A Scientific Hypothesis Of Design – finally.

Upright Biped has announced the launch of his site via this UD post: Writing Biosemiosis-org

All of the unique physical conditions of dimensional semiosis have already been observed and documented in the scientific literature. It is an intractable fact that a dimensional semiotic system is used to encode organic polymers inside the cell. The conclusion of intelligent action is therefore fully supported by the physical evidence, and is subject to falsification only by showing an unguided source capable of creating such a system.

http://biosemiosis.org/index.php/a-scientific-hypothesis-of-design

Discuss!

828 thoughts on “A Scientific Hypothesis Of Design – finally.

  1. OMagain: Care to name one of those designs?

    The human eye/vision system. It’s a design. The question is whether or not it is a design that can be plausibly accomplished via processes unguided by intelligence. To claim that particular design is factually the product of unguided natural processes (RM & NS) is itself a positive claim which must be supported.

    In order to support that claim, one must be able to provide a metric that shows what RM&NS is, and is not, capable of producing given a certain resource pool and time frame.

  2. William J. Murray: In order to support that claim, one must be able to provide a metric that shows what RM&NS is, and is not, capable of producing given a certain resource pool and time frame.

    Why?

  3. William J. Murray: The pertinent question isn’t if evolution can solve problems, but whether or not evolution unguided by intelligence can solve any significant problems or building anything significant.

    Name a significant problem.

  4. OMagain: what is it you are trying to accomplish here?

    1) Mostly to correct jacked up twisted ideas of what Christian’s believe.
    2) I enjoy the give and take, it helps me to tidy up my own ideas
    3) Thinking and talking about God’s handy work is a form of worship
    4) I’m bothered when folks approach science from an improperly biased perspective
    5) I would hope we could eventually get past the tired old culture war stuff and actually talk about some actual science

    peace

  5. William J. Murray: In order to support that claim, one must be able to provide a metric that shows what RM&NS is, and is not, capable of producing given a certain resource pool and time frame.

    Let’s say such a metric is devised and it demonstrates that evolution (RM&NS) cannot produce the eye.

    What then? Is the assumption then “it must have been designed”? Why?

  6. OMagain: Why?

    Because that is how one would support that claim. Given that we cannot actually observe X producing Y, then to support the proposition that X produces Y, one must at least show X plausibly capable of producing Y from available resources and time. To show this, one must at least provide a means of falsifying X as a plausible sufficient cause of Y – which means providing a falsifying metric.

  7. fifthmonarchyman: 1) Mostly to correct jacked up twisted ideas of what Christian’s believe.
    2) I enjoy the give and take, it helps me to tidy up my own ideas
    3) Thinking and talking about God’s handy work is a form of worship
    4) I’m bothered when folks approach science from an improperly biased perspective
    5) I would hope we could eventually get past the tired old culture war stuff and actually talk about some actual science

    1) Start a thread about that and confine that to that thread.
    2) I’ve seen no evidence of that so far
    3) But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
    4) You are the one with the biased perspective. That you can’t see this is not unexpected. You are not the first to think you have no bias when in fact you are all bias.
    5) You are not capable of such. Prove me wrong. Explain why the design principles that lead you to think the genome is designed are not seen when we look at human design principles.

  8. OMagain: Fuck off.

    Ever notice how the increase in profanity is proportional to the increase in frustration?

    Do you kiss Darwin with that mouth?

    peace

  9. William J. Murray: Given that we cannot actually observe X producing Y, then to support the proposition that X produces Y, one must at least show X plausibly capable of producing Y from available resources and time.

    But if we have a metric that shows eye cannot evolve, you certainly have no metric that shows an undefined designer could create one, do you?

    If we rule out evolution we don’t just jump over to design, as much as you’d like to.

  10. William J. Murray: Because that is how one would support that claim.Given that we cannot actually observe X producing Y, then to support the proposition that X produces Y, one must at least show X plausibly capable of producing Y from available resources and time.To show this, one must at least provide a means of falsifying X as a plausible sufficient cause of Y – which means providing a falsifying metric.

    Let us know when you finally apply those same criteria to your Intelligent Design claims, OK?

  11. fifthmonarchyman: Ever notice how the increase in profanity is proportional to the increase in frustration?

    It’s like talking to a cat. So yes, it’s a bit frustrating. Your unwarranted superior attitude is not supported by your ability or understanding.

