal I'm sure he would have tried. I see no reason to consider this paper as a compelling argument for intelligent design.
I appreciate the opinion you're entitled to, but since it is merely a subjective opinion it carries little weight. Further, I am deeply suspicious (I am being kind) that the peer-reviewed article I did offer adequately rebuts the evolution of the flagellum as found in Talkshit.org. The is yet another example of why I place zero faith in them. If anything the Type-III secretion system came after the flagellum, not the other way around.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Good questions, John. I only have time for a brief comment right now. First I'd say that viewing data as predictions can be a bit thorny, even for natural selection. Philosopher of science, Karl Popper, uses the falsifiability criterion, another interpretation of predictability. In other words, someone could ask the same question of evolution.
So, what is the next species that man will turn into, huh? Go on, make a prediction.
I asked zouden for one such prediction and he said we'd never find a fossil in a strata before they appeared in the fossil record. That would be a prediction and a falsification of natural selection. My counter was that it wouldn't because natural selection, based on methodological naturalism, can only consider natural causes for organisms. It wouldn't falsify a thing.
I'll get back to the rest later. Thanks for the questions.
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Grapefruit
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And if there was a god, people would say that god's so complex he must've been designed by grandmaster god. God would have to be just as complex as the thing he made.
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"So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God." - Herman Melville
Edited by Grapefruit (05/03/09 12:14 PM)
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zouden
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
I asked zouden for one such prediction and he said we'd never find a fossil in a strata before they appeared in the fossil record. That would be a prediction and a falsification of natural selection. My counter was that it wouldn't because natural selection, based on methodological naturalism, can only consider natural causes for organisms. It wouldn't falsify a thing.
Within limits. But there are certain predictions which are based on such well-established principles within evolutionary biology that if they were proven wrong, the whole theory would need to be reconsidered. Finding a mammal fossil from a time before mammals were thought to have evolved would be one such falsification.
In fact, if you want to get picky, you could say the evolution is falsified all the time. Whenever a scientist finds something that doesn't quite fit, the theory is 'falsifieid' then revised to fit the new data. Thus you could say that we're not even using the same theory of evolution as that proposed by Darwin, since it's been modified over the years.
The only reason you wouldn't say that is well... that's how science works. That sort of thing happens all the time so it's unremarkable. What it certainly does not imply is that intelligent design is an adequate theory. There has never been a discovery which falsified evolution so much that the only valid alternative explanation was ID, despite what those at the Discovery Institute would have us believe.
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OrgoneConclusion
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You failed to give the Discovery Institute a funny name.
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zouden
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The Dicksuckery Institute?
The Discovery Scamstitute?
The Dicksuckery Scamstitute: when your only tool is a vise, everything looks like Darwin's head
Catchy slogan?
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OrgoneConclusion
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It's a little wordy for a bumper sticker or a t-shirt.
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mad_cow
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Darwin must have pissed off joe pesci.
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Drakion
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Quote:
Or he could have said: "Science cannot be blamed for nuclear weapons, just like the God concept cannot be blamed for religious malevolence".
I love science, but I don't support the building of nuclear weapons. I also have a concept of a mono-holo-pantheistic God, but I don't adhere to any religion, and I certainly don't support religious malevolence.
But science can be blamed for nuclear weapons. Science developed them.
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Choosing a religion is like playing the lotto, you can't get saved if you don't play! ~ Bill Maher
The efficiency of the truly national leader consists primarily in preventing the division of the attention of a people, and always in concentrating it on a single enemy. ~Adolf Hitler
10 years in an American prison right here folks, be careful!
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zouden
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No it didn't. Some scientists did.
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johnm214
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Good questions, John. I only have time for a brief comment right now. First I'd say that viewing data as predictions can be a bit thorny, even for natural selection. Philosopher of science, Karl Popper, uses the falsifiability criterion, another interpretation of predictability. In other words, someone could ask the same question of evolution.
So, what is the next species that man will turn into, huh? Go on, make a prediction.
I asked zouden for one such prediction and he said we'd never find a fossil in a strata before they appeared in the fossil record. That would be a prediction and a falsification of natural selection. My counter was that it wouldn't because natural selection, based on methodological naturalism, can only consider natural causes for organisms. It wouldn't falsify a thing.
I'll get back to the rest later. Thanks for the questions.
What do you mean about data and predictions? The predictions are what the hypothesis should produce and the data is what you look at to see if this is so. I'm not confusing them I don't think, and I don't understand the comment.
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In other words, someone could ask the same question of evolution.
\
Doesn't matter. I.D. and evolution both have their own burdens independant of each other.
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So, what is the next species that man will turn into, huh? Go on, make a prediction.
I don't know, and it doesn't matter. Just cuz a hypothesis isn't useful for everything doesn't mean it isn't valid. The predictions of evolution are things such as intermediate forms between diverse life, common genetic origin, adaptations that fit the environment, et cet.
My understanding is that their is many examples of new discoveries in genetics that allow us to discover such things, discoveries in fossils and geological/biological history that substantiate evolution, et cet.
But it doesn't matter, I.D. must stand on its own. I don't know or care much about evolution, I don't consider it really all that useful or interesting from a practical standpoint.
Quote:
I asked zouden for one such prediction and he said we'd never find a fossil in a strata before they appeared in the fossil record. That would be a prediction and a falsification of natural selection. My counter was that it wouldn't because natural selection, based on methodological naturalism, can only consider natural causes for organisms. It wouldn't falsify a thing.
I don't understand your point.
Either way, you've not posited what was asked regarding I.D.. I don't know much and don't really care much about evolution so I'm not the best one to ask. Regardless, my point was that it seems I.D. can't produce any predictions since the entire basis is supernatural forces that don't produce any detectable phenomena. So far I don't think you've produced any basis on which you can call I.D. a scientific theory or thought for these reasons.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
johnm214 said:
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
I think we've covered the fact that ID makes falsifiable predictions. It does and hasn't been falsified. All of the tests for ID have given evidence for design.
What are they, please. I've seen you quote people several times but I've never seen what the predictions are.
I could start off with my explanation, but instead I'll use Dembski's in the hopes it will be clearer.
Quote:
William Dembski said:
There is a belief among media commentators that intelligent design is unscientific
because it is unfalsifiable or untestable: no empirical evidence can count against it.
Though common, this charge is demonstrably false. Of course there’s no way to falsify a
mere assertion that a cosmic designer exists. This much we are agreed on. But
contemporary design arguments focus not on such vague claims, but on detectible
evidence for design in the natural world. Therefore, the design arguments currently in
play are falsifiable.
Consider the argument that Michael Behe makes in his book Darwin’s Black Box.
There he proposes that design is detectable in many “molecular machines,” including the
bacterial flagellum. Behe argues that this tiny motor needs all its parts to function—it is
“irreducibly complex.” Such systems in our experience are a hallmark of designed
systems, because they require the foresight that is the exclusive jurisdiction of intelligent
agents. Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection and random variations, in contrast,
requires a functional system at each transition along the way. Natural selection can select
for present but not for future function. Notice that Behe’s argument rests not on
ignorance, but on what we know about designed systems, the causal powers of intelligent
agents, and on our growing knowledge of the cellular world and its many mechanisms.
How does one test and discredit Behe’s argument? Describe a realistic,
continuously functional Darwinian pathway from simple ancestor to present motor.
Darwinists like Kenneth Miller point to the hope of future discoveries, and to the type III
secretory system as a machine possibly co-opted on the evolutionary path to the
flagellum. The argument is riddled with problems, but it shows that Miller, at least,
understands perfectly well that Behe’s argument is testable. Similarly, the Internet is
filled with supposed refutations of contemporary design arguments, many written by
scientists using information from the natural world to make their arguments. An
argument can’t be both open to falsifiability and unfalsifiable at the same time.
To sum up, how is ID tested or falsified in the case of the flagellum?
"Describe a realistic, continuously functional Darwinian pathway from simple ancestor to present motor." Miller, and others, tried this and failed. The evidence is found in the peer-reviewed article:
Nguyen L, Paulsen IT, Tchieu J, Hueck CJ, and Saier MH Jr. Phylogenetic analyses of the constituents of the Type III protein secretion systems. J. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 2:125-144. 2000.
This is what Orgone was referring to when he said:
Quote:
OrgoneConclusion said:
Behe's claim of irreducible complexity was clearly falsified at the Dover School, PA trial. His best example of the bacterial flagellum was shown to have functions other than motility in other bacterium using a similar mechanism with fewer parts.
That should have put this nonsense to rest, but there is no accounting for illogic and belief.
Pointedly, the "prediction" is that a natural pathway for the flagellum will never be found. If it is it would mean that the flagellum evolved by natural selection, destroying IC (irreducible complexity) and EF (the explanatory filter). Why do you think evolutionists tried so hard to falsify the idea that the flagellum evolved through natural causes?
Because they knew that doing so would falsify ID!
So the very idea that ID cannot be falsified is ridiculous nonsense.
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johnm214 said:
What physical consequences does it have that can be tested?
I'm not sure what you mean here.
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johnm214 said:
The whole notion of intelligent design seems an entirely post hoc rationalization, which is part of why I say its not science. What physical evidence could we ever discover that validates it or rejects it?
I understand what you mean by "post hoc rationalization." It seems as if the ID folks are saying, "Hey, if you can't figure something out, God did it." But that isn't really the case. The answer lies in whether something is run through the explanatory filter and comes out as designed.
If you want to understand the filter, read this link:
http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_explfilter.htm
It basically says that if something isn't produced by law or chance it was designed.
The physical evidence you are referring to would be partial flagellums attached to bacteria or whatever that have not been eliminated by natural selection due to their non-advantage for the organism. They would be non-functional and just hanging around waiting for the other parts to evolve. Trust me, you're not going to find them.
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johnm214 said:
In answering please indicate what prediction it would make that could be observed that would support it, particularly, as opposed to simpler models (models that make less presumptions) and briefly why these observations would support or refute I.D. Please briefly describe what I.D. model you think this would support or reject, to avoid confusion (as these discussions often encounter misunderstandings).
I think I've done that but I'll reword and repeat it.
ID predicts that, in the case of the flagellum, partial motors or all the pieces of the flagellum will not be found and neither can a DNA blueprint for its construction. If, for example, we were to find parts of the flagellum waiting in a bacteria for the other parts to show up it would quickly render the idea that the flagellum could not have evolved false. I'm not sure if this meets your "model" criterion. If not, please elaborate and I'll attempt an answer.
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johnm214 said:
All I've seen in your quotes are some guy that says if predictions are wrong that the theory would be falsified, which isn't helpful.
I didn't understand the first paragraph and what it had to do with anyting (finding a place conducive to scientific discovery, wtf?) and the others seem to unclearly related to intelligent design.
What does carbon based life have to do with anything, for example?
I don't understand what that quote is trying to say nor how it provides what you claim it provides, so please break it down for me.
If I am correct in assuming you are referring to this quote:
Quote:
The most decisive way to falsify our argument as a whole would be to find a distant
and very different environment, which, while quite hostile to life....
That quote is Dembski quoting Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards in The Privileged Planet. Their contention is:
Quote:
[Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards] argue that there is a correlation between the conditions needed for life and the conditions needed for diverse types of scientific discovery, and suggest that such a correlation, if true, points to intelligent design.
If you want to read the whole article in context, here is the link:
http://www.discovery.org/a/2812
It took me an hour to put this together. After investing that much time I hope you'll forgive me for not replying to your last post.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
I asked zouden for one such prediction and he said we'd never find a fossil in a strata before they appeared in the fossil record. That would be a prediction and a falsification of natural selection. My counter was that it wouldn't because natural selection, based on methodological naturalism, can only consider natural causes for organisms. It wouldn't falsify a thing.
Within limits. But there are certain predictions which are based on such well-established principles within evolutionary biology that if they were proven wrong, the whole theory would need to be reconsidered. Finding a mammal fossil from a time before mammals were thought to have evolved would be one such falsification.
This depends on how we are using the term 'evolution'. If by evolution we mean life evolved from natural causes your mammal fossil would not falsify it. The is because methodological naturalism, i.e. science, is hamstrung in matters of teleology. That premise itself is absurd when we consider the various fields of science that admit intelligent agency as a cause.
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zouden said:
In fact, if you want to get picky, you could say the evolution is falsified all the time. Whenever a scientist finds something that doesn't quite fit, the theory is 'falsifieid' then revised to fit the new data. Thus you could say that we're not even using the same theory of evolution as that proposed by Darwin, since it's been modified over the years.
Ah yes, the ol' ad hoc two-step. Let me quote Popper:
Quote:
Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers, for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status.
http://darwin.eeb.uconn.edu/sci240/popper.html
Could it be for this reason evolution hasn't been rejected by now? I submit that it is.
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zouden said:
The only reason you wouldn't say that is well... that's how science works. That sort of thing happens all the time so it's unremarkable. What it certainly does not imply is that intelligent design is an adequate theory. There has never been a discovery which falsified evolution so much that the only valid alternative explanation was ID, despite what those at the Discovery Institute would have us believe.
So you keep telling us. However, when evidence is produced you either dismiss it without a counterclaim or ignore it.
Let's recap:
You said ID wasn't a theory. I showed that it was. Your response? Silence.
You said ID wasn't falsifiable. I showed that it was. Your response? Silence.
You claimed TalkOrigins was an accurate website for disputing the flagellum hypothesis. I showed you a peer-reviewed article showing they were wrong or at the very least only telling half the story. Your response? You dismissed it because it gave weight to ID. A theory that, according to you, "There has never been a discovery which falsified evolution so much that the only valid alternative explanation was ID....".
To me this conversation is taking on the appearance of a logical fallacy:
Moving The Goalposts (Raising The Bar, Argument By Demanding Impossible Perfection)
If your opponent successfully addresses some point, then say he must also address some further point. If you can make these points more and more difficult (or diverse) then eventually your opponent must fail. If nothing else, you will eventually find a subject that your opponent isn't up on.
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/6787104
Your move.
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Edited by Mr. Mushrooms (05/04/09 05:00 AM)
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Mr. Mushrooms
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OrgoneConclusion said:
You failed to give the Discovery Institute a funny name.
Help me out here. Is your post needling?
"This is simply attempting to make the other person angry, without trying to address the argument at hand. Sometimes this is a delaying tactic.
You may instead insult something the other person believes in (Argumentum Ad YourMomium), interrupt, clown to show disrespect, and numerous other tricks. All of these work better if you are running things - for example, if it is your radio show, and you can cut off microphones. A competent moderator is almost as good."
Source: The Fallacies of Philosophical Debate by Diploid.
Perhaps, and I'm just spitballing here, you could address the portion where I shredded the erroneous idea that the Dover trial falsified the flagellum.
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zouden
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Quote:
You said ID wasn't a theory. I showed that it was. Your response? Silence.
You said ID wasn't falsifiable. I showed that it was. Your response? Silence.
You claimed TalkOrigins was an accurate website for disputing the flagellum hypothesis. I showed you a peer-reviewed article showing they were wrong or at the very least only telling half the story. Your response? You dismissed it because it gave weight to ID. A theory that, according to you, "There has never been a discovery which falsified evolution so much that the only valid alternative explanation was ID....".
I'm not sure why you think I was silent on those points, because I distinctly remember responding. But anyway. For the last time, the article you linked was not peer reviewed. It was a conference paper. The author himself admitted, in court, that it was not peer reviewed. It is worthless.
The paper you then moved on to, Nguyen et al (2000), is peer reviewed, but it doesn't prove ID one way or the other. It merely provides evidence that perhaps the flagellum is the precursor for the TPSS and not the other way around as previously thought. I'm afraid it'll take more than that to prove that God designed the flagellum.
Regarding your central point that ID is falsifiable, I'll grant you one thing: the version being espoused by Dembski is falsifiable. But, just as with young-earth creationists, the ID proponents are happy to keep moving the goalposts when required. When biologists develop a better explanation for the flagellum's evolution, you can bet that Dembski will a) deny it, and b) move on to something else. He can do this because the central tenet of ID, God, allows that the 'theory' be modified to accommodate Him.
To put it another way, think about it like this: why should we give Dembski any credence at all? Because he's an expert on ID? How could anyone be an expert in how God created the world? We don't know jack about God's methods or motives, and there's certainly no reason to think that Dembski knows any more about Him than anyone else, is there? So when Dembski says that that the TPSS is not the precursor to the flagellum and therefore God must have designed the flagellum, he's just talking out his ass. God could have designed some other precursor and then let it evolve into the flagellum. Or maybe the TPSS really did come first and God is playing tricks on Nguyen et al. Who knows.
This is the reason why ID is not falsifiable. It relies on an external actor about whom we know nothing, and to whom we can attribute anything.
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Quote:
You said ID wasn't a theory. I showed that it was. Your response? Silence.
You said ID wasn't falsifiable. I showed that it was. Your response? Silence.
You claimed TalkOrigins was an accurate website for disputing the flagellum hypothesis. I showed you a peer-reviewed article showing they were wrong or at the very least only telling half the story. Your response? You dismissed it because it gave weight to ID. A theory that, according to you, "There has never been a discovery which falsified evolution so much that the only valid alternative explanation was ID....".
I'm not sure why you think I was silent on those points, because I distinctly remember responding. But anyway. For the last time, the article you linked was not peer reviewed. It was a conference paper. The author himself admitted, in court, that it was not peer reviewed. It is worthless.
Well upon review you weren't silent, you just didn't offer a counterclaim that evidenced your point, i.e. ID isn't falsifiable--still haven't. Whether a hypothesis is peer-reviewed or not has nothing whatsoever to do with its merit. As a scientist you should know this. Right now I am working on a hypothesis dealing with the mushroom species Morchella elata and the pH in which they are found. Morels: Limestone, run-off, and pH--a study So far the findings are that Black Morels prefer soils with higher pH. If others add to the thread and we establish this it will be a scientific fact, even though it was never submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. You keep saying the paper is worthless, but I don't see you putting forth an argument against it.
Looking for peer-review is an old evolutionist trick. It's moving the goal-post. Could it be that the bias of the journals will not allow ID a hearing in the case of this paper? That is a distinct possibility and I submit that is the case.
Quote:
zouden said:
The paper you then moved on to, Nguyen et al (2000), is peer reviewed, but it doesn't prove ID one way or the other. It merely provides evidence that perhaps the flagellum is the precursor for the TPSS and not the other way around as previously thought. I'm afraid it'll take more than that to prove that God designed the flagellum.
We don't look to "prove," we look for evidence. We found that the evidence contradicts Miller and the crap they publish at TalkOrigins. You won't hear either admitting that though. What counts for evidence in terms of evolution and what counts against it as ID proves my point. Neither Dembski nor Behe are saying God designed the flagellum. That's a Red Herring.
Quote:
zouden said:
Regarding your central point that ID is falsifiable, I'll grant you one thing: the version being espoused by Dembski is falsifiable. But, just as with young-earth creationists, the ID proponents are happy to keep moving the goalposts when required. When biologists develop a better explanation for the flagellum's evolution, you can bet that Dembski will a) deny it, and b) move on to something else. He can do this because the central tenet of ID, God, allows that the 'theory' be modified to accommodate Him.
Supposition. ID predicts another, better explanation will never be found for the reasons stated in ID theory. Dembski's central tenet(s) are specified complexity, irreducible complexity and primarily the Explanatory Filter. If a real, quantifiable explanation of the flagellum's creation could be found by natural selection, the ball game is over, the end, checkmate. As it stands now 30 of the proteins used to make the flagellum do not even exist. So two steps are required to falsify it:
1) Find the proteins. (Rather tough as they don't exist)
2) Hypothesize the sequenced construction per environmental factors, founder effect, what-have-you.
It's that simple and that complex. So it seems we've found your "mammal fossil." Unfortunately bias and a limited scope of inquiry deny its access to the paradigm.
Quote:
zouden said:
To put it another way, think about it like this: why should we give Dembski any credence at all? Because he's an expert on ID? How could anyone be an expert in how God created the world? We don't know jack about God's methods or motives, and there's certainly no reason to think that Dembski knows any more about Him than anyone else, is there? So when Dembski says that that the TPSS is not the precursor to the flagellum and therefore God must have designed the flagellum, he's just talking out his ass. God could have designed some other precursor and then let it evolve into the flagellum. Or maybe the TPSS really did come first and God is playing tricks on Nguyen et al. Who knows.
This is the reason why ID is not falsifiable. It relies on an external actor about whom we know nothing, and to whom we can attribute anything.
That isn't Dembski's conjecture. As I said, his hypothesis rests on three factors:
1) Specified complexity.
2) Irreducible complexity.
3) The Explanatory Filter.
By using those three criteria we can be sure that an organism either:
1) Came about by natural law. We now know that evolution cannot use that as a reason.
2) Came about by chance. The laws of probability when taken into the explanatory filter dismiss such an idea and counts as evidence against it.
3) Came about by an intelligent agency.
In the science of forensics you do not need to hypothesize the identity of the perpetrator to know his hand was in play. Either someone died of "natural causes" or someone killed them. The identity of the intelligent agent is a moot point.
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Edited by Mr. Mushrooms (05/04/09 06:27 AM)
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Grapefruit
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MM wouldn't you agree that something that creates something would have to be just as complex if not more complex than the thing it creates? Surely you can't really argue complexity? At the end of the day something of extreme complexity came out of nowhere (not intelligently designed).
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"So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God." - Herman Melville
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
Grapefruit said:
MM wouldn't you agree that something that creates something would have to be just as complex if not more complex than the thing it creates? Surely you can't really argue complexity? At the end of the day something of extreme complexity came out of nowhere (not intelligently designed).
Yes, I would stipulate that a designer would be more complex than that which it designs.
I'm not sure what you mean by the last two sentences.
Ex nihilo nihil fit is the Latin for out of nothing, nothing comes.
Your argument earlier about God is countered by the Prime Mover argument or that God isn't a contingent Being, but a necessary Being.
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Grapefruit
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Why is he neccassary? There are all sorts of unimaginably complex proccesess going on. The god that created them would have to have proccesses just as complex going on in his mind, does that mean in your theory it would be "neccessary" that he had a god to create those proccesses, or am i missing something here?
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"So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God." - Herman Melville
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
Grapefruit said:
Why is he neccassary? There are all sorts of unimaginably complex proccesess going on. The god that created them would have to have proccesses just as complex going on in his mind, does that mean in your theory it would be "neccessary" that he had a god to create those proccesses, or am i missing something here?
Yes, you're missing something. The term 'necessary' refers to a philosophical idea that all Beings are either contingent, i.e. created, or necessary, i.e. not created.
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johnm214
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Quote:
zouden said:
I'm not sure why you think I was silent on those points, because I distinctly remember responding. But anyway. For the last time, the article you linked was not peer reviewed. It was a conference paper. The author himself admitted, in court, that it was not peer reviewed. It is worthless.
How is that worthless?
This is just an appeal to authority. You didn't ask what the scientific oligarchy accepts, you asked specific questions.
You should address any points on their merits rather than ignoring them on extraneous grounds. Peer review isn't magical and isn't relevant to any claim your making.
Maybe if some questionable data or whatnot were at issue or your pleading ignorance on a particular area then the fact it wasn't reviewed would be relevant to a claim that you can't be confident in the paper, but this isn't what your claiming.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
johnm214 said:
Quote:
zouden said:
I'm not sure why you think I was silent on those points, because I distinctly remember responding. But anyway. For the last time, the article you linked was not peer reviewed. It was a conference paper. The author himself admitted, in court, that it was not peer reviewed. It is worthless.
How is that worthless?
This is just an appeal to authority. You didn't ask what the scientific oligarchy accepts, you asked specific questions.
You should address any points on their merits rather than ignoring them on extraneous grounds. Peer review isn't magical and isn't relevant to any claim your making.
Maybe if some questionable data or whatnot were at issue or your pleading ignorance on a particular area then the fact it wasn't reviewed would be relevant to a claim that you can't be confident in the paper, but this isn't what your claiming.
Nice job, John. I assume you directed this to zouden so I'll let him answer.
If any of my points were unclear don't hesitate to address them.
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johnm214
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Quote:
Pointedly, the "prediction" is that a natural pathway for the flagellum will never be found. If it is it would mean that the flagellum evolved by natural selection, destroying IC (irreducible complexity) and EF (the explanatory filter). Why do you think evolutionists tried so hard to falsify the idea that the flagellum evolved through natural causes?
How does finding that the flagellum could have naturally evolved in a likely progression mean that I.D. is wrong?
If such is never found how does that give evidence to I.D.?
This is evidence that evolution is wrong, at most, rather than intelligent design is correct. How does any of this suggest supernatural sources at all? That's the equivalent at looking at a rock and figuring it had to come from somewhere so claiming that's evidence of god, it just begs the question and presumes soemthing without evidence.
This seems to be I.D. in a nutshell: find soemthing allegedly wrong or incomplete in evolution and claim its evidence of intelligent design.
You cannot disprove god by finding that something occurs naturally, and finding that something is here without a reason can never produce evidence that god exists any more than looking at a rock means god exists. You make something up without the means to test it and the only evidence is that some other theory has holes or is wrong.
Finally, why does intelligent design predict the flagellum will not be shown likely naturally evolved in origin? What tennant of the hypothesis produces this result? I don't know of any, and this is what I mean when I say intelligent design is not falsifiable and does not produce physically testable phenomena.
Unless you can show why intelligent design requires the flagellum to be unexplained, presuming it is, and how it predicts that, its all just a case of selecting random unknowns (like the rock) and claiming that supports god's design. Not knowing isn't evidence of design its evidence of not knowing.
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Grapefruit
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quote:
Grapefruit said:
Why is he neccassary? There are all sorts of unimaginably complex proccesess going on. The god that created them would have to have proccesses just as complex going on in his mind, does that mean in your theory it would be "neccessary" that he had a god to create those proccesses, or am i missing something here?
Yes, you're missing something. The term 'necessary' refers to a philosophical idea that all Beings are either contingent, i.e. created, or necessary, i.e. not created.
Ok so I still don't see how you can say one thing that is complex is necessary and the other thing must be contingent because of the fact it is complex. This seems to be paradoxical.
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"So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God." - Herman Melville
Edited by Grapefruit (05/04/09 08:10 AM)
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
johnm214 said:
Quote:
Pointedly, the "prediction" is that a natural pathway for the flagellum will never be found. If it is it would mean that the flagellum evolved by natural selection, destroying IC (irreducible complexity) and EF (the explanatory filter). Why do you think evolutionists tried so hard to falsify the idea that the flagellum evolved through natural causes?
How does finding that the flagellum could have naturally evolved in a likely progression mean that I.D. is wrong?
If such is never found how does that give evidence to I.D.?
This is evidence that evolution is wrong, at most, rather than intelligent design is correct. How does any of this suggest supernatural sources at all? That's the equivalent at looking at a rock and figuring it had to come from somewhere so claiming that's evidence of god, it just begs the question and presumes soemthing without evidence.
This seems to be I.D. in a nutshell: find soemthing allegedly wrong or incomplete in evolution and claim its evidence of intelligent design.
You cannot disprove god by finding that something occurs naturally, and finding that something is here without a reason can never produce evidence that god exists any more than looking at a rock means god exists. You make something up without the means to test it and the only evidence is that some other theory has holes or is wrong.
Finally, why does intelligent design predict the flagellum will not be shown likely naturally evolved in origin? What tennant of the hypothesis produces this result? I don't know of any, and this is what I mean when I say intelligent design is not falsifiable and does not produce physically testable phenomena.
Unless you can show why intelligent design requires the flagellum to be unexplained, presuming it is, and how it predicts that, its all just a case of selecting random unknowns (like the rock) and claiming that supports god's design. Not knowing isn't evidence of design its evidence of not knowing.
I think all of these questions can be answered by reading the link I gave on the Explanatory Filter. I don't mean to put the burden on you, but if you read it and still have the same questions I'll be happy to answer them. I've already spent about 4 hours on this thread today.
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OrgoneConclusion
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Quote:
Help me out here. Is my renaming of TalkOrigins to TalkShit needling?
"This is simply attempting to make the other person angry, without trying to address the argument at hand. Sometimes this is a delaying tactic.
So it would seem as it only detracted from the discussion.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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OrgoneConclusion said:
Quote:
Help me out here. Is my renaming of TalkOrigins to TalkShit needling?
"This is simply attempting to make the other person angry, without trying to address the argument at hand. Sometimes this is a delaying tactic.
So it would seem as it only detracted from the discussion.
Yet another fallacy? My they're really stacking up.Tu Quoque, Ad Hominem Fallacies of Relevance
In other words, "You did it too!" Nyah 
Fallacy Name:
Tu Quoque
Alternative Names:
You did it too!
Category:
Fallacies of Relevance > Ad Hominem Arguments
Explanation:
Another form of the ad hominem fallacy does not attack them for random, unrelated things, but instead attacks them for some perceived fault in how they have presented their case. This form of the ad hominem is often called tu quoque, which means "you too" - because it often occurs when a person is attacked for doing what they are arguing against.
This fallacy was found in Agnostics and Atheists. I picked it just for you. 
Why don't you answer the question instead of evading?
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quote:
OrgoneConclusion said:
You failed to give the Discovery Institute a funny name.
Help me out here. Is your post needling?
"This is simply attempting to make the other person angry, without trying to address the argument at hand. Sometimes this is a delaying tactic.
You may instead insult something the other person believes in (Argumentum Ad YourMomium), interrupt, clown to show disrespect, and numerous other tricks. All of these work better if you are running things - for example, if it is your radio show, and you can cut off microphones. A competent moderator is almost as good."
Source: The Fallacies of Philosophical Debate by Diploid.
Perhaps, and I'm just spitballing here, you could address the portion where I shredded the erroneous idea that the Dover trial falsified the flagellum.
Are you frightened of defeat or can you really not answer a substantive post?
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zouden
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Neither Dembski nor Behe are saying God designed the flagellum.
That's precisely what they are saying. There's no use pretending otherwise. Everyone knows ID is an attempt to validate God.
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zouden
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johnm214 said:
This is just an appeal to authority. You didn't ask what the scientific oligarchy accepts, you asked specific questions.
You should address any points on their merits rather than ignoring them on extraneous grounds. Peer review isn't magical and isn't relevant to any claim your making.
Yes, it is an appeal to authority. That's one of the reasons we have peer-review: so that other people can go through and check the validity of the work, because I don't have time to do it myself. In any given day at work I might read several articles and there's no way I have time to question each finding; there's an implicit level of trust placed in the peer-review process.
If the Discovery Institute thought they could get their paper in a journal they would have tried. The fact that they didn't is very telling. And it's nothing to do with "implicit bias" in the journals themselves - if they were concerned they'd get rejected because of the pro-ID stance, maybe they should have taken the pro-ID stance out of the paper. For crying out loud, it's got a section titled "Philosophical Implications". What a joke.
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zouden
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In the science of forensics you do not need to hypothesize the identity of the perpetrator to know his hand was in play. Either someone died of "natural causes" or someone killed them. The identity of the intelligent agent is a moot point.
Yes but how many episodes of CSI end with them saying "it was God all along!"? None, because it's fucking retarded to assume that an invisible being committed the crime. You have to work within limits. The CSI team know that the perpetrator, even though his identity is unknown, cannot kill people just by looking at them. If they couldn't assume that then they'd never get anywhere. The case would go to court and the defence would just say "no it wasn't this guy, it was... God" and the prosecutors would have no rebuttal. Why? Because you can't falsify something when God is involved.
Courts don't accept God as an actor, and neither does science.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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zouden said:
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Neither Dembski nor Behe are saying God designed the flagellum.
That's precisely what they are saying. There's no use pretending otherwise. Everyone knows ID is an attempt to validate God.
Now that's just plain, unadulterated horseshit. If you want to believe that go ahead. But that certainly is NOT what ID is about. Please give evidence for that ridiculous claim.
*Edit: and make it from a peer-reviewed journal.
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Edited by Mr. Mushrooms (05/04/09 08:28 PM)
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
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johnm214 said:
This is just an appeal to authority. You didn't ask what the scientific oligarchy accepts, you asked specific questions.
You should address any points on their merits rather than ignoring them on extraneous grounds. Peer review isn't magical and isn't relevant to any claim your making.
Yes, it is an appeal to authority. That's one of the reasons we have peer-review: so that other people can go through and check the validity of the work, because I don't have time to do it myself. In any given day at work I might read several articles and there's no way I have time to question each finding; there's an implicit level of trust placed in the peer-review process.
If the Discovery Institute thought they could get their paper in a journal they would have tried. The fact that they didn't is very telling. And it's nothing to do with "implicit bias" in the journals themselves - if they were concerned they'd get rejected because of the pro-ID stance, maybe they should have taken the pro-ID stance out of the paper. For crying out loud, it's got a section titled "Philosophical Implications". What a joke.
Yes, your entire statement is quite a joke. Now you're telling us the Discovery Institute hasn't or its members haven't tried to get their papers into peer-reviewed journals. And you know this how?
And the journals aren't biased? 
And you know this how?
I have already posted an article that was published in a peer-reviewed journal turning Miller's and TalkOrigin's hypothesis on its head. Pure science. That article counts as evidence against the natural selection process for the bacterial flagellum. Miller and TalkOrigins are wrong and will not admit it. They just keep churning out the same lie over and over again hoping if they repeat it enough people will believe it.
Some will, but not because of the evidence. They believe it because of its theological implications. And that is the worst reason ever to ignore empirically driven data.
I'll say it again: Falsifying ID is easy. First, find the missing 30 proteins. Second: find the DNA code that assembles the parts in the right sequence. Until that is done the existence of the bacterial flagellum is hard, scientific evidence that natural selection isn't as powerful as we once thought. It can't design a thing.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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zouden said:
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In the science of forensics you do not need to hypothesize the identity of the perpetrator to know his hand was in play. Either someone died of "natural causes" or someone killed them. The identity of the intelligent agent is a moot point.
Yes but how many episodes of CSI end with them saying "it was God all along!"? None, because it's fucking retarded to assume that an invisible being committed the crime. You have to work within limits. The CSI team know that the perpetrator, even though his identity is unknown, cannot kill people just by looking at them. If they couldn't assume that then they'd never get anywhere. The case would go to court and the defence would just say "no it wasn't this guy, it was... God" and the prosecutors would have no rebuttal. Why? Because you can't falsify something when God is involved.
Courts don't accept God as an actor, and neither does science.
Design is design no matter who did it. If the courts or science refuse to acknowledge that they are wrong. The principles of design do not rely on the identity of the designer; they rely on design.
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zouden
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
I have already posted an article that was published in a peer-reviewed journal turning Miller's and TalkOrigin's hypothesis on its head. Pure science. That article counts as evidence against the natural selection process for the bacterial flagellum.
No, it doesn't. I've been over this.
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I'll say it again: Falsifying ID is easy. First, find the missing 30 proteins. Second: find the DNA code that assembles the parts in the right sequence.
And I'll say it again: that won't falsify ID.
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Mr. Mushrooms
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zouden said:
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
I have already posted an article that was published in a peer-reviewed journal turning Miller's and TalkOrigin's hypothesis on its head. Pure science. That article counts as evidence against the natural selection process for the bacterial flagellum.
No, it doesn't. I've been over this.
Yes, you've posted a baseless claim twice now. Isn't it time to provide the reasoning? Here is the post where you addressed it:
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zouden said:
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
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zouden said:
>If their idea is correct, it makes the flagellum purported "evolution" a blast of hot air.
Sure, but that doesn't mean it was designed. There are many competing theories for how things evolved, but there are no scenarios where intelligent design is the only explanation.
Competing theories other than natural selection? I'm intrigued because I haven't seen any in reference to the flagellum. (because there are none) Showing that the Type-III secretion system came after the flagellum--the claim of the peer-reviewed article--pretty much shoots down Miller's et al idea of the flagellum evolving from the Type-III secretion system.
It isn't necessary to shred every possible naturalistic explanation to give evidence for design. The design filter does that quite well enough.
I should mention that the peer-reviewed article I posted came from the article you dismissed out of hand.
