I don’t know if anyone is still following the Uncommon Descent blog, currently owned by lawyer Barry Arrington. It is supposed to be a blog dedicated to “Intelligent Design” – the idea that evolutionary theories are unable to account for the diversity of life on Earth. However, interest in ID has been on the wane since its peak around December 2005 (the run-up to the decision on whether ID is genuinely scientific).
Hat-tip – Rich Hughes
But there is still material to be enjoyed and savoured. Mr. Arrington does not lack confidence in his ability to be certain about things. He authors this OP, posting a “randomly” generated string of characters and a piece of text and concludes:
For what possible reason would a materialist deny knowing what he plainly must know – that we can know the second string is not a group of random letters because it is highly complex and also conforms to a specification?
Unfortunately for Barry, his OP was noticed by Jeffrey Shallit (half of Elsberry and Shallitt, bane of Bill Dembski {see this paper – PDF}) and who then wrote a post on his blog, Recursivity. Barry responds with this post and conveniently summarises thus:
Shallit made some trivial points. On the substance of the matter – whether design can be detected – he actually undermined his own position. Stunning.
Professor Shallit then takes the gloves off! Here! Barry should write this down!
Barry, and all ID advocates, need to understand one basic point. It’s one that Wesley Elsberry and I have been harping about for years. Here it is: the opposite of “random” is not “designed”.
Here’s the best part, from Shallit’s second post:
And it is exactly that which shows precisely why intelligent design is pseudoscience.
Yet the value of ID for doing science has never been greater than it is now.
Well, sure, that’s presumably why interest in it trends ever downward.
Glen Davidson
The more that ID diminishes in public consciousness, the more stridently do the folks at Uncommon Descent insist that their moment of validation is right around the corner. (Indeed, they sometimes write as if they’ve already been validated — except that no one noticed!) Anyone who’s read a fair share of Nietzsche will be able to notice that Uncommon Descent is pretty much just stoking resentment upon resentment. Whatever philosophical* merit there was in the ID movement — and I don’t deny that there was some, once upon a time — has long since evaporated.
* and I do mean philosophical merit, as distinct from scientific merit. Just so we’re clear.
I was just looking at the “Why there’s no such thing as a CSI scanner” thread at UD and found this gem:
I give them points for a vivid imagination. But given that was March 28, 2011, can we have an update on how those labs are getting on vjtorley?
Randomness; a state in which every possible event is as likely to happen as every other. Asked to pick which photo shows a random pattern of raindrops and which a normal one, most beginners will pick wrong. They will say that the normal photo represents randomness. Why? Mathematical randomness seems more ordered. In a way, it is.
What does this have to do with ID? We live in a world of non-random probabilities. To find mathematical randomness at any point in time would be more surprising than not finding it. You’d think you’d made a mistake in your calculations. You might become suspicious. Maybe your partner gave you funky data just for a chuckle.
If you believe in ID, would you take this shocking evidence of randomness as evidence for your god? Maybe the ID people have gone over this. I don’t know. I think the topic – paradoxes of randomness – would be more interesting apart from any consideration of ID.
OMagain, quoting vjtorley:
In Dembski’s formulation, H is not merely “the most likely process whereby the biological sample might have formed naturally”. It represents all processes whereby it might have formed naturally.
VJT’s two labs will never be able to identify all of the possible processes, much less assign probabilities to them. CSI is a dead end even if we don’t consider its circularity.
Well, paley was pretty sharp, and Natural Theology was cutting edge stuff in 1803.
And Agassiz was as knowledgeable as any biologist of his day.
It’s been downhill ever since. Aside from folks who are basically Deists, ID is in the hands of one tenured professor, a handful of PhDs without portfolio, and a tribe of lawyers and bill collectors.
Check this youtube video. In it, Dembski as much as admits that ID does not make sense to materialists. He says he is trying to create an alternate world view where it makes sense.
That’s probably as close as you will get to an admission that ID is theology. He does at least try to attract interest from people like Nagel, who are critics of materialism.
That’s no problem if your alternate world view includes invisible and undetectable agents doing undetectable things at unspecified times and places.
kn here shows why he is amazingly out of the loop, and also decadent, boring and backwards. But he sure wants validation of personal importance in USAmerican analytical philosophy circles!!
As a secular Jew (as admitted here at TSZ), kn confidently can’t accept that ‘intelligent design’ actually doesn’t mean ‘Intelligent Design’.
Yet the argument made by theists against “Intelligent Design” (i.e. the Discovery Institute’s theory) is quite clear. Incidentally, this is much more powerful than the materialistic atheist critique of “Intelligent Design” due to its historical attention and worldview involvement (rather than simple natural scientific estrangement).
The vast majority of USAmericans (check it), unlike (agnostic, pseudo-atheist) kn and his naturalism worldview, are actually supportive of ‘intelligent design’, even as the DI peddles it. Yet that figure surprisingly holds well around the world, including Native Americans and Catholics. It’s the disenchanted naturalism of marginalized and insignificant ‘philosophers’ (they’re not actually worthy of that name) like kn that blunt and dull it.
Don’t get me wrong, folks, I’m against IDism (and certainly contra-Barry A’s arrogant ignorance), just as you are. It’s just that the ‘alternative’ kn would promote is so disheartening and depressing that no one should adopt it. Why would TSZ not be open to something better than that?
I suppose because nothing better has been presented or offered.
Yeah, KN, you’re decadent.
1) Not sticking up for IDism
2) “Petrushka” (anonymous on-line pseudonym) = “nothing better”
Gregory’s never gone out with me on a Saturday night. He doesn’t know the half of it.
I find it a bit intriguing that Gregory insists that I’m promoting a disenchanted naturalism, because Gregory — like quite a few of you here — knows who I am in real life, and it’s a trivial matter to look at my work and see if what Gregory says about my views is correct.
Gregory, you are like the groom who spends his wedding night on the edge of the bed declaring how great it’s going to be.
Or perhaps the one who spends the night disparaging his bride’s former lover.
I’ve seen you post here a hundred times without offering up your own vision.
Kantian Naturalist,
Last time you got called out, kn, you took a long vacation from reality. Secular disenchanted naturalism trying to be enchanted as you enact … and sometimes, granted, seemingly display honesty and sincerity instead is decadently oblivious.
My words for you now are economically blunt.
Okay, so that means you’re officially coming out? Do show then…
Yeah, I agree. You have much room for elevation and perhaps expansion, kn, should you seek a higher path than you seem to have done so far in your Sellarsian, Kantian, naturalism, empiricism, quasi-materialism, proto-nihilism, almost atheism. Skeptic slug of a dire person finally insincere go vertical. That should (ironically, but clearly) sound encouraging in its apophatic veil, which many ‘uncultured’ USAmericans here won’t recognize or tolerate. Well meaning to your future change…
Oh, Washington dude, that was hard, philo