  12. William J. Murray,

    But why Design?

    “Because that is how one would support that claim. Given that we cannot actually observe Design producing Eyes, then to support the proposition that Design produces Eyes, one must at least show Design plausibly capable of producing Eyes from available resources and time. To show this, one must at least provide a means of falsifying Design as a plausible sufficient cause of Eyes – which means providing a falsifying metric.”

  13. So, Mr “I’m all about the science and want to talk about science”.

    Choose one. A or B.

    Would you expect an Intelligent Designer who is capable of creating a universe to

    A) Write really shitty code
    B) Write really elegant code

    Where “shitty” and “elegant” are derived from human principles of software design (remember you are using evidence how humans practice design as evidence for design in biology so this is valid).

  14. OMagain: You see, that’s the trouble with your position. It does not have any entailments. There is no prediction you can make regarding the genome regarding what you would expect to see if it was designed vs evolved.

    In Popperian terms, ID is not falsifiable, for just the same reasons that Popper thought that psychoanalysis and Marxism are not falsifiable — any observation can be interpreted as consistent with the hypothesis, regardless of whether the observation confirms or disconfirms an entailment of the hypothesis.

    On the question of other minds: though it is right to say that we do not have “evidence” for other minds, this way of putting it misdescribes the phenomenology of intersubjectivity. We do not need evidence for other minds because the mindedness of other persons and animals is manifest in our experience of them. It never occurs to us to doubt that they have minds (except when we are doing philosophy); doubt simply gets no traction in our experience.

    But our experience of other persons and animals as minded is an essentially embodied experience — it is through the embodied entangling our intentions, desires, and behaviors that their minds are manifest to us in our experience of them. Because of this, the phenomenology of intersubjective experience cannot ground any claim about the existence or non-existence of non-embodied minds or minds whose embodiment is vastly different from what we encounter in ordinary experience.

  15. OMagain: Explain why the design principles that lead you to think the genome is designed are not seen when we look at human design principles.

    They are seen when we look at human design. Heck you can see them in the very code I sent you for my game.

    peace

  16. So, according to FMM the genome regardless of it’s specific contents is “evidence for design”.

    He does not know about design principles that humans have created, but their lack or presence both indicate design.

    The really sad thing is that he knows this and revels in it:

    fifthmonarchyman: Yes there is absolutely no way you will ever win this one. Just as there will always be an escape hatch for you

    There’s no way “I will ever win this one” despite the fact that fmm cannot actually muster any evidence for his position.

    So it’s pointless to argue with such people. They are not actually capable of debate.

  17. William J. Murray: Conceptual.

    One would need to know that concepts are “immaterial” on the basis of a theory of what concepts are. It’s not an assumption that one is entitled to make “for free”.

  18. Kantian Naturalist: But our experience of other persons and animals as minded is an essentially embodied experience

    In a sense the universe is the body of the preincarnate logos. At the very least it is an extension of that body. The same way the pixels on your screen are an extension of me.

    peace

  19. William J. Murray,

    The pertinent question isn’t if evolution can solve problems, but whether or not evolution unguided by intelligence can solve any significant problems or building anything significant.

    And, as has been thrashed out many times, indeed it can. ‘unguided’ evolution is frequently used as a design tool. That is, mutating a pool with random variation and differential survival. You will no doubt play the tattered card that there is some kind of goal in mind. And of course there is, if the task is solve any significant problem[s] or build[ing] anything significant. No-one is going to use evolutionary methods to do nothing in particular.

  20. OMagain: There’s no way “I will ever win this one” despite the fact that fmm cannot actually muster any evidence for his position.

    again there can be no empirical evidence for other minds.

    we don’t need any

    peace

  21. OMagain: Would you expect an Intelligent Designer who is capable of creating a universe to

    A) Write really shitty code
    B) Write really elegant code

    I would ask a slightly different question.

    Would a human programmer write code that modifies itself and changes “purpose” over time?

    My own response is yes, if he’s imitating evolution.

  22. Again, the problem with ID is not that it is wrong — we cannot prove that — but that the idea is worthless.

  23. fifthmonarchyman: In a sense the universe is the body of the preincarnate logos. At the very least it is an extension of that body. The same way the pixels on your screen are an extension of me.