Well, I'm not familiar with the current theories regarding the development of the flagellum, but I think there's something deeply suspicious about a non-peer-reviewed paper written by a well-known shill for the Discovery Institute. I don't think it matters that he cites articles that have been peer reviewed. To me it seems like he's just picked articles that agree with his viewpoint and presented them as evidence for intelligent design, but, well... anyone can do that. Which is why his article wasn't reviewed. He said it was just a 'conference paper', but if he thought he could get it in a proper journal I'm sure he would have tried. I see no reason to consider this paper as a compelling argument for intelligent design.
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zouden said:
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I'll say it again: Falsifying ID is easy. First, find the missing 30 proteins. Second: find the DNA code that assembles the parts in the right sequence.
And I'll say it again: that won't falsify ID.
Where did you say that? You didn't. And even if you did it is another baseless claim. You did say:
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zouden said:
Every single piece of 'evidence' for irreducible complexity has been debunked thoroughly....
I think we've laid that one to rest by now.
I've mentioned the proteins twice now and you haven't produced even a baseless counterclaim yet.
From this statement on down you haven't addressed it:
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
ID predicts another, better explanation will never be found for the reasons stated in ID theory. Dembski's central tenet(s) are specified complexity, irreducible complexity and primarily the Explanatory Filter. If a real, quantifiable explanation of the flagellum's creation could be found by natural selection, the ball game is over, the end, checkmate. As it stands now 30 of the proteins used to make the flagellum do not even exist. So two steps are required to falsify it:
1) Find the proteins. (Rather tough as they don't exist)
2) Hypothesize the sequenced construction per environmental factors, founder effect, what-have-you.
It's that simple and that complex. So it seems we've found your "mammal fossil." Unfortunately bias and a limited scope of inquiry deny its access to the paradigm.
We're sadly in need of some reasoning here, but all we're getting is rhetoric.
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zouden
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Good god. You've been having a great deal of trouble understanding my posts lately.
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
Yes, you've posted a baseless claim twice now. Isn't it time to provide the reasoning? Here is the post where you addressed it:
<insert my diatribe about non-peer-reviewed conference papers>
Nope, that's not where I addressed your claim that "That article counts as evidence against the natural selection process for the bacterial flagellum." This is what I said:
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zouden said:
The paper you then moved on to, Nguyen et al (2000), is peer reviewed, but it doesn't prove ID one way or the other. It merely provides evidence that perhaps the flagellum is the precursor for the TPSS and not the other way around as previously thought. I'm afraid it'll take more than that to prove that God designed the flagellum.
Specific debates within the biology community about how things evolved do not count as evidence for ID. Nguyen's paper provides no support for ID whatsoever. Moving on...
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
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zouden said:Quote:
I'll say it again: Falsifying ID is easy. First, find the missing 30 proteins. Second: find the DNA code that assembles the parts in the right sequence.
And I'll say it again: that won't falsify ID.
Where did you say that? You didn't. And even if you did it is another baseless claim. You did say:
<insert my diatribe about irreducible complexity being debunked>
Again, completely missing what I said. This is why finding those 30 'missing' proteins won't falsify ID, and it's the final thing I'll say on the topic:
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zouden said:
This is the reason why ID is not falsifiable. It relies on an external actor about whom we know nothing, and to whom we can attribute anything.
Finding 30 proteins won't mean jack.
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You know... I'm not a blind man
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Mr. Mushrooms
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zouden said:
Good god. You've been having a great deal of trouble understanding my posts lately.
Yes, well when you type so much to say so little specific quotes can be hard to find.
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zouden said:
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
Yes, you've posted a baseless claim twice now. Isn't it time to provide the reasoning? Here is the post where you addressed it:
<insert my diatribe about non-peer-reviewed conference papers>
Nope, that's not where I addressed your claim that "That article counts as evidence against the natural selection process for the bacterial flagellum." This is what I said:
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zouden said:
The paper you then moved on to, Nguyen et al (2000), is peer reviewed, but it doesn't prove ID one way or the other. It merely provides evidence that perhaps the flagellum is the precursor for the TPSS and not the other way around as previously thought. I'm afraid it'll take more than that to prove that God designed the flagellum.
Specific debates within the biology community about how things evolved do not count as evidence for ID. Nguyen's paper provides no support for ID whatsoever. Moving on...
Yes, we have been over that. Anything that counts as evidence against the evolutionary paradigm in this manner counts as evidence for ID. It's put up or shut up. As it stands and has stood for years now, it's as Behe says, "Publish or perish." Tell me, as current scientific evidence stands now against Miller and Talkshit, when will either of them get around to admitting they are wrong? Let me guess: never.
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zouden said:
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
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zouden said:Quote:
I'll say it again: Falsifying ID is easy. First, find the missing 30 proteins. Second: find the DNA code that assembles the parts in the right sequence.
And I'll say it again: that won't falsify ID.
Where did you say that? You didn't. And even if you did it is another baseless claim. You did say:
<insert my diatribe about irreducible complexity being debunked>
Again, completely missing what I said. This is why finding those 30 'missing' proteins won't falsify ID, and it's the final thing I'll say on the topic:
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zouden said:
This is the reason why ID is not falsifiable. It relies on an external actor about whom we know nothing, and to whom we can attribute anything.
Finding 30 proteins won't mean jack.
And as I said:
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Design is design no matter who did it. If the courts or science refuse to acknowledge that they are wrong. The principles of design do not rely on the identity of the designer; they rely on design.
It is patently obvious you do not need to know anything about the designer to know that something is designed. I found a shotgun shell in the woods once. I immediately hypothesized it was natural selection because I didn't know anything about the designer.
The parts and pieces of the flagellum and the "story" of its evolution are missing, i.e. no evidence exists.
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zouden
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Yes, we have been over that. Anything that counts as evidence against the evolutionary paradigm in this manner counts as evidence for ID.
But there is no single 'evolutionary paradigm'. Nguyen's paper provides evidence against one particular theory in evolution, not the whole thing. You seem to think that counts as a win for ID. It doesn't.
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The parts and pieces of the flagellum and the "story" of its evolution are missing, i.e. no evidence exists.
So? Just because we don't know the full story, does that mean we should hypothesise that God Did It? Come on. It's the god of the gaps all over again. What will you do if the development of the flagellum becomes fully understood? Will you just give up and say 'yeah, I guess evolution is real'? Will Dembski?
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You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
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Yes, we have been over that. Anything that counts as evidence against the evolutionary paradigm in this manner counts as evidence for ID.
But there is no single 'evolutionary paradigm'. Nguyen's paper provides evidence against one particular theory in evolution, not the whole thing. You seem to think that counts as a win for ID. It doesn't.
Sure it does. The fact that you don't agree changes nothing.
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The parts and pieces of the flagellum and the "story" of its evolution are missing, i.e. no evidence exists.
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zouden said:
So? Just because we don't know the full story, does that mean we should hypothesise that God Did It? Come on. It's the god of the gaps all over again. What will you do if the development of the flagellum becomes fully understood? Will you just give up and say 'yeah, I guess evolution is real'? Will Dembski?
We aren't hypothesizing God for the umpteenth time. We are positing an intelligent agency. What will I do personally if the flagellum can be explained by naturalistic methods? Think that I'd been had once again. Will Dembski? That's funny. It is his name. I cannot speculate what Will will do. If he had any sense he'd move on.
I'm sorry but it isn't the God of the Gaps, no matter what you have heard. It is the explanatory filter. I really recommend you read a little ID theory. That would clear things up immensely.
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deCypher
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
We aren't hypothesizing God for the umpteenth time. We are positing an intelligent agency.
Yeah OK, so the flagellum was created by an intelligent agency. How did that intelligent agency get there? Either you have to postulate an infinite regress or stipulate that at some point the creator of an intelligent agency was generated via naturalistic methods. The sole remaining alternative is an intelligent agency that has somehow existed since the beginning of time, but I find this more improbable than the naturalistic explanation.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
deCypher said:
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
We aren't hypothesizing God for the umpteenth time. We are positing an intelligent agency.
Either you have to postulate an infinite regress or stipulate that at some point the creator of an intelligent agency was generated via naturalistic methods. The sole remaining alternative is an intelligent agency that has somehow existed since the beginning of time, but I find this more improbable than the naturalistic explanation.
Yes, the slippery slope can lead us places that are uncomfortable. There are a lot of arguments for the existence of God; as you pointed out, intelligent design isn't one of them.
One of the more interesting spin-offs of ID theory, in my view, is the idea of information. Where did "it" come from?
I've been following this (and sometimes in the thick of the battle) for nearly 40 years. It's a fascinating subject to explore if you have the right people to discuss it. I think zouden has made some interesting comments and I have been delighted to discuss this with him.
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johnm214
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I still have the same questions. How does the flagellum being reasonably explainable by evolution or natural casuses render I.D. wrong?
And what is evolution and intelligent design? You seem to use some of these words in weird ways, lets iron out what your saying.
Your picking out very specific predictions and just declaring that if they are wrong that I.D. is but never showing WHY?
That's the whole point: I.D. doesn't seem to proffer any neccesary predictions that may be observed and so it isn't falsifiable.
If youc ould just show how this is wrong and clearly explain what predictions that could be tested are crucial to I.D. that would end this whole discusion.
It just seems quite clear to me that you are ignoring this issue when its THE issue. WHY is anything in particular a neccesary consequence of I.D.? i.e. WHAT is I.D. and WHAT does it predict and SHOW that it does predict this as a neccesary consequence of its holdings.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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johnm214 said:
I still have the same questions. How does the flagellum being reasonably explainable by evolution or natural casuses render I.D. wrong?
The answer is found in the explanatory filter. Evidently you didn't read it.
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johnm214 said:
And what is evolution and intelligent design? You seem to use some of these words in weird ways, lets iron out what your saying.
That's a great idea, however, with the word evolution it would depend on the context. Intelligent design is the idea that something with a mind designed something. Wiki's definition is good, "Intelligent design is the assertion that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."
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johnm214 said:
Your picking out very specific predictions and just declaring that if they are wrong that I.D. is but never showing WHY?
Because I don't have the time to explain the component parts of ID, irreducible complexity, specified complexity and the explanatory filter. Can you imagine the investment when every point is sure to be critiqued, argued against and dissected? Not just my investment, anyone following the thread or answering my posts? One morning alone I spent 4 hours on a few posts in this thread. I can't spend weeks. This can be considered moving the goalposts and the argument by laziness.
Moving The Goalposts (Raising The Bar, Argument By Demanding Impossible Perfection)
If your opponent successfully addresses some point, then say he must also address some further point. If you can make these points more and more difficult (or diverse) then eventually your opponent must fail. If nothing else, you will eventually find a subject that your opponent isn't up on.
This is related to Argument By Question. Asking questions is easy: it's answering them that's hard.
Argument By Laziness (Argument By Uninformed Opinion)
The arguer hasn't bothered to learn anything about the topic. He nevertheless has an opinion, and will be insulted if his opinion is not treated with respect. For example, someone looked at a picture on one of my web pages and made a complaint which showed that he hadn't even skimmed through the words on the page. When I pointed this out, he replied that I shouldn't have had such a confusing picture.
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johnm214 said:
That's the whole point: I.D. doesn't seem to proffer any neccesary predictions that may be observed and so it isn't falsifiable.
We've covered this. (zouden's rebuttal)
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johnm214 said:
If youc ould just show how this is wrong and clearly explain what predictions that could be tested are crucial to I.D. that would end this whole discusion.
We've covered this.
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johnm214 said:
It just seems quite clear to me that you are ignoring this issue when its THE issue. WHY is anything in particular a neccesary consequence of I.D.? i.e. WHAT is I.D. and WHAT does it predict and SHOW that it does predict this as a neccesary consequence of its holdings.
I covered the predictions and the rest is answered by the explanatory filter (EF).
EF, in a nutshell, is that if something isn't produced by law or chance it must have been designed.
I hope I haven't disappointed you with these answers but they are the best I can do with the time I have available.
If you want to read up on it, fine. If not, you'll be left with the questions unanswered.
The Explanatory Filter
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johnm214
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Your just retreating to "if you cared, you'd read enough to find and understand my argument".
You've not stated why the predictions you mention flow out of whatever I.D. specifically is and why it is neccesary that these predictions be true, therefore you've not shown it falsifiable.
This is the whole discussion right here.
Untill you can show why the things you state must be true for whatever I.D. is to be true, you cannot claim it is falsifiable. Otherwise your just "but what about this?" to eternity which doesn't reach the point: what does I.D. actually hold and what neccesary manifestations can we actually observe to test it?
This is incredibly basic and the answer is found in none of this thread nor its links that I've seen.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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johnm214 said:
Your just retreating to "if you cared, you'd read enough to find and understand my argument".
I'm asking for anyone to read a ten minute article that would taken me hours to explain. If you read it and have questions about it, I'll be happy to state my view on those questions.
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johnm214 said:
You've not stated why the predictions you mention flow out of whatever I.D. specifically is and why it is neccesary that these predictions be true, therefore you've not shown it falsifiable.
This is the whole discussion right here.
It is the heart of this part of the discussion and I have explained it. Just not as in detail as some would like.
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johnm214 said:
Untill you can show why the things you state must be true for whatever I.D. is to be true, you cannot claim it is falsifiable. Otherwise your just "but what about this?" to eternity which doesn't reach the point: what does I.D. actually hold and what neccesary manifestations can we actually observe to test it?
There are plenty of links and I gave plenty of answers to give plenty of evidence that ID is, indeed, falsifiable. If someone cannot make sense of that information, I am not to blame.
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johnm214 said:
This is incredibly basic and the answer is found in none of this thread nor its links that I've seen.
If you cannot understand, there is nothing I can do to help you understand. Some things are like that.
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Grapefruit
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How can that explanatory filter work when everything is highly improbable? Including intelligent designers.
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"So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God." - Herman Melville
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zouden
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
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johnm214 said:
I still have the same questions. How does the flagellum being reasonably explainable by evolution or natural casuses render I.D. wrong?
The answer is found in the explanatory filter. Evidently you didn't read it.
Oh come on. I read it, and here are my thoughts:
1. It's trivial. He even admits that he didn't invent it.
2. It's flawed. It fails to account for necessity. Yes, creationists are still making this mistake.
3. It doesn't answer John's question. In Dembski's own words:
Quote:
When the Explanatory Filter fails to detect design in a thing, can we be sure no intelligent cause underlies it? The answer to this question is No. For determining that something is not designed, the Explanatory Filter is not a reliable criterion.
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johnm214
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I don't know why your presuming the only consequence of me asking for these simple issues to be explained requires that i didn't read that link you've posted.
I do not understand what that has to do wtih my questions, which are very basic and seem quite undemanding.
Quote:
You've not stated why the predictions you mention flow out of whatever I.D. specifically is and why it is neccesary that these predictions be true, therefore you've not shown it falsifiable.
This is the whole discussion right here.
What is intelligent design, briefly, what phenomena does it predict and must neccesarily be true, and what phenomena could be found that disproves it, and why for each.
It seems the I.D. has no actual holdings and the flagellum example is just picking something out and making an argument about why it might have been designed without showing why I.D. requires it to be designed. It seems that way with everything given the nature of I.D., which is why I asked what we could actually observe in the world around us that would be predicted and required to be found by I.D. and what might be observed that would be incompatable with I.D.
As it is it seems like a case of cherry picking particular claims whose truth or falsity have nothing to do with the idea that god or soemone designed life because whether or not its shown to be true has no consequence on I.D. specifically because I.D. doesn't so far appear to require anything observable at all (meaning it isn't science, if so).
Its hard to understand the objection given how base a question as "what does it hold?" and "how may we test for it?" is. Thus far I.D. doesn't seem to be a sepcific enough thought to require anything observable to be true, unfortunatly. I'd be delighted to be shown wrong.
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3. It doesn't answer John's question. In Dembski's own words:
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When the Explanatory Filter fails to detect design in a thing, can we be sure no intelligent cause underlies it? The answer to this question is No. For determining that something is not designed, the Explanatory Filter is not a reliable criterion.
Right, as would seem to comport with my hazy idea of what MM or others are meaning when saying "I.D.". I don't know how much more basic you can get than to say "a scientific hypothesis must mean and predict something in the physical world". Otherwise its just one big texas sharpshooter fallacy with zero consequence. I'm just trying to figure out if this is so or not. What is it and what does it hold that can be observed and tested?
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Well, at least zouden showed he read it. Since I have something to work with, I'll try to answer zouden's comments and attempt an explanation. I'm not going to do the quote thing. To much banter, not enough fact.
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1. It's trivial. He even admits that he didn't invent it.
1) Triviality is a subjective opinion. It counts for nothing in an argument. Dembski admits he didn't invent design detection. Whoever said he did? He did, however, create the Explanatory Filter, a precise way to empirically and mathematically detect apparent design.
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Hardly a dubious innovation, Intelligent Design formalizes and makes precise something we do all the time. All of us are all the time engaged in a form of rational activity which, without being tendentious, can be described as inferring design. Inferring design is a perfectly common and well-accepted human activity. People find it important to identify events that are caused through the purposeful, premeditated action of an intelligent agent, and to distinguish such events from events due to either law or chance. Intelligent Design unpacks the logic of this everyday activity, and applies it to questions in science. There's no magic, no vitalism, no appeal to occult forces here. Inferring design is widespread, rational, and objectifiable. The purpose of this paper is to formulate Intelligent Design as a scientific theory.
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2. It's flawed. It fails to account for necessity. Yes, creationists are still making this mistake.
Dembski isn't a creationist, if that's what you're implying. (which is a side issue anyway) I won't even pretend to know what you mean by "necessity" until you explain it.
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3. It doesn't answer John's question. In Dembski's own words:
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When the Explanatory Filter fails to detect design in a thing, can we be sure no intelligent cause underlies it? The answer to this question is No. For determining that something is not designed, the Explanatory Filter is not a reliable criterion.
Producing half a quote is quote-mining and a logical fallacy too--fallacy of suppressed evidence.
Fallacy of suppressed evidence:
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One of the basic principles of cogent argumentation is that a cogent argument presents all the relevant evidence. An argument that omits relevant evidence appears stronger and more cogent than it is.
The fallacy of suppressed evidence occurs when an arguer intentionally omits relevant data. This is a difficult fallacy to detect because we often have no way of knowing that we haven't been told the whole truth.
What Dembski actually said was:
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When the Explanatory Filter fails to detect design in a thing, can we be sure no intelligent cause underlies it? The answer to this question is No. For determining that something is not designed, the Explanatory Filter is not a reliable criterion. False negatives are a problem for the Explanatory Filter. This problem of false negatives, however, is endemic to detecting intelligent causes. One difficulty is that intelligent causes can mimic law and chance, thereby rendering their actions indistinguishable from these unintelligent causes. It takes an intelligent cause to know an intelligent cause, but if we don't know enough, we'll miss it.
Intelligent causes can do things that unintelligent causes cannot, and can make their actions evident. When for whatever reason an intelligent cause fails to make its actions evident, we may miss it. But when an intelligent cause succeeds in making its actions evident, we take notice. This is why false negatives do not invalidate the Explanatory Filter. The Explanatory Filter is fully capable of detecting intelligent causes intent on making their presence evident.
Logical fallacies don't seem to stop zouden though. As has been pointed out, his appeal to authority, i.e. vaunted peer-review, meant nothing. What can I say?
 Let's quote in full or not at all.
To explain what Dembski means by false negatives let's look at two photos.
Obviously designed. Anyone want argue natural causes on it?
I didn't think so.
Is the sand in the above photo designed? How do you know? You can't. Someone could have placed each grain in its place with a pair of tweezers and designed it that way.
The beautiful thing is, it doesn't matter! We only want to assign intelligence to apparent design. If the filter can do that, it works well enough for our purposes.
Now, with that out of the way let me continue. For my money several questionable arguments are going on. I've mentioned others previously. Here's another:
Argument By Question
Asking your opponent a question which does not have a snappy answer, or no snappy answer that the audience has the background to understand. Your opponent has a choice: he can look weak or he can look long-winded.
For example, "How can scientists expect us to believe that anything as complex as a single living cell could have arisen as a result of randomness?" To answer this question requires either a long, boring explanation or a snappy explanation only if the audience is already versed in thermodynamics.
Actually, pretty well any question has this effect to some extent. It usually takes longer to answer a question than ask it.
Source: Diploid's sticky thread at the top of the forum.
Along the way I was able to find some writings that might help those who are interested understand. It's a long explanation of these principles. But before I get to that I want to pointedly show the reason I have been focusing on the flagellum and ID. It's a Darwin quote:
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If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, sucessive, slight modifications my theory would absolutely break down.
~ Chuck "Monkey Man" Darwin
This is what makes the flagellum so powerful. Not only are 30 parts of it missing in nature, there is no plausible story for its evolution, none! This is exactly why it is at the center of the ring. Further, as my explanation will explain, should the parts be found (they won't) and a plausible story concocted for its existence (it can't), the ID ball game is over.
The "Argument from Design" is an ancient theological argument dating from the time of the Greek philosophers that maintains we can know a supreme being exists based on the design of the external world. The most widely known version of it is found in a book called, "Natural Theology," written by William Paley in 1803. Most people, including creationists, Christians, Atheists, and evolutionists assume this is intelligent design. However counterintuitive it may seem intelligent design is a scientific theory, not a theological argument. This confusion arises from the similarity of the ideas and the theological or philosophical prejudices brought to the table from either side.
The distinction between scientific theories and theological implications is critical. The court, in Kitzmiller v. Dover, failed to make such a distinction as well as numerous posters in the forum attacking intelligent design. In Nature magazine, a premier publication from the publishers of scientific journals, the editor John Maddox wrote an article entitled, "Down with the Big Bang." In it, he stated, "Creationists, and those of similar persuasions seeking support for their opinions have ample justification in the doctrine of the Big Bang. That, they might say, is when and how the universe was created." Mr. Maddox wrote this in August of 1989. His opinion, based on the theological implications of the Big Bang, was that the theory would be found incorrect by December, 1989. It turns out, he was wrong.
Similarly, Eugenie Scott, in her book, "Evolution versus Creationism (2004)," makes a similar error. She states, "In some ways, [intelligent design] is a descendant of William Paley's Argument from Design (Paley 1803), which argued that God's existence could be proved by examining His works. Paley used a metaphor: if one found a watch, it was obvious that such a complex object could not have come together by chance; the existence of a watch implied a watchmaker who had designed the watch with a purpose in mind."
In contrast intelligent design is a scientific theory based on three critical concepts: specified complexity, irreducible complexity, in combination with a probability matrix called the "explanatory filter." I will explain these concepts next.
Whatever theological implications arise from a scientific theory, they have absolutely no bearing on the truth or falsity of the scientific theory. Neither do the theological implications of a scientific theory make it a religious or theological view or idea. A scientific theory is just a scientific theory-nothing more or less.
What is intelligent design (ID)? I have explained the "argument from design"-a theological argument for the existence of God based on the design of the universe and its parts. I also said ID is, in contrast, a scientific theory made up of three distinct concepts: irreducible complexity, specified complexity, and a probability matrix called, "the explanatory filter."
Let's look at specified complexity (SC). SC has five parts:
(1) Probabilistic complexity. This is the "C" part of SC. "Probabilistic" refers to the odds of some event. Think of a combination lock. The more numbers on the lock and the more turns required to open it, the harder it would be to open by chance.
(2) Patterns. This is the "S" part of SC. Think of a target with a bull's-eye. If a target is painted on a barn and we specify the bull's-eye as the goal, we have selected a specification.
(3) Probabilistic resources. These come in two types: specificational and replicational. In the target scenario the size of the bull's-eye would be specificational and the number of shots would be replicational. If the shooter was 20 paces away allowed one shot at a bull's eye 15 feet wide or if the shooter was allowed a million shots at a bull's-eye 4 inches wide, the odds are they would hit it.
(4) Specificational complexity. Some patterns are more complex than others. To rule out chance we look for low specificity (a smaller target) with high improbability (fewer shots). If a shooter could hit a bull's-eye 1 inch wide five times in a row from 1/4 mile away we would reasonably conclude they are a good shot not just lucky.
(5) Universal probability bound (UPB). The term "bound" refers to a limit. Universal probability refers to the number of chances in the universe. In probability Borel's Law, named for French mathematician Emile Borel, refers to something so improbable it could not happen by chance- one out of 10 to the 50th power(one followed by 50 zeros). UPB is 10 to the 150th power. This is arrived at by multiplying the number of all the subatomic particles in the universe (you know, the little pieces)-10 to the 80th power- by the number of times matter can change within a second-10 to the 45th power-times the age of the universe in seconds times one billion-10 to the 25th power. This is the most conservative measurement there is for something happening due to chance.
However, specified complexity is not enough to conclude something was designed. The parameters have to be run through a probability matrix called, "the explanatory filter." I will explain the filter and how it works next.
The EF is like a series of three nets-one on top of another. The top net, natural law, has the largest holes; the middle net, chance, has medium-sized holes; and the bottom net, design, has the smallest holes. Every event or phenomenon can be dropped into the nets to see whether it is the result of natural law, chance, or ID. Since every event or phenomenon is the result of one or more of these categories, everything in the universe can be tested this way.
A few examples should make this clear. An old tree falls down in a forest. The event (its falling) is the result of natural law-gravity. This event would be represented in the EF as a large ball that was caught in the first net-natural law.
A person's ticket is drawn in a 50/50 raffle. The event (its being chosen) is the result of chance. This event would be represented in the EF as a medium-sized ball. It would drop through the first net-natural law-but be caught by the second net-chance.
A human skeleton. A human skeleton comprises 206 bones in a specific configuration that allows humans to move and function. The configuration, or pattern, is specified and complex. The skeleton is the result of design. It would be represented in the EF as a small ball. It would drop through the first net-natural law- because no natural law mandates the skeleton's configuration or pattern. It would drop through the second net-chance-because the odds of its specific configuration are beyond chance. Here's why.
Specified complexity uses a universal probability bound (UPB) as a limit to rule out chance. Any event or phenomenon where the odds are greater than UPB cannot have happened by chance. This is because UPB is the number of all the subatomic particles in the universe times the number of times matter can chance in one second times the age of the universe in seconds times one billion. UPB exhausts all the natural resources in the universe. UPB is 1 out of 10 to the 150th power. A skeleton with only 97 bones-a human skeleton has 206-falls outside of the realm of chance because its specific configuration is greater than 1 out of 36 to the 150th power.
As I've said in earlier, intelligent design (ID) consists of three concepts: specified complexity (SC), an explanatory filter (EF), and irreducible complexity (IC). IC is a distinct type of specified complexity that comes in two kinds: complex machines and complex systems. The bacterial flagellum, the official mascot of ID, is a rotary motor embedded in the surface of bacteria so they can move. Its function can be compared to an outboard motor on a boat.
Like any motor the flagellum has parts that interact with other parts in order for the motor to work. It has a propeller, bushings, rotor, drive shaft, universal and stator. What makes the flagellum irreducibly complex is that if you remove a part or a function it will not work.
This is an assembly evolution cannot perform. Why? Because according to evolution each part would have appeared individually through natural selection; evolution is a gradual process requiring many years. And according to evolution no part would survive without contributing to the survival of the bacteria. Therefore, a purely natural process could not have built this motor. Parts cannot wait around for other parts to appear while they sit there and do nothing.
When we speak of the assembly of the flagellum in terms of SC we count the number of parts and calculate the odds of their specific configuration. The parts of the motor, i.e. drive shaft, rotor, etc., are made of 40 or 50 proteins. Most of the proteins (30 or 40) are found nowhere else in the living world. The assembly of all of the parts and their proteins coming together at the right time in the right configuration would be a chance of 1 out of 10 to the 1,170 powerth (10 followed by 1,170 zeros)!
So what are the odds of this motor building itself? Not a chance.
Any Yabbits out there now?
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Edited by Mr. Mushrooms (05/07/09 12:41 AM)
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Mr. Mushrooms
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I should add as an addendum the preceding paper is worthless.
It wasn't peer-reviewed. 
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zouden
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Quote:
Dembski said:
When the Explanatory Filter fails to detect design in a thing, can we be sure no intelligent cause underlies it? The answer to this question is No. For determining that something is not designed, the Explanatory Filter is not a reliable criterion. False negatives are a problem for the Explanatory Filter. This problem of false negatives, however, is endemic to detecting intelligent causes. One difficulty is that intelligent causes can mimic law and chance, thereby rendering their actions indistinguishable from these unintelligent causes. It takes an intelligent cause to know an intelligent cause, but if we don't know enough, we'll miss it.
Intelligent causes can do things that unintelligent causes cannot, and can make their actions evident. When for whatever reason an intelligent cause fails to make its actions evident, we may miss it. But when an intelligent cause succeeds in making its actions evident, we take notice. This is why false negatives do not invalidate the Explanatory Filter. The Explanatory Filter is fully capable of detecting intelligent causes intent on making their presence evident.
Why do you think I was being misleading when I quoted only the first passage? They deal with different things: false negatives and false positives, respectively. I don't care about false positives. But false negatives are extremely serious.
Dembski is happy to admit that the explanatory filter can't tell us for certain that something has not been designed. Therefore, anything could have been designed. This means ID is not falsifiable, so it is not a scientific theory.
This is what I've been trying to say all along.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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So because we can't tell if this is designed:
We can't tell if this is designed:
Gotcha. That's a powerful argument. 
Just one final question, counselor.
Can I smoke out of your bag?
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C.M. Mann
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If there is a God, if Martians messed with our DNA, If we evolved from one cell into an ape then a human... Science will eventually will figure it out!
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zouden
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What? I thought I was perfectly clear.
Because we can't tell if this is not designed:
We can never disprove ID. It is unfalsifiable.
Whether we can detect design is irrelevant to the conversation. The discussion is about whether ID can be falsified. As we've seen above, the explanatory filter doesn't help. It is a red herring.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Immaterial to the case, counselor.
If we can prove or disprove whether this is designed, ID is falsifiable:
EF admits no false positives, but each one is subject to falsifiability.
We can falsify ID. QED
ID is science.
More importantly:
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If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, sucessive, slight modifications my theory would absolutely break down.
~ Chuck Darwin
The bacterical flagellum is such an organ. Natural selection is broken until the proteins are found and the numerous, successive, slight modifications are described. In the words of Dr. Behe, "Publish or perish." Otherwise it is natural selection that cannot be disproved.
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zouden
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I think you're confusing 'evidence in favour of a theory' with 'evidence that disproves a theory'. Yes, I realise that you think the flagella provides evidence in favour of ID, but that's irrelevant to whether ID can be falsified or not. Two separate arguments. I'm only interested in the latter (in this thread).
ID says that nature was designed by a Designer. The explanatory filter doesn't provide for a way to prove that something wasn't designed, therefore, we can't disprove ID.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
I think you're confusing 'evidence in favour of a theory' with 'evidence that disproves a theory'. Yes, I realise that you think the flagella provides evidence in favour of ID, but that's irrelevant to whether ID can be falsified or not. Two separate arguments. I'm only interested in the latter (in this thread).
ID says that nature was designed by a Designer. The explanatory filter doesn't provide for a way to prove that something wasn't designed, therefore, we can't disprove ID.
Yes, I realize there are two separate arguments. There have been more than two in the thread. One of the first was whether ID was a theory. I proved that it is.
In the sense that false negatives can never be detected no design is ever known without additional information, EF cannot be used with accuracy. In the sense that ID can detect design positively, every instance to use it carries with it falsifiability. Evidently you cannot see that.
Furthermore, ID makes a prediction that a natural cause will never be found for the flagellum. That is a VERY risky prediction. It is obviously falsifiable! Therefore, ID is falsifiable. Whether an intelligent agent wants to obscure his artifact is completely irrelevant.
Popper is quite clear on this.
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1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory — if we look for confirmations.
2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory — an event which would have refuted the theory.
3. Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.
4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of "corroborating evidence.")
7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status.
http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=74952
I didn't submit evolution to the test of the biological artifact that cannot be explained by slight modifications, Chuck did. In that way, evolution is testable and that is a VERY risky prediction. It looks like that prediction is coming back to haunt him now.
Until the proteins are found and the slight modification story constructed, natural selection is broken beyond repair. Publish or perish.
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johnm214
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Quote:
zouden said:
I think you're confusing 'evidence in favour of a theory' with 'evidence that disproves a theory'. Yes, I realise that you think the flagella provides evidence in favour of ID, but that's irrelevant to whether ID can be falsified or not. Two separate arguments. I'm only interested in the latter (in this thread).
ID says that nature was designed by a Designer. The explanatory filter doesn't provide for a way to prove that something wasn't designed, therefore, we can't disprove ID.
Yep.
I made it quite clear what I was asking for and nothing was provided. Why does the flagellum or anyuthing manifest from a neccesary prediction of I.D.? If you can't find anything that neccesarily is true for I.D. to be true, then its a munch of crap.
And MM. Don't be an ass. I told you why I thought your links were worthless (they don't answr the above question). Now you presume I'm commenting on things I've not read? I'm not getting into some "read this and search out my argument for me" routine. Either answer the quite simple questions or don't.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
johnm214 said:
Quote:
zouden said:
I think you're confusing 'evidence in favour of a theory' with 'evidence that disproves a theory'. Yes, I realise that you think the flagella provides evidence in favour of ID, but that's irrelevant to whether ID can be falsified or not. Two separate arguments. I'm only interested in the latter (in this thread).
ID says that nature was designed by a Designer. The explanatory filter doesn't provide for a way to prove that something wasn't designed, therefore, we can't disprove ID.
Yep.
I made it quite clear what I was asking for and nothing was provided. Why does the flagellum or anyuthing manifest from a neccesary prediction of I.D.? If you can't find anything that neccesarily is true for I.D. to be true, then its a munch of crap.
And MM. Don't be an ass. I told you why I thought your links were worthless (they don't answr the above question). Now you presume I'm commenting on things I've not read? I'm not getting into some "read this and search out my argument for me" routine. Either answer the quite simple questions or don't.
I answered your question(s) with the long post. The only thing I can think at this point is that you don't understand the nature of scientific inquiry. There's not much I can do about that.
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johnm214
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said: The only thing I can think at this point is that you don't understand the nature of scientific inquiry. There's not much I can do about that.
Which has nothing to do with whether I.D. actually means anything, whether it can predict any physical phenomena that we can observe that if absent would render it wrong.
Your whole post seems to be going on about how the flagellum should suggest a creator (which is irrelevant and pure post hoc analysis) and ignoring whether I.D. actually means anything- whether it could be tested. You also suggest science cant answer how life began, the relevance of such I cannot see.
What is ID and what does it predict and why? What does it predict that if not found would would make it wrong?
To me, it seems just one big texas sharpshooter fallacy that doesn't actually mean anything
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
johnm214 said:
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said: The only thing I can think at this point is that you don't understand the nature of scientific inquiry. There's not much I can do about that.
Which has nothing to do with whether I.D. actually means anything, whether it can predict any physical phenomena that we can observe that if absent would render it wrong.
Your whole post seems to be going on about how the flagellum should suggest a creator (which is irrelevant and pure post hoc analysis) and ignoring whether I.D. actually means anything- whether it could be tested. You also suggest science cant answer how life began, the relevance of such I cannot see.
What is ID and what does it predict and why? What does it predict that if not found would would make it wrong?
To me, it seems just one big texas sharpshooter fallacy that doesn't actually mean anything
Hey John. Our discussion is over. The answers to all your questions are in my preceding posts.
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zouden
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Quote:
Furthermore, ID makes a prediction that a natural cause will never be found for the flagellum. That is a VERY risky prediction. It is obviously falsifiable! Therefore, ID is falsifiable. Whether an intelligent agent wants to obscure his artifact is completely irrelevant.
Please, explain in your own words (preferably as few as possible) how finding a natural cause for the flagellum would falsify ID. I'm looking at your word "Therefore" and wondering about the logic behind it.
