As a card carrying creationist, I’ve sometimes wanted to post about my reservations regarding the search for evidence of Intelligent Design (ID) and some of the rottenness in the search for evidence in young earth creation. I’ve refrained from speaking my mind on these matters too frequently lest I ruffle the feathers of the few friends I have left in the world (the ID community and the creationist community). But I must speak out and express criticism of my own side of the aisle on occasion.

Before proceeding, I’d like to thank Elizabeth for her hospitality in letting me post here. She invited me to post some things regarding my views of Natural Selection and Genetic Algorithms, but in the spirit of skepticism I want to offer criticism of some of my own ideas.So this essay will sketch what I consider valid criticism of ID, creationism in general and Young Earth Creationism (YEC) in particular.

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Nothing to do with intelligent design, as such, but Sal Cordova brought up the issue of how wings produce lift in this thread.

hmmm.

[Edited to add xkcd, which my son just reminded me of….]

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To define:

NDE (Neo-Darwinian Evolution) = OOL & evolution without prescriptive goals, both being nothing more in essence than functions of material forces & interactions.

ID (Intelligent Design) = Deliberate OOL & evolution with prescriptive goals

(I included OOL because if OOL contains purposefully written code that provides guidelines for evolutionary processes towards goals, then evolutionary processes are not neo-Darwinian as they utilize oracle information).

I’m not an evolutionary biologist, nor am I a mathematician. Therefore, when I argue about NDE and ID, the only cases I attempt to make are logical ones based on principles involved because – frankly – I lack the educational, application & research expertise to legitimately parse, understand and criticize most papers published in those fields. I suggest that most people who engage in NDE/ID arguments (on either side) similarly lack the necessary expertise to evaluate (or conduct) such research on their own.

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It is quite common for ID commenters to argue that it is not possible for evolutionary forces such as natural selection to put Functional Information or Specified Information) into the genome. Whether they know it or not, these commenters are relying on William Dembski’s Law of Conservation of Complex Specified information. It is supposed to show that Complex Specified Information cannot be put into the genome. Many people have argued that this theorem is incorrect. In my 2007 article I summarized many of these objections and added some of my own.

One of the sections of that article gave a simple computational example of mine showing natural selection putting nearly 2 bits of specified information into the genome, by replacing an equal mixture of A, T, G, and C at one site with 99.9% C.

This post is intended to show a more dramatic example along the same lines.

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What is a GA?

Discuss.

This is a topic where we can discuss what we mean by “objective” and by “subjective”.  It is not tied to anything specific.  We don’t have to reach a consensus.

Here are a couple of examples to illustrate the issues:

1. Is mathematics objective or subjective?  On the one hand, it is mostly a mental construct, so in some views that would make it subjective.  On the other hand, there is very strong agreement between mathematicians, and that seems to suggest that it is about as objective as anything could be.
2. If we assume Berkeley’s idealism (the world is nothing more than a mental construct derived from our perceptions), would that imply that everything is subjective and nothing is objective?  Or, since we seem to all refer to the same things (cats, trees, etc) should we say that those are objective even if only mental constructs.

Here’s some personal correspondence between Liz and me. I presume that she checks posts before allowing publication, so if this is inappropriate I claim innocence.

Dear Liz,

As you know, I have great respect for you, even admiration, but I suggest the following.

You wrote:

The reason I get exercised about ID is that I do think, in simple scientific terms, that it is fallacious. Not because there couldn’t have been an ID, nor because science demonstrates that there wasn’t/isn’t one, but because the inference is, IMO, fallacious.

I respond:

The reason I get exercised about the proposed creative power of the Darwinian mechanism of random errors filtered by natural selection is that I do think, in simple scientific terms, that it is fallacious. Not because this mechanism couldn’t possibly have produced all that it is credited with, but because evidence, logic, and simple probability calculations demonstrate that this proposition is fallacious.

Thus, it seems to me, we are separated by an immense chasm over which there is no bridge.

Gil

Let’s face it, the ID versus materialism debate has profound scientific, philosophical, theological, and even ethical implications, which is why passions run so high.

Someone is wrong and someone is right. I just want to know the truth.

The ‘here’ in the first para refers to Secular Cafe, from which this is reposted.

In a number of threads, here and in other places, I’ve seen discussions – sometimes more than a little vituperative – concerning the value or otherwise of anecdotal evidence.

To start with my current position on it before commenting further.

I think that anecdotal evidence is evidence, but with three little caveats.

It is often, IMV, poor evidence, it is sometimes evidence of something other than what the anecdote purports to be evidence of, and it is rather infrequently later confirmed by later observations which have physical rather than anecdotal evidence behind them.

Having got that out of the way, an in-exhaustive list to identify the sort of alleged phenomena in which anecdotal evidence raises its head, in no particular order but as they spring to mind, with a few exceptions which I am anxious to include.

Ghosts, the effectiveness of clairvoyance, the effectiveness of astrology, the effect (or otherwise) of the full moon on madness,  hospital admissions et al, sightings of monsters on various lakes, UFO sightings, alien abductions, the power of prayer, what may broadly be called religious or spiritual experiences, unusual and hard or impossible to replicate physical phenomena.

For all of these, and others, I’d see it as important to keep a few things in mind.

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This was originally intended as a brief reply to the comment by William J Murray but it sort of grew into something a little longer so I thought, since everyone else is doing it, I’d put it up here.

William J Murray:
I think that any fair reading of UD will show that the vast majority of pro-ID posters there, and certainly the moderators and subject contributors, are not “anti-science” at all, nor “sneer” at science; rather, they have what is IMO a legitimate concern over the anti-religious, anti-theist, pro-materialist agenda that many of those currently in positions of power in the institutions of science blatantly demonstrate.

I would agree that not all contributors to UD are anti-science but there is, nonetheless, a prominent strand of such thinking there. Many of the original posts mock the speculative excesses of evolutionary psyschology, for example, or seem to gloat over instances of where science has apparently got it wrong. Those occasions where the author of such comments has got it wrong themselves pass largely unremarked. The overall impression is of an anti-science advocacy site.

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While I tend to see materialism, or any ism really, as misguided attempts to to translate the epic poem of reality into a language of limits, the universe to an Upanishad, the unknown and unexpected cuisine of eternity into bite sized morsels of processed food by-product. Ultimately, I think isms, including materialism narrow the minds of the porters stuck with the baggage. Like a person forced to wear a hat two sizes too small, like a fundamentalist’s child taught to feel shame at the first whiff of curiosity about something potentially interesting, isms discourage freestyle boogie on the cranial dance floor. They attempt to definitively answer the important question, “Why?”*. At least, that is my general attitude. I can and occasionally do trot out tome lubricant for my neurons in order to formulate a logical support for the idea, but I just ran across a printed copy of this paper in a file folder which accidentally traveled with me this week. Continue reading →

Questions about truth, free will, logic have been raised in another thread.  To help clarify the discussion, let’s separate those from the “necessary premise” discussion.

Here’s an example of the argument being raised:

True statements can only be expected to exist, and we can only expect to be able to deliberately discern them, if we assume the universe is governed by logic (necssarily rationally ordered) and if we assume for ourselves the libertarian free will causative capacity to discern them.

This seems a rather strange claim, given then many people believe that our best and most reliable true statements are those coming from science, and based on describing our world in terms physical causation.  Moreover, science is often considered to provide our best examples rationality and logical reasoning.

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