    A very pretty metaphor, and one that holds a great deal of personal significance to you, but it is both empirically unverifiable and logically unprovable, hence useless to both philosophy and to science. It can never rise above being a mere “presupposition” that can’t be argued for, can’t be verified, and is not even necessary since philosophy and science are themselves fully intelligible within a non-theistic world-view.

  24. Kantian Naturalist: In Popperian terms, ID is not falsifiable, for just the same reasons that Popper thought that psychoanalysis and Marxism are not falsifiable — any observation can be interpreted as consistent with the hypothesis, regardless of whether the observation confirms or disconfirms an entailment of the hypothesis.

    nicely put. fmm, agree/disagree? If you disagree then propose an observation that would disconfirm your hypothesis.

  25. fifthmonarchyman:

    The default understanding was once geocentric and flat earth.

    I can agree with geocentric but not flat earth any one who ever watched a ship sail over the horizon would question a flat earth

    Dopey thing to say.

    When do you think humanity evolved/was created on our planet? When do you think the first person ever had a chance to watch “a ship sail over the horizon”? How many thousands or hundreds of thousands of years passed between the first self-conscious human and the first ship spectator? When that first ship-sighting happened, did the question of a flat earth suddenly get answered for every human alive simultaneously? When that happened, were there millions of humans alive, inland, who had never seen a body of water bigger than a fishing pond, much less had never seen a ship sail? Were their default understandings of flat earth suddenly changed?

    Our ancestors weren’t dumb. Flat earth actually makes sense – even today – it fits our intuition, our mental sense of the dimensions around us. Flat earth is still a universal assumption among children until we educate them otherwise.

    Which is why Allan Miller is correct to point out the your claim about default unnderstanding is worthless, and why you’re wrong to claim that a common human impulse towards religion is somehow evidence that any aspect of religion is actually true in our real universe.

  26. fifthmonarchyman:

    OMagain:
    [I ask you for entailments for your ideas about design in biology and you post a link?]

    Fuck off.

    Ever notice how the increase in profanity is proportional to the increase in frustration?

    Do you kiss Darwin with that mouth?

    peace

    Wanker.

    Quote-mining, condescending and insulting in one comment.

    No doubt, our boyo fifthmonarchyman is a real winner.

    Erm, where “winner” is spelled w.a.n.k.e.r.

  27. Kantian Naturalist: A very pretty metaphor, and one that holds a great deal of personal significance to you, but it is both empirically unverifiable and logically unprovable, hence useless to both philosophy and to science.

    The same can be said for evidence surrounding all other minds. Do you find other minds useless to both philosophy and to science?

    Kantian Naturalist: [It] is not even necessary since philosophy and science are themselves fully intelligible within a non-theistic world-view.

    I would disagree and would break out the “how do you know?” bot. to illustrate that intelligibility is impossible sans the Christian God.

    How would you respond?

    peace

  28. OMagain: nicely put. fmm, agree/disagree? If you disagree then propose an observation that would disconfirm your hypothesis.

    I agree that global ID is unfalsifiable The same way materialism or Atheism in general is unfalsifiable.

    You can’t prove that other minds exist or not. You don’t need to we all know they do.

    On the other hand individual hypothesis associated with ID are very much falsifiable. I have offered one my self. I’m still waiting on Patrick’s “two week hack” on that one.

    peace

  29. fifthmonarchyman:

    hotshoe_: When do you think the first person ever had a chance to watch “a ship sail over the horizon”?

    check it out

    http://www.wired.com/2010/01/ancient-seafarers/

    Besides boats would not be necessary to infer a nonflat earth. A fallen tree in the ocean would do the trick.

    peace

    Don’t be more of a fool than you have to be.

    The flat earth perspective of a landlubber — which were, basically, all of our human ancestors throughout a hundred thousand years of history — is not invalidated by speculation that some small number of humans used rafts before “modern” tall-masted sailing ships.

    How many times have you witnessed a “fallen tree in the ocean” moving off towards the horizon demonstrating the curvature of not-flat Earth?

    Never. Not once.

    I’d bet real money that you’ve never even seen a tall ship sail out of harbor and slowly vanish at the horizon. I have, more than once. And believe me, it’s not a very convincing sight for a curved Earth idea. You have to be watching closely, really paying attention to the mast tops, and so much depends on the weather, the wave action, the angle of the sunlight … but even seafarers who know that the globe is round, because they’ve circumnavigated it, still intuitively sense a flat earth. When you’re out there on the ocean with no land in sight, the entire ocean looks and feels flat from horizon to horizon.