BTW, it's friday night here and I'm opening my first beer of the weekend 
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johnm214
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Dude, my questions are the whole point. I don't know why you'd back out now given they are the most basic of requests: What is I.D., What does I.D. actually say about our world i.e. what are its holdings that have actual consequence for our observable world?, What observable phenomena does I.D. predict and how are any of them a necessary consequence of whatever I.D. is?
You say you've answered these questions, but I still don't see them.
Anyone reading this that can identify the answers to these questions that Mr. Mushrooms says he answered, please post them here.
I missed them.
How much more basic can you get than to say a scientific theory must actually mean something and predict some phenomena? E=mcc; species have common ancestors that differentiated through natural selection; the nucleus has a positive charge that is compact and is orbited by negative charges with quantized energy levels.
All of these have actuall meaning and actually give rise to obvious predictions that could disprove them. I.D. seems to actually mean nothing and be utterly unable to make any prediction nor be refuted in any way because it has no physical consequences in our world that can be tested.
Quote:
Furthermore, ID makes a prediction that a natural cause will never be found for the flagellum. That is a VERY risky prediction. It is obviously falsifiable! Therefore, ID is falsifiable. Whether an intelligent agent wants to obscure his artifact is completely irrelevant.
You keep saying this is the case but I sure don't see it. How does I.D. predict anything abservable? You've failed to show how I.D. predicts flagella are designed nor what else it predicts, nor that any of them are falsifiable.
Can anyone explain what I.D. actually has to say about our world that can be detected it any way? What is a consequence of I.D., prove that it is, and how can we detect its presence or absence?
Someone, anyone, please answer this question. Mr. Mushrooms says he has, so feel free to quote him or find someone else's words, either way.
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zouden
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Quote:
Can anyone explain what I.D. actually has to say about our world that can be detected it any way?
Very good choice of words there. The way I see it, saying that "ID predicts that the flagella was designed" is meaningless because it's impossible to prove that it wasn't designed. We can't detect a lack of design, so none of ID's predictions can be falsified. Thus it isn't a scientific theory.
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You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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Yeah, but the main point is "how does I.D. predict anything at all that may be observed?" It simply seems it doesn't.
I'm just a bit worried folks will try to equivocate "well I'd accept this as evidence it wasn't designed" or something or the popular "how do we know anything?" when that isn't the point. (your absolutely correct in my opinion, I'm just worried folks will try to ignore the main point when its more immeidatly troubling that it seems I.D. doesn't predict the flagella be anything at all)
If ahypothesis has no consequences then it can't be tested and its meaningless scientifically.
Nowhere has anyone shown how I.D. actually has any consequences nor what it holds that can be tested. The Bohr model of the atom, e=mcc, evolution, all of these actually have consequences and could be falsified. I.D.? What does it predict that we can measure and what prediction does it have that is neccesarily true for the theory to be wrong? I really beleive all we've got is the equivalent to saying "rocks are hard, if they aren't then my theory is wrong" withotu any demonstration that the theory requires rocks to be hard as a consequence.
If a hypothesis has no observable consequence then its not a scientific thought at all.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
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Furthermore, ID makes a prediction that a natural cause will never be found for the flagellum. That is a VERY risky prediction. It is obviously falsifiable! Therefore, ID is falsifiable. Whether an intelligent agent wants to obscure his artifact is completely irrelevant.
Please, explain in your own words (preferably as few as possible) how finding a natural cause for the flagellum would falsify ID. I'm looking at your word "Therefore" and wondering about the logic behind it.
BTW, it's friday night here and I'm opening my first beer of the weekend
That I can handle. What I cannot handle is posting the lengthiest explanation of what ID is and have someone ask afterwards, "What is ID?" Even the answer to your question is contained in the posts above. That means either you aren't reading them or you don't understand them. There is nothing wrong with asking for clarification provided the issue is the latter. I looked back several posts and couldn't find the "Therefore" you are referring to.
In brief, using the EF we see the flagellum meets the criteria of specified complexity (any assemblage of interconnecting parts would do that) and irreducible complexity (if you remove a part, the motor will not work). When we calculate the math of the flagellum we see that the odds it was produced by chance are impossible. This happens when we run any designed object with the same number of parts whether it is biological or manmade mechanical. This means a natural explanation for the flagellum will never be found. That is what the EF predicts. If that were to happen, intelligent design and the explanatory filter would come crashing to the ground, broken forever.
Do not think of the flagellum as a false negative. It's apparent design is obvious. Even Dawkins and Miller admit that.
I can handle further requests for clarification as long as someone isn't asking the same questions repeatedly or not reading what I am writing.
What kind of beer is it?
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
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When I ask what I.D. means I don't need a lengthy answer, I just need some statement of what it predicts or holds, what does it say about the world?. The bohr model holds positive and neutral charges orbited by negative quantized energy level charges, relativity holds the obeserved time change and length of objects should decrease at high speeds. What is I.D.?
You still haven't shown in any way that I can see:
a) what I.D. actually holds, what it means... relativity means observed length contracts at high speeds, the bohr model means atoms should appear mostly hollow when alpha particles are fired at them, and I.D. means... what physical consequence? What predictions does it make and why are they neccesary consequences of I.D.?
b) How is the flagellumcharecter, origin, or source predicted byI.D? You've just stated it is, have you ever demonstrated that it is? What else is predicted by I.D., how? I can find nothing I.D. predicts, how could it be testable? It seems like pure post hoc picking and choosing that is not able to be predicted by the 'theory' ahead of time (ignoring whether or not you can test for the supernatural creation of an object). Saying my flying pig theory holds that rocks are hard doesn't mean my theory is correct even if rocks are hard because I can't establish what my theory actually is such that its predictions can be tested and the rocks being hard can be found to actually be a consequence of the theory rather than pure post hoc picking and choosing where convenient. Its the same question asked for the last several pages. Feel free to quote yourself if you feel you've answered it allready, I can't find it.
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When we calculate the math of the flagellum we see that the odds it was produced by chance are impossible. This happens when we run any designed object with the same number of parts whether it is biological or manmade mechanical.
Why is this not just a texas sharpshooter fallacy? The chance that anything happens, say a marble rolling down the street in the exact path as the one I just rolled, is very small when you have relativly few data points, that doesn't mean my marbel's path was impossible, it means my post hoc analysis is fallacious and neglects that the chances of my marble rolling some way is quite likely and hte way it chose was not unlikely among those- just how a flagellum may be quite likely as an evolutionary drive to evolve motility and isn't particularly unlikely given the other possible means of such to evolve and the prior existance of the components serving similar functions (microtubules, mitochondria, similarity of cillia and flagella)
How can you calculate the odds of similar motility devices evolving naturally? Could you point me to the methodology and the conclusions?
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Mufungo
Coming at ya
Registered: 04/03/07
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
I looked back several posts and couldn't find the "Therefore" you are referring to.
lol, bit slow off the mark there, you quoted it in your own post.
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Mufungo
Coming at ya
Registered: 04/03/07
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Hi John, for what it's worth here's my summary of I.D.
Because I.D. is based on the idea that complex things are unlikely to exist without being intentionally created/designed, then they must have been intentionally created/designed.
Now, as for what that means and what it predicts, 
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Mufungo said:
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
I looked back several posts and couldn't find the "Therefore" you are referring to.
lol, bit slow off the mark there, you quoted it in your own post.
So I did. I was looking further back than that. I hope my answer suffices.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
Mufungo said:
Hi John, for what it's worth here's my summary of I.D.
Because I.D. is based on the idea that complex things are unlikely to exist without being intentionally created/designed, then they must have been intentionally created/designed.
Now, as for what that means and what it predicts,
Ya run off, ya coward.
Seriously though, not all complex things are designed in the same way. The arrangement of a snowflake's atoms and structure can be described as complex (an example I'll probably use in my answer to John). According to the EF it falls under natural law, thus eliminating it from design. Now, whether an intelligent Creator designed the natural laws is a completly different issue. In any event, EF cannot answer that.
If you have pointed short questions or comments, feel free to chime in.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
johnm214 said:
When I ask what I.D. means I don't need a lengthy answer, I just need some statement of what it predicts or holds, what does it say about the world?. The bohr model holds positive and neutral charges orbited by negative quantized energy level charges, relativity holds the obeserved time change and length of objects should decrease at high speeds. What is I.D.?
You still haven't shown in any way that I can see:
a) what I.D. actually holds, what it means... relativity means observed length contracts at high speeds, the bohr model means atoms should appear mostly hollow when alpha particles are fired at them, and I.D. means... what physical consequence? What predictions does it make and why are they neccesary consequences of I.D.?
b) How is the flagellumcharecter, origin, or source predicted byI.D? You've just stated it is, have you ever demonstrated that it is? What else is predicted by I.D., how? I can find nothing I.D. predicts, how could it be testable? It seems like pure post hoc picking and choosing that is not able to be predicted by the 'theory' ahead of time (ignoring whether or not you can test for the supernatural creation of an object). Saying my flying pig theory holds that rocks are hard doesn't mean my theory is correct even if rocks are hard because I can't establish what my theory actually is such that its predictions can be tested and the rocks being hard can be found to actually be a consequence of the theory rather than pure post hoc picking and choosing where convenient. Its the same question asked for the last several pages. Feel free to quote yourself if you feel you've answered it allready, I can't find it.
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When we calculate the math of the flagellum we see that the odds it was produced by chance are impossible. This happens when we run any designed object with the same number of parts whether it is biological or manmade mechanical.
Why is this not just a texas sharpshooter fallacy? The chance that anything happens, say a marble rolling down the street in the exact path as the one I just rolled, is very small when you have relativly few data points, that doesn't mean my marbel's path was impossible, it means my post hoc analysis is fallacious and neglects that the chances of my marble rolling some way is quite likely and hte way it chose was not unlikely among those- just how a flagellum may be quite likely as an evolutionary drive to evolve motility and isn't particularly unlikely given the other possible means of such to evolve and the prior existance of the components serving similar functions (microtubules, mitochondria, similarity of cillia and flagella)
How can you calculate the odds of similar motility devices evolving naturally? Could you point me to the methodology and the conclusions?
Part of my ability to answer you depends on your posts and the manner by which your ideas are presented. That, is obvious. This post is much easier to answer though I still won't break it all apart.
The ID model holds apparent design can be identified as intelligent design by ruling out natural law and chance. Physical consequence, as far as I can detect, has nothing to do with it. ID is not subject to physicality in the same way as material objects; ID deals in design, an attribute of material objects.
The prediction of ID is that an object or event that does not exist either by natural law or chance will be the result of an intelligent agent.
I'm not sure what you mean by "How is the flagellumcharecter, origin, or source predicted byI.D?" ID does not predict that way and neither does evolution. You cannot say this species will turn into that species. Neither ID nor evolution works that way. You can look at pre-existing organisms and speculate if they were related. In the same way, you can look at a pre-existing or existing organism and test it for design.
ID is not ad hoc because we do not know if an apparent design is intelligent design until we calculate the odds and run it through the EF.
I didn't know what the sharpshooter fallacy was until I looked it up. ID does not paint a bull's eye around a design. It qualifies apparent design by specified complexity (any assemblage of interconnecting parts would do that) and irreducible complexity (if you remove a part, the motor will not work).
It would be better if you ask one question at a time rather than a barrage of questions. Otherwise, we're back to the Argument by Question.
That should save both of us time and energy.
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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ID is not subject to physicality in the same way as material objects; ID deals in design, an attribute of material objects.
The prediction of ID is that an object or event that does not exist either by natural law or chance will be the result of an intelligent agent.
I'm not sure what you mean by "How is the flagellumcharecter, origin, or source predicted byI.D?" ID does not predict that way and neither does evolution. You cannot say this species will turn into that species. Neither ID nor evolution works that way. You can look at pre-existing organisms and speculate if they were related. In the same way, you can look at a pre-existing or existing organism and test it for design.
So I.D. predicts that things that aren't natural are supernaturally designed? That seems obvious and correct by definition.
It seems you concede, or at least fail to identify, that I.D. doesn't actually predict anything except that things that aren't naturally formed are supernaturally formed. That it places a qualification on teh supernatural charecter is really irrelevant from a scientific merits of it- we can't observe supernatural phenomena so they are irrelevant.
I.D. isn't a scientific hypothesis or theory because it cannot predict anything observable, it doesn't hold anything to be true and so it cannot be measured to see if it is accurate (as all supernatural things are not natural by definition).
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Neither ID nor evolution works that way. You can look at pre-existing organisms and speculate if they were related. In the same way, you can look at a pre-existing or existing organism and test it for design.
Yes you can use evolution to show that a feature is consistant or not with evolution. Evolution posits that things are derived from natural selection, the flagellum will be derived from some prior pieces parts and will provide some benifit to the organism. The species that develop flagella will be related and the information will be passed along geneticallly. If something just pops up with a flagellum with no prior pieces evolution would be falsified. If multiple things develop flagella simultaneously evolution is falsified. Evolution says that some trait will originate at a particular time and be transmitted genetically in linear succesion. I.D. seems to hold nothing beyond meer definition.
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ID is not ad hoc because we do not know if an apparent design is intelligent design until we calculate the odds and run it through the EF.
That is ad hoc. You cannot use the 'theory' to predict anything therefore it is all ad hoc picking and chosing things, which is what the texas sharpshooter fallacy regards. There is no way to falsify it because it predicts nothing that is measurable, the only things I.D. is applied to is things for which an explanation is deemed lacking and therefore supernatural origin is suggested. Let alone the fact that supernatural things cannot be measured, there is no way to predict anything at all so nothing could disprove it- you forever move on to the next 'unexplained' phenomena and label it supernatural with no actual prediction at all.Quote:
Mufungo said:
Hi John, for what it's worth here's my summary of I.D.
Because I.D. is based on the idea that complex things are unlikely to exist without being intentionally created/designed, then they must have been intentionally created/designed.
Now, as for what that means and what it predicts,
Thanks for the help.
What I meant was that this idea doesn't actually hold anything true ahead of time. It doesn't predict any observable phenomena in the way that relativity, the bohr model of the atom, or other things do. It is just an idea, it doesn't actually make a scientific statement- there's nothing you can actually apply to the world around you to make aprediction or measure.
Thanks
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
johnm214 said:
How can you calculate the odds of similar motility devices evolving naturally? Could you point me to the methodology and the conclusions?
I posted it already. It is lengthy.
The EF is like a series of three nets-one on top of another. The top net, natural law, has the largest holes; the middle net, chance, has medium-sized holes; and the bottom net, design, has the smallest holes. Every event or phenomenon can be dropped into the nets to see whether it is the result of natural law, chance, or ID. Since every event or phenomenon is the result of one or more of these categories, everything in the universe can be tested this way.
A few examples should make this clear. An old tree falls down in a forest. The event (its falling) is the result of natural law-gravity. This event would be represented in the EF as a large ball that was caught in the first net-natural law.
A person's ticket is drawn in a 50/50 raffle. The event (its being chosen) is the result of chance. This event would be represented in the EF as a medium-sized ball. It would drop through the first net-natural law-but be caught by the second net-chance.
A human skeleton. A human skeleton comprises 206 bones in a specific configuration that allows humans to move and function. The configuration, or pattern, is specified and complex. The skeleton is the result of design. It would be represented in the EF as a small ball. It would drop through the first net-natural law- because no natural law mandates the skeleton's configuration or pattern. It would drop through the second net-chance-because the odds of its specific configuration are beyond chance. Here's why.
Specified complexity uses a universal probability bound (UPB) as a limit to rule out chance. Any event or phenomenon where the odds are greater than UPB cannot have happened by chance. This is because UPB is the number of all the subatomic particles in the universe times the number of times matter can chance in one second times the age of the universe in seconds times one billion. UPB exhausts all the natural resources in the universe. UPB is 1 out of 10 to the 150th power. A skeleton with only 97 bones-a human skeleton has 206-falls outside of the realm of chance because its specific configuration is greater than 1 out of 36 to the 150th power.
As I've said in earlier, intelligent design (ID) consists of three concepts: specified complexity (SC), an explanatory filter (EF), and irreducible complexity (IC). IC is a distinct type of specified complexity that comes in two kinds: complex machines and complex systems. The bacterial flagellum, the official mascot of ID, is a rotary motor embedded in the surface of bacteria so they can move. Its function can be compared to an outboard motor on a boat.
Like any motor the flagellum has parts that interact with other parts in order for the motor to work. It has a propeller, bushings, rotor, drive shaft, universal and stator. What makes the flagellum irreducibly complex is that if you remove a part or a function it will not work.
This is an assembly evolution cannot perform. Why? Because according to evolution each part would have appeared individually through natural selection; evolution is a gradual process requiring many years. And according to evolution no part would survive without contributing to the survival of the bacteria. Therefore, a purely natural process could not have built this motor. Parts cannot wait around for other parts to appear while they sit there and do nothing.
When we speak of the assembly of the flagellum in terms of SC we count the number of parts and calculate the odds of their specific configuration. The parts of the motor, i.e. drive shaft, rotor, etc., are made of 40 or 50 proteins. Most of the proteins (30 or 40) are found nowhere else in the living world. The assembly of all of the parts and their proteins coming together at the right time in the right configuration would be a chance of 1 out of 10 to the 1,170 powerth (10 followed by 1,170 zeros)!
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
johnm214 said:
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ID is not subject to physicality in the same way as material objects; ID deals in design, an attribute of material objects.
The prediction of ID is that an object or event that does not exist either by natural law or chance will be the result of an intelligent agent.
I'm not sure what you mean by "How is the flagellumcharecter, origin, or source predicted byI.D?" ID does not predict that way and neither does evolution. You cannot say this species will turn into that species. Neither ID nor evolution works that way. You can look at pre-existing organisms and speculate if they were related. In the same way, you can look at a pre-existing or existing organism and test it for design.
So I.D. predicts that things that aren't natural are supernaturally designed? That seems obvious and correct by definition.
If you can't help the long posts, I'll just snip the rest and answer one comment/question.
No, that is incorrect. The filter is not just used on biological artifacts. It can also be used on other artifacts. If a series of radio waves were to come in with some specified pattern from a distant galaxy, the EF could determine if they were from an intelligent agent. You could also run any artifact, manmade or not, and the EF would assign intelligent agency if the artifact wasn't produced by natural law or chance.
Next question?
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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How is that not correct? You challenged nothing I stated.
I.D. doesn't actually predict any observable phenomena. It is not at all scientific because of this and could never be demonstrated false because it never actually holds anything, observable, to be true as a consequence of itself.
I don't know what this explanatory filter has to do with anything, but you can't show that intelligent design actually means anything. It's just some vague statement that presumes supernatural causes to natural things on very questionable grounds.
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This is an assembly evolution cannot perform. Why? Because according to evolution each part would have appeared individually through natural selection; evolution is a gradual process requiring many years. And according to evolution no part would survive without contributing to the survival of the bacteria. Therefore, a purely natural process could not have built this motor. Parts cannot wait around for other parts to appear while they sit there and do nothing.
Why would the parts have to appear all at once? of the relativly macroscopic parts, all I know of are found in other structures and could have been derived from these quite easily it would seem superficially. Andy molecular differences could come from specialization over many generalizations.
What exactly are you claiming had to show up all at once or wouldn't have contributed to the fitness of the cell if not in a working flagellum or similar structure that preceded it?
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
johnm214 said:
How is that not correct? You challenged nothing I stated.
I.D. doesn't actually predict any observable phenomena. It is not at all scientific because of this and could never be demonstrated false because it never actually holds anything, observable, to be true as a consequence of itself.
[snip]
I showed how the filter works with artifacts that are not supernatural. That was your claim. I disproved it.
I think you're hung up on predictability and using it in only one way. I have stated repeatedly that ID predicts a natural explanation for the flagellum will never be found. That is certainly a prediction.
It seems like you want ID to predict an eclipse or something. That isn't how it works.
You do realize a prediction and a falsification aren't exactly the same thing but only related to each other, don't you? If a theory submits to falsification or makes risky predictions it is science.
Another thing I think is going on here is you've heard (you're not the only one) that ID isn't falsifiable. Therefore, everything I write must be incorrect somehow and you're trying to find it. Otherwise we would have found common ground long before now. This may be a new concept to most here but it isn't rocket science.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
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Oh god... what a long night 
Ermm... regarding my post about the word "therefore", you said:
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Furthermore, ID makes a prediction that a natural cause will never be found for the flagellum. That is a VERY risky prediction. It is obviously falsifiable! Therefore, ID is falsifiable.
I just can't think of any way that falsifying that prediction (ie, finding a natural cause) could disprove ID. In Dembski's words, "intelligent causes can mimic law and chance, thereby rendering their actions indistinguishable from these unintelligent causes." This means that finding a natural cause does nothing to disprove ID.
And I think this is quite clear if you think about other predictions that ID has made - predictions which we know to be false. We've been focusing on the flagella because science lacks a good explanation at the moment. But what about the original irreducible complexity example, the eye? We know a lot more about the eye and we can see a clear evolutionary path from lower animals to higher ones, so you'd be pretty hard pressed to argue the case for design there. But people did argue that case (and probably still do). So why isn't ID falsified already? I think the answer is obvious: falsifying that prediction does nothing to falsify ID.
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Oh god... what a long night
Ermm... regarding my post about the word "therefore", you said:
Quote:
Furthermore, ID makes a prediction that a natural cause will never be found for the flagellum. That is a VERY risky prediction. It is obviously falsifiable! Therefore, ID is falsifiable.
I just can't think of any way that falsifying that prediction (ie, finding a natural cause) could disprove ID. In Dembski's words, "intelligent causes can mimic law and chance, thereby rendering their actions indistinguishable from these unintelligent causes." This means that finding a natural cause does nothing to disprove ID.
You seem hung up on that point. Dembski is referring to false negatives at that point, not false positives. That--is the difference.
Can you explain what a false negative and a false positive is? Use an example for each.
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zouden said:
And I think this is quite clear if you think about other predictions that ID has made - predictions which we know to be false. We've been focusing on the flagella because science lacks a good explanation at the moment. But what about the original irreducible complexity example, the eye? We know a lot more about the eye and we can see a clear evolutionary path from lower animals to higher ones, so you'd be pretty hard pressed to argue the case for design there. But people did argue that case (and probably still do). So why isn't ID falsified already? I think the answer is obvious: falsifying that prediction does nothing to falsify ID.
These are claims without evidence or reasoning. They are mere statements without anything to back them up. PLUS, they are yet another example of the Argument by Question Diploid lists in Philosophical fallacies. I cannot discuss some of them at length because they are outside my knowledge, and probably outside of yours. I wouldn't know if they were right or wrong.
Example:
True or False?
GTP-transducin-metarhodopsin II binds to a protein called phosphodiesterase, located in the inner membrane of the cell. When attached to metarhodopsin II and its entourage, the phodiesterase acquires the chemical ability to "cut" a molecule called cGMP (a chemical of both GDP and GTP).
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zouden
Neuroscientist
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I don't see how G-protein-coupled-receptor signalling pathways has anything to do with what we are talking about...
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Dembski is referring to false negatives at that point, not false positives. That--is the difference.
Can you explain what a false negative and a false positive is? Use an example for each.
Yes, I know he is talking about false negatives. That's what I'm talking about too.
False positive: incorrectly identifying something as positive. Eg, saying something was designed when it isn't. Dembski claims that the explanatory filter doesn't suffer from this problem - he says it'll always detect design if there is design. I disagree with him, but that's a debate for a different thread. I am not interested in false positives.
False negative: incorrectly identifying something as negative, eg, "the flagella was not designed" could be a false negative, if it actually was designed. Dembski is happy to admit that false negatives are an issue in ID. And I agree with him. He even, quite correctly, states that all negatives could be false ones. This means ID can never be falsified, a fact I'm sure he's aware of.
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
I don't see how G-protein-coupled-receptor signalling pathways has anything to do with what we are talking about...
It's part of Behe's argument for irreducible complexity for vision, i.e. the eye.
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zouden said:
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Dembski is referring to false negatives at that point, not false positives. That--is the difference.
Can you explain what a false negative and a false positive is? Use an example for each.
Yes, I know he is talking about false negatives. That's what I'm talking about too.
False positive: incorrectly identifying something as positive. Eg, saying something was designed when it isn't. Dembski claims that the explanatory filter doesn't suffer from this problem - he says it'll always detect design if there is design. I disagree with him, but that's a debate for a different thread. I am not interested in false positives.
False negative: incorrectly identifying something as negative, eg, "the flagella was not designed" could be a false negative, if it actually was designed. Dembski is happy to admit that false negatives are an issue in ID. And I agree with him. He even, quite correctly, states that all negatives could be false ones. This means ID can never be falsified, a fact I'm sure he's aware of.
I see you left out the examples. If the explanatory filter assigns intelligent causation to an artifact or an event and either turns out to be naturally caused, the explanatory filter is falsified and broken. The flagellum is such a case and it hasn't been shown to be naturally caused.
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quote:
johnm214 said:
How is that not correct? You challenged nothing I stated.
I.D. doesn't actually predict any observable phenomena. It is not at all scientific because of this and could never be demonstrated false because it never actually holds anything, observable, to be true as a consequence of itself.
[snip]
I showed how the filter works with artifacts that are not supernatural. That was your claim. I disproved it.
I think you're hung up on predictability and using it in only one way. I have stated repeatedly that ID predicts a natural explanation for the flagellum will never be found. That is certainly a prediction.
It seems like you want ID to predict an eclipse or something. That isn't how it works.
You do realize a prediction and a falsification aren't exactly the same thing but only related to each other, don't you? If a theory submits to falsification or makes risky predictions it is science.
Another thing I think is going on here is you've heard (you're not the only one) that ID isn't falsifiable. Therefore, everything I write must be incorrect somehow and you're trying to find it. Otherwise we would have found common ground long before now. This may be a new concept to most here but it isn't rocket science.
I'm using predictability in only one way? What way am I not using it in?
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"I have stated repeatedly that ID predicts a natural explanation for the flagellum will never be found. That is certainly a prediction."
Yeah, you keep saying it and I keep asking you to demonstrate that it does that. You've never stated what I.D. is such that your assertion is true.
I've asked this many times How does ID predict anything about the flagellum? Stop just claiming it, demonstrate it.
Quote:
Another thing I think is going on here is you've heard (you're not the only one) that ID isn't falsifiable. Therefore, everything I write must be incorrect somehow and you're trying to find it. Otherwise we would have found common ground long before now. This may be a new concept to most here but it isn't rocket science.
Whatever I heard isn't relevant.
I'm saying I don't see how ID has anything to say about the world at all- it makes no predictions that can be measured. Since this appears true it can never be falsified as it never requires any particular observation to maintain its plausibility.
I don't know how you seem to be going back on forth on this. You've never stated what ID is such that it predicts something about the falgellum and never explained how ID requires anything observable in the world.
What is the hangup here? Why do you keep repeating irrelevancies like "ID predicts such and such about the flagellum" when that isn't the issue? I don't care what you say, I want you to lay out how what you are saying is true rather than read again and again your conclusory summations of the 'theory'.
What is ID and show how it predicts any observable phenomena or could ever be inconsistant with the observable world because its holdings are false. Do it. Lets drop the conclusory language- I already know what you think. The discussion is over whether that is correct.
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector
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You are saying:
My science book says there will be an solar eclipse on July 22, 2009 at Japan's Ryukyu Islands.
My science books says mixing vinegar and baking soda will create carbon dioxide.
Those are predictions.
What does intelligent design predict?
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That is the most childish idea of science I have ever heard.
Let me ask a question.
What will the species of man look like 250,000 years from now?
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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No, where have I said that?
I don't know what distinction you are drawing between those hypothesis and any other since you've never explained what your talking about.
Its not like your offering stuff here and I'm saying "that's not the right kind of observable phenomena". Your saying nothing and haven't even defined ID to mean anything such that it would allow someone to test it.
I don't know why you keep dodging this question if you can answer it. What is ID and show that it actually claims some observable phenomena as a necessary element of it being correct.
So far as you've shown, there are no actual observable consequences to I.D., let alone any that could be investigated and determined to exist or not thereby supporting or rejecting ID.
Why you claim I'm unfairly pigeon holling "science" into any particular corner of the world when you've never even offered any description of ID that allows it to be tested is beyond me. If ID is being unfairly cast aside then why don't you demonstrate its true rather than, again, decreeing that it is so.
Like I said, I understand your claims- demonstrate that they are true.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
What is ID and show that it actually claims some observable phenomena as neccesary.
What do you mean by "observable phenomena"?
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
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Use a dictionary man, I'm not trying to be tricky here.
something that happens that we can detect.
quantized electrons= observable
fishe talking to each other and then rolling dice in heaven to determine the energy level of electrons= not observable.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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ID predicts this is designed:
Would that count?
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
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Loc: Americas
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If you can show that ID does predict that that the picture's subject is designed, I would think that would be fine- then the same basic statement that concluded the picture was designed could be tested for accuracy.
Basically I've not seen a definition of what ID holds sufficient to allow anyone to actually determine that it does in fact say that picture was designed, nor a definition sufficient enough that would allow it's claims, in general, to be tested for accuracy.
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OrgoneConclusion
Pharoah & Balanced
Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 29,358
Loc: Luxor
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30 some-odd pages and nary a clear response should be your answer.
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This is your drain on brugs.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
OrgoneConclusion said:
30 some-odd pages and nary a clear response should be your answer.
Yes, your threads aren't nearly as long because as soon as someone beats your ass, you run away.
John and I are attempting a solution here, civilly. Why don't you follow suit?
I'm still waiting for your answer to your last embarrassing thread on intelligent design. At least be a man and concede defeat.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
johnm214 said:
If you can show that ID does predict that that the picture's subject is designed, I would think that would be fine- then the same basic statement that concluded the picture was designed could be tested for accuracy.
Great. Let me try it.
I use the explanatory filter, the main tool of ID, the same way I use a microscope.
When I find a mushroom, I make a spore print and then look at the spores under the microscope. Many times that will tell me if what I predicted about the identity of the mushroom is correct.
In the exact same way I look at an artifact that appears designed and look at it under the explanatory filter. If it cannot have been produced by natural law or chance, it was designed. I hypothesize design based on appearances and test it with the filter.
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Mufungo
Coming at ya
Registered: 04/03/07
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quote:
johnm214 said:
If you can show that ID does predict that that the picture's subject is designed, I would think that would be fine- then the same basic statement that concluded the picture was designed could be tested for accuracy.
Great. Let me try it.
I use the explanatory filter, the main tool of ID, the same way I use a microscope.
When I find a mushroom, I make a spore print and then look at the spores under the microscope. Many times that will tell me if what I predicted about the identity of the mushroom is correct.
In the exact same way I look at an artifact that appears designed and look at it under the explanatory filter. If it cannot have been produced by natural law or chance, it was designed. I hypothesize design based on appearances and test it with the filter.
The analogy between microscope and EF doesn't hold up. The accuracy and precision of a microscope can be analysed and scrutinised with converging and diverging evidence. Thereby establishing the reliability and validity of the instrument. Can the same be said for the EF? Is there any empirical evidence showing the reliability or validity of the EF? How can we be sure that the EF is the appropriate "tool" for deciding whether something was designed or not?
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Mr. Mushrooms
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All analogies are weak at some point. That's what makes them analogies.
Quote:
Is there any empirical evidence showing the reliability or validity of the EF?
This is the nub, or crux, of the situation.
And the answer is, yes, we can. How?
By running other designs through the filter to see if they show up undesigned.
A fiendish mad scientist bent on destroying ID could set up this experiment:
Item X is actually a product of chance but it appears designed. He hands it over to Dembski and says, "Run it through your blasted filter. I want to know if it was designed." Dembski runs it through and states unequivocally, "This was designed!" Dembski is wrong and the filter is broken. Dembski quits Baylor University and goes back to Amway.
The problem with that scenario is that no item has tested that way yet. The filter has worked 1000% of the time. If it was a product of chance it never made it past that net.
Nothing has escaped the net.
Google it.
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Mufungo
Coming at ya
Registered: 04/03/07
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
All analogies are weak at some point. That's what makes them analogies.
Quote:
Is there any empirical evidence showing the reliability or validity of the EF?
This is the nub, or crux, of the situation.
And the answer is, yes, we can. How?
By running other designs through the filter to see if they show up undesigned.
A fiendish mad scientist bent on destroying ID could set up this experiment:
Item X is actually a product of chance but it appears designed. He hands it over to Dembski and says, "Run it through your blasted filter. I want to know if it was designed." Dembski runs it through and states unequivocally, "This was designed!" Dembski is wrong and the filter is broken. Dembski quits Baylor University and goes back to Amway.
The problem with that scenario is that no item has tested that way yet. The filter has worked 1000% of the time. If it was a product of chance it never made it past that net.
Nothing has escaped the net.
Google it.
Thanks for the laugh and nice dodge. But seriously, that's nonsense. Mad scientist? You weren't serious with that answer I hope.
Not speaking in hypotheticals, how/where/when and by who has the reliability and/or validity of the EF actually been tested?
Why should we use the EF rather than some other tool to decide on whether something is designed or not?
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
Mufungo said:
Thanks for the laugh and nice dodge. But seriously, that's nonsense. Mad scientist? You weren't serious with that answer I hope.
Not speaking in hypotheticals, how/where/when and by who has the reliability and/or validity of the EF actually been tested?
Why should we use the EF rather than some other tool to decide on whether something is designed or not?
Of course I wasn't serious about the mad scientist. It was part of the joke.
Dembski and others have run numerous tests on the filter before he published it. Scott Minich has a published test, but it relies heavily on technical terms that most here wouldn't be familiar with.
I don't know if there is such a tool other than the EF for detecting design. If there is I haven't heard of it. Dembski's formulation was a way to formalize the identification of design.
There are other arguments against it and I'm a little surprised they haven't surfaced by now. For example, how do you specify specificity? I'm not going to answer that right now. I'm just saying.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
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Quote:
If the explanatory filter assigns intelligent causation to an artifact or an event and either turns out to be naturally caused, the explanatory filter is falsified and broken.
Yes but you still haven't answered my question: how does that falsify ID?
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Quote:
If the explanatory filter assigns intelligent causation to an artifact or an event and either turns out to be naturally caused, the explanatory filter is falsified and broken.
Yes but you still haven't answered my question: how does that falsify ID?
Because ID is built from the explanatory filter. It is the foundation of ID. Without the foundation, the house cannot stand.
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Mufungo
Coming at ya
Registered: 04/03/07
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Cheers. Then the validity and reliability of EF is not yet established. Fair enough, that's not unusual for a new tool. But it's important to know that the tool that's being used could be putting out results which are questionable and not supported with convergent/divergent evidence from other tools. In other words, the result of the tool should not be taken on face value.
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OrgoneConclusion
Pharoah & Balanced
Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 29,358
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Quote:
Without the foundation, the house cannot stand.
And logic is the termites.
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This is your drain on brugs.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
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Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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I just wrote a big post but I've realised I'm going off on a tangent, because I misspoke in my last post. If you will, allow me to rephrase my last post 
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
If the explanatory filter assigns intelligent causation to an artifact or an event and either turns out to be naturally caused, the explanatory filter is falsified and broken.
How can we be sure if something is naturally caused? We can't be. Demski says so too. So how could ID truly be falsified?
--------------------
I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quote:
johnm214 said:
If you can show that ID does predict that that the picture's subject is designed, I would think that would be fine- then the same basic statement that concluded the picture was designed could be tested for accuracy.
Great. Let me try it.
I use the explanatory filter, the main tool of ID, the same way I use a microscope.
When I find a mushroom, I make a spore print and then look at the spores under the microscope. Many times that will tell me if what I predicted about the identity of the mushroom is correct.
In the exact same way I look at an artifact that appears designed and look at it under the explanatory filter. If it cannot have been produced by natural law or chance, it was designed. I hypothesize design based on appearances and test it with the filter.
So ID is: "the explanatory filter will correctly distinguish between designed and not designed things"?
That's not what I thought it was, but if that's your claim it is probably an actual hypothesis and could be falsified. I don't understand the relevance or import of this "explanatory filter" but at least it appears an actual claim.
I'll look at the "explanatory filter" later.
I just don't see any way your ever going to show that anything was of supernatural origins since we have no data on what something of supernatural origins should be like, but whatever.
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
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Its really hard for me to see the "explanatory filter" as saying anything concrete.
It seems its just a lot of hand waving.
How are we to know the chances that some phenomena would come about or whether some law requires it?
It just seems impossible to know.
If we grant that the filter is usefule and that the statement I've applied above is actually a scientific one, your still left with the problem of being able to use it. I mean can anyone predict the probability of even simple life systems doing soemthing? Not that I know of.
Especially given the very long time spans we are discussing here and the fact that we don't know the liklihood of a particular phenomena manifesting in that time period, its hard to see how the filter could ever be used even if we presume it to be correct.
I mean how do you demonstrate the flagellum is designed? It seems clear we just don't have the information to know how likely that result was.
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zen buddy
not a buddhist
Registered: 01/22/09
Posts: 704
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Quote:
teeter said:
Zanthius posted a link the the CTMU in the spoof of his neural net thread and the theory looks like it could be really interesting, but the guy uses an assload of technical jargon and big words. Does anyone actually understand what this guy is saying? If so can you give a basic explanation of what hes saying, I'm really interested, but it would take me forever to gain an understanding of what hes saying, so I'm hoping someone can help me out.
A true genius understands the value of communicating in a way that everyone can easily understand.
Whatever this guy is saying is probably not worth your time.
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
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To illustrate what I'm talking about:
As an analogy for the evolution of life:
Say a marble is being tracked. We have a tracker that marks its position as a function of time. It travels several meters on the floor.
Now, we look at the data and try to figure out if the path was designed, all we know is the position as a fucntion of time of some object. How do we know if it was designed to move how it did vs just pure chance? (i.e. it could have rolled down a track designed for that purpose or soemthing)
If we claculate the known path we would find it quite rare that that exact path would be replicated, therefore, was it designed? It wasn't though, the marble was rolled on an ordinary floor.
This is analagous to the descent of species or the creation of life from inanimate matter. We have data about the state of the life at particular times. We might say "wow, that's quite unlikely". Now with the marble it was fallacious to say it was unlikely because the chance it would take a path was quite high. We know this from the shape of the floor and the strength of the throw. The path it took was equally plausible as others, so it wasn't neccesarily designed.
With the life though, we don't know the analagous shape of the floor or strength of the toss.
How do we distinguish between things that seem unlikely but really aren't because of conditions we don't know about? When we only have one known "genesis of life" incident and everything descending from that, and we don't know too much about the condititions, how can we ever know if something really was unlikely or just appeared to be? And how can we distinguish between something that was unlikely but did occur (the ultimate confirmation bias, we'd only make these observations if we actually did exist to make them) betwen something that was unlikely and did not occur.
It seems we could never know enough to make these kinds of judgments, and I can't see how this can be overcome given these problems. How would the explanatory filter deal with the case of the marbel on the floor when we don't know the shape of the floor?
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
Mufungo said:
Cheers. Then the validity and reliability of EF is not yet established. Fair enough, that's not unusual for a new tool. But it's important to know that the tool that's being used could be putting out results which are questionable and not supported with convergent/divergent evidence from other tools. In other words, the result of the tool should not be taken on face value.
No one's taking anything at face value, and the tool has been tested repeatedly without failure. The only result that is argued against is when it proves intelligent design within biological entities. Then, all hell breaks lose as scientists and laymen alike rush to destroy a theory with, to them, horrible metaphysical consequences.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
I just wrote a big post but I've realised I'm going off on a tangent, because I misspoke in my last post. If you will, allow me to rephrase my last post
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
If the explanatory filter assigns intelligent causation to an artifact or an event and either turns out to be naturally caused, the explanatory filter is falsified and broken.
How can we be sure if something is naturally caused? We can't be. Demski says so too. So how could ID truly be falsified?
We can be sure that positives are not naturally caused. We cannot be sure that false negatives are naturally caused.
Thanks for saving me from the tome. Time is short and I like to stick to the basics.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
johnm214 said:
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quote:
johnm214 said:
If you can show that ID does predict that that the picture's subject is designed, I would think that would be fine- then the same basic statement that concluded the picture was designed could be tested for accuracy.
Great. Let me try it.
I use the explanatory filter, the main tool of ID, the same way I use a microscope.
When I find a mushroom, I make a spore print and then look at the spores under the microscope. Many times that will tell me if what I predicted about the identity of the mushroom is correct.
In the exact same way I look at an artifact that appears designed and look at it under the explanatory filter. If it cannot have been produced by natural law or chance, it was designed. I hypothesize design based on appearances and test it with the filter.
So ID is: "the explanatory filter will correctly distinguish between designed and not designed things"?
That's not what I thought it was, but if that's your claim it is probably an actual hypothesis and could be falsified. I don't understand the relevance or import of this "explanatory filter" but at least it appears an actual claim.
I'll look at the "explanatory filter" later.
I just don't see any way your ever going to show that anything was of supernatural origins since we have no data on what something of supernatural origins should be like, but whatever.
I have time for one of your posts. Intelligent design has nothing to do with supernatural anything no matter what you have heard. Does it have theological implications? Yes, and so does evolution. We set those aside, or should, when we are constructing a historical story from scientific research.
To rephrase your statement to more accurately reflect ID:
So ID is: "the explanatory filter will correctly distinguish between designed and not designed things when the design is apparent and not mimicing non-design."
By Jove I think we're getting somewhere.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
Registered: 11/12/07
Posts: 7,091
Loc: Australia
Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quote:
zouden said:
I just wrote a big post but I've realised I'm going off on a tangent, because I misspoke in my last post. If you will, allow me to rephrase my last post
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
If the explanatory filter assigns intelligent causation to an artifact or an event and either turns out to be naturally caused, the explanatory filter is falsified and broken.
How can we be sure if something is naturally caused? We can't be. Demski says so too. So how could ID truly be falsified?
We can be sure that positives are not naturally caused. We cannot be sure that false negatives are naturally caused.
Thanks for saving me from the tome. Time is short and I like to stick to the basics.
But you still didn't answer my question. How could ID truly be falsified?
--------------------
I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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Right.
I mean if we are talking about the explanatory filter, it doesn't seem to be able to ever get decently accurate answers since its more of a heuristic then anything.
It leaves the determinations of liklihood to other methods, when that's the whole point.
So its hard for me to see how you could ever demonstrate the "filter" is at all worthwhile as applied to the origin of life. How could you ever demonstrate it true or not? It seems like philosophy rather than science since it pretty much works on stated premises rather than actual data- you can't test the thing out to determine if it works on the relevant subject matter.
We know a marble's position vs time to a high degree of percision and with many data points. Was that path designed?
As applied to the relevant subject matter: was the flagellum designed?
It seems like we can't actually test the thing on relevant data and as applied to other things like the marbles path it produces wrong results it seems. Wouldn't the marble's path be determined to have been designed since the liklihood of replication is quite small?
And as to how to apply that to the actual target.... yeah, let us know how to do that and where we get this data.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
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Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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A very good point. It is a heuristic that relies on data from elsewhere, like the fact that there are 30 or so orphan proteins in the flagella (or whatever). But the problem is that that data can be faulty. Those proteins appear to be orphans because we don't know of any homologs, but we don't know everything. We can't possibly say with 100% certainty that the flagella proteins are orphans, which means we can't be 100% certain of the output of the explanatory filter.
--------------------
I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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But more than just the data possibly being faulty, we also can never know what the odds of soemthing arising is, can we?
How the hell do we know what the chances of a flagellum arising are? How could we possibly know? Its just saying if its very unlikely it didn't happen but how do we ever know that? That's what I mean when I say its more of a philosophy. You take a premise that something was unlikely to have arisen by chance and then so conclude, but in reality how are we ever supposed to know whether hte premise is true?
I really don't know how anyone's supposed to know what the odds of a flagellum or something forming are.
And unless we know, you can't disprove the thing either.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
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Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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I believe Dembski makes some calculations and if he works out that the odds are greater than 10150 then it couldn't have happened by chance because there's not enough events in the universe. I'm serious.
--------------------
I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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Yeah, all those numbers kinda become meaningless when you have no idea what yoru actual odds are, which seems to be the problem. It seems he just assumes without explanation that accurate data is available and that it can be meaningfully used.
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Mufungo
Coming at ya
Registered: 04/03/07
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quote:
Mufungo said:
Cheers. Then the validity and reliability of EF is not yet established. Fair enough, that's not unusual for a new tool. But it's important to know that the tool that's being used could be putting out results which are questionable and not supported with convergent/divergent evidence from other tools. In other words, the result of the tool should not be taken on face value.
No one's taking anything at face value, and the tool has been tested repeatedly without failure. The only result that is argued against is when it proves intelligent design within biological entities. Then, all hell breaks lose as scientists and laymen alike rush to destroy a theory with, to them, horrible metaphysical consequences.
You're obviously taking this EF "tool" at face value. You say that it's been repeatedly tested without failure, but you are unaware of how it was tested, what it was compared to, etc, etc. How would you know if the tool failed? Sure, reliability might be ok assuming that the person using the EF was trained to use it, but it gets a big fail on any validity claim of being accurate.
I'll attempt to incorporate your microscope analogy to make the point. It's like you looking through a microscope that greatly distorts what is actually there. If you look through that microscope you might see the same distorted pattern of things over and over again reliably but that says nothing for what was actually there on the slide. If that was the only microscope you've ever used and the only one available, then you might start to believe that the pattern you observe on the slide was meaningful and try to constructively use that information, make statements about that information and so on. And if anyone disagreed with what you said was on the slide, then you would go "but aha! Have a look through this microscope." and they see a similar thing and maybe agree with you. But the microscope is bunk and no one yet knows it. But thankfully there are other ways to test the validity of a microscope. So if the microscope shows one thing but checked against a magnifying glass, electron microscopes and of course other microscopes of varying quality and strength, it shows something completely different, then we might conclude that the original microscope was dodgy, not useful for its intended purpose, and then throw it away.
Therefore, how do you know that EF is not a faulty "tool"?
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector
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Quote:
zouden said:
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quote:
zouden said:
I just wrote a big post but I've realised I'm going off on a tangent, because I misspoke in my last post. If you will, allow me to rephrase my last post
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
If the explanatory filter assigns intelligent causation to an artifact or an event and either turns out to be naturally caused, the explanatory filter is falsified and broken.
How can we be sure if something is naturally caused? We can't be. Demski says so too. So how could ID truly be falsified?
We can be sure that positives are not naturally caused. We cannot be sure that false negatives are naturally caused.
Thanks for saving me from the tome. Time is short and I like to stick to the basics.
But you still didn't answer my question. How could ID truly be falsified?
You're right, I didn't. And I apologize to both you guys for not answering. As I explained to deimya, morels are poppin' and priorities are priorities.
 
That's nearly 8 pounds of morels I picked in 24 hours, 569 of them to be exact.
How to falsify ID? I thought we've been over that. Nevertheless, find a designed artifact or event that you know is designed, i.e. non-biological, run it through the filter and have it turn up a product of natural law or chance.
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
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Loc: Americas
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I've allready suggested one: the position vs time of a marble thrown on a piece of granite or something. If we take the position vs time measurements to reasonable percision say a hundred times a second, how would we know if that was designed or not?
If we don't know the shape of the floor could we do such? It seems as if the odds would be determined to be very small and therefore designed, erroneously, or we would be left concluding we cannot know the odds without more informaiton- which inherently seems to be the case with the filter as applied to relevant topics?
I think its doubtful such analysis could ever show the odds of some unobservable and unrepeatable phenomena as being anything at all, but I'm interested to know if it would even work on simple problems- which would depend on the means of determining chance I suppose.
How about the flagellum?
How could you ever show what the chances of the flagellum forming are? How could this possibly be known?
I have no idea how to use the filter because it seems to be just a casual statement that we can presume sentient design when nonentient causes are excluded through probability. While probably true, a) its just a presumption, and b) it is nontrivial to get the infromation required to use this presumption.
Rather than set forth a workable way to make ID scientific, it seems a plainly obvious heuristic is suggested which is meaningless without a way to use it.
You said previously that it has been tested: how? Has it ever been tested on new features evolving in life over many, many generations? How did they determine the odds of these forming where it wasn't simple point mutation but rather complex traits?
Its curious that this seems to be ignored when this is the whole point.
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zouden
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Quote:
How to falsify ID? I thought we've been over that. Nevertheless, find a designed artifact or event that you know is designed, i.e. non-biological, run it through the filter and have it turn up a product of natural law or chance.
That is impossible. You can never be sure if something was the product of chance or if it was designed that way.
Edit: in any case, why would putting a non-biological artifact through the filter do anything to falsify ID, when ID only deals with biology?
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
Edited by zouden (05/12/09 02:28 PM)
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Grapefruit
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Quote:
You're right, I didn't. And I apologize to both you guys for not answering. As I explained to deimya, morels are poppin' and priorities are priorities.
That's nearly 8 pounds of morels I picked in 24 hours, 569 of them to be exact.
I'm very jealous, morels are absoloutely delicious, I've only had dried ones before but damn they are tasty as hell.
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"So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God." - Herman Melville
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zouden
Neuroscientist
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Say what you will about Mr. Mushrooms, one thing's for sure: the man has a lot of morels
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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deimya
tofu and monocle
Registered: 08/26/04
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Quote:
How to falsify ID? I thought we've been over that. Nevertheless, find a designed artifact or event that you know is designed, i.e. non-biological, run it through the filter and have it turn up a product of natural law or chance.
That is impossible. You can never be sure if something was the product of chance or if it was designed that way.
Edit: in any case, why would putting a non-biological artifact through the filter do anything to falsify ID, when ID only deals with biology?
But the explanatory filter can be used many ways, including non-biological ones. To use deimya's example of a watch, run it through the filter and see what you get: designed. Do that with thousands of artifacts and events and you'll get the same result. Now do it with a motor purportedly design by nature and what do you get: designed. If at any of those points prior to testing the flagellum, the filter fails, ID is undone.
It's simple really.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
johnm214 said:
How could you ever show what the chances of the flagellum forming are? How could this possibly be known?
You take the number of parts times the exact sequence and work out the math. That would be the odds of the all the parts coming together in the right sequence at one specific moment.
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Mufungo
Coming at ya
Registered: 04/03/07
Posts: 2,556
Loc: Knowhere
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
But the explanatory filter can be used many ways, including non-biological ones. To use deimya's example of a watch, run it through the filter and see what you get: designed. Do that with thousands of artifacts and events and you'll get the same result. Now do it with a motor purportedly design by nature and what do you get: designed. If at any of those points prior to testing the flagellum, the filter fails, ID is undone.
What if we run a piece of art, let's say a simple abstract clay sculpture through the EF?
Assuming that a person doesn't know whether the hunk of clay was sculpted or pulled out of the ground that way, how could they use the EF to decide whether the clay was designed or not?
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Anything can be run through the filter.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
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But the filter just tells you if it's likely that something was designed. I totally agree with you that if you run a watch, or the flagellum, through the filter then it'll say "most likely designed". But the filter is, at best, a heuristic that relies on the data we give it. That data can be faulty. We don't know everything there is to know about the flagellum (and related biological machines) so we can't 100% trust the output of the filter.
Thus, if the filter makes an incorrect prediction, it could be because we fed it the wrong data. This inherent uncertainty means that disproving one of the filter's predictions does nothing to falsify ID.
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Mr. Mushrooms
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zouden said:
But the filter just tells you if it's likely that something was designed.
Where do you come up with these statements? If all it was was likelihood this discussion would not have taken place.
If something is not a result of natural law, it must be chance or design. If it is neither natural law or chance it IS design. If it shows up as design after being run through the filter and we determine it is either chance or law, the filter is broken and so is ID.
Maybe you're overcomplicating this.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
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Did you skip my whole point about the filter being reliant on the data we give it?
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Nope. I discounted it because it is a logical fallacy called the argument from ignorance:
The two most common forms of the argument from ignorance, both fallacious, can be reduced to the following form:
- Something is currently unexplained or insufficiently understood or explained, so it is not (or must not be) true.
- Because there appears to be a lack of evidence for one hypothesis, another chosen hypothesis is therefore considered proven.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
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What? That's the complete opposite of what I'm saying. Please, read it again and point out where the fallacy is.
I'll ask again: how can you be completely certain of what the filter is telling you?
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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deimya
tofu and monocle
Registered: 08/26/04
Posts: 825
Loc: ausländer.ch
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Therefore using the EF "scientifically", one should never go past the first step without committing such a fallacy. Doing so puts the EF in a dangerous position bound to eventually produce false positives. (Spot the philosophical stance for 10 points)
It might be tempting to say that life or the mind is forever too complex or metaphysical and could never be embedded in a theory, but then it is not a scientific question any more (spotted yet ?). Actually life is today partially accessible to our instruments, so I'm positive the EF should never get pasted the first step when grinding its teeth against it.
Mind, on the other hand, is or isn't actually accessible depending on one's philosophy. For me it's an unresolved issue and the little naturalist in me could never see how to "scientifically" apply the EF on it.
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Grapefruit
Obliviated
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The explanatory filter seems to assume that evolution cannot create things that are highly improbably complex, infact in selecting what is improbably complex it seems to completely ignore what is complex in terms of any evolutionary theories and totally ignores the question, "is it possible for evolution to create something like this?".
Because there is no consideration of evolution in the EF it does nothing to disprove evolution. A theory disproving evolution in something would have to be deeply involved in the reasons why evolution cannot work in the given situation.
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"So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God." - Herman Melville
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
What? That's the complete opposite of what I'm saying. Please, read it again and point out where the fallacy is.
I'll ask again: how can you be completely certain of what the filter is telling you?
The requirement to know everything there is to know about something before we can understand part of it is a requirement that evolution isn't asked to make. It is setting the bar far higher for intelligent design than necessary.
With all that has been said and explained about the EF it should be more than apparent.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
deimya said:
Therefore using the EF "scientifically", one should never go past the first step without committing such a fallacy. Doing so puts the EF in a dangerous position bound to eventually produce false positives. (Spot the philosophical stance for 10 points)
Please find one such false positive.
Quote:
deimya said:
It might be tempting to say that life or the mind is forever too complex or metaphysical and could never be embedded in a theory, but then it is not a scientific question any more (spotted yet ?). Actually life is today partially accessible to our instruments, so I'm positive the EF should never get pasted the first step when grinding its teeth against it.
Not sure what you're getting at but the mind is more than matter. It requires science and philosophy to answer questions dealing with its composition.
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deimya said:
Mind, on the other hand, is or isn't actually accessible depending on one's philosophy. For me it's an unresolved issue and the little naturalist in me could never see how to "scientifically" apply the EF on it.
Yet theories of information work and are workable. The explanatory filter is one such instrument.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
Grapefruit said:
The explanatory filter seems to assume that evolution cannot create things that are highly improbably complex, infact in selecting what is improbably complex it seems to completely ignore what is complex in terms of any evolutionary theories and totally ignores the question, "is it possible for evolution to create something like this?".
Because there is no consideration of evolution in the EF it does nothing to disprove evolution. A theory disproving evolution in something would have to be deeply involved in the reasons why evolution cannot work in the given situation.
I suggest reading the longest post in this thread. If you still hold that view after reading it, we'll have something to discuss.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
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zouden said:
What? That's the complete opposite of what I'm saying. Please, read it again and point out where the fallacy is.
I'll ask again: how can you be completely certain of what the filter is telling you?
The requirement to know everything there is to know about something before we can understand part of it is a requirement that evolution isn't asked to make. It is setting the bar far higher for intelligent design than necessary.
With all that has been said and explained about the EF it should be more than apparent.
Perhaps I haven't made my point fully clear. Basically, the way I see it, you're claiming that if the explanatory filter made a faulty judgement, then it would render ID false. But surely this requires the filter to be perfect. This is clearly impossible, because the filter relies on the data we put into it. That data can be faulty, so the EF can make faulty conclusions. Do you agree or disagree on this point?
If you agree that the filter can make faulty conclusions, how can you say that a faulty conclusion would lead to the falsification of ID? A more likely explanation would obviously be that the data was faulty.
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Perhaps I haven't made my point fully clear. Basically, the way I see it, you're claiming that if the explanatory filter made a faulty judgement, then it would render ID false. But surely this requires the filter to be perfect. This is clearly impossible, because the filter relies on the data we put into it. That data can be faulty, so the EF can make faulty conclusions. Do you agree or disagree on this point?
If you agree that the filter can make faulty conclusions, how can you say that a faulty conclusion would lead to the falsification of ID? A more likely explanation would obviously be that the data was faulty.
Ahh yes, thanks for the clarification. Yes, those are valid points. We can only say the filter has failed if we put enough data into it for it to work properly. This does not mean we need infinite data on the entity we are putting in the filter. Example: a snowflake's pattern may be described as complex. The snowflake would be caught by the first net because natural law explains it. To run the flagellum through the filter all we need to know are the parts and the sequence of its construction.
Could natural law produce the flagellum? As far as we know, no natural law makes motors. That is, it isn't something as simple as a chemical reaction.
Could chance have produced the flagellum? No, the odds of it happening fall far below any known design.
Therefore it is designed.
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BlueCoyote
Beyond
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I'm not able to follow this thread.
1) Sure, natural law can produce the flagellum, show me anything else working on it than natural law.
2) Sure, chance is an essential part of creating such a thing. Just given enough time and variation.
3) design ? Yes, that's natures way designing out of the properties from probability(given) and chance(variation).
Sorry 
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
BlueCoyote said:
I'm not able to follow this thread.
1) Sure, natural law can produce the flagellum, show me anything else working on it than natural law.
Please provide evidence for your first claim.
Natural law: Quote:
A scientific law or scientific principle is a concise verbal or mathematical statement of a relation that is always under the same conditions.
The term "scientific law" is traditionally associated with the natural sciences and hence the term is used interchangeably with the term physical laws. The biological sciences also have scientific laws, such as Mendelian inheritance and the Hardy-Weinberg principle found in genetics.
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BlueCoyote
Beyond
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Okay, thanks. I tried the principle of exclusion (even to prove a negative/absence of something), but you use the proof of the claimant.
I could imagine different forces else than natural law working to create a flagellum, but of course they are not proven nor necessary imho.
So that's how Occam's Razor works both ways.
Why add unnecessary things to a process where natural laws can do the trick ?
I would call nature the designer, what makes me pantheist.
To see humans as separate from nature, like 'they' see g*d separated from nature, so to see design separate from nature is beyond my horizon (and that's a reverse)...
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
BlueCoyote said:
Okay, thanks. I tried the principle of exclusion (even to prove a negative/absence of something), but you use the proof of the claimant.
I could imagine different forces else than natural law working to create a flagellum, but of course they are not proven nor necessary imho.
So that's how Occam's Razor works both ways.
Why add unnecessary things to a process where natural laws can do the trick ?
I would call nature the designer, what makes me pantheist.
To see humans as separate from nature, like 'they' see g*d separated from nature, so to see design separate from nature is beyond my horizon (and that's a reverse)...
You wouldn't use a design hypothesis if natural law could do the trick. The problem is it can't. Your argument is similar to deimya's: nature did it because nature is all there is. I'm sorry but that reasoning begs the question.
Natural law also cannot explain chance. There is no natural law that says if I deal a hand of cards you're going to get a royal flush. Odds are you're not.
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deimya
tofu and monocle
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My premise is that nature is all there is. My argument against ID is that we don't know all of nature's resources and thus possibilities and necessities.
It thus begs the question the same way the interference pattern in the double-slit experiment begged the question of a refined understanding of the nature of matter. ID is not the answer because it supposes too much knowledge about what nature could or couldn't ever come up with.
In that sense ID is very similar to dogma by claiming too much certainty through the EF, hence its unscientific flavour.
Evolution is a closer call to understanding the apparent specified and apparent irreducible complexity than classical physics ever was to understand the wave-particle duality though, since at least evolution can produce plausible scenarios that correlate well with everything else around, i.e. vestigial organs, the zoo of flagella and their proteins across thousands of different bacteria, etc. While the article posted earlier may not be totally compelling to some, I hope it at least get its point across if one goes over selective reading.
Really, from there it's about arguing with negative evidence and/or personal incredulity.
Parallel to that, Dembski's use of probabilities, from which he derived his argument of specified complexity, is at best flawed. It is flawed because we know that we do not possess the necessary knowledge to correctly assess the probabilities of various complex structures arising before they are selected out, a missing knowledge which Dembski fails to acknowledge and from which he proceeds to deduce the flawed UPB.
In that regard, it seems to me that yours and Dembski's argument goes well with those who say mutations/selection may never produce new information, thereby misunderstanding both the meaning of information, complexity and the very nature and power of mutations and selection.
Edited by deimya (05/14/09 01:17 PM)
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BlueCoyote
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quote:
BlueCoyote said:
Okay, thanks. I tried the principle of exclusion (even to prove a negative/absence of something), but you use the proof of the claimant.
I could imagine different forces else than natural law working to create a flagellum, but of course they are not proven nor necessary imho.
So that's how Occam's Razor works both ways.
Why add unnecessary things to a process where natural laws can do the trick ?
I would call nature the designer, what makes me pantheist.
To see humans as separate from nature, like 'they' see g*d separated from nature, so to see design separate from nature is beyond my horizon (and that's a reverse)...
You wouldn't use a design hypothesis if natural law could do the trick. The problem is it can't.
What makes you so sure about that ? I think the argument already was brought up that if you're not certain/know about an exclusion (natural law) then you can not discard it's probabilities. For example if one doesn't know about the cocreative forces happening around the phenomena (maybe comparable to weather).
Quote:
Your argument is similar to deimya's: nature did it because nature is all there is. I'm sorry but that reasoning begs the question.
Maybe you claim that there is anything else outside of natural law ?
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Natural law also cannot explain chance. There is no natural law that says if I deal a hand of cards you're going to get a royal flush. Odds are you're not.
But patterns can form into some very complex and abstract kind of 'formed' existences too, which seem and maybe are not connected to their primal causes anymore and become dynamic of themselves.
And if chance would not give it to a certain pattern, all probability calculations in maths are futile and betting in casino would be futile. Of course chance makes it a royal flush to appear, and makes its uniqueness. Formed out of the given, made it peak of poker evolution
But this chance was designed by humans
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deCypher
Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 52,515
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Could chance have produced the flagellum? No, the odds of it happening fall far below any known design.
Therefore it is designed.
What? This doesn't make sense. It certainly isn't impossible for chance to have produced the flagellum, so you cannot definitively conclude that it was designed.
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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
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zouden
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Could natural law produce the flagellum? As far as we know, no natural law makes motors. That is, it isn't something as simple as a chemical reaction.
Could chance have produced the flagellum? No, the odds of it happening fall far below any known design.
Therefore it is designed.
Again, you're assuming that we know the answers to those questions. How can you accurately calculate the odds of the flagellum forming? It may just seem unlikely, but we don't know the full story. Also, saying "as far as we know, no natural law makes motors" is pointless, because there's so many things we don't know. By the way, motors appear plenty of times in nature. Like the ATP synthase.
Turning your 3 sentences around, we get:
Could natural law produce the flagellum? Possibly, because there are similar things in nature, like the ATP synthase.
Could chance have produced the flagellum? Maybe. We don't know all the steps involved so we can't calculate the odds.
Therefore it might be designed or it might have evolved. We don't know.
...
Do you see how the explanatory filter really isn't that useful? It's only useful if we know the full story, if we can say with absolute certainty that "this was designed". It'd work for a wristwatch where we do know the full story, but protein complexes? We don't know much about them, and we certainly don't know about every possible homolog in nature from which it could have evolved. We can only hypothesis about its story. Therefore, the data that we put into the explanatory filter is full of guesses and assumptions, so any information it returns will have to use words like "possibly" "maybe" and "we don't know".
--------------------
I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
deimya said:
My premise is that nature is all there is. My argument against ID is that we don't know all of nature's resources and thus possibilities and necessities.
We don't need to know everything to know something. The premise that nature is all there is is a philosophical position with serious philosophical problems.
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deimya said:
It thus begs the question the same way the interference pattern in the double-slit experiment begged the question of a refined understanding of the nature of matter. ID is not the answer because it supposes too much knowledge about what nature could or couldn't ever come up with.
That is incorrect. If nature can build motors we need something called evidence. As Behe says, "publish or perish."
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deimya said:
In that sense ID is very similar to dogma by claiming too much certainty through the EF, hence its unscientific flavour.
Claiming relative certainty upon evidence isn't dogma, it's logical.
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deimya said:
Evolution is a closer call to understanding the apparent specified and apparent irreducible complexity than classical physics ever was to understand the wave-particle duality though, since at least evolution can produce plausible scenarios that correlate well with everything else around, i.e. vestigial organs, the zoo of flagella and their proteins across thousands of different bacteria, etc. While the article posted earlier may not be totally compelling to some, I hope it at least get its point across if one goes over selective reading.
The flagella, cilia and their proteins are proving to be a vexing problem for evolutionary biologists who are readily admitting they have only tapped the surface of the problem. If you'll put the phrase, "From The Origin of Species to the origin of bacterial flagella." into Google you'll find a PDF at the top of the page with a whole host of problems. It's an intense read for those without the requisite science background but it does give insight into the thorniness of the problem. The paper, From The Origin of Species to the origin of bacterial flagella, is rife with error repeating the same old Millerism about the secretory system predating the flagellum. The paper, which dates from 2006, is STILL repeating the same old error even though it was shown to be false in 2000 in the peer-reviewed paper, Nguyen L, Paulsen IT, Tchieu J, Hueck CJ, and Saier MH Jr. Phylogenetic analyses of the constituents of the Type III protein secretion systems. J. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 2:125-144. 2000.
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deimya said:
Really, from there it's about arguing with negative evidence and/or personal incredulity.
I appreciate your opinion, but no, that is incorrect. The argument from personal incredulity in this case first was brought to the table by Miller himself as an attack against Behe during the Firing Line show where they faced off. It didn't hold water then and it doesn't hold water today.
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deimya said:
Parallel to that, Dembski's use of probabilities, from which he derived his argument of specified complexity, is at best flawed. It is flawed because we know that we do not possess the necessary knowledge to correctly assess the probabilities of various complex structures arising before they are selected out, a missing knowledge which Dembski fails to acknowledge and from which he proceeds to deduce the flawed UPB.
In that regard, it seems to me that yours and Dembski's argument goes well with those who say mutations/selection may never produce new information, thereby misunderstanding both the meaning of information, complexity and the very nature and power of mutations and selection.
A fine opinion but until a reasonable story is concocted for the flagellum we have nothing but evolutionary opinions without evidence.
Publish or perish. Darwin's Black Box came out 13 years ago. We're still waiting.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Nice replies but rather than reply line by line I'll just say those are nice straws you're grasping.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
deCypher said:
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Could chance have produced the flagellum? No, the odds of it happening fall far below any known design.
Therefore it is designed.
What? This doesn't make sense. It certainly isn't impossible for chance to have produced the flagellum, so you cannot definitively conclude that it was designed.
Thanks for the springboard as this is one of my favorite points.
In any other circumstance, running the math through the filter, we would normally conclude the artifact or event was designed. The opposition has nothing to do with anything other than the implications. And that, in my view, is a piss poor way of doing science.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
Could natural law produce the flagellum? As far as we know, no natural law makes motors. That is, it isn't something as simple as a chemical reaction.
Could chance have produced the flagellum? No, the odds of it happening fall far below any known design.
Therefore it is designed.
Again, you're assuming that we know the answers to those questions. How can you accurately calculate the odds of the flagellum forming? It may just seem unlikely, but we don't know the full story. Also, saying "as far as we know, no natural law makes motors" is pointless, because there's so many things we don't know. By the way, motors appear plenty of times in nature. Like the ATP synthase.
Supposition and a baseless claim. If you have evidence, I'll review it.
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zouden said:
Turning your 3 sentences around, we get:
Could natural law produce the flagellum? Possibly, because there are similar things in nature, like the ATP synthase.
Second mention of the baseless claim. Evidence please.
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zouden said:
Could chance have produced the flagellum? Maybe. We don't know all the steps involved so we can't calculate the odds.
We know the steps of the construction based upon logic. Watch Unlocking the Mystery of Life for a fuller treatment of the vexing problem of co-option. And as I said to deCypher: In any other circumstance, running the math through the filter, we would normally conclude the artifact or event was designed. The opposition has nothing to do with anything other than the implications. And that, in my view, is a piss poor way of doing science.
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zouden said:
Therefore it might be designed or it might have evolved. We don't know.
Hardly. We DO know. It didn't evolve.
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zouden said:
Do you see how the explanatory filter really isn't that useful? It's only useful if we know the full story, if we can say with absolute certainty that "this was designed". It'd work for a wristwatch where we do know the full story, but protein complexes? We don't know much about them, and we certainly don't know about every possible homolog in nature from which it could have evolved. We can only hypothesis about its story. Therefore, the data that we put into the explanatory filter is full of guesses and assumptions, so any information it returns will have to use words like "possibly" "maybe" and "we don't know".
A mishmash of errors already dealt with. Bringing up homologues and assumed protein complexes begs the question numerous times.
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zouden
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Quote:
And as I said to deCypher: In any other circumstance, running the math through the filter, we would normally conclude the artifact or event was designed.
Yes but this isn't "any other circumstance", so those kinds of conclusions aren't enough. Your argument still amounts to nothing more than "it looks like the flagella was designed" which I don't disagree with- but that's not the issue here. The issue is that you claim the explanatory filter is so good, that to disprove one of its findings would mean that ID itself would be falsified. I've been pointing out how this isn't the case, but you still haven't responded to this point. As Behe would say, "publish or perish".
Edited by zouden (05/15/09 07:45 AM)
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deimya
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Quote:
Publish or perish.
We're working on it, only we'll do so in peer reviewed journals instead of books, and without the blatantly flawed maths. Although that might never convinced die-hard IDers, it might at least convince their, hopefully, critically thinking off-spring.
Design is in the eye of the beholder. Would a natural law explaining how stuff is apparently designed count as design or necessity and probable possibilities? As far as I know there are no proof that isn't based on bad statistics (i.e. Dembski's EF and UPB) that tells us no such explanation could ever be found, hence the impossibility to conclude "designed".
In that regard, evolution is to the flagella what quantum mechanics is to superconductors; to go from the general to the specific is very difficult business, but not impossible, and a momentary failure to get from one to other doesn't necessarily entail a failure of the theory, but more often than not a failure of the theorist. Falsifying a theory requires a clean and clear contradiction. For users of the EF, it seems to me a contradiction needs only be clear to them and will amount to concluding "design" (the UPB, i.e. filter no. 2, is useless and barely poses as to make the EF more reasonable than it is), while in a more scientific context, a contradiction needs more scrutiny and will only amount to ditching the theory in search for a better one.
ID seeks to conclude with certainty using the EF, and therefore isn't scientific.
Also I would like to point you to reference 34 in the review article from 2006. As you can see from the second paragraph on the third page, there are ongoing debates about what you qualify as "Millerisms" and it is not as clear cut as "one proved the other wrong", but it's rather more about where do these similarities stem from and what are viable evolutionary pathways. As for co-option, I would like to bring your attention to box 2 "Of forelimbs and flagella" on the same page, although I'm sure you already read it.
Anyway, I think I don't have much to add to the discussion any more. You gals and guys have a good time, I did like the discussion through and through
Edited by deimya (05/15/09 08:31 AM)
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Quote:
And as I said to deCypher: In any other circumstance, running the math through the filter, we would normally conclude the artifact or event was designed.
Yes but this isn't "any other circumstance", so those kinds of conclusions aren't enough. Your argument still amounts to nothing more than "it looks like the flagella was designed" which I don't disagree with- but that's not the issue here. The issue is that you claim the explanatory filter is so good, that to disprove one of its findings would mean that ID itself would be falsified. I've been pointing out how this isn't the case, but you still haven't responded to this point. As Behe would say, "publish or perish".
But I have responded to it. I won't endlessly repeat things because someone cannot understand them. You can ask for clarification and I'll respond.