    It’s a powerful illusion, just like the powerful illusion of god’s existence.

    No one believes your dopey excuse for refusing to admit you were wrong about our default understanding of flat earth. We’re right, you’re wrong, get over it.

    Pray to your god if you need more education into actual human history because I’ve already wasted enough time on you.

  30. William J. Murray:
    5MM asks:

    I think a better question would be, “Do you have evidence that certain designs we see in nature can be produced without intelligent guidance?”

    Or how did the designer create the forms, that is the question evolution seeks to answer.

  31. There is another small question about which fifth could not possibly be more wrong.
    And that would the question of ideal forms.

    What Fifth is totally wrong about is the history of life, and it matters that he is wrong.

    The really cool part of evolution is not the directed/undirected dimension. that is trivial.

    The cool part is common descent.

    We are all cousins: humans, apes, fish bananas, bacteria. The changes that produces humans from bacteria were tiny, imperceptible. The changes from amphibian to human never involved a child being of a different species from its parent. Never involved a child being obviously different from its parent.
    There are no ideal forms. There are an endless sequence of forms blending imperceptibly into each other.

  32. hotshoe_: The flat earth perspective of a landlubber — which were, basically, all of our human ancestors throughout a hundred thousand years of history

    You don’t need an ocean to infer a nonflat earth Grog walking over the horizon in a grassland or savanna will work as well. As will a little thought about a lunar eclipse or thinking about the different shadow lengths at different places. You seem to think our ancestors were stupid.

    That pre-modern folks believed that the earth was flat is a 19th century myth that was busted long ago.

    check it out

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/busting-a-myth-about-columbus-and-a-flat-earth/2011/10/10/gIQAXszQaL_blog.html

    Peace

  33. petrushka: There are no ideal forms. There are an endless sequence of forms blending imperceptibly into each other.

    Yet we all know what a circle is and that a circle is not a square.

    I would question any position that required you to deny the existence of circles.

    but that is just me

    peace

  34. fifthmonarchyman: Yet we all know what a circle is and that a circle is not a square.
    I would question any position that required you to deny the existence of circles.
    but that is just me
    peace

    Living things are things, and not abstractions or definitions.

    But you seem acquainted with Flatland, where circles and squares are sentient beings.

  35. Interestingly, even in Flatland, there are no circles, just incrementally evolved polygons.

  36. petrushka: Living things are things, and not abstractions or definitions.

    Living things like all designed things they are approximations of ideal forms.

    Physical circles are approximations of the ideal circle. Physical wombats are approximations of the ideal wombat.

    that is how we can tell the difference between a circle and a oval
    and between a wombat and a koala

    peace

  37. fifthmonarchyman: Physical circles are approximations of the ideal circle. Physical wombats are approximations of the ideal wombat.

    And what about all the imperceptible shadings of wombat going back to back to bacteria?

  38. Allan Miller:
    William J. Murray,

    And, as has been thrashed out many times, indeed it can. ‘unguided’ evolution is frequently used as a design tool. That is, mutating a pool with random variation and differential survival. You will no doubt play the tattered card that there is some kind of goal in mind. And of course there is, if the task is solve any significant problem[s] or build[ing] anything significant. No-one is going to use evolutionary methods to do nothing in particular.

    I think Dembski and Marks have shown that such evolutionary algorithms and simulations only work due to oracle information embedded in some way in such systems, which falsifies the notion that such system are teleologically blind.

  39. petrushka: And what about all the imperceptible shadings of wombat going back to back to bacteria?

    Each species in the “chain” approximates it’s own ideal form.

    peace

  40. William J. Murray: I think Dembski and Marks have shown that such evolutionary algorithms and simulations only work due to oracle information embedded in some way in such systems, which falsifies the notion that such system are teleologically blind.

    You think a lot of things that are not true.

  41. petrushka: In the four dimensional view of life there are no species.

    Why?

    From God’s perspective species would exist in four dimensions. A timeless God would see it all in one single unchanging 4D grid.

    It’s only from our finite position in time that it would be difficult to distinguish one species from another in four dimensions.

    The Forms exist in the mind of God remember

    peace

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