Here's another informative link:
http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_isidtestable.htm
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
deimya said:
Quote:
Publish or perish.
We're working on it, only we'll do so in peer reviewed journals instead of books, and without the blatantly flawed maths. Although that might never convinced die-hard IDers, it might at least convince their, hopefully, critically thinking off-spring.
Design is in the eye of the beholder. Would a natural law explaining how stuff is apparently designed count as design or necessity and probable possibilities? As far as I know there are no proof that isn't based on bad statistics (i.e. Dembski's EF and UPB) that tells us no such explanation could ever be found, hence the impossibility to conclude "designed".
In that regard, evolution is to the flagella what quantum mechanics is to superconductors; to go from the general to the specific is very difficult business, but not impossible, and a momentary failure to get from one to other doesn't necessarily entail a failure of the theory, but more often than not a failure of the theorist. Falsifying a theory requires a clean and clear contradiction. For users of the EF, it seems to me a contradiction needs only be clear to them and will amount to concluding "design" (the UPB, i.e. filter no. 2, is useless and barely poses as to make the EF more reasonable than it is), while in a more scientific context, a contradiction needs more scrutiny and will only amount to ditching the theory in search for a better one.
ID seeks to conclude with certainty using the EF, and therefore isn't scientific.
Also I would like to point you to reference 34 in the review article from 2006. As you can see from the second paragraph on the third page, there are ongoing debates about what you qualify as "Millerisms" and it is not as clear cut as "one proved the other wrong", but it's rather more about where do these similarities stem from and what are viable evolutionary pathways. As for co-option, I would like to bring your attention to box 2 "Of forelimbs and flagella" on the same page, although I'm sure you already read it.
Anyway, I think I don't have much to add to the discussion any more. You gals and guys have a good time, I did like the discussion through and through
Though our opinions greatly differ I'd like to say I had a wonderful time discussing this with you.
Intelligent design--the best explanation we have.
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OrgoneConclusion
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Intelligent design--the best non-explanation we have.
ID explains nothing, teaches us nothing and goes nowhere. It is magical thinking carried to an extreme.
The primitives upon first seeing an airplane thought it to be of divine origin. Seems to be the same mindset.
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zouden
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I agree. It's not an explanation at all. It's a surrender to ignorance. "This looks really complicated so it must have been designed by God". Thankfully Charles Darwin made us snap out of that and put us back on the track of solving life's mysteries.
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zouden
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quote:
zouden said:
The issue is that you claim the explanatory filter is so good, that to disprove one of its findings would mean that ID itself would be falsified. I've been pointing out how this isn't the case, but you still haven't responded to this point. As Behe would say, "publish or perish".
But I have responded to it. I won't endlessly repeat things because someone cannot understand them. You can ask for clarification and I'll respond.
Here's another informative link:
http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_isidtestable.htm
Come on, don't cop out now and hide behind one of Dembski's walls-of-text. I've asked you a very simple question that you seem extremely unwilling to answer.
ID says that nature was designed. How could we prove that it isn't?
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
OrgoneConclusion said:
ID says that nature was designed. How could we prove that it isn't?
That is your claim. Do you have evidence that is what ID says?
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zouden
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Why are you attributing something that I said to OC? I'm curious how that happened.
Well, I'm using the common definition. But in any case, I'll clarify my position:
Any theory which states that an unknown Designer created the universe - or any aspect of the universe - is unfalsifiable, and therefore not a theory at all.
1. Do you disagree with the above statement?
2. Do you think that ID is one such theory?
If you answer yes to the first but no to the second then it means we are talking about separate things, and may have been in agreement all along.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Why are you attributing something that I said to OC? I'm curious how that happened.
Well, I'm using the common definition. But in any case, I'll clarify my position:
Any theory which states that an unknown Designer created the universe - or any aspect of the universe - is unfalsifiable, and therefore not a theory at all.
1. Do you disagree with the above statement?
2. Do you think that ID is one such theory?
If you answer yes to the first but no to the second then it means we are talking about separate things, and may have been in agreement all along.
That's bizarre. I did nothing to that post, just quoted you. 
To answer your position:
I think that some aspects of the universe, particularly biological ones, show evidence of design. I think that ID theory can identify some of the design in biological entities.
From the link:
Quote:
The testability objection to intelligent design can be interpreted in two ways. One is to claim that intelligent design is in principle untestable. This seems to have been Scott's line in the early nineties. Certainly it is a hallmark of science that any of its claims be subject to revision or refutation on the basis of new evidence or further theoretical insight. If this is what one means by testability, then design is certainly testable. Indeed, it was in this sense that Darwin tested William Paley's account of design and found it wanting. It simply won't wash to say that design isn't testable and then in the same breath say that Darwin tested design and refuted it.
The other way to interpret the testability objection is to claim that intelligent design may in principle be testable, but that no tests have been proposed to date. This seems to be Scott's line currently. Indeed, if the testability objection is to bear any weight, its force must reside in the absence of concrete proposals for testing intelligent design. Are such proposals indeed lacking? Rather than looking solely at the testability of intelligent design, I want also to consider the testability of Darwinism. By comparing the testability of the two theories, it will become evident that even the more charitable interpretation of Scott's testability objection does not hold up.
FALSIFIABILITY: Is intelligent design falsifiable? Is Darwinism falsifiable? Yes to the first question, no to the second. Intelligent design is eminently falsifiable. Specified complexity in general and irreducible complexity in biology are within the theory of intelligent design the key markers of intelligent agency. If it could be shown that biological systems like the bacterial flagellum that are wonderfully complex, elegant, and integrated could have been formed by a gradual Darwinian process (which by definition is non-telic), then intelligent design would be falsified on the general grounds that one doesn't invoke intelligent causes when purely natural causes will do. In that case Occam's razor finishes off intelligent design quite nicely.
On the other hand, falsifying Darwinism seems effectively impossible. To do so one must show that no conceivable Darwinian pathway could have led to a given biological structure. What's more, Darwinists are apt to retreat into the murk of historical contingency to shore up their theory. For instance, Allen Orr in his critique of Behe's work shortly after _Darwin's Black Box_ appeared remarked, "We have no guarantee that we can reconstruct the history of a biochemical pathway." What he conceded with one hand, however, he was quick to retract with the other. He added, "But even if we can't, its irreducible complexity cannot count against its gradual evolution."
The fact is that for complex systems like the bacterial flagellum no biologist has or is anywhere close to reconstructing its history in Darwinian terms. Is Darwinian theory therefore falsified? Hardly. I have yet to witness one committed Darwinist concede that any feature of nature might even in principle provide countervailing evidence to Darwinism. In place of such a concession one is instead always treated to an admission of ignorance. Thus it's not that Darwinism has been falsified or disconfirmed, but that we simply don't know enough about the biological system in question and its historical context to determine how the Darwinian mechanism might have produced it.
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zouden
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 Why do you insist on quoting Dembski instead of answering my two questions?
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johnm214
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quote:
johnm214 said:
How could you ever show what the chances of the flagellum forming are? How could this possibly be known?
You take the number of parts times the exact sequence and work out the math. That would be the odds of the all the parts coming together in the right sequence at one specific moment.
I'm asking you what "work out the math" means. The whole point is that we don't seem to know what the odds are and so how could the filter be used? Far from being a useful tool its a rather obvious heuristic, I'd like to know how we know it works on even simple verifiable problems like a marble's trajectory on an unknown surface or the evolution of relativly simple traits overy many generations (something more than point mutation)
Lets see some explanation of how this thing can actually be used- preferably on the relevant subjects. I don't see where you've ever backed up your claims with more than "of course it would conclude the flagellum was designed".Quote:
zouden said:
But the filter just tells you if it's likely that something was designed. I totally agree with you that if you run a watch, or the flagellum, through the filter then it'll say "most likely designed". But the filter is, at best, a heuristic that relies on the data we give it. That data can be faulty. We don't know everything there is to know about the flagellum (and related biological machines) so we can't 100% trust the output of the filter.
Thus, if the filter makes an incorrect prediction, it could be because we fed it the wrong data. This inherent uncertainty means that disproving one of the filter's predictions does nothing to falsify ID.
What does "running it through the filter" mean? I don't think it means anything since no method of actually calculating the odds of the flagellum's formation have been proffered to my knowledge.
Basically it seems to me that the amount of information you'd need to determine whether your looking at something that is likely to have evolved is nontrivial. Just like the bridge hand, we'd also need to know the odds of similar structures forming for similar reasons and include that data- as the number of paths become gigantic the required knowledge likewise becomes gigantic.
Perhaps there's some way to deal with this problem or the other obvious ones, but the proponents sure haven't pointed anything out that I've seens. Its just a bunch of "do this" without actually explaining how to do so.
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OrgoneConclusion
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After thirteen pages of repeatedly asking the same question(s), do you really expect a straight and clear answer at this juncture?
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
zouden said:
Why do you insist on quoting Dembski instead of answering my two questions?
1) If you read before my quote you'll find I did answer your questions.
2) I used Dembski's quote to further explain my answers and provide reasoning for my position.
Let's try one last time:
Any theory which states that an unknown Designer created the universe - or any aspect of the universe - is unfalsifiable, and therefore not a theory at all.
1. Do you disagree with the above statement?
2. Do you think that ID is one such theory?
1. I do not fully agree with that statement. ID is an informational theory. I won't answer that again as I answered in weeks ago. I answered it and proved it. Period, end of story.
2. ID is a theory that provides evidence of intelligent agency for some biological artifacts.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
OrgoneConclusion said:
After thirteen pages of repeatedly asking the same question(s), do you really expect a straight and clear answer at this juncture?
You do realize that understanding a claim requires two distinct separate parts (maybe you don't):
1) The reasoning behind the claim.
2) The ability to understand the reasoning.
If one or the other is insufficient, the reasoning will not be sufficient.
Do you ever have anything to say about the substantial portions of a thread? Or are you limited to jokes and innuendo?
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Mr. Mushrooms
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I'm asking you what "work out the math" means.
I worked out the math in the long post and used a skeleton as an example.
What does "running it through the filter" mean?
I fully explained what running something through the filter meant in the long post as well. I used three nets as an example.
So either you can't remember that post or you didn't understand it.
I'm not going to indulge you by repeating what I've already explained if you can't remember it. The thread is static; go look it up. If you cannot understand what I explained as simply as it could be, I cannot help you if I wanted to.
I truly appreciate your interest and curiosity though. You're one of the few people I've ever met on the Internet that seems to want to understand what intelligent design means.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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I'll put it in here too.
You wanted to see how to "work out the math":
Quote:
A human skeleton. A human skeleton comprises 206 bones in a specific configuration that allows humans to move and function. The configuration, or pattern, is specified and complex. The skeleton is the result of design. It would be represented in the EF as a small ball. It would drop through the first net-natural law- because no natural law mandates the skeleton's configuration or pattern. It would drop through the second net-chance-because the odds of its specific configuration are beyond chance. Here's why.
Specified complexity uses a universal probability bound (UPB) as a limit to rule out chance. Any event or phenomenon where the odds are greater than UPB cannot have happened by chance. This is because UPB is the number of all the subatomic particles in the universe times the number of times matter can chance in one second times the age of the universe in seconds times one billion. UPB exhausts all the natural resources in the universe. UPB is 1 out of 10 to the 150th power. A skeleton with only 97 bones-a human skeleton has 206-falls outside of the realm of chance because its specific configuration is greater than 1 out of 36 to the 150th power.
When we speak of the assembly of the flagellum in terms of SC we count the number of parts and calculate the odds of their specific configuration. The parts of the motor, i.e. drive shaft, rotor, etc., are made of 40 or 50 proteins. Most of the proteins (30 or 40) are found nowhere else in the living world. The assembly of all of the parts and their proteins coming together at the right time in the right configuration would be a chance of 1 out of 10 to the 1,170 powerth (10 followed by 1,170 zeros)!
In case that isn't clear you multiply the number of the proteins times the number of possible configurations.
You wanted to see something run through the filter:
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The EF is like a series of three nets-one on top of another. The top net, natural law, has the largest holes; the middle net, chance, has medium-sized holes; and the bottom net, design, has the smallest holes. Every event or phenomenon can be dropped into the nets to see whether it is the result of natural law, chance, or ID. Since every event or phenomenon is the result of one or more of these categories, everything in the universe can be tested this way.
A few examples should make this clear. An old tree falls down in a forest. The event (its falling) is the result of natural law-gravity. This event would be represented in the EF as a large ball that was caught in the first net-natural law.
A person's ticket is drawn in a 50/50 raffle. The event (its being chosen) is the result of chance. This event would be represented in the EF as a medium-sized ball. It would drop through the first net-natural law-but be caught by the second net-chance.
A human skeleton. A human skeleton comprises 206 bones in a specific configuration that allows humans to move and function. The configuration, or pattern, is specified and complex. The skeleton is the result of design. It would be represented in the EF as a small ball. It would drop through the first net-natural law- because no natural law mandates the skeleton's configuration or pattern. It would drop through the second net-chance-because the odds of its specific configuration are beyond chance. Here's why.
Specified complexity uses a universal probability bound (UPB) as a limit to rule out chance. Any event or phenomenon where the odds are greater than UPB cannot have happened by chance. This is because UPB is the number of all the subatomic particles in the universe times the number of times matter can chance in one second times the age of the universe in seconds times one billion. UPB exhausts all the natural resources in the universe. UPB is 1 out of 10 to the 150th power. A skeleton with only 97 bones-a human skeleton has 206-falls outside of the realm of chance because its specific configuration is greater than 1 out of 36 to the 150th power.
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zouden
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Let's try one last time:
Any theory which states that an unknown Designer created the universe - or any aspect of the universe - is unfalsifiable, and therefore not a theory at all.
1. Do you disagree with the above statement?
2. Do you think that ID is one such theory?
1. I do not fully agree with that statement. ID is an informational theory. I won't answer that again as I answered in weeks ago. I answered it and proved it. Period, end of story.
2. ID is a theory that provides evidence of intelligent agency for some biological artifacts.
My first question didn't mention ID, so I don't know why you brought it up in your answer. I think you haven't answered it at all. I would still like to know whether you agree or disagree with that statement. A simple yes or no should suffice.
Regarding the second part: you said that ID provides evidence of intelligent agency for some biological artifacts. What about the others? Do you believe that they have an intelligent designer, and we just haven't found the evidence yet?
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Zanthius
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
I think that some aspects of the universe, particularly biological ones, show evidence of design. I think that ID theory can identify some of the design in biological entities.
Why is it that you keep on discussing this topic for ever and ever and ever, without making any intellectual progress? In order to make intellectual progress you must try to understand your opponent's perspective, instead of trying to convince him that you are right. Your intellectual opponent should also try to understand your perspective, without trying to convince you that he is right.
You are not going to make any progress if you just keep on claiming that you are right, while claiming that your intellectual opponent is wrong. Intellectual progress is made from trying to understand each other, not from trying to convince our intellectual opponents that we are right.
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johnm214
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Quote:
When we speak of the assembly of the flagellum in terms of SC we count the number of parts and calculate the odds of their specific configuration. The parts of the motor, i.e. drive shaft, rotor, etc., are made of 40 or 50 proteins. Most of the proteins (30 or 40) are found nowhere else in the living world. The assembly of all of the parts and their proteins coming together at the right time in the right configuration would be a chance of 1 out of 10 to the 1,170 powerth (10 followed by 1,170 zeros)!
Again, you've said this but you've not shown it to be true. Why is it 10 to the 1,170th ? I don't understand. The whole point was I don't see where these numbers come from and why they are reasonable statistics.
What is the event being measured, anyways? Random assembly in an organism's lifetime? In an inanimate solution? Random spontaneous genetic mutation?
Its impossible to determine if the method used to calculate these odds is accurate nor even to understand what the odds measure. What is the data and what is the method used to determine whatever the odds are?
Quote:
Zanthius said:
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
I think that some aspects of the universe, particularly biological ones, show evidence of design. I think that ID theory can identify some of the design in biological entities.
Why is it that you keep on discussing this topic for ever and ever and ever, without making any intellectual progress? In order to make intellectual progress you must try to understand your opponent's perspective, instead of trying to convince him that you are right. Your intellectual opponent should also try to understand your perspective, without trying to convince you that he is right.
You are not going to make any progress if you just keep on claiming that you are right, while claiming that your intellectual opponent is wrong. Intellectual progress is made from trying to understand each other, not from trying to convince our intellectual opponents that we are right.
Yeah, but these aren't just conversations between two people, its a public discussion. I think its more important that someone make a compelling case, regardless of whether someone understands it or they understand their opponents views- what matters is whether the claims can be demonstrated true and if the criticisms can be shown lacking.
If MM was arguing with illiterate folks he would have no burden to translate their writings and understand them, he only has his own burden of proof. He can answer well stated objections or clarify where confusion is aparent, but I don't know if you have a burden to neccesarily convince someone who refuses to be convinced, nor to understand their views.
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johnm214
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Does anyone see how the above claims are justified? How is the probability of the flagellum forming in some way, or anything else, the stated number?
After being criticized for what is claimed as me failing to read a post, it seems instead that my questions as to the data and method used to calculate the relevant odds of flagella formtion remain even after being directed to the claimed answer. Does anyone else see what I'm missing here? How do we verify that this is correct? How do we know what is being claimed in the first place (i.e. what are these odds of?)
What would be the relevant comparison anyways to avoid the bridge-hand post hoc fallacy ("that bridge hand couldn't have been dealt to you- it is so unlikely to be repeated" even though it was certain that a hand would be delt and the hand recieved isn't any more unlikely than others, i.e. repeatability isn't relevant only the chance that the phenomena as a class be observed presuming all members of the class are equally likely)?
Wouldn't you need to investigate the odds of flagella appearing, for example, compared to similar motility devices and then evaluate the odds of any of these similar motility devices forming? If the flagella was unlikely but the summation of the odds of the development of all similar structures (similar in purpose for selection purposes- i.e. allowing chemotaxis even if unintelligently) was not unlikely, wouldn't the flagellum actually be akin to the bridge hand- the odds of repeatability being quite irrelevant? It would only be unlikely then in the sense the bridge hand is unlikely- not really relevant since the point is whether the structure supports design, when it wouldn't if similar structures as a group are quite likely and the flagellum was not unlikely compared to them?
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zouden
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Totally. The way creationists calculate odds is astoundingly bad.
Quote:
The parts of the motor, i.e. drive shaft, rotor, etc., are made of 40 or 50 proteins. Most of the proteins (30 or 40) are found nowhere else in the living world. The assembly of all of the parts and their proteins coming together at the right time in the right configuration would be a chance of 1 out of 10 to the 1,170 powerth (10 followed by 1,170 zeros)!
It blows my mind that people think that is is sound mathematics. A schoolkid could see the flaws here, yet these sorts of 'calculations' are still being used.
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I know... that just the smallest
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You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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Right, just cuz the exact path might be unlikely to have been repeated if we started over and let things go for a billion years that isn't really relevant since the chance argument of the IDers apparently applies to all of the members of the classes of similar motility devices that could have concievably formed. (just as it is with a marble rolled down the road- with enough measurements the exact path is quite unlikely even though the chance of the marble taking one of the unlikely paths to the same end is quite likely. Its foolish to pick a particular path and say its unlikely and therefore not a result of chance because of the number of data points when that same 'logic' applies to any of the paths, and when the addition of the probabilities of all these unlikely paths reveals that collectively they weren't unlikely at all. This seems to be the silliness being used on the flagellum)
That and nobody has yet explained why the quote you refrence is true. How do they calculate these odds? They need to start sharring their data and methods (or someone needs to refrence where such is done). Can anyone find an intelligent designer who's explained how he's gotten statistics and justified them as relevant?
Without this the whole explanatory filter is utterly useless. I suspect it is since the data is likely impossible to be had quantitativly, but that's their burden since they are the ones claiming such is able to demonstrate design.
(and it would be nice if people wouldn't just say "you've obviously not read my argument" if I ask for something specific, that wasn't provided- like the justification for claiming the flagellum being unlikely. The quoted reasoning was nothing more than a few stated facts with no clear relevance and conclusory statements of odds with no description of the method used to derive them. What the odds were measuring wasn't even clear. )
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector
Registered: 05/25/08
Posts: 13,018
Loc: Registered: 6/04/02
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Quote:
zouden said:
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Let's try one last time:
Any theory which states that an unknown Designer created the universe - or any aspect of the universe - is unfalsifiable, and therefore not a theory at all.
1. Do you disagree with the above statement?
2. Do you think that ID is one such theory?
1. I do not fully agree with that statement. ID is an informational theory. I won't answer that again as I answered in weeks ago. I answered it and proved it. Period, end of story.
2. ID is a theory that provides evidence of intelligent agency for some biological artifacts.
My first question didn't mention ID, so I don't know why you brought it up in your answer. I think you haven't answered it at all. I would still like to know whether you agree or disagree with that statement. A simple yes or no should suffice.
Regarding the second part: you said that ID provides evidence of intelligent agency for some biological artifacts. What about the others? Do you believe that they have an intelligent designer, and we just haven't found the evidence yet?
What do you mean?
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OrgoneConclusion
Pharoah & Balanced
Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 29,358
Loc: Luxor
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Quote:
Why are you attributing something that I said to OC?
I covered this in the Ethics thread.
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OrgoneConclusion
Pharoah & Balanced
Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 29,358
Loc: Luxor
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Quote:
My first question didn't mention ID, so I don't know why you brought it up in your answer.
Standard reading comprehension error.
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OrgoneConclusion
Pharoah & Balanced
Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 29,358
Loc: Luxor
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Quote:
How do they calculate these odds?
They make them up. It is called 'intellectual dishonesty'.
Quote:
Without this the whole explanatory filter is utterly useless. I suspect it is since the data is likely impossible to be had quantitativly, but that's their burden since they are the ones claiming such is able to demonstrate design.
Quote:
(and it would be nice if people wouldn't just say "you've obviously not read my argument" if I ask for something specific
This is the standard fallacy of attempting to wear your opponent down along with a not-so-sly insult. Thus we have dozens of pages with zero information content.
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This is your drain on brugs.
Edited by OrgoneConclusion (05/17/09 09:50 AM)
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zouden
Neuroscientist
Registered: 11/12/07
Posts: 7,091
Loc: Australia
Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quote:
zouden said:
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Let's try one last time:
Any theory which states that an unknown Designer created the universe - or any aspect of the universe - is unfalsifiable, and therefore not a theory at all.
1. Do you disagree with the above statement?
2. Do you think that ID is one such theory?
1. I do not fully agree with that statement. ID is an informational theory. I won't answer that again as I answered in weeks ago. I answered it and proved it. Period, end of story.
2. ID is a theory that provides evidence of intelligent agency for some biological artifacts.
My first question didn't mention ID, so I don't know why you brought it up in your answer. I think you haven't answered it at all. I would still like to know whether you agree or disagree with that statement. A simple yes or no should suffice.
Regarding the second part: you said that ID provides evidence of intelligent agency for some biological artifacts. What about the others? Do you believe that they have an intelligent designer, and we just haven't found the evidence yet?
What do you mean?
With question 1 or question 2? Because I want to keep them as separate as possible.
Regarding question 2, you said that ID provides evidence of intelligent agency for some biological artifacts. I think it attempts to do more than that: I think ID proponents believe that all biological artifacts were created, especially humans, and so evidence will be found if they look hard enough. I say this because it's clear that ID proponents are not satisfied with evolutionary explanations for things. There doesn't appear to be any point where they say "yeah okay that evolved" - yet they demand that that we do just that for them. They expect us to say "yeah okay that was designed" whenever evolution lacks a clear explanation.
Now I'm expecting you to dismiss this as the difference between "some people" and "the theory" ie, not all ID proponents are like that and their behaviour doesn't reflect the theory - but that's exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the way the theory is applied in practice. I also want to know how you think the theory is applied.
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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Quote:
OrgoneConclusion said:
Quote:
How do they calculate these odds?
They make them up. It is called 'intellectual dishonesty'.
Quote:
Without this the whole explanatory filter is utterly useless. I suspect it is since the data is likely impossible to be had quantitativly, but that's their burden since they are the ones claiming such is able to demonstrate design.
Quote:
(and it would be nice if people wouldn't just say "you've obviously not read my argument" if I ask for something specific
This is the standard fallacy of attempting to wear your opponent down along with a not-so-sly insult. Thus we have dozens of pages with zero information content.
I'd just like to see some answers. This has gone on a bit long to not have an answer to the simple question of how the odds are calculated and used and the justification for their relevance and correctness.
If they can't demonstrate how the odds are calculated and applied then the filter is useless- its just philosophy based upon premises that we hae information that it seems we don't.
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OrgoneConclusion
Pharoah & Balanced
Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 29,358
Loc: Luxor
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Good luck with that. ID is all about hand-waving and little to do with critical examination.
As I have repeatedly asked and not received even a hint of a reply: What new inventions or knowledge or discoveries can spring forth from ID?
Answer: none. It is a dead end.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
Registered: 11/12/07
Posts: 7,091
Loc: Australia
Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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You're forgetting the way it strengthens faith in the glory of the Creator
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part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Mufungo
Coming at ya
Registered: 04/03/07
Posts: 2,556
Loc: Knowhere
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Hear hear... Next.
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Shirakawasuna
Stranger
Registered: 05/17/09
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Last seen: 2 years, 11 months
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The odds, when they are actually calculated, are based on obviously faulty assumptions like completely random assembly of proteins, nucleic acids, etc, from their component atoms. In other words, bullshit. The problem with any such calculation, even if honestly and intelligently attempted, is that natural selection affects the chances significantly and has acted in a historically conginent fashion: in particular ways in history. To get a really good idea of how likely any of that stuff was, you'd need to be an insanely educated expert on every biological system that ever existed.
The other big problem is that they're typically taking incomplete inferences and treating them as limits (argument from ignorance). If we find X, Y, and Z particles, the calculations do not take into consideration A, B, and C particle which could function as then-common, but unknown, precursors. Again, missing this stuff would be hard for anyone with an even slight biological education. That's why the calculations for evolution in general tend to be made by mathematicians and engineers with almost no input from biologists. Now, there *are* a few which were germane and kinda OK. They made Crick pose some questions. But they turned out, as usual, to have fatal flaws.
Alright, now I admit I haven't read this whole thread. It's probably got a whole lot of stupid in it (no offense), so I hope you'll forgive me. If you're talking about ID creationinst nonsense odds like Bill Dembski's pseudomath, then there aren't calculations. He won't show them to anyone. He talks a lot of BS and put up vaguely-defined, often information theory-inappropriate jargon with meaningless equations, but he simply does not produce anything verifiable. This doesn't stop him from actually claiming to be awesome and having come up with something super great that totally blows evolution out of the water. Given that he's too cowardly to actually show the math he claims exists, it's easy to see that he's a boisterous coward. (LOL, look at the amazon.com mini-"scandal" with B Dembski. HILARIOUS)
If you're talking about anyting else in ID, it gets worse. If you really want to discuss it (I sure don't!), then whoever finds it interesting or academically honest can go ahead and show how that is the case.
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Shirakawasuna
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As for asking/answering questions, I think it's clear that Mr. Mushroom's answer to 1. is an implicit YES. That's why he decided to go about saying that ID "theory" (whatever that is) doesn't count.
Of course, he's wrong about everything he said about ID "theory". ID is a very specific creationist movement that arose in the 1980s as a result of creationists getting pwnt in the courtrooms and thrown out of children's classrooms (the only place they can hope to find an unearned sense of legitimacy). You can verify these statements easily by following various creationist textbooks, all of them with input from the big ID advocates nowadays and following the 'train' of rhetoric. ID began being exactly the same as typical creationism but with references to God and the Bible removed. This left: criticism of evolution. Behe recycled Paley's Watchmaker 'argument', a common creationist classic, and Bill Dembski added nothing but another typical lie about what evolution does, design, etc. It's a little novel for creationism itself, but still rather pitiful.
There is no ID "theory". There's a loose set of BS peddled by ID advocates, primarily just Bill Dembski's nonsense, Behe's nonsense, and typical, fallacious attacks on evolutionary theory.
Why is Behe wrong? All kinds of reasons, but I"ll just mention the fact that his idea is an argument from ignorance and either makes no predictions or has already been falsified.
Why is Dembski wrong? Well, he's wrong in claiming to have any cogent or even coherent math supporting his clearly exaggerated proclamations. If he had the math, he could easily share it and mock "Darwininsts". Instead he hides it, saying it needs more work. Oh, and it's the best thing ever "Darwinism" is going to lose hurr hurr.
Of course, Bill Dembski "isn't even wrong". He's so bad at academic honesty that he can't even share a coherent point mathematically, relying instead on obfuscation and the misuse of fancy-sounding terms from information theory.
The attacks on evolution are typical and rely solely on the intended audience having no clue whatsoever about evolutionary theory. If anyone finds them convincing, you can go ahead and list the ones you like and see how quickly they fall.
There is little else to ID besides these three things. There are other people who parrot the same nonsense or just lie about what ID does (providing no evidence) or what evolution fails at (providing no evidence). This CTMU stuff, just from reading the intro, is a man making inane assertions by merely *asserting* what is true and defining his assertions into obfuscating terms. This CTMU stuff is also rather unpopular, thus making up, at best, a tiny fraction of antievolution nonsense.
Finally, there's comedy gold operations like the Biologic Institute, shamefully located quite close to where I live. They literally contort images of proteins and try to match them visually to chinese characters. I'm not joking.
Edited by Shirakawasuna (05/18/09 01:22 PM)
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OrgoneConclusion
Pharoah & Balanced
Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 29,358
Loc: Luxor
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Quote:
Of course, he's wrong about everything he said about ID "theory".
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This is your drain on brugs.
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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Quote:
Shirakawasuna said:
The odds, when they are actually calculated, are based on obviously faulty assumptions like completely random assembly of proteins, nucleic acids, etc, from their component atoms. In other words, bullshit. The problem with any such calculation, even if honestly and intelligently attempted, is that natural selection affects the chances significantly and has acted in a historically conginent fashion: in particular ways in history. To get a really good idea of how likely any of that stuff was, you'd need to be an insanely educated expert on every biological system that ever existed.
The other big problem is that they're typically taking incomplete inferences and treating them as limits (argument from ignorance). If we find X, Y, and Z particles, the calculations do not take into consideration A, B, and C particle which could function as then-common, but unknown, precursors. Again, missing this stuff would be hard for anyone with an even slight biological education. That's why the calculations for evolution in general tend to be made by mathematicians and engineers with almost no input from biologists. Now, there *are* a few which were germane and kinda OK. They made Crick pose some questions. But they turned out, as usual, to have fatal flaws.
Alright, now I admit I haven't read this whole thread. It's probably got a whole lot of stupid in it (no offense), so I hope you'll forgive me. If you're talking about ID creationinst nonsense odds like Bill Dembski's pseudomath, then there aren't calculations. He won't show them to anyone. He talks a lot of BS and put up vaguely-defined, often information theory-inappropriate jargon with meaningless equations, but he simply does not produce anything verifiable. This doesn't stop him from actually claiming to be awesome and having come up with something super great that totally blows evolution out of the water. Given that he's too cowardly to actually show the math he claims exists, it's easy to see that he's a boisterous coward. (LOL, look at the amazon.com mini-"scandal" with B Dembski. HILARIOUS)
If you're talking about anyting else in ID, it gets worse. If you really want to discuss it (I sure don't!), then whoever finds it interesting or academically honest can go ahead and show how that is the case.
Don't worryk, you didn't miss all that much in the thread. We're starting to see arguments be repeated by now with mushroomhunter, for example.
Basically I suspect you are correct in regards to how they calculate ridiculous odds: ridiculous assumptions such as presuming stuff is in equilibrium with the environment or that the chance of something occuring infers design if it is a very low chance rather than looking towards the relative liklihood of the event compared to other possible outcomes and investigating if there's a discord (i.e. the bridge hand was unlikely to have occured but the low probability of occurance doesn't mean it was likely designed since it was just as likely as every other possible outcome).
The problem of course is that you can make these guesses as you and I have done, but we don't know what they are doing to come up with their conclusions and random probabilities, as nobody has actually shown:
a) what method they use to calculate the odds
b) how the odds are relevant, and
c) shown how they can ever do this with anything appropriate (i.e. how would you do this with the flagellum or even simpler traits?)
I asked and got someone telling me I didn't read the thread. Only when you look at the responses they don't answer the question at all(when finally provided after folks refuse to understand the difference between data and methodlogy vs random facts and conclusory statements).
Untill you nail down a methodology it will remain a moving target just like the very definition of ID is. It seems these numbers are just used cuz they are big with no concern for whether the probability is acutally accurate and whether it has anything to do with the relative improbability of the phenomena occuring.
Quote:
When we speak of the assembly of the flagellum in terms of SC we count the number of parts and calculate the odds of their specific configuration. The parts of the motor, i.e. drive shaft, rotor, etc., are made of 40 or 50 proteins. Most of the proteins (30 or 40) are found nowhere else in the living world. The assembly of all of the parts and their proteins coming together at the right time in the right configuration would be a chance of 1 out of 10 to the 1,170 powerth (10 followed by 1,170 zeros)!
Quote:
A human skeleton. A human skeleton comprises 206 bones in a specific configuration that allows humans to move and function. The configuration, or pattern, is specified and complex. The skeleton is the result of design. It would be represented in the EF as a small ball. It would drop through the first net-natural law- because no natural law mandates the skeleton's configuration or pattern. It would drop through the second net-chance-because the odds of its specific configuration are beyond chance. Here's why.
Specified complexity uses a universal probability bound (UPB) as a limit to rule out chance. Any event or phenomenon where the odds are greater than UPB cannot have happened by chance. This is because UPB is the number of all the subatomic particles in the universe times the number of times matter can chance in one second times the age of the universe in seconds times one billion. UPB exhausts all the natural resources in the universe. UPB is 1 out of 10 to the 150th power. A skeleton with only 97 bones-a human skeleton has 206-falls outside of the realm of chance because its specific configuration is greater than 1 out of 36 to the 150th power.
I have no idea how simply stating various facts and then a conclusory answer as to the liklihood of a skeleton forming is helpful, but its all we've go so far. I'm not going to try to figure out what vodoo they did to determine these numbers cuz it really doesn't matter- untill they posit a set methodology that can be critiqued its totally pointless.
This far into the discussion it is really looking like they have no actual justification for any of these claims.
If any IDer wants to defend this stuff:
a) show your data
b) show your methodology (generically and as applied)
c) show the relevance of your conclusion to logic and whatever you claim ID is
Untill then its all just "Step 1: state random fact (humans walk with two legs); Step 2: State conclusory opinion premised upon probabilities you've not established as accurate or relevant (Humans couldn't walk with two legs by chance- the odds of a human walking with two legs is 1:308498498498498); Step 3: You've just discovered more evidence for ID! Congratulations!
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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Quote:
Shirakawasuna said:
The odds, when they are actually calculated, are based on obviously faulty assumptions like completely random assembly of proteins, nucleic acids, etc, from their component atoms. In other words, bullshit. The problem with any such calculation, even if honestly and intelligently attempted, is that natural selection affects the chances significantly and has acted in a historically conginent fashion: in particular ways in history. To get a really good idea of how likely any of that stuff was, you'd need to be an insanely educated expert on every biological system that ever existed.
The other big problem is that they're typically taking incomplete inferences and treating them as limits (argument from ignorance). If we find X, Y, and Z particles, the calculations do not take into consideration A, B, and C particle which could function as then-common, but unknown, precursors. Again, missing this stuff would be hard for anyone with an even slight biological education. That's why the calculations for evolution in general tend to be made by mathematicians and engineers with almost no input from biologists. Now, there *are* a few which were germane and kinda OK. They made Crick pose some questions. But they turned out, as usual, to have fatal flaws.
Alright, now I admit I haven't read this whole thread. It's probably got a whole lot of stupid in it (no offense), so I hope you'll forgive me. If you're talking about ID creationinst nonsense odds like Bill Dembski's pseudomath, then there aren't calculations. He won't show them to anyone. He talks a lot of BS and put up vaguely-defined, often information theory-inappropriate jargon with meaningless equations, but he simply does not produce anything verifiable. This doesn't stop him from actually claiming to be awesome and having come up with something super great that totally blows evolution out of the water. Given that he's too cowardly to actually show the math he claims exists, it's easy to see that he's a boisterous coward. (LOL, look at the amazon.com mini-"scandal" with B Dembski. HILARIOUS)
If you're talking about anyting else in ID, it gets worse. If you really want to discuss it (I sure don't!), then whoever finds it interesting or academically honest can go ahead and show how that is the case.
Don't worryk, you didn't miss all that much in the thread. We're starting to see arguments be repeated by now with mushroomhunter, for example.
Basically I suspect you are correct in regards to how they calculate ridiculous odds: ridiculous assumptions such as presuming stuff is in equilibrium with the environment or that the chance of something occuring infers design if it is a very low chance rather than looking towards the relative liklihood of the event compared to other possible outcomes and investigating if there's a discord (i.e. the bridge hand was unlikely to have occured but the low probability of occurance doesn't mean it was likely designed since it was just as likely as every other possible outcome).
The problem of course is that you can make these guesses as you and I have done, but we don't know what they are doing to come up with their conclusions and random probabilities, as nobody has actually shown:
a) what method they use to calculate the odds
b) how the odds are relevant, and
c) shown how they can ever do this with anything appropriate (i.e. how would you do this with the flagellum or even simpler traits?)
I asked and got someone telling me I didn't read the thread. Only when you look at the responses they don't answer the question at all(when finally provided after folks refuse to understand the difference between data and methodlogy vs random facts and conclusory statements).
Untill you nail down a methodology it will remain a moving target just like the very definition of ID is. It seems these numbers are just used cuz they are big with no concern for whether the probability is acutally accurate and whether it has anything to do with the relative improbability of the phenomena occuring.
Quote:
When we speak of the assembly of the flagellum in terms of SC we count the number of parts and calculate the odds of their specific configuration. The parts of the motor, i.e. drive shaft, rotor, etc., are made of 40 or 50 proteins. Most of the proteins (30 or 40) are found nowhere else in the living world. The assembly of all of the parts and their proteins coming together at the right time in the right configuration would be a chance of 1 out of 10 to the 1,170 powerth (10 followed by 1,170 zeros)!
Quote:
A human skeleton. A human skeleton comprises 206 bones in a specific configuration that allows humans to move and function. The configuration, or pattern, is specified and complex. The skeleton is the result of design. It would be represented in the EF as a small ball. It would drop through the first net-natural law- because no natural law mandates the skeleton's configuration or pattern. It would drop through the second net-chance-because the odds of its specific configuration are beyond chance. Here's why.
Specified complexity uses a universal probability bound (UPB) as a limit to rule out chance. Any event or phenomenon where the odds are greater than UPB cannot have happened by chance. This is because UPB is the number of all the subatomic particles in the universe times the number of times matter can chance in one second times the age of the universe in seconds times one billion. UPB exhausts all the natural resources in the universe. UPB is 1 out of 10 to the 150th power. A skeleton with only 97 bones-a human skeleton has 206-falls outside of the realm of chance because its specific configuration is greater than 1 out of 36 to the 150th power.
I have no idea how simply stating various facts and then a conclusory answer as to the liklihood of a skeleton forming is helpful, but its all we've go so far. I'm not going to try to figure out what vodoo they did to determine these numbers cuz it really doesn't matter- untill they posit a set methodology that can be critiqued its totally pointless.
This far into the discussion it is really looking like they have no actual justification for any of these claims.
If any IDer wants to defend this stuff:
a) show your data
b) show your methodology (generically and as applied)
c) show the relevance of your conclusion to logic and whatever you claim ID is
Untill then its all just "Step 1: state random fact (humans walk with two legs); Step 2: State conclusory opinion premised upon probabilities you've not established as accurate or relevant (Humans couldn't walk with two legs by chance- the odds of a human walking with two legs is 1:308498498498498); Step 3: You've just discovered more evidence for ID! Congratulations!
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Shirakawasuna
Stranger
Registered: 05/17/09
Posts: 66
Last seen: 2 years, 11 months
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Quote:
johnm214 said:
The problem of course is that you can make these guesses as you and I have done, but we don't know what they are doing to come up with their conclusions and random probabilities, as nobody has actually shown:
a) what method they use to calculate the odds
b) how the odds are relevant, and
c) shown how they can ever do this with anything appropriate (i.e. how would you do this with the flagellum or even simpler traits?)
This is very much often the case. When I talk about the honest mathematicians/engineers coming up with various probabilities (quite some time ago, I'll add), they simply made mistakes in thinking they had enough knowledge of chemistry, the conditions of the earth, and how molecules can form, etc. Their results are misused by creationists to this day. One of the most obvious things they tend to leave out are natural catalysts which can come in many forms. Even RNA can be autocatalytic.
Most of the time, rather than taking something like the flagellum, creationist probabilities draw from taking a single protein and pretending it originated by every amino acid coming together at random and then showing the odds. Substitute protein for anything else and its subunits. It's very silly but it tricks people because most people don't know how probabilities are calculated, don't know how to judge for independent variables, don't know that they should be seeing whether it's a single event happening over a period of time or multiple events happening at once, etc. Add that on top of ignorance of biology and you have a perfect recipe for being taken in by dishonest creationists.
Quote:
johnm214 said:
I asked and got someone telling me I didn't read the thread. Only when you look at the responses they don't answer the question at all(when finally provided after folks refuse to understand the difference between data and methodlogy vs random facts and conclusory statements).
Untill you nail down a methodology it will remain a moving target just like the very definition of ID is. It seems these numbers are just used cuz they are big with no concern for whether the probability is acutally accurate and whether it has anything to do with the relative improbability of the phenomena occuring.
That's how people in general act, creationists in particular. Overall, when they find something they don't like, they'll go for the quick and easy result which supports their position. Creationists find creationist websites with BS probabilities and parrot them until they're convinced.
Quote:
Some gullible guy said:
When we speak of the assembly of the flagellum in terms of SC we count the number of parts and calculate the odds of their specific configuration. The parts of the motor, i.e. drive shaft, rotor, etc., are made of 40 or 50 proteins. Most of the proteins (30 or 40) are found nowhere else in the living world. The assembly of all of the parts and their proteins coming together at the right time in the right configuration would be a chance of 1 out of 10 to the 1,170 powerth (10 followed by 1,170 zeros)!
Let's take each bit apart, shall we?
Quote:
When we speak of the assembly of the flagellum in terms of SC we count the number of parts and calculate the odds of their specific configuration.
Too vague to be verifiable. Furthermore, how do you calculate the odds? Do you ignore natural selection? Do you treat each part as independent (sure sounds like it!) I bet so!
Quote:
The parts of the motor, i.e. drive shaft, rotor, etc., are made of 40 or 50 proteins.
Yup. A flagellum is huge. You do realize that the explanation you're trying to falsify holds that the entire system had precursors, right?
Quote:
Most of the proteins (30 or 40) are found nowhere else in the living world.
First, identifying all of the proteins in many microorganisms, including E. coli, and their molecular basis is very much a question of active research. There are still many enzymes in E. coli, the most-studied creature for microbiological research, for which the origin is being worked out. In other words, using this information in that way constitutes an argument from ignorance: we quite clearly do not have a full picture of all extant proteins. Furthermore, specific identical proteins could very much be in lineages which died out. In any case, as new proteins are commonly derived from the later-modified copies of old ones, this claim is surely FALSE on its face. While they'll try to dither about some amino acid changes, most of these proteins have analogs via common ancestry (of the gene!) Look up the type III secretory system.
Quote:
The assembly of all of the parts and their proteins coming together at the right time in the right configuration would be a chance of 1 out of 10 to the 1,170 powerth (10 followed by 1,170 zeros)!
Too scared to show their work, no doubt. They're probably making the ignorant mistakes I listed before like considering each amino acid as an independent variable and completely ignoring the system's evolutionary history and the power of natural selection, gene copying, and mutation.
I'm gonna skip the human skeleton one since you guys can definitely figure out what's wrong, if not entirely on your own then by using what I just said about the flagellum.
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johnm214 said:
I have no idea how simply stating various facts and then a conclusory answer as to the liklihood of a skeleton forming is helpful, but its all we've go so far. I'm not going to try to figure out what vodoo they did to determine these numbers cuz it really doesn't matter- untill they posit a set methodology that can be critiqued its totally pointless.
Ah, but as you can see they've already supplied to much to be critiqued! They've exposed their ignorance of probability and biology without even showing how they did the calculation. Quite a feat!
I'll second your call for a full explanation, though. If they do it, they'll soon show us just how bad at assessing these situations they are. If they don't, they'll have to deal with the cognitive dissonance. There's only so much dismissal one can do without absorbing some of that "I have fragile ideas" concept.
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector
Registered: 05/25/08
Posts: 13,018
Loc: Registered: 6/04/02
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Shirakawasuna said:
The odds, when they are actually calculated, are based on obviously faulty assumptions like completely random assembly of proteins, nucleic acids, etc, from their component atoms. In other words, bullshit. The problem with any such calculation, even if honestly and intelligently attempted, is that natural selection affects the chances significantly and has acted in a historically conginent fashion: in particular ways in history. To get a really good idea of how likely any of that stuff was, you'd need to be an insanely educated expert on every biological system that ever existed.
The other big problem is that they're typically taking incomplete inferences and treating them as limits (argument from ignorance). If we find X, Y, and Z particles, the calculations do not take into consideration A, B, and C particle which could function as then-common, but unknown, precursors. Again, missing this stuff would be hard for anyone with an even slight biological education. That's why the calculations for evolution in general tend to be made by mathematicians and engineers with almost no input from biologists. Now, there *are* a few which were germane and kinda OK. They made Crick pose some questions. But they turned out, as usual, to have fatal flaws.
Alright, now I admit I haven't read this whole thread. It's probably got a whole lot of stupid in it (no offense), so I hope you'll forgive me. If you're talking about ID creationinst nonsense odds like Bill Dembski's pseudomath, then there aren't calculations. He won't show them to anyone. He talks a lot of BS and put up vaguely-defined, often information theory-inappropriate jargon with meaningless equations, but he simply does not produce anything verifiable. This doesn't stop him from actually claiming to be awesome and having come up with something super great that totally blows evolution out of the water. Given that he's too cowardly to actually show the math he claims exists, it's easy to see that he's a boisterous coward. (LOL, look at the amazon.com mini-"scandal" with B Dembski. HILARIOUS)
If you're talking about anyting else in ID, it gets worse. If you really want to discuss it (I sure don't!), then whoever finds it interesting or academically honest can go ahead and show how that is the case.
Rather than wade through the excrement you call ideas/rebuttal, let me pick apart a few common evolutionist errors:
1) Intelligent design isn't creationism unless you want to classify Kenneth Miller as a creationist too. Conflation of terms and equivocation in an attempt to poison the well.
2) The odds are calculations from the number of parts and the sequence of their assembly. There is no need to overcomplicate the uncomplicated.
3) The precursor argument begs the question. You're relying on what needs to be proved to give evidence for what you're hoping to prove.
4) Calling Dr. Dembski names is an example of ad hominem libel, a logical fallacy but that doesn't seem to stop you. He holds two doctorates. And you have how many?
5) It's obvious you haven't read the thread, but it is also painfully obvious you haven't submitted yourself to the literature--a common mistake among evolutionists as well.
Two or three logical fallacies with a mishmash of unsupported ideas and baseless claims. Not bad for an introduction to the argument. Perhaps you'll attempt to bedazzle the gullible with more nonsense later in the thread.
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector
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Shirakawasuna said:
As for asking/answering questions, I think it's clear that Mr. Mushroom's answer to 1. is an implicit YES. That's why he decided to go about saying that ID "theory" (whatever that is) doesn't count.
Of course, he's wrong about everything he said about ID "theory". ID is a very specific creationist movement that arose in the 1980s as a result of creationists getting pwnt in the courtrooms and thrown out of children's classrooms (the only place they can hope to find an unearned sense of legitimacy). You can verify these statements easily by following various creationist textbooks, all of them with input from the big ID advocates nowadays and following the 'train' of rhetoric. ID began being exactly the same as typical creationism but with references to God and the Bible removed. This left: criticism of evolution. Behe recycled Paley's Watchmaker 'argument', a common creationist classic, and Bill Dembski added nothing but another typical lie about what evolution does, design, etc. It's a little novel for creationism itself, but still rather pitiful.
There is no ID "theory". There's a loose set of BS peddled by ID advocates, primarily just Bill Dembski's nonsense, Behe's nonsense, and typical, fallacious attacks on evolutionary theory.
Why is Behe wrong? All kinds of reasons, but I"ll just mention the fact that his idea is an argument from ignorance and either makes no predictions or has already been falsified.
Why is Dembski wrong? Well, he's wrong in claiming to have any cogent or even coherent math supporting his clearly exaggerated proclamations. If he had the math, he could easily share it and mock "Darwininsts". Instead he hides it, saying it needs more work. Oh, and it's the best thing ever "Darwinism" is going to lose hurr hurr.
Of course, Bill Dembski "isn't even wrong". He's so bad at academic honesty that he can't even share a coherent point mathematically, relying instead on obfuscation and the misuse of fancy-sounding terms from information theory.
The attacks on evolution are typical and rely solely on the intended audience having no clue whatsoever about evolutionary theory. If anyone finds them convincing, you can go ahead and list the ones you like and see how quickly they fall.
There is little else to ID besides these three things. There are other people who parrot the same nonsense or just lie about what ID does (providing no evidence) or what evolution fails at (providing no evidence). This CTMU stuff, just from reading the intro, is a man making inane assertions by merely *asserting* what is true and defining his assertions into obfuscating terms. This CTMU stuff is also rather unpopular, thus making up, at best, a tiny fraction of antievolution nonsense.
Finally, there's comedy gold operations like the Biologic Institute, shamefully located quite close to where I live. They literally contort images of proteins and try to match them visually to chinese characters. I'm not joking.
Far too many errors to correct in this joke of a post, but here's some information for your education:
Well, at least zouden showed he read it. Since I have something to work with, I'll try to answer zouden's comments and attempt an explanation. I'm not going to do the quote thing. To much banter, not enough fact.
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1. It's trivial. He even admits that he didn't invent it.
1) Triviality is a subjective opinion. It counts for nothing in an argument. Dembski admits he didn't invent design detection. Whoever said he did? He did, however, create the Explanatory Filter, a precise way to empirically and mathematically detect apparent design.
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Hardly a dubious innovation, Intelligent Design formalizes and makes precise something we do all the time. All of us are all the time engaged in a form of rational activity which, without being tendentious, can be described as inferring design. Inferring design is a perfectly common and well-accepted human activity. People find it important to identify events that are caused through the purposeful, premeditated action of an intelligent agent, and to distinguish such events from events due to either law or chance. Intelligent Design unpacks the logic of this everyday activity, and applies it to questions in science. There's no magic, no vitalism, no appeal to occult forces here. Inferring design is widespread, rational, and objectifiable. The purpose of this paper is to formulate Intelligent Design as a scientific theory.
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2. It's flawed. It fails to account for necessity. Yes, creationists are still making this mistake.
Dembski isn't a creationist, if that's what you're implying. (which is a side issue anyway) I won't even pretend to know what you mean by "necessity" until you explain it.
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3. It doesn't answer John's question. In Dembski's own words:
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When the Explanatory Filter fails to detect design in a thing, can we be sure no intelligent cause underlies it? The answer to this question is No. For determining that something is not designed, the Explanatory Filter is not a reliable criterion.
Producing half a quote is quote-mining and a logical fallacy too--fallacy of suppressed evidence.
Fallacy of suppressed evidence:
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One of the basic principles of cogent argumentation is that a cogent argument presents all the relevant evidence. An argument that omits relevant evidence appears stronger and more cogent than it is.
The fallacy of suppressed evidence occurs when an arguer intentionally omits relevant data. This is a difficult fallacy to detect because we often have no way of knowing that we haven't been told the whole truth.
What Dembski actually said was:
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When the Explanatory Filter fails to detect design in a thing, can we be sure no intelligent cause underlies it? The answer to this question is No. For determining that something is not designed, the Explanatory Filter is not a reliable criterion. False negatives are a problem for the Explanatory Filter. This problem of false negatives, however, is endemic to detecting intelligent causes. One difficulty is that intelligent causes can mimic law and chance, thereby rendering their actions indistinguishable from these unintelligent causes. It takes an intelligent cause to know an intelligent cause, but if we don't know enough, we'll miss it.
Intelligent causes can do things that unintelligent causes cannot, and can make their actions evident. When for whatever reason an intelligent cause fails to make its actions evident, we may miss it. But when an intelligent cause succeeds in making its actions evident, we take notice. This is why false negatives do not invalidate the Explanatory Filter. The Explanatory Filter is fully capable of detecting intelligent causes intent on making their presence evident.
Logical fallacies don't seem to stop zouden though. As has been pointed out, his appeal to authority, i.e. vaunted peer-review, meant nothing. What can I say?
Let's quote in full or not at all.
To explain what Dembski means by false negatives let's look at two photos.
Obviously designed. Anyone want argue natural causes on it?
I didn't think so.
Is the sand in the above photo designed? How do you know? You can't. Someone could have placed each grain in its place with a pair of tweezers and designed it that way.
The beautiful thing is, it doesn't matter! We only want to assign intelligence to apparent design. If the filter can do that, it works well enough for our purposes.
Now, with that out of the way let me continue. For my money several questionable arguments are going on. I've mentioned others previously. Here's another:
Argument By Question
Asking your opponent a question which does not have a snappy answer, or no snappy answer that the audience has the background to understand. Your opponent has a choice: he can look weak or he can look long-winded.
For example, "How can scientists expect us to believe that anything as complex as a single living cell could have arisen as a result of randomness?" To answer this question requires either a long, boring explanation or a snappy explanation only if the audience is already versed in thermodynamics.
Actually, pretty well any question has this effect to some extent. It usually takes longer to answer a question than ask it.
Source: Diploid's sticky thread at the top of the forum.
Along the way I was able to find some writings that might help those who are interested understand. It's a long explanation of these principles. But before I get to that I want to pointedly show the reason I have been focusing on the flagellum and ID. It's a Darwin quote:
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If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, sucessive, slight modifications my theory would absolutely break down.
~ Chuck "Monkey Man" Darwin
This is what makes the flagellum so powerful. Not only are 30 parts of it missing in nature, there is no plausible story for its evolution, none! This is exactly why it is at the center of the ring. Further, as my explanation will explain, should the parts be found (they won't) and a plausible story concocted for its existence (it can't), the ID ball game is over.
The "Argument from Design" is an ancient theological argument dating from the time of the Greek philosophers that maintains we can know a supreme being exists based on the design of the external world. The most widely known version of it is found in a book called, "Natural Theology," written by William Paley in 1803. Most people, including creationists, Christians, Atheists, and evolutionists assume this is intelligent design. However counterintuitive it may seem intelligent design is a scientific theory, not a theological argument. This confusion arises from the similarity of the ideas and the theological or philosophical prejudices brought to the table from either side.
The distinction between scientific theories and theological implications is critical. The court, in Kitzmiller v. Dover, failed to make such a distinction as well as numerous posters in the forum attacking intelligent design. In Nature magazine, a premier publication from the publishers of scientific journals, the editor John Maddox wrote an article entitled, "Down with the Big Bang." In it, he stated, "Creationists, and those of similar persuasions seeking support for their opinions have ample justification in the doctrine of the Big Bang. That, they might say, is when and how the universe was created." Mr. Maddox wrote this in August of 1989. His opinion, based on the theological implications of the Big Bang, was that the theory would be found incorrect by December, 1989. It turns out, he was wrong.
Similarly, Eugenie Scott, in her book, "Evolution versus Creationism (2004)," makes a similar error. She states, "In some ways, [intelligent design] is a descendant of William Paley's Argument from Design (Paley 1803), which argued that God's existence could be proved by examining His works. Paley used a metaphor: if one found a watch, it was obvious that such a complex object could not have come together by chance; the existence of a watch implied a watchmaker who had designed the watch with a purpose in mind."
In contrast intelligent design is a scientific theory based on three critical concepts: specified complexity, irreducible complexity, in combination with a probability matrix called the "explanatory filter." I will explain these concepts next.
Whatever theological implications arise from a scientific theory, they have absolutely no bearing on the truth or falsity of the scientific theory. Neither do the theological implications of a scientific theory make it a religious or theological view or idea. A scientific theory is just a scientific theory-nothing more or less.
What is intelligent design (ID)? I have explained the "argument from design"-a theological argument for the existence of God based on the design of the universe and its parts. I also said ID is, in contrast, a scientific theory made up of three distinct concepts: irreducible complexity, specified complexity, and a probability matrix called, "the explanatory filter."
Let's look at specified complexity (SC). SC has five parts:
(1) Probabilistic complexity. This is the "C" part of SC. "Probabilistic" refers to the odds of some event. Think of a combination lock. The more numbers on the lock and the more turns required to open it, the harder it would be to open by chance.
(2) Patterns. This is the "S" part of SC. Think of a target with a bull's-eye. If a target is painted on a barn and we specify the bull's-eye as the goal, we have selected a specification.
(3) Probabilistic resources. These come in two types: specificational and replicational. In the target scenario the size of the bull's-eye would be specificational and the number of shots would be replicational. If the shooter was 20 paces away allowed one shot at a bull's eye 15 feet wide or if the shooter was allowed a million shots at a bull's-eye 4 inches wide, the odds are they would hit it.
(4) Specificational complexity. Some patterns are more complex than others. To rule out chance we look for low specificity (a smaller target) with high improbability (fewer shots). If a shooter could hit a bull's-eye 1 inch wide five times in a row from 1/4 mile away we would reasonably conclude they are a good shot not just lucky.
(5) Universal probability bound (UPB). The term "bound" refers to a limit. Universal probability refers to the number of chances in the universe. In probability Borel's Law, named for French mathematician Emile Borel, refers to something so improbable it could not happen by chance- one out of 10 to the 50th power(one followed by 50 zeros). UPB is 10 to the 150th power. This is arrived at by multiplying the number of all the subatomic particles in the universe (you know, the little pieces)-10 to the 80th power- by the number of times matter can change within a second-10 to the 45th power-times the age of the universe in seconds times one billion-10 to the 25th power. This is the most conservative measurement there is for something happening due to chance.
However, specified complexity is not enough to conclude something was designed. The parameters have to be run through a probability matrix called, "the explanatory filter." I will explain the filter and how it works next.
The EF is like a series of three nets-one on top of another. The top net, natural law, has the largest holes; the middle net, chance, has medium-sized holes; and the bottom net, design, has the smallest holes. Every event or phenomenon can be dropped into the nets to see whether it is the result of natural law, chance, or ID. Since every event or phenomenon is the result of one or more of these categories, everything in the universe can be tested this way.
A few examples should make this clear. An old tree falls down in a forest. The event (its falling) is the result of natural law-gravity. This event would be represented in the EF as a large ball that was caught in the first net-natural law.
A person's ticket is drawn in a 50/50 raffle. The event (its being chosen) is the result of chance. This event would be represented in the EF as a medium-sized ball. It would drop through the first net-natural law-but be caught by the second net-chance.
A human skeleton. A human skeleton comprises 206 bones in a specific configuration that allows humans to move and function. The configuration, or pattern, is specified and complex. The skeleton is the result of design. It would be represented in the EF as a small ball. It would drop through the first net-natural law- because no natural law mandates the skeleton's configuration or pattern. It would drop through the second net-chance-because the odds of its specific configuration are beyond chance. Here's why.
Specified complexity uses a universal probability bound (UPB) as a limit to rule out chance. Any event or phenomenon where the odds are greater than UPB cannot have happened by chance. This is because UPB is the number of all the subatomic particles in the universe times the number of times matter can chance in one second times the age of the universe in seconds times one billion. UPB exhausts all the natural resources in the universe. UPB is 1 out of 10 to the 150th power. A skeleton with only 97 bones-a human skeleton has 206-falls outside of the realm of chance because its specific configuration is greater than 1 out of 36 to the 150th power.
As I've said in earlier, intelligent design (ID) consists of three concepts: specified complexity (SC), an explanatory filter (EF), and irreducible complexity (IC). IC is a distinct type of specified complexity that comes in two kinds: complex machines and complex systems. The bacterial flagellum, the official mascot of ID, is a rotary motor embedded in the surface of bacteria so they can move. Its function can be compared to an outboard motor on a boat.
Like any motor the flagellum has parts that interact with other parts in order for the motor to work. It has a propeller, bushings, rotor, drive shaft, universal and stator. What makes the flagellum irreducibly complex is that if you remove a part or a function it will not work.
This is an assembly evolution cannot perform. Why? Because according to evolution each part would have appeared individually through natural selection; evolution is a gradual process requiring many years. And according to evolution no part would survive without contributing to the survival of the bacteria. Therefore, a purely natural process could not have built this motor. Parts cannot wait around for other parts to appear while they sit there and do nothing.
When we speak of the assembly of the flagellum in terms of SC we count the number of parts and calculate the odds of their specific configuration. The parts of the motor, i.e. drive shaft, rotor, etc., are made of 40 or 50 proteins. Most of the proteins (30 or 40) are found nowhere else in the living world. The assembly of all of the parts and their proteins coming together at the right time in the right configuration would be a chance of 1 out of 10 to the 1,170 powerth (10 followed by 1,170 zeros)!
So what are the odds of this motor building itself? Not a chance.
Any Yabbits out there now?
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Mufungo
Coming at ya
Registered: 04/03/07
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We only want to assign intelligence to apparent design. If the filter can do that, it works well enough for our purposes.
What are "our purposes" for assigning intelligence to apparent design?
I only ask cause you brought it up.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
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Posts: 7,091
Loc: Australia
Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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It seems like I stepped through a time portal into two weeks ago 
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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OrgoneConclusion
Pharoah & Balanced
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Loc: Luxor
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"Arwk! Polly want a cracker? Arwk!"
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This is your drain on brugs.
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Shirakawasuna
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Mr. Mushroom said:
Rather than wade through the excrement you call ideas/rebuttal, let me pick apart a few common evolutionist errors:
lol. When someone begins their first response to a slew of refutations with, 'your ideas are dumb', you know the person is compensating for something.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
1) Intelligent design isn't creationism unless you want to classify Kenneth Miller as a creationist too. Conflation of terms and equivocation in an attempt to poison the well.
You call this picking apart? You're just asserting the contrary and providing no coherent arguments. ID is a direct outgrowth of creationism, it's creationism minus the honesty of saying it's God and going off into apologetics-land with the Old Testament. It has retained *every* fallacious antievolution bit of rhetoric which doesn't directly reference God. It has recycled old creationist BS like Paley's Watchmaker argument as its primary P.R. weapon. It's primary tactic is WHINING. That's creationism in the U.S., my fungal friend. In case you still think that denialism is the way to go, you can go ahead and look up "cdesign proponentists".
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Mr. Mushroom said:2) The odds are calculations from the number of parts and the sequence of their assembly. There is no need to overcomplicate the uncomplicated.
I've been referencing two different probability calculations here, so I'm not sure which one you're talking about.
If you're referring to the non-Dembski ones parroted by creationists about how unlikely it is for a protein (for example) to form "by chance", then you're simply factually wrong. Many of them get far more complicated than what I've written and still fail for the reasons I've said. And in this situation, making the models *more simple* only makes them more laughably inaccurate.
If you're talking about Dembski's hidden calculations (I'm thinking you probably aren't), then you go right ahead and give me the mathematical definitions he uses and show me the math. It'll take you a while, since he hasn't released it.
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Mr. Mushroom wrote:
3) The precursor argument begs the question. You're relying on what needs to be proved to give evidence for what you're hoping to prove.
Wrong. The probability arguments are an attempt to take a *model system* and claim how likely it is to form under natural circumstances. They usually neglect many important factors, ones which change the probabilities, including the fact that the *precursors* make assembly easier. You're very confused about who has the onus here: it's on the people claiming their model is a good correlate to reality. Evolution has been thoroughly evidenced all over the sciences and need not refute every creationist argument from ignorance by plopping down the entirety of every protein + gene which ever existed in a common ancestor to prove just how inadequate their calculations are. All it takes is a tiny bit of knowledge about biology and math.
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Mr. Mushroom
4) Calling Dr. Dembski names is an example of ad hominem libel, a logical fallacy but that doesn't seem to stop you. He holds two doctorates. And you have how many?
1) When did I call Dr. Dembski names? I mean, he certainly is a liar and a coward, these things are easily demonstrated, but those are directly related to the failures of ID and his arguments. BTW, have you checked the amazon.com event I referenced?
2) The truth can't be libel. Certainly not in the U.S., at least, Mr. Mushroom.
3) The ad hominem fallacy only applies if the personal attacks are used in lieu of an argument, implying they are an argument in themselves. I can call Bill Dembski all kinds of childish names and never commit the *fallacy* of ad hominem, as I also provide all kinds of arguments for why he's wrong (or "not even wrong"!) to make it clear that such a fallacy is nonexistent.
4) The argument from authority is a fallacy, Mr. Mushroom. That you managed to get indignant about my alleged use of a fallacy while immediately bringing up one of your own is quite an achievement. I'm talking about leaning on Bill Dembksi's doctorates, of course. His education is actually damning, as he should know better and probably does while he peddles his incoherent math and lies about evolution. I will give no undue respect to poor arguments and dishonest statements, nor to those who willfully and knowingly choose to use them.
If you really appreciate doctorates so much, though, you'll find that the people in the appropriate sciences find all of ID highly laughable and possess quite a few PhDs themselves. Ones which required *actual* empirical research.
Oh, and as I've said before, I'm a student. I possess no PhDs nor will I rely on my authority (whatever there is of it) to utterly destroy ID's hallmarks.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
5) It's obvious you haven't read the thread, but it is also painfully obvious you haven't submitted yourself to the literature--a common mistake among evolutionists as well.
Uh, yeah, I told you directly that I didn't read the thread and don't expect to find enlightenment in doing so. So far, the antievolution response has been underwhelming, so I'm confident in my assumption.
The rest of your comment is just like your introductions. Baseless ridicule. Here, I'll give you an example of how ridicule can work with actual arguments to back it up: it's obvious that you have your biology experience, however deep or shallow that may be, on very biased sources. "Evolutionist" is a term used *SOLELY* by antievolution creationists because they can't handle using the term "biologist" to describe the scientists they disagree with and because they'd like to pretend that there's two "camps" which are equally dogmatic and just as exposed to the facts of the situation. Of course that's not the case: there are the creationists on one side of the argument and the body of science on the other, empirically supported and publically available for critique and analysis, of which said creationists are almost universally unaware.
See, wasn't that fun?
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Mr. Mushroom said:
Two or three logical fallacies with a mishmash of unsupported ideas and baseless claims. Not bad for an introduction to the argument. Perhaps you'll attempt to bedazzle the gullible with more nonsense later in the thread.
Again all you can seem to handle is saying that I'm wrong without explaining why. Boring and very typical for someone apologizing for a pseudoscience. I see that you've made another post after this one. Maybe, if we're all very lucky, Mr. Mushroom will come down off his high horse and offer something cogent.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
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Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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The argument from authority is a fallacy, Mr. Mushroom.
Indeed.
Now I'd like to point out that this thread (as distinct from the others) has been over all these points and moved beyond them, to try and tackle the very simple question that started the whole thing off: is ID falsifiable?
I remain unconvinced by MM's arguments, and I'm waiting to hear a response from him regarding my latest points, but I fear the moment may be lost.
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Shirakawasuna
Stranger
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Quote:
Mr. Mushroom said:/i]
Far too many errors to correct in this joke of a post, but here's some information for your education:
I guess I should take this introduction as a sign that no, in fact you are not going to reply to any specific thing I said and offer a counterargument. Everyone will be so disappointed!
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Mr. Mushroom said:
Well, at least zouden showed he read it. Since I have something to work with, I'll try to answer zouden's comments and attempt an explanation. I'm not going to do the quote thing. To much banter, not enough fact.
For a second there I thought there was a flash video than didn't load or something. Apparently you're just launching into something zouden said? Sorry, don't care. If you have nothing to say against what I've specifically said, you are essentially self-refuting.
I'll just grab out the parts which seem relevant.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
[Dembski] did, however, create the Explanatory Filter, a precise way to empirically and mathematically detect apparent design.
Feel free to show all of us the math. The Explanatory Filter is Dembski's most notorious game of bait and switch. It's always a couple years off, and then those "Darwinists" will get it!
Now while he doesn't provide his calculations (don't you wonder why?), he does provide a lot of assertions and bluster about what his explanatory filter can do, allowing for at least a little criticism. The very first and most obvious point is that deterministic (actually, stochastic) processes like natural selection can do precisely what he is claiming design does. Should I say again that he does not show his math?
As your comment clearly implies you've seen the math (how else would you know it's precise?), please give it to us! I've read his book, it's not there. And yes, it hurt.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
Dembski isn't a creationist, if that's what you're implying. (which is a side issue anyway)
Do you know who coauthored Of Pandas and People? I've already provided plenty of information for you to figure out why he's a creationist, despite your just repeating (to yourself, presumably) that he isn't.
Oh, I guess it's a side issue. I guess you'll let it go, then.
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Mr. Mushroom
The beautiful thing is, it doesn't matter! We only want to assign intelligence to apparent design. If the filter can do that, it works well enough for our purposes.
YOINK!
This is after a reply to zouden about what Bill Dembski says the Explanatory Filter (gotta capitalize the Real Official© term) can do and where it might fail (false negatives).
At which point do you assign intelligence to "apparent design"? Why do you (and he) call it "apparent design" and not "apparent product of evolution"? Is it because you like to bias the argument by focusing on the things which are the creation of humans while obfuscating and largely ignoring alternative and proven explanations? That's my guess.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
Along the way I was able to find some writings that might help those who are interested understand. It's a long explanation of these principles. But before I get to that I want to pointedly show the reason I have been focusing on the flagellum and ID. It's a Darwin quote:
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If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, sucessive, slight modifications my theory would absolutely break down.
~ Chuck "Monkey Man" Darwin
[Humanzee Darwin picture]
This is what makes the flagellum so powerful.
You left this bit out, like all creationists do: "I can find out no such case."
You'll probably scoff and say it changes nothing, and I could see on one hand how that would make sense. On the other hand, Darwin considered the idea of necessarily-interlocking parts and considered their possibility of having evolved quite comfortable. The flagellum is certainly nowhere near as devastating as ID advocates like to pretend it is, however. Darwin's own ideas refute it. That's how pitiful all of this is: one should expect systems precisely like a flagellum, interlocking parts that obtain their function only when put together *just so* and don't work when components are missing, IF it evolved. This is because:
1) evolution coopts existing molecules for new tasks. All kinds of proteins are the result of gene copying events that later resulted in unique proteins as one of those genes was able to mutate while the other still provided the original functionality. This also works for protein complexes. Darwin knew essentially nothing about the molecular basis of life but he was quite familiar with the reuse of features for different tasks.
2) evolution *should* produce a complicated functional system, often with redundancies, and then be quite capable of streamlining the system. This is analagous to a building with scaffolding: the scaffolding is the way the house was built and it is then removed. If we used creationist-style reasoning, we'd be ignoring the very idea of scaffolding. To die this back to Darwin and therefore morphology, we can see that a bird's wing has all kinds of parts necessary for flight: remove the parts and that bird's grounded. However, we can see in the fossil record that a bird's wing is a modified arm, it once had claws, shorter feathers, and was more robust (sidenote: Hoatzin have claws). To reference the creationist argument analogy here, we would be ignoring the evolutionary history of the wing, acting like it appeared out of nowhere. Ken Miller wore a mousetrap as a tie clip to illustrate the points of cooption and alternative function of an 'irreducibly complex' object that's had a part removed.
They'd also be exploiting a state of ignorance, which we absolutely have concerning the diversity and genetic basis of microorganism proteins. While science has made great advances, finding proteins which appear unique isn't exactly a rare thing in microbiology and neither is finding those proteins elsewhere shortly thereafter. This is what Mr. Mushroom will be doing when he states that there are 30 unique proteins.
Now it's only fair that I let him talk:
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Mr. MushroomNot only are 30 parts of it missing in nature, there is no plausible story for its evolution, none!
This is rather typical of creationist rationalization. Why is he saying 30 parts of it are missing in nature? Because 10 are found in the Type III secretory system, damaging Behe's already-fallacious irreducible complexity: his idea relies on a strong confidence in one's lack of imagination setting the limits of evolutionary history, on supposing that there are not alternative functions of a stripped down or precursor system. Anyways, back to the point: creationists loved to claim things about the flagellum and once an extremely similar morphology was found they chose to highlight what was left rather than learn from the experience and notice that they have an argument fro mignorance.
So no, there aren't 30 parts "missing in nature". Or better said: we don't known if there are 30 parts missing in nature. So far, in our very light (but still impressive!) probings of microbial life, we've found one homologous system that shares 10 proteins with the flagellum.
I am also quite comfortable with them being missing once we acquire far more knowledge about bacteria and their proteins . First, there's no reason any intermediate forms would need to exist today. All non-avian dinosaurs are now extinct, yet using this ID reasoning we should be utterly astounded by the features birds have, dinosaurs had, and yet other animals don't have. While those features are interesting, they're not a *challenge* to the evolution of avians merely because they're missing in other clades. The same type of common descent can hold true on a molecular level, although the dynamics are surely a bit different.
Finally, I would appeal to learning more about the research. If there's one thing I've learned about the natural world, it's that my imagination does NOT set its limits. I'm sure this sounds like wishful thinking to an ID advocate, but I suppose they do lack an appreciation for empirical data, don't they?
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Mr. Mushroom
This is exactly why it is at the center of the ring. Further, as my explanation will explain, should the parts be found (they won't) and a plausible story concocted for its existence (it can't), the ID ball game is over.
The ID game is already over, it hardly even began. IC is an argument from ignorance and Dembski's pseudomath is obfuscatory, not in line with the terminology used in information theory, and literally unreleased. Other than that, ID doesn't really have anything but attacks on evolution, constituting another argument from ignorance.
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Mr. Mushroom
The "Argument from Design" is an ancient theological argument dating from the time of the Greek philosophers that maintains we can know a supreme being exists based on the design of the external world. The most widely known version of it is found in a book called, "Natural Theology," written by William Paley in 1803. Most people, including creationists, Christians, Atheists, and evolutionists assume this is intelligent design. However counterintuitive it may seem intelligent design is a scientific theory, not a theological argument. This confusion arises from the similarity of the ideas and the theological or philosophical prejudices brought to the table from either side.
Paley's Watchmaker is not ID. ID is a particular creationist movement that began in the 1980s as a result of creationism being thoroughly thrown out of the classroom (at least as a legal precedent). While one of the two main ideas of ID is a recycling of Paley's Watchmaker argument, showing a lack of originality, IC is even sillier as it was introduced *after* plausible mechanisms for increased complexity and contingent systems were developed and the examples chosen are hilarious.
ID is in no way scientific. To be scientific, ID would need to provide a specific, coherent, testable hypothesis. Something where an actual person could go out and gather data which will either support, fail to support, or contradict the prediction. This is not something a single ID advocate is willing to do with the hilarious exception of the Biologic Institute's absolutely insane arm flappings.
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Mr. Mushroom
The distinction between scientific theories and theological implications is critical. The court, in Kitzmiller v. Dover, failed to make such a distinction as well as numerous posters in the forum attacking intelligent design. In Nature magazine, a premier publication from the publishers of scientific journals, the editor John Maddox wrote an article entitled, "Down with the Big Bang." In it, he stated, "Creationists, and those of similar persuasions seeking support for their opinions have ample justification in the doctrine of the Big Bang. That, they might say, is when and how the universe was created." Mr. Maddox wrote this in August of 1989. His opinion, based on the theological implications of the Big Bang, was that the theory would be found incorrect by December, 1989. It turns out, he was wrong.
Reading your declaration, I assumed you'd be telling us what the difference between a theological 'implication' (not an argument, now?) and scientific theory is. I guess not? Given the direction this is going, I have a question for you: if the prediction of an ID is solely of what will *not* be found, is it scientific?
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Mr. Mushroom
Similarly, Eugenie Scott, in her book, "Evolution versus Creationism (2004)," makes a similar error. She states, "In some ways, [intelligent design] is a descendant of William Paley's Argument from Design (Paley 1803), which argued that God's existence could be proved by examining His works. Paley used a metaphor: if one found a watch, it was obvious that such a complex object could not have come together by chance; the existence of a watch implied a watchmaker who had designed the watch with a purpose in mind."
You gave another example without actually arguing your point. How is Eugenie Scott wrong? Did you expect to get away with saying nothing cogent? I expect you'll simply insult my intelligence and say it was 'obvious' .
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Mr. Mushroom
In contrast intelligent design is a scientific theory based on three critical concepts: specified complexity, irreducible complexity, in combination with a probability matrix called the "explanatory filter." I will explain these concepts next.
Whatever theological implications arise from a scientific theory, they have absolutely no bearing on the truth or falsity of the scientific theory. Neither do the theological implications of a scientific theory make it a religious or theological view or idea. A scientific theory is just a scientific theory-nothing more or less.
What is intelligent design (ID)? I have explained the "argument from design"-a theological argument for the existence of God based on the design of the universe and its parts. I also said ID is, in contrast, a scientific theory made up of three distinct concepts: irreducible complexity, specified complexity, and a probability matrix called, "the explanatory filter."
Oh hey, you're getting around to that explaining, kinda sorta almost. You still haven't demonstrated why Eugenie Scott's example is wrong, though. You are aware that Behe takes a theological implication from IC very similar to that of Paley, right? You do know that Paley was referring to life and an intuitive unlikelihood that it came about via naturalistic processes, too?
Consider the proposition that IC is utterly unscientific as you read what I say. I do not contend that it is theological because the arguments themselves have had the 'God' taken out of them: they're just a collection of fallacies and dishonesty with a religious agenda supporting them.
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Mr. Mushroom
Let's look at specified complexity (SC). SC has five parts:
[five parts with no math]
It really doesn't matter that Dembski delineated five parts to his obfuscation. He does. not. have. the. math. He can whine and mock all he'd like, but his ideas are so confused that he, the creator of them, cannot use demonstrate their applicability even to a given string. Go ahead and show how they work, precisely with the mathematics he *should* be. Poor references to the terminology of information theory will not cut it.
Maybe I should explain that. Dembski defines complexity and he defines specificity. However, if we use the ideas of complexity and specificity derived from information theory, as is obviously implied, it doesn't work. Under one common usage, complexity is the difficulty of compressing a string. A string with very little repetition would be high in complexity in this fashion. However, in attempting to read Dembski's claims (he's not exactly consistent with his terminology), specificity is repetition. Mr. Mushroom says as much by saying it's patterns. These are competing ideas describing the same thing: complexity is a measure of how poorly a string can be compressed while specificity is how well it can be compressed. How something can then be interesting by being complex and specified is anyone's guess!
The obvious "counterargument" to what I just explained is that I have Dembski's ideas of complexity and specificity wrong. However, his ideas are *vague* and he uses the terminology inconsistently, making it very easy for one to point out a *wrong* interpretation but very difficult to demonstrate the correct one.
Now perhaps I've been a bit unfair to Dembski. He does have a tiny bit of math, although he didn't show all of his work. The problem is that when he has the cojones to actually use some numbers he models the systems inadequately. You can see the criticisms by Jeffrey Shallit and Wesley Elsberry for a much smoother explanation than I could write.
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Mr. Mushroom
However, specified complexity is not enough to conclude something was designed. The parameters have to be run through a probability matrix called, "the explanatory filter." I will explain the filter and how it works next.
lol, specified complexity isn't even coherent. Why do you think concluding anything from it is even a little reasonable? Again I expect you to pull out the bluster and to ridicule me personally or call my ideas 'dull', all while avoiding a rigorous demonstration of the supposedly exact Explanatory Filter™.
Oh jeeze, I kept reading until I found the part on human bones. This *is* just a repost, how sad. I hope you realize that I've read all of this before and am quite familiar with Dembski's propensity for doing precisely what you're doing: throw in a bunch of jargon, throw in metaphors, and never actually try to communicate the math and how it's applicable. Perhaps this is because you're merely parroting Dembski himself.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
Specified complexity uses a universal probability bound (UPB) as a limit to rule out chance. Any event or phenomenon where the odds are greater than UPB cannot have happened by chance. This is because UPB is the number of all the subatomic particles in the universe times the number of times matter can chance in one second times the age of the universe in seconds times one billion. UPB exhausts all the natural resources in the universe. UPB is 1 out of 10 to the 150th power.
The UPB is actually not much of a problem. What is is the numbers offered from the 'by chance' probabilities, which COMPLETELY IGNORE deterministic (or stochastic) processes like natural selection, heredity, fecundity, etc.
Let us take the skeleton example.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
A human skeleton. A human skeleton comprises 206 bones in a specific configuration that allows humans to move and function. The configuration, or pattern, is specified and complex
Yeah, kinda like it's light and heavy. I will gladly grant that the human body is complex. I will gladly grant that it's in a particular order! I won't grant that Dembski's ideas apply because they're so confused and contradictory.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
The skeleton is the result of design.
Bald-faced assertion with no support. Even Dembski does not say that specified complexity = design.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
It would be represented in the EF as a small ball. It would drop through the first net-natural law- because no natural law mandates the skeleton's configuration or pattern. It would drop through the second net-chance-because the odds of its specific configuration are beyond chance. Here's why.
Funny, you keep saying what you're going to do and then fail to do it either by omitting it or failing. You should try doing arguments first and then conclusions, or arguments that immediately follow a single sentence stating your conclusion. At the very least the claims will look less silly.
Now, you have your ball analogy. I fail to see anything separating the existence of the body and the existence of spontaneously-formed micelles in terms of 'natural law'-ness. We see micelles generated in real-time, we see bodies generated in real-time (from zygotes! woo!. If one is discussing deeper mechanistic origins, then the primary difference between the two is the length of time involved: one is observable in a lab in seconds, the other is fully evidenced to have happened over millions and millions of years. I would not be too surprised to find that when applied consistently, micelles are 'designed'.
We'll get to the meat of the skeleton claim (lol I'm hilarious):
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Mr. Mushroom said:
A skeleton with only 97 bones-a human skeleton has 206-falls outside of the realm of chance because its specific configuration is greater than 1 out of 36 to the 150th power.
Where did you get that number? Since you like referencing poop, I'll venture it was pulled out of a rectum. I'm sure physiologists would *LOVE* to know every conceivable configuration of a skeleton. I bet they'd also like to know why random chance is what you're testing and not a deterministic (stochastic) process like natural selection. You know, the alternative hypothesis.
Keep that in mind, dear readers. Bill Dembski and surely Mr. Mushroom are doing this: attempting to calculate the probability that a configuration arose from chance alone. This is the same BS that creationists have been doing for decades: calculate a rather stupid probability by ignoring known processes which change those probabilities.
The 'natural law' bit sure doesn't rule it out and they both seem to confuse natural law w/ scientific laws (gravitation vs. gravity), as only one of those provides an explanation (gravitation).
Now I'll give an example. Dawkins wrote a program a while ago now referred to as a weasel program. Starting from a fixed-length string with random letters, a goal is set, analagous to a selective pressure: matching the phrase 'Methinks it is like a weasel'. As anyone can confirm, this is a sequence of 28 characters counting spaces. There are therefore 27^28 combinations here, counting a space as the 27th letter, and only *ONE* of them is the final 'right' answer and what the program indeed lands on. As wikipedia notes, 27^28 is ~10^40, not a small number. One can make the string longer and surely exceed dembski's UPB. You can find an online version here: http://damian.peterson.net.nz/2009/05/03/methinks-it-is-like-a-weasel/
Here is the source for a cool python version: http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/courses/27615.mol/weasel.php
That second one is more complicated, but the basic idea is that mutations are introduced every generation, one of the letters changing to another at random. A selective force is induced: similarity to 'methinks it is like a weasel'. It takes a very short period to get a result, especially with today's computers. You can see that there's still a little bit of a drunkard's walk involved (very cool) but that the 'goal' is fixed in the population around generation 400 in the run presented. Yet if we were to use Dembski's ideas of probability, it had only a 10^-40 chance of happening. This is what happens when you neglect selection!
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Mr. Mushroom said:
As I've said in earlier, intelligent design (ID) consists of three concepts: specified complexity (SC), an explanatory filter (EF), and irreducible complexity (IC). IC is a distinct type of specified complexity that comes in two kinds: complex machines and complex systems. The bacterial flagellum, the official mascot of ID, is a rotary motor embedded in the surface of bacteria so they can move. Its function can be compared to an outboard motor on a boat.
IC is an argument from ignorance. I've explained why repeatedly and you can go respond to what I've said and how it's been supported if you want to address actual arguments and not rant half-tangentially.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
Like any motor the flagellum has parts that interact with other parts in order for the motor to work. It has a propeller, bushings, rotor, drive shaft, universal and stator. What makes the flagellum irreducibly complex is that if you remove a part or a function it will not work.
This is an assembly evolution cannot perform.
Thank you for proving that you have an argument from ignorance.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
Why? Because according to evolution each part would have appeared individually through natural selection; evolution is a gradual process requiring many years. And according to evolution no part would survive without contributing to the survival of the bacteria.
Not necessarily... there are neutral attributes as well. And since I've read the next sentence, I can prepare everyone: cover your eyes, children, he's going to ignore every other function possible and every other configuration with more, redundant parts!
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Mr. Mushroom said:
Therefore, a purely natural process could not have built this motor.
OHHHH the horror. Not only do you not understand natural selection one whit, you have a non-sequitur: even showing natural selection to be inadequate wouldn't automatically rule out every purely natural process. Relatively neutral happenings increase variation and exaptation, which has natural selection components, is ubiquitous.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
Parts cannot wait around for other parts to appear while they sit there and do nothing.
Yes they can. They can perform other functions or be relatively neutral.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
When we speak of the assembly of the flagellum in terms of SC we count the number of parts and calculate the odds of their specific configuration.
Assuming chance? Yes, I know that's what you're going for because you've fallaciously "excluded" natural selection. You literally have to throw out, while thoroughly misunderstanding, the primary natural explanation for the existence of complex biological structures in order to pretend there's no natural explanation. Perhaps I should point you to Abbie Smith, who quite entertainingly pwnt Michael Behe's proclamations about binding sites, very similar to the flagellum in terms of the reasoning used.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
The parts of the motor, i.e. drive shaft, rotor, etc., are made of 40 or 50 proteins. Most of the proteins (30 or 40) are found nowhere else in the living world.
Again you try to imply that 30 of them don't exist elsewhere. This is not something you, any ID advocate, nor scientists know. It's a fallacy of induction. It also doesn't even destroy the argument, as I said earlier.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
The assembly of all of the parts and their proteins coming together at the right time in the right configuration would be a chance of 1 out of 10 to the 1,170 powerth (10 followed by 1,170 zeros)!
Your math? You are aware that if you used that same math for all kinds of reactions, it would be demonstrably false? I'm guessing that you're treating each and every little variation as fully independent and with no spontaneous conformations.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
So what are the odds of this motor building itself? Not a chance.
Not demonstrated and supported by ignorance and fallacious reasoning. Not a good point on which to conclude.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
Any Yabbits out there now?
I hope you don't consider any of this particularly impressive. That would be sad.
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Shirakawasuna
Stranger
Registered: 05/17/09
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On the plus side, having all italics meant I could violate the quote number limit
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zouden
Neuroscientist
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There's a quote limit?
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You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Shirakawasuna
Stranger
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Apparently. Every time I went back to fix the italics, it told me I was over the 15-quote limit.
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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zouden said:
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The argument from authority is a fallacy, Mr. Mushroom.
Indeed.
Now I'd like to point out that this thread (as distinct from the others) has been over all these points and moved beyond them, to try and tackle the very simple question that started the whole thing off: is ID falsifiable?
I remain unconvinced by MM's arguments, and I'm waiting to hear a response from him regarding my latest points, but I fear the moment may be lost.
Yeppers
I feel we've made progress: we've narrowed ID down to a particular claim: the explanatory filter can determine between design and chance/universe's nature.
Now we're still waiting, as our friends from dawkins forum pointed out and I've asked for repeatedly, to see the methodology of determining whether chance or the universe's nature can be excluded in producing a particular result.
Simple question. How do we use th explanatory filter, how do we know it is correct, and give us some examples of it working such that it could have falsified ID but didn't.
We've gone too far to start quibbling over the same old crap again.
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OrgoneConclusion
Pharoah & Balanced
Registered: 04/01/07
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Quibbling and hand-waving was the sum total of the substance.
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This is your drain on brugs.
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector
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Shirakawasuna said:
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Mr. Mushroom said:
Rather than wade through the excrement you call ideas/rebuttal, let me pick apart a few common evolutionist errors:
lol. When someone begins their first response to a slew of refutations with, 'your ideas are dumb', you know the person is compensating for something.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
1) Intelligent design isn't creationism unless you want to classify Kenneth Miller as a creationist too. Conflation of terms and equivocation in an attempt to poison the well.
You call this picking apart? You're just asserting the contrary and providing no coherent arguments. ID is a direct outgrowth of creationism, it's creationism minus the honesty of saying it's God and going off into apologetics-land with the Old Testament. It has retained *every* fallacious antievolution bit of rhetoric which doesn't directly reference God. It has recycled old creationist BS like Paley's Watchmaker argument as its primary P.R. weapon. It's primary tactic is WHINING. That's creationism in the U.S., my fungal friend. In case you still think that denialism is the way to go, you can go ahead and look up "cdesign proponentists".
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Mr. Mushroom said:2) The odds are calculations from the number of parts and the sequence of their assembly. There is no need to overcomplicate the uncomplicated.
I've been referencing two different probability calculations here, so I'm not sure which one you're talking about.
If you're referring to the non-Dembski ones parroted by creationists about how unlikely it is for a protein (for example) to form "by chance", then you're simply factually wrong. Many of them get far more complicated than what I've written and still fail for the reasons I've said. And in this situation, making the models *more simple* only makes them more laughably inaccurate.
If you're talking about Dembski's hidden calculations (I'm thinking you probably aren't), then you go right ahead and give me the mathematical definitions he uses and show me the math. It'll take you a while, since he hasn't released it.
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Mr. Mushroom wrote:
3) The precursor argument begs the question. You're relying on what needs to be proved to give evidence for what you're hoping to prove.
Wrong. The probability arguments are an attempt to take a *model system* and claim how likely it is to form under natural circumstances. They usually neglect many important factors, ones which change the probabilities, including the fact that the *precursors* make assembly easier. You're very confused about who has the onus here: it's on the people claiming their model is a good correlate to reality. Evolution has been thoroughly evidenced all over the sciences and need not refute every creationist argument from ignorance by plopping down the entirety of every protein + gene which ever existed in a common ancestor to prove just how inadequate their calculations are. All it takes is a tiny bit of knowledge about biology and math.
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Mr. Mushroom
4) Calling Dr. Dembski names is an example of ad hominem libel, a logical fallacy but that doesn't seem to stop you. He holds two doctorates. And you have how many?
1) When did I call Dr. Dembski names? I mean, he certainly is a liar and a coward, these things are easily demonstrated, but those are directly related to the failures of ID and his arguments. BTW, have you checked the amazon.com event I referenced?
2) The truth can't be libel. Certainly not in the U.S., at least, Mr. Mushroom.
3) The ad hominem fallacy only applies if the personal attacks are used in lieu of an argument, implying they are an argument in themselves. I can call Bill Dembski all kinds of childish names and never commit the *fallacy* of ad hominem, as I also provide all kinds of arguments for why he's wrong (or "not even wrong"!) to make it clear that such a fallacy is nonexistent.
4) The argument from authority is a fallacy, Mr. Mushroom. That you managed to get indignant about my alleged use of a fallacy while immediately bringing up one of your own is quite an achievement. I'm talking about leaning on Bill Dembksi's doctorates, of course. His education is actually damning, as he should know better and probably does while he peddles his incoherent math and lies about evolution. I will give no undue respect to poor arguments and dishonest statements, nor to those who willfully and knowingly choose to use them.
If you really appreciate doctorates so much, though, you'll find that the people in the appropriate sciences find all of ID highly laughable and possess quite a few PhDs themselves. Ones which required *actual* empirical research.
Oh, and as I've said before, I'm a student. I possess no PhDs nor will I rely on my authority (whatever there is of it) to utterly destroy ID's hallmarks.
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Mr. Mushroom said:
5) It's obvious you haven't read the thread, but it is also painfully obvious you haven't submitted yourself to the literature--a common mistake among evolutionists as well.
Uh, yeah, I told you directly that I didn't read the thread and don't expect to find enlightenment in doing so. So far, the antievolution response has been underwhelming, so I'm confident in my assumption.
The rest of your comment is just like your introductions. Baseless ridicule. Here, I'll give you an example of how ridicule can work with actual arguments to back it up: it's obvious that you have your biology experience, however deep or shallow that may be, on very biased sources. "Evolutionist" is a term used *SOLELY* by antievolution creationists because they can't handle using the term "biologist" to describe the scientists they disagree with and because they'd like to pretend that there's two "camps" which are equally dogmatic and just as exposed to the facts of the situation. Of course that's not the case: there are the creationists on one side of the argument and the body of science on the other, empirically supported and publically available for critique and analysis, of which said creationists are almost universally unaware.
See, wasn't that fun?
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Mr. Mushroom said:
Two or three logical fallacies with a mishmash of unsupported ideas and baseless claims. Not bad for an introduction to the argument. Perhaps you'll attempt to bedazzle the gullible with more nonsense later in the thread.
Again all you can seem to handle is saying that I'm wrong without explaining why. Boring and very typical for someone apologizing for a pseudoscience. I see that you've made another post after this one. Maybe, if we're all very lucky, Mr. Mushroom will come down off his high horse and offer something cogent.
Sadly, if you can't at least admit the logical fallacies you've committed, our short exchange has come, abruptly, to an end. As you'll see in the Crop Circles thread I have much more important things to do with argue with *expletive censored per forum rules* like you.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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zouden said:
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The argument from authority is a fallacy, Mr. Mushroom.
Indeed.
Now I'd like to point out that this thread (as distinct from the others) has been over all these points and moved beyond them, to try and tackle the very simple question that started the whole thing off: is ID falsifiable?
I remain unconvinced by MM's arguments, and I'm waiting to hear a response from him regarding my latest points, but I fear the moment may be lost.
Just for you.
I know this probably won't count because it isn't peer-reviewed or my words but...
Eugenie Scott is a physical anthropologist who as director of the National Center for Science Education travels the United States warning audiences about the threat of creationism and unmasking its various guises. Intelligent design, according to her, is currently the most sinister of these guises. Scott has developed a standard shtick, which includes not only some well-worn arguments against creationism and some newer arguments against intelligent design (which she refers to as "neocreationism") but also some comedic elements, like the Monty Python wink-wink-nudge-nudge routine, which she uses when she wants to make clear to her audiences that the designer of intelligent design is really none other than the "Big G" of the Christian faith.
Recently (January 18, 2001) Scott presented a lecture at U.C. Berkeley sponsored by the department of integrative biology and titled "Icons of Creationism: The New Anti-Evolutionism and Science" (http://ib.berkeley.edu/seminars/index.html). The title alludes to Jonathan Wells's recent book _Icons of Evolution_, which critiques the various standard evidences used in textbooks to support Darwinian evolution. Scott presumably means to turn the tables and show that intelligent design is similarly open to criticism.
Scott's key criticism against intelligent design, both in her talk the other day and since the early nineties, has been that intelligent design is untestable. For instance, in an exchange with Stephen Meyer back in 1994 in _Insight_ magazine, Scott remarked that until design theorists develop a "theo-meter" (this neologism is hers) to test for design, they are treading water in a sea of retarded scientific aspirations. In her talk the other day at U.C. Berkeley she claimed that intelligent design does not propose any "testable model."
The testability objection to intelligent design can be interpreted in two ways. One is to claim that intelligent design is in principle untestable. This seems to have been Scott's line in the early nineties. Certainly it is a hallmark of science that any of its claims be subject to revision or refutation on the basis of new evidence or further theoretical insight. If this is what one means by testability, then design is certainly testable. Indeed, it was in this sense that Darwin tested William Paley's account of design and found it wanting. It simply won't wash to say that design isn't testable and then in the same breath say that Darwin tested design and refuted it.
The other way to interpret the testability objection is to claim that intelligent design may in principle be testable, but that no tests have been proposed to date. This seems to be Scott's line currently. Indeed, if the testability objection is to bear any weight, its force must reside in the absence of concrete proposals for testing intelligent design. Are such proposals indeed lacking? Rather than looking solely at the testability of intelligent design, I want also to consider the testability of Darwinism. By comparing the testability of the two theories, it will become evident that even the more charitable interpretation of Scott's testability objection does not hold up.
In relation to science testability is a very broad notion. It certainly includes Karl Popper's notion of falsifiability, but it is hardly coextensive with it and can apply even if falsifiability does not obtain. Testability as well covers confirmation, predicability, and explanatory power. At the heart of testability is the idea that our scientific theories must make contact with and be sensitive to what's happening in nature. What's happening in nature must be able to affect our scientific theories not only in form and content but also in the degree of credence we attach to or withhold from them. For a theory to be immune to evidence from nature is a sure sign that we're not dealing with a scientific theory.
What then are we to make of the testability of both intelligent design and Darwinism taken not in a generic abstract sense but concretely? What are the specific tests for intelligent design? What are the specific tests for Darwinism? And how do the two theories compare in terms of testability? To answer these questions, let's run through several aspects of testability, beginning with falsifiability.
FALSIFIABILITY: Is intelligent design falsifiable? Is Darwinism falsifiable? Yes to the first question, no to the second. Intelligent design is eminently falsifiable. Specified complexity in general and irreducible complexity in biology are within the theory of intelligent design the key markers of intelligent agency. If it could be shown that biological systems like the bacterial flagellum that are wonderfully complex, elegant, and integrated could have been formed by a gradual Darwinian process (which by definition is non-telic), then intelligent design would be falsified on the general grounds that one doesn't invoke intelligent causes when purely natural causes will do. In that case Occam's razor finishes off intelligent design quite nicely.
On the other hand, falsifying Darwinism seems effectively impossible. To do so one must show that no conceivable Darwinian pathway could have led to a given biological structure. What's more, Darwinists are apt to retreat into the murk of historical contingency to shore up their theory. For instance, Allen Orr in his critique of Behe's work shortly after _Darwin's Black Box_ appeared remarked, "We have no guarantee that we can reconstruct the history of a biochemical pathway." What he conceded with one hand, however, he was quick to retract with the other. He added, "But even if we can't, its irreducible complexity cannot count against its gradual evolution."
The fact is that for complex systems like the bacterial flagellum no biologist has or is anywhere close to reconstructing its history in Darwinian terms. Is Darwinian theory therefore falsified? Hardly. I have yet to witness one committed Darwinist concede that any feature of nature might even in principle provide countervailing evidence to Darwinism. In place of such a concession one is instead always treated to an admission of ignorance. Thus it's not that Darwinism has been falsified or disconfirmed, but that we simply don't know enough about the biological system in question and its historical context to determine how the Darwinian mechanism might have produced it.
For instance, to neutralize the challenge that the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum raises against Darwinism, Ken Miller employs the following argument from ignorance. Like the rest of the biological community, Miller doesn't know how the bacterial flagellum originated. The biological community's ignorance about the flagellum, however, doesn't end with its origin but extends to its very functioning. For instance, according to David DeRosier, "The mechanism of the flagellar motor remains a mystery." Miller takes this admission of ignorance by DeRosier and uses it to advantage. In _Finding Darwin's God_ he writes: "Before [Darwinian] evolution is excoriated for failing to explain the evolution of the flagellum, I'd request that the scientific community at least be allowed to figure out how its various parts work." But in the article by DeRosier that Miller cites, Miller conveniently omits the following quote: "More so than other motors, the flagellum resembles a machine designed by a human."
So apparently we know enough about the bacterial flagellum to know that it is designed or at least design-like. Indeed, we know what most of its individual parts do. Moreover, we know that the flagellum is irreducibly complex. Far from being a weakness of irreducible complexity as Miller suggests, it is a strength of the concept that one can determine whether a system is irreducibly complex without knowing the precise role that each part in the system plays (one need only knock out individual parts and see if function is preserved; knowing what exactly the individual parts do is not necessary). Miller's appeal to ignorance obscures just how much we know about the flagellum, how compelling the case is for its design, and how unfalsifiable Darwinism is when Darwinists proclaim that the Darwinian selection mechanism can account for it despite the absence of any identifiable biochemical pathway.
CONFIRMATION: What about positive evidence for intelligent design and Darwinism? From the design theorist's perspective, the positive evidence for Darwinism is confined to small-scale evolutionary changes like insects developing insecticide resistance. This is not to deny large-scale evolutionary changes, but it is to deny that the Darwinian mechanism can account for them. Evidence like that for insecticide resistance confirms the Darwinian selection mechanism for small-scale changes, but hardly warrants the grand extrapolation that Darwinists want. It is a huge leap going from insects developing insecticide resistance via the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random variation to the very emergence of insects in the first place by that same mechanism.
Darwinists invariably try too minimize the extrapolation from small-scale to large-scale evolution, arguing that it is a failure of imagination on the part of critics to appreciate the wonder-working power of the Darwinian mechanism. From the design theorist's perspective, however, this is not a case of failed imagination but of the emperor's new clothes. Yes, there is positive evidence for Darwinism, but the strength and relevance of that evidence on behalf of large-scale evolution is very much under dispute, if not within the Darwinian community then certainly outside of it.
What about the positive evidence for intelligent design? It seems that here we may be getting to the heart of Eugenie Scott's concerns. I submit that there is indeed positive evidence for intelligent design. To see this, let's consider an example that I recycle endlessly in my writings (if only because its force seems continually lost on Darwinists). Consider the movie _Contact_ that appeared summer of 1997, based on the novel by Carl Sagan. In the movie radio astronomers determine that they have established contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence after they receive a long sequence of prime numbers, represented as a sequence of bits.
Although in the actual SETI program (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) radio astronomers look not for something as flamboyant as prime numbers but something much more plebeian, namely, a narrow bandwidth of transmissions (as occur with human radio transmissions), the point nonetheless remains that SETI researchers would legitimately count a sequence of prime numbers (and less flamboyantly though just as assuredly a narrow bandwidth transmission) as positive evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. No such conclusive signal has yet been observed, but I can assure you that if it were to be observed, Eugenie Scott would not be complaining about SETI not having proposed any "testable models." Instead she would rejoice that the model had been tested and decisively confirmed.
Now what's significant about a sequence of prime numbers from outer space is that they exhibit specified complexity -- there has to be a long sequence (hence complexity) and it needs to display an independently given pattern (hence specificity). But what if specified complexity is also exhibited in actual biological systems? In fact it is -- notably in the bacterial flagellum. Internet mavens have been pestering me for actual calculations of complexity involved in such systems. I address this in my forthcoming book (_No Free Lunch_), but such calculations are out there in the literature (cf. the work of Hubert Yockey, Robert Sauer, Peter Rüst, Paul Erbrich, Siegfried Scherer, and most recently Douglas Axe -- I'm not enlisting these individuals as design advocates but merely pointing out that methods for determining specified complexity are already part of biology).
Even so, it appears that Eugenie Scott would not be entirely happy admitting that intelligent design is positively confirmed once some clear-cut instances of specified complexity are discovered in biological systems. Why not? As she put it in her U.C. Berkeley lecture, design theorists "never tell you what happened." Well, neither do SETI researchers. If a SETI researcher discovers a radio transmission of prime numbers from outer space, the inference to an extraterrestrial intelligence is clear, but the researcher doesn't know "what happened" in the sense of knowing any details about the radio transmitter or for that matter the extraterrestrial that transmitted the radio transmission.
Ah, but we have experience with radio transmitters. At least with extraterrestrial intelligences we can guess what might have happened. But we don't have any experience with unembodied designers, and that's clearly what we're dealing with when it comes to design in biology. Actually, if an unembodied designer is responsible for biological complexity, then we do have quite a bit of experience with such a designer through the designed objects (not least ourselves) that confront us all the time. On the other hand, it is true that we possess very little insight at this time into how such a designer acted to bring about the complex biological systems that have emerged over the course of natural history.
Darwinists take this present lack of insight into the workings of an unembodied designer not as remediable ignorance on our part and not as evidence that the designer's capacities far outstrip ours, but as proof that there is no unembodied designer (at least none relevant to biology). By the same token, if an extraterrestrial intelligence communicated via radio signals with earth and solved computational problems that exceeded anything an ordinary or quantum computer could ever solve, we would have to conclude that we weren't really dealing with an intelligence because we have no experience of super-mathematicians that can solve such problems. My own view is that with respect to biological design humans are in the same position as William James's dog studying James while James was reading a book in his library. Our incomprehension over biological design is the incomprehension of a dog trying to understand its master's actions. Interestingly, the biological community regularly sings the praises of natural selection and the wonders it has wrought while admitting that it has no comprehension of how those wonders were wrought. Natural selection, we are assured, is cleverer than we are or can ever hope to be. Darwinists have merely swapped one form of awe for another. They've not eliminated it.
It is no objection at all that we don't at this time know how an unembodied designer produced a biological system that exhibits specified complexity. We know that specified complexity is reliably correlated with the effects of intelligence. The only reason to insist on looking for non-telic explanations to explain the complex specified structures in biology is because of prior commitment to naturalism that perforce excludes unembodied designers. It is illegitimate, scientifically and rationally, to claim on a priori grounds that such entities do not exist, or if they do exist that they can have no conceivable relevance to what happens in the world. Do such entities exist? Can they have empirical consequences? Are they relevant to what happens in the world? Such questions cannot be prejudged except on metaphysical grounds. To prejudge these questions the way Eugenie Scott does is therefore to make certain metaphysical commitments about what there is and what has the capacity to influence events in the world. Such commitments are utterly gratuitous to the practice of science. Specified complexity confirms design regardless whether the designer responsible for it is embodied or unembodied.
PREDICTABILITY: Another aspect of testability is predictability. A good scientific theory, we are told, is one that predicts things. If it predicts things that don't happen, then it is tested and found wanting. If it predicts things that do happen, then it is tested and regarded as successful. If it doesn't predict things, however, what then? Often with theories that try to account for features of natural history, prediction gets generalized to include retrodiction, in which a theory also specifies what the past should look like. Darwinism is said to apply retrodictively to the fossil record and predictively in experiments that place an organism under selection pressures and attempt to induce some adaptive change.
But in fact Darwinism does not retrodict the fossil record. Natural selection and random variation applied to single-celled organisms offers no insight at all into whether we can expect multi-celled organisms, much less whether evolution will produce the various body-plans of which natural history has left us a record. At best one can say that there is consilience, i.e., that the broad sweep of evolutionary history as displayed in the fossil record is consistent with Darwinian evolution. Design theorists strongly dispute this as well (pointing especially to the Cambrian explosion). But detailed retrodiction and detailed prediction are not virtues of Darwin's theory. Organisms placed under selection pressures either adapt or go extinct. Except in the simplest cases where there is, say, some point mutation that reliably confers antibiotic resistance on a bacterium, Darwin's theory has no way of predicting just what sorts of adaptive changes will occur. "Adapt or go extinct" is not a prediction of Darwin's theory but an axiom that can be reasoned out independently.
Challenging me in _American Outlook_ biologist Alex Duncan remarked: "A scientific theory makes predictions about the world around us, and enables us to ask and answer meaningful questions. For example, we might pose the question 'why do polar bears have fur, while penguins have feathers, given the similar nature of their environments
Evolution provides an answer to this question. The only answer creationism (or intelligent design) provides is 'because God made them that way.'" Actually, evolution, whether Darwinian or otherwise, makes no predictions about there being bears or birds at all or for that matter bears having fur and birds having feathers. Once bears or birds are on the scene, they need to adapt to their environment or die. Intelligent design can accommodate plenty of evolutionary change and allows for natural selection to act as a conservative force to keep organisms adapted to their environments. Contrary to Duncan's remark, intelligent design does not push off all explanation to the inscrutable will of God. On the other hand, intelligent design utterly rejects natural selection as a creative force capable of bringing about the specified complexity we see in organisms.
It's evident, then, that Darwin's theory has virtually no predictive power. Insofar as it offers predictions, they are either extremely general, concerning the broad sweep of natural history and in that respect quite questionable (Why else would Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge need to introduce punctuated equilibria if the fossil record were such an overwhelming vindication of Darwinism?); and when the predictions are not extremely general they are extremely specific and picayune, dealing with small-scale adaptive changes. Newton was able to predict the path that a planet traces out. Darwin's disciples can neither predict nor retrodict the pathways that organisms trace out in the course of natural history.
But what about the predictive power of intelligent design? To require prediction fundamentally misconstrues design. To require prediction of design is to put design in the same boat as natural laws, locating their explanatory power in an extrapolation from past experience. This is to commit a category mistake. To be sure, designers, like natural laws, can behave predictably (designers often institute policies that end up being rigidly obeyed). Yet unlike natural laws, which are universal and uniform, designers are also innovators. Innovation, the emergence to true novelty, eschews predictability. Designers are inventors. We cannot predict what an inventor would do short of becoming that inventor. Intelligent design offers a radically different problematic for science than a mechanistic science wedded solely to undirected natural causes. Yes, intelligent design concedes predictability. But this represents no concession to Darwinism, for which the minimal predictive power that it has can readily be assimilated to a design-theoretic framework.
EXPLANATORY POWER: According to Darwin the great advantage of his theory over William Paley's theory of design was that Darwin's theory managed to account for a wide diversity of biological facts that Paley's theory could not. Darwin's theory was thus thought to have greater explanatory power than Paley's , and this relative advantage could be viewed as a test of the two theories. Underlying explanatory power is a view of explanation known as inference to the best explanation in which a "best explanation" always presupposes at least two competing explanations and attempts to determine which comes out on top. Design theorists see advances in the biological and information sciences as putting design back in the saddle and enabling it to outperform Darwinism, thus making design currently the best explanation biological complexity. Darwinists of course see the matter quite differently.
What I want to focus on here, however, is not the testing of Darwinism and design against the broad body of biological data, but the related question of which theory can accommodate the greater range of biological possibilities. Think of it this way: Are there things that might occur in biology for which a design-theoretic framework could give a better, more accurate account than a purely Darwinian and therefore non-teleological framework? The answer is yes.
First off, let's be clear that design can accommodate all the results of Darwinism. Intelligent design does not repudiate the Darwinian mechanism. It merely assigns it a lower status than Darwinism does. The Darwinian mechanism does operate in nature and insofar as it does, design can live with its deliverances. Even if the Darwinian mechanism could be shown to do all the design work for which design theorists want to invoke design (say for the bacterial flagellum), a design-theoretic framework would not destroy any valid findings of science. To be sure, design would then become superfluous, but it would not become contradictory or self-refuting.
The same cannot be said for Darwinism and the naturalism it embodies as a framework for science. Suppose I were a super-genius molecular biologist, and I invented some hitherto unknown molecular machine, far more complicated and marvelous than the bacterial flagellum. Suppose further I inserted this machine into a bacterium, set this genetically modified organism free, allowed it to reproduce in the wild, and destroyed all evidence of my having created the molecular machine. Suppose, for instance, the machine is a stinger that injects other bacteria and explodes them by rapidly pumping them up with some gas (I'm not familiar with any such molecular machine in the wild), thereby allowing the bacteria endowed with my invention to consume their unfortunate prey.
Now let's ask the question, If a Darwinist came upon this bacterium with the novel molecular machine in the wild, would that machine be attributed to design or to natural selection? When I presented this example to David Sloan Wilson at a conference at MIT two years ago, he shrugged it off and remarked that natural selection created us and so by extension also created my novel molecular machine. But of course this argument won't wash since the issue is whether natural selection could indeed create us. What's more, if Darwinists came upon my invention of a novel molecular machine inserted into a bacterium that allows it to feed on other bacteria, they wouldn't look to design but would reflexively turn to natural selection. But, if we go with the story, I designed the bacterial stinger and natural selection had nothing to do with it. Moreover, intelligent design would confirm the stinger's design whereas Darwinism never could. It follows that a design-theoretic framework could account for biological facts that would forever remain invisible within a Darwinian framework. It seems to me that this possibility constitutes a joint test of Darwinism and intelligent design that strongly supports intelligent design -- if not as the truth then certainly as a live possible theoretical option that must not be precluded for a priori philosophical reasons like naturalism.
In conclusion, there is no merit to Eugenie Scott's claim that intelligent design is untestable or hasn't put forward any "testable models." Intelligent design's claims about specified and irreducible complexity are in close contact with the data of biology and open to refutation as well as confirmation. What's more, as a framework for doing science intelligent design is more robust and sensitive to the possibilities that nature might actually throw our way than Darwinism, which must view everything through the lens of chance and necessity and take a reductive approach to all signs of teleology in nature.
But isn't intelligent design just a stone's throw from fundamentalist Christianity and rabid creationism? Even if a theory of intelligent design should ultimately prove successful and supersede Darwinism, it would not follow that the designer posited by this theory would have to be the Christian God or for that matter be real in some ontological sense. One can be an anti-realist about science and simply regard the designer as a regulative principle -- a conceptually useful device for making sense out of certain facts of biology -- without assigning the designer any weight in reality. Wittgenstein, for instance, regarded the theories of Copernicus and Darwin not as true but as "fertile new points of view."
Ultimately, the main question that confronts scientists working on a theory of intelligent design is whether design provides powerful new insights and fruitful avenues of research. The metaphysics underlying such a theory, and in particular the ontological status of the designer, can then be taken up by philosophy and theology. Indeed, one's metaphysics ought to be a matter of indifference to one's scientific theorizing about design. The fact that it is not for Eugenie Scott says more about her own biases than about the biases of design theorists, whose primary task is to explore the fruitfulness of design for science. Yes, we've got our work cut out for us. But instead of facilitating that work, Scott and her National Center for Science Education are far more interested in exiling that work to oblivion. Fortunately, design theorists have suffered exile for so long at the hands of Darwinists that we've learned to operate effectively even in oblivion.
http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_isidtestable.htm
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Mufungo
Coming at ya
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johnm214 said:
Simple question. How do we use th explanatory filter, how do we know it is correct, and give us some examples of it working such that it could have falsified ID but didn't.
We've gone too far to start quibbling over the same old crap again.
John, those simple questions have so far been asked repeatedly in this thread. Answers have consisted of dodges, incorrect assumptions about what was being asked or just plain ignoring the question. Good luck with trying to get an answer now.
What do they call it when someone repeats the same thing over and again expecting different results??
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
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Quote:
Mufungo said:
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johnm214 said:
Simple question. How do we use th explanatory filter, how do we know it is correct, and give us some examples of it working such that it could have falsified ID but didn't.
We've gone too far to start quibbling over the same old crap again.
John, those simple questions have so far been asked repeatedly in this thread. Answers have consisted of dodges, incorrect assumptions about what was being asked or just plain ignoring the question. Good luck with trying to get an answer now.
What do they call it when someone repeats the same thing over and again expecting different results??
Yeah I don't know.
I just feel that there is no excuse for anyone bringing up these assertions again in this forum untill they answer the outstanding questions.
Now we've seen ID morph from the explanatory filter being correct (using means nobody can figure out, no methodology for deriving the data or using it has been put forth despite much time and many requests) to ID being "things are irreproducibly complex" (a vague and impossible thing to test for in the absence of specific claims and predictions which would reveal how much, if any of it, is consistant with the previous explanatory filter buisness).
We're boomeranging back to "but darwinism/evolution isn't...." which is off topic and better addressed in its own thread.
We see long posts going off on side issues while the problems remain unaddressed. With all the dodging and equivocating its hard to see how anybody could take ID seriously as remotely scientific on this evidence.
I hope in the future people will hold folks to the fire when they make ID claims. We've been over this ground before- lets get some answers and not get distracted when folks start equivocating, dodging, making new allegations, or spending all their time forking the conversation to extraneous issues. Lets get some answers: 1. What is ID and what does it hold? 2. What observable phenomena does it predict as a neccesary consequence of its theories? 3. How do we actually determine, based on static holdings of the hypothesis and well supported methodlogy, whether I.D. is true? False?
Untill people answer those basic questions I would hope folks would continue to ask them and not allow the conversation to move to dodges and new discussions over extraneous issues.
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Shirakawasuna
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Mr. Mushroom said:
Sadly, if you can't at least admit the logical fallacies you've committed, our short exchange has come, abruptly, to an end. As you'll see in the Crop Circles thread I have much more important things to do with argue with *expletive censored per forum rules* like you.
As appears to be typical for you, you go on about how wrong your opponent is without even attempting to argue it let alone offer specific references for your point. Anyone can and will notice how cowardly your actions are. Oh, I see you think you're quite important, too important to have standards like cogency or even responding to specific arguments. Do you notice this inconsistency and plow on ahead anyways or are you completely oblivious?
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Shirakawasuna
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Oh, and I'll argue with Dembski with you as a proxy if that's what you REALLY want, Mr. Mushroom, but only after you've not found it beneath you to actually supply counterarguments to my points rather than fallacies and vitriol.
I'll try to do what I can, johnm214, but I tend to argue with everything someone presents, if I disagree with it . I think it's the honest thing to do. You can then probably guess what I think of people who ignore multiple arguments against their position, pretending they don't exist or require no explanation whatsoever.
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zouden
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Mr. Mushrooms said:
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zouden said:
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The argument from authority is a fallacy, Mr. Mushroom.
Indeed.
Now I'd like to point out that this thread (as distinct from the others) has been over all these points and moved beyond them, to try and tackle the very simple question that started the whole thing off: is ID falsifiable?
I remain unconvinced by MM's arguments, and I'm waiting to hear a response from him regarding my latest points, but I fear the moment may be lost.
Just for you.
I know this probably won't count because it isn't peer-reviewed or my words but...
<snip>
http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_isidtestable.htm
Yes yes, you've posted this before. But my questions weren't directed at Dembski. They were directed at you. I want to know your opinion. Do you agree or disagree with this statement:
Any theory which states that an unknown Designer created the universe - or any aspect of the universe - is unfalsifiable, and therefore not a theory at all.
Bear in mind that this statement doesn't mention ID.
A simple yes or no will suffice.
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector
Registered: 05/25/08
Posts: 13,018
Loc: Registered: 6/04/02
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Quote:
Mufungo said:
Quote:
johnm214 said:
Simple question. How do we use th explanatory filter, how do we know it is correct, and give us some examples of it working such that it could have falsified ID but didn't.
We've gone too far to start quibbling over the same old crap again.
John, those simple questions have so far been asked repeatedly in this thread. Answers have consisted of dodges, incorrect assumptions about what was being asked or just plain ignoring the question. Good luck with trying to get an answer now.
What do they call it when someone repeats the same thing over and again expecting different results??
What do they call it when someone repeats the same questions, gets answers to those questions but keeps on asking the same questions? I dunno, you tell me.
Those questions have been answered repeatedly. I'm not answering them again or pointing to where I answered them.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Shirakawasuna said:
Oh, and I'll argue with Dembski with you as a proxy if that's what you REALLY want, Mr. Mushroom, but only after you've not found it beneath you to actually supply counterarguments to my points rather than fallacies and vitriol.
I'll try to do what I can, johnm214, but I tend to argue with everything someone presents, if I disagree with it . I think it's the honest thing to do. You can then probably guess what I think of people who ignore multiple arguments against their position, pretending they don't exist or require no explanation whatsoever.
You're late to the game. There's nothing I can do about that. I've answered the question(s) repeatedly and I have a life outside this argument. It's a pity some don't.
I did a little research and you get 1/2 a point for your definition of libel. The legal definition includes the idea that a libelous statement is false. However, other definitions, including the one I was using, do not include that as a criterion.
1. Law. a. defamation by written or printed words, pictures, or in any form other than by spoken words or gestures.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/libel
2 a: a written or oral defamatory statement or representation that conveys an unjustly unfavorable impression
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/libel
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Mr. Mushrooms
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zouden said:
Yes yes, you've posted this before. But my questions weren't directed at Dembski. They were directed at you. I want to know your opinion. Do you agree or disagree with this statement:
Any theory which states that an unknown Designer created the universe - or any aspect of the universe - is unfalsifiable, and therefore not a theory at all.
Bear in mind that this statement doesn't mention ID.
A simple yes or no will suffice.
Actually, no, I never posted that tome before. I might have posted the link.
Do I agree with that statement? Why would you ask it when I already answered it? Intelligent design, which is similar to your question, is a falsifiable theory of information. Your statement is incorrect. Therefore, I do not agree with it.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
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So you believe that it is possible to falsify a hypothesis that states that an Unknown Designer created the universe, or some part of the universe?
Forgetting ID and just looking at this hypothesis as it stands. Surely the only way to falsify that would be to show that nothing in the universe was created by an Unknown Designer. Do you agree? Or is there another method that I haven't thought of?
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector
Registered: 05/25/08
Posts: 13,018
Loc: Registered: 6/04/02
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zouden said:
So you believe that it is possible to falsify a hypothesis that states that an Unknown Designer created the universe, or some part of the universe?
Forgetting ID and just looking at this hypothesis as it stands. Surely the only way to falsify that would be to show that nothing in the universe was created by an Unknown Designer. Do you agree? Or is there another method that I haven't thought of?
That would be one way, yes, but not the only way. Conversely, if you showed one thing that was designed you have given evidence for an unknown designer.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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deimya retracted his post a minute ago but I'll comment anyway.
My dialogue with him was excellent. He grasps the root of the problem better than anyone here, is obviously well-read, and had no problem understanding my answers even though he disagreed with them. And as well was very respectful. He is a first rate member and a joy to dialogue with.
zouden and John get multiple points for being polite though at times a little frustrating to dialogue with. Both are great members.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
Registered: 11/12/07
Posts: 7,091
Loc: Australia
Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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>Conversely, if you showed one thing that was designed you have given evidence for an unknown designer.
Of course. But since an absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, no one could claim a lack of evidence of design as a falsification of the hypothesis.
>That would be one way, yes, but not the only way.
Well, I can't think of any other ways. To me it's quite clear: a hypothesis that states that an Unknown Designer played some role in the design of the universe can only be disproved by showing that he didn't, or couldn't have. But since the Unknown Designer is, well, unknown, then we don't know his motives or his limitations. This would make it very difficult, even impossible, to disprove his influence, don't you agree?
So the next question is: does ID fall into this category, or is it different kind of hypothesis?
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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deimya
tofu and monocle
Registered: 08/26/04
Posts: 825
Loc: ausländer.ch
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That's why I retracted it, wrong thread. It was aimed at the other thread about Expelled but there too I'll let it go as it doesn't bring anything to the discussion and there's much to learn.
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Shirakawasuna
Stranger
Registered: 05/17/09
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Quote:
Mr. Mushroom said:
You're late to the game. There's nothing I can do about that. I've answered the question(s) repeatedly and I have a life outside this argument. It's a pity some don't.
I can see you've taken a queue from Dembski, as might be expected, and rely on merely claiming to have answered questions which you have not. I've read the thread now, it was just as I expected: rather stupid claims and then attempts to avoid supporting them, with a few exceptions.
Should you desire, I can repost my lengthy answer to your parroting of Dembski's ideas. You did not address the questions of counterpoints I brought up. This is not a game of he said, she said, all of this is easy to avoid by going through what I've written and supplying cogent counterarguments. If there's overlap with what you've already said, you can point it out. It's called being a minimally good faith debater.
Quote:
Mr. Mushroom said:
I did a little research and you get 1/2 a point for your definition of libel. The legal definition includes the idea that a libelous statement is false. However, other definitions, including the one I was using, do not include that as a criterion.
1. Law. a. defamation by written or printed words, pictures, or in any form other than by spoken words or gestures.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/libel
2 a: a written or oral defamatory statement or representation that conveys an unjustly unfavorable impression
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/libel
Your definitions are not consistent with one another, as one requires an 'unjustly unfavorable impression'. In any case, if the statements are accurate and you still call them libelous, it's no better than saying 'defamatory' or 'damaging'. Do you cede that the statements you called libelous are true?
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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Quote:
rely on merely claiming to have answered questions which you have not. I've read the thread now, it was just as I expected: .... claims and then attempts to avoid supporting them, with a few exceptions.
Yep.
He just states various things have such and such probability (without even saying what's being measured) and then refuses to explain what the event being measured is or what the probability is, let alone put forth a methodology and supporting how it ties in with the explanatory filter (which is defined to be ID) to produce accurate, testable, predictions.
Quote:
You're late to the game. There's nothing I can do about that. I've answered the question(s) repeatedly and I have a life outside this argument. It's a pity some don't.
No you haven't, you've just stated things to be true and haven't supported them. If you don't want to discuss it then stop discussing it. Don't pop in to post and claim that you've done something you can't demonstrate and then refuse to cite where.
Your life is entirely irrelevant.
Do what you want, but it seems manifestly dishonest to continue promoting ID as a valid scientific hypothesis when you refuse to produce even one example of it being used to produce a testable hypothesis that can be determined accurate or false. I hope in the future you won't continue making claims you can't back up if you fail to do so here.
Your defense of ID establishes it as nothing more than a philosophy with neccesary presumptions that you can't justify as being present in the real world: it is entirely founded upon unsupported premises and thus remains a philosophical discussion of no applicability to science or the real world.
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Mr. Mushrooms
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Quote:
johnm214 said:
Your life is entirely irrelevant.
Not nearly as irrelevant as your post. We're done talking, John.
See ya.
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quote:
johnm214 said:
Your life is entirely irrelevant.
Not nearly as irrelevant as your post. We're done talking, John.
See ya.
How is my post irrelevant? I point out several gaps in the claims made re: ID and its scientific merit. I address claims you've made and not supported.
Then you ignore all that and instead quote and respond to the one sentence of my post that didn't deal with the failings of the arguments but rather addressed the aside of "I've answered the question(s) repeatedly and I have a life outside this argument. It's a pity some don't."?
You've not answered any of these problems nor even supported the stuff you have claimed. Then you pop in and post regarding trivialities, forking the conversation to irrelevancies, and assert that your opponents are loosers who don't have a big important life like you. And the one sentence of my post which addresses that nonsense is the one you reply to- declaring I have no point?
Fantastic.
The questions are waiting if you ever want to establish ID as actually producing useful predictions that can be tested, falsified, or found true. Or, you know, if you want to back up your numbers and vague claims regarding them, like for instance demonstrating they are true, relevant, and clarifying what they are probabilities of (which incredibly has not been stated thus far, of all things).
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Shirakawasuna
Stranger
Registered: 05/17/09
Posts: 66
Last seen: 2 years, 11 months
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Derogatory personalisms such as johnm214, Mr. Mushroom is to be addressed as Your Highness. are not allowed in PS&P. You will not ask questions of His Highness when he does not support his claims: they are supported by way of his Very Important Life, a life so incomparably great that you can barely comprehend it. You should be thanking him for even blessing us with his sarcasm and derision, then accept his claims, no matter how poorly worded or demonstrated they may be.
I, for one, am pleased to know that His Highness has found the appropriate balance between his Very Important Life and commenting on an online messaging board. I will now go back to my existence as a miserable turnip-farming hermit.
Edited by deCypher (05/21/09 11:18 AM)
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zouden
Neuroscientist
Registered: 11/12/07
Posts: 7,091
Loc: Australia
Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Not nearly as irrelevant as your post. We're done talking, John.
See ya.
Fail. I'm sorry, but that is a complete cop-out. John has been asking very good questions to which you simply respond with "I've already answered that" yet you haven't pointed out where. If you did answer them I must have missed it, which is odd since I've been following the whole thread.
Quoting one line out of his post (taking it out of context, no less) and using that as an excuse to ignore the rest of his post is pretty poor form, no matter how many morels you have to collect.
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I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector
Registered: 05/25/08
Posts: 13,018
Loc: Registered: 6/04/02
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You seem to miss the point as well. Evidently some here find this more important than other aspects of their lives. I'm happy for them. However, that isn't the case with me. I have spent God knows how many hours responding to others in this thread and others. To require me to have the same priorities as others do is nonsense. My life is my point! And if others cannot see that they can kiss my Royal ass!
I'll come back and post what I want to post when I want to post it. I WILL NOT answer questions I have already answered.
"I asked a question and Mr. Mushrooms didn't answer ME!" 
So call the Wambulance.
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector
Registered: 05/25/08
Posts: 13,018
Loc: Registered: 6/04/02
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Quote:
Shirakawasuna said:
Derogatory personalisms such as johnm214, Mr. Mushroom is to be addressed as Your Highness. are not allowed in PS&P. You will not ask questions of His Highness when he does not support his claims: they are supported by way of his Very Important Life, a life so incomparably great that you can barely comprehend it. You should be thanking him for even blessing us with his sarcasm and derision, then accept his claims, no matter how poorly worded or demonstrated they may be.
I, for one, am pleased to know that His Highness has found the appropriate balance between his Very Important Life and commenting on an online messaging board. I will now go back to my existence as a miserable turnip-farming hermit.
You need to acquaint yourself with the rules before posting like that. Our careful and highly trained staff are constant in their watchfulness and fairness.
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Shirakawasuna
Stranger
Registered: 05/17/09
Posts: 66
Last seen: 2 years, 11 months
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I expect you will be held to the same standard, Mr. Mushroom, with comments like 'either stupid or ignorant'.
I will refrain from apt mocking in the future .
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Shirakawasuna
Stranger
Registered: 05/17/09
Posts: 66
Last seen: 2 years, 11 months
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Quote:
Mr. Mushroom
You seem to miss the point as well. Evidently some here find this more important than other aspects of their lives. I'm happy for them. However, that isn't the case with me. I have spent God knows how many hours responding to others in this thread and others. To require me to have the same priorities as others do is nonsense. My life is my point! And if others cannot see that they can kiss my Royal ass!
I'll come back and post what I want to post when I want to post it. I WILL NOT answer questions I have already answered.
"I asked a question and Mr. Mushrooms didn't answer ME!"
So call the Wambulance.
You have failed to address a large number of criticisms and questions. That you deny doing so while providing not a single piece of evidence for it, you are either under the impression that the few relevant responses you have given were solid (an incorrect notion) and that they have gone unchallenged or have largely ignored the criticisms to begin with.
So, where's that testable hypothesis?
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector
Registered: 05/25/08
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I won't be responding to many of your posts, so don't feel slighted, injured or hurt. But I'll leave you with this for the moment.
I find it laughable to say design cannot be tested when Darwin tested it with natural selection and thought he refuted it.
If someone wants me to respond to a point several criteria should be met, considering I've mentioned several times my time is limited by other priorities:
1) Be brief. Don't attempt to answer 18 questions and expect me to respond with 18 rebuttals if I don't have time. It's unreasonable.
2) Be respectful. Don't tell me my life isn't relevant or malign me in any way. Malign the ideas all you want. I'm not the point of the thread.
And for the record, I did a little research on you. Quite an impressive resume you've got there. Is this forum your new pulpit? If so I should inform you that we rarely discuss intelligent design or evolution.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
Registered: 11/12/07
Posts: 7,091
Loc: Australia
Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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Getting back on topic...
Quote:
zouden said:
>Conversely, if you showed one thing that was designed you have given evidence for an unknown designer.
Of course. But since an absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, no one could claim a lack of evidence of design as a falsification of the hypothesis.
>That would be one way, yes, but not the only way.
Well, I can't think of any other ways. To me it's quite clear: a hypothesis that states that an Unknown Designer played some role in the design of the universe can only be disproved by showing that he didn't, or couldn't have. But since the Unknown Designer is, well, unknown, then we don't know his motives or his limitations. This would make it very difficult, even impossible, to disprove his influence, don't you agree?
So the next question is: does ID fall into this category, or is it different kind of hypothesis?
--------------------
I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
I won't be responding to many of your posts, so don't feel slighted, injured or hurt. But I'll leave you with this for the moment.
I find it laughable to say design cannot be tested when Darwin tested it with natural selection and thought he refuted it.
If someone wants me to respond to a point several criteria should be met, considering I've mentioned several times my time is limited by other priorities:
1) Be brief. Don't attempt to answer 18 questions and expect me to respond with 18 rebuttals if I don't have time. It's unreasonable.
2) Be respectful. Don't tell me my life isn't relevant or malign me in any way. Malign the ideas all you want. I'm not the point of the thread.
And for the record, I did a little research on you. Quite an impressive resume you've got there. Is this forum your new pulpit? If so I should inform you that we rarely discuss intelligent design or evolution.
Same questions I've been asking since the beginning.
1. What testable predictions does ID neccesarily produce? Demonstrate that it does produce these, i.e. what is the hypothesis and how does the prediction flow from that?
2. How do you test the prediction? What methodology may we use to test the hypothesis and see whether it is true or not?
3. Demonstrate that ID has done the above: what is the data, methodlogy, results, and conclusions?
That's it.
Quote:
I find it laughable to say design cannot be tested when Darwin tested it with natural selection and thought he refuted it.
Darwin or evolution failing doesn't mean ID succeeds, they are two different things as has been addresssed repeatedly.
Regardless, yeah, you can't get any positive evidence that something wasn't designed and can't demonstrate something was or wasn't designed by unobservable entities. How has Darwini done this? It sounds like a naked claim, what is the justification for it?
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector
Registered: 05/25/08
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Quote:
zouden said:
>Conversely, if you showed one thing that was designed you have given evidence for an unknown designer.
Of course. But since an absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, no one could claim a lack of evidence of design as a falsification of the hypothesis.
I do not understand that statement. What "absence of evidence"?
Quote:
zouden said:
>That would be one way, yes, but not the only way.
Well, I can't think of any other ways. To me it's quite clear: a hypothesis that states that an Unknown Designer played some role in the design of the universe can only be disproved by showing that he didn't, or couldn't have. But since the Unknown Designer is, well, unknown, then we don't know his motives or his limitations. This would make it very difficult, even impossible, to disprove his influence, don't you agree?
In a broader sense, yes. But that's not what we're talking about (or at least I'm not). I have mentioned this before but there are folks who are FLE fans. Front Loaded Evolution. How the hell you disprove that is beyond me. What I am talking about is obvious design by an intelligent agent. Evidently, this one makes motors far beyond our current capabilities.
Quote:
zouden said:
So the next question is: does ID fall into this category, or is it different kind of hypothesis?
Obviously from my reply immediately above, intelligent design is different.
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Shirakawasuna
Stranger
Registered: 05/17/09
Posts: 66
Last seen: 2 years, 11 months
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
I won't be responding to many of your posts, so don't feel slighted, injured or hurt. But I'll leave you with this for the moment.
That your responses are inadequate is of no surprise and is consistent with your claims. It doesn't ire me, but serves only to prove my point.
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
I find it laughable to say design cannot be tested when Darwin tested it with natural selection and thought he refuted it.
So now you have equivocated intelligent design with design in general? While Darwin's ideas certainly show many of ID's ideas to be sophomoric, Darwin had no knowledge of the United States antievolution creationist movement of the 1970s and '80s.
Intelligent design, the topic of this thread, is not testable because its proponents' ideas (which constitute ID) do not offer testable hypotheses. When other, actually active scientists do attempt to find a testable hypothesis, they find that ID was highly naive. Since this has been my consistent position, perhaps I should frame it more simply: either ID has no testable hypotheses or they have been refuted.
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:If someone wants me to respond to a point several criteria should be met, considering I've mentioned several times my time is limited by other priorities:
1) Be brief. Don't attempt to answer 18 questions and expect me to respond with 18 rebuttals if I don't have time. It's unreasonable.
If you do not have the time to address rebuttals, you lose the luxury of claiming to have successfully answered them and that our points have already been responded to. That is your prerogative.
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms2) Be respectful. Don't tell me my life isn't relevant or malign me in any way. Malign the ideas all you want. I'm not the point of the thread.
A highly hypocritical statement, given that my mocking of your *attitude* was intended solely to point out that you were using the condescension you describe. I do not claim my life is more important than yours or that your personal time has less value. That type of statement is *your* implication in a number of different posts.
Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:And for the record, I did a little research on you. Quite an impressive resume you've got there. Is this forum your new pulpit? If so I should inform you that we rarely discuss intelligent design or evolution.
I've added it to the record. If you admit you don't have the time to deal with rebuttals, I have to wonder how you scrounge the time to do research into someone else's posts on another forum! Additionally, I think it's a bit inconsistent to imply that I'm preaching when you can't even address the tiniest of my rebuttals or even *attempt* to support ID having a testable hypothesis. That I must repeat myself is a symptom of the inadequacy of your posts.
I will now repeat some simple requests for you as a launching platform. Do not assume that these are the only questions which have gone unaddressed:
"1. What testable predictions does ID neccesarily produce? Demonstrate that it does produce these, i.e. what is the hypothesis and how does the prediction flow from that?
2. How do you test the prediction? What methodology may we use to test the hypothesis and see whether it is true or not?
3. Demonstrate that ID has done the above: what is the data, methodlogy, results, and conclusions?"
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector
Registered: 05/25/08
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Maybe you missed this part:
If someone wants me to respond to a point several criteria should be met, considering I've mentioned several times my time is limited by other priorities:
1) Be brief.
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Maybe you missed this part:
If someone wants me to respond to a point several criteria should be met, considering I've mentioned several times my time is limited by other priorities:
1) Be brief.
Considering the three questioned asked by me and the other poster are ridiculously base and fundamental, I have no idea why you continue to repond and yet avoid all of them.
You can't even show that ID can ever be used for what it was intended, let alone get the correct result. You've failed to put forth ANY example of ID being used to infrom anything at all.
All you've done is make naked claims that "this is the probability of...." without demonstrating it is so nor demonstrating the relevance.
You cannot show that ID can be used at all, period. It produces no testable hypothesises at all so far as you've shown. Why you persists in responding with silliness like the above when you can't establish that ID actually has ANYTHING to say about the world that can be verified is beyond me.
Hell, even if we had infinite knowledge you've not even proffered a methodology for using ID to do ANYTHING. If you still persists in claiming ID has anything at all to say about the world that may be verified or refuted I feel it is utterly baseless from teh showing here.
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector
Registered: 05/25/08
Posts: 13,018
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Brief:
1. Short in time, duration, length, or extent.
2. Succinct; concise: a brief account of the incident.
You lost your responses from me when you told me my life was irrelevant. This is our last exchange.
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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?
Was this really that confusing?
Your life is irrelevant to the argument. I wasn't saying your life was irrelevant to me or to the world, or to the shroomery, or to whatever else. I appologize if you misunderstood, I was replying to the quote I included in my post(below), I thought that was clear.
Quote:
Quote:
You're late to the game. There's nothing I can do about that. I've answered the question(s) repeatedly and I have a life outside this argument. It's a pity some don't.
No you haven't, you've just stated things to be true and haven't supported them. If you don't want to discuss it then stop discussing it. Don't pop in to post and claim that you've done something you can't demonstrate and then refuse to cite where.
Your life is entirely irrelevant.
For someone who makes posts like the above where they claim they have a life outside the argument and that their opponenets don't, you seem to be reaching a bit to be offended here- I quoted the assertion to which I was replying in that very post, are you really maintaining I was saying you, whom I don't know anything about, are an irrelevant person or something?
Maybe if you wish to not have your life and its relevance discussed you shouldn't bring it up. It is and will remain irrelevant to the argument. I appologize if you misconstrued that statement, but it seems to be a stretch to me to read it as anything more than dismissive of your 'get a life' comment.
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Mr. Mushrooms
Spore Print Collector
Registered: 05/25/08
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Loc: Registered: 6/04/02
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You weren't clear enough. Are you apologizing for that as well?
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 14,292
Loc: Americas
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I see how I should have been clearer and how the comment by itself could be insulting. I was trying to say your comments about your life and the life of others being lesser than your own were irrelevant. I appologize if this was unclear or for any offense it caused.
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Shirakawasuna
Stranger
Registered: 05/17/09
Posts: 66
Last seen: 2 years, 11 months
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Maybe you missed this part:
If someone wants me to respond to a point several criteria should be met, considering I've mentioned several times my time is limited by other priorities:
1) Be brief.
No. I'll wait for you to come up with good responses. This topic requires full explanations for good-faith debate, particularly when one party (hint hint) will not answer the most basic of questions and points. The same points get repeated ad nauseum solely because you continue to do everything *but* address the pertinent questions.
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zouden
Neuroscientist
Registered: 11/12/07
Posts: 7,091
Loc: Australia
Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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Quote:
Mr. Mushrooms said:
Quote:
zouden said:
>Conversely, if you showed one thing that was designed you have given evidence for an unknown designer.
Of course. But since an absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, no one could claim a lack of evidence of design as a falsification of the hypothesis.
I do not understand that statement. What "absence of evidence"?
I'm simply pointing out that your statement ("Conversely...") can't be used to falsify ID. That is, even though I like to say we haven't found any evidence of design, that's not a falsification of ID.
Quote:
Quote:
zouden said:
>That would be one way, yes, but not the only way.
Well, I can't think of any other ways. To me it's quite clear: a hypothesis that states that an Unknown Designer played some role in the design of the universe can only be disproved by showing that he didn't, or couldn't have. But since the Unknown Designer is, well, unknown, then we don't know his motives or his limitations. This would make it very difficult, even impossible, to disprove his influence, don't you agree?
In a broader sense, yes. But that's not what we're talking about (or at least I'm not). I have mentioned this before but there are folks who are FLE fans. Front Loaded Evolution. How the hell you disprove that is beyond me. What I am talking about is obvious design by an intelligent agent. Evidently, this one makes motors far beyond our current capabilities.
Quote:
zouden said:
So the next question is: does ID fall into this category, or is it different kind of hypothesis?
Obviously from my reply immediately above, intelligent design is different.
I had to look FLE up. It's the idea that all the genetic information was pre-loaded (presumably by God) and just activated later in a process that appears to be like evolution. But the problem is that inactivated genes aren't subject to selection, so lethal mutations would accumulate. Also, since we've now sequenced the genome of so many organisms, it's quite clear that they don't have the same DNA as us. I think the FLE idea is pretty much falsified. It's much easier to falsify than the form of ID that I'm thinking of, because it makes specific claims (that the genetic information is all pre-loaded) which we can, and have, disproven.
So does ID make specific claims that can be disproven? Wayyy back at the start of all this, you quoted Dembski as saying that ID claims silicon-based lifeforms don't exist. Which is a ridiculous thing to say, because that's quite obviously not a necessary requirement for ID.
Are there any others? Any claims that are required by ID, yet falsifiable? Because if there is one, then I'd be satisfied. My impression of ID is that it makes no required, falsifiable claims. Perhaps I have a different idea of ID to you.
--------------------
I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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zouden
Neuroscientist
Registered: 11/12/07
Posts: 7,091
Loc: Australia
Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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Quote:
zouden said:
So does ID make specific claims that can be disproven? Wayyy back at the start of all this, you quoted Dembski as saying that ID claims silicon-based lifeforms don't exist. Which is a ridiculous thing to say, because that's quite obviously not a necessary requirement for ID.
Are there any others? Any claims that are required by ID, yet falsifiable? Because if there is one, then I'd be satisfied. My impression of ID is that it makes no required, falsifiable claims. Perhaps I have a different idea of ID to you.
--------------------
I know... that just the smallest
part of the world belongs to me
You know... I'm not a blind man
but truth is the hardest thing to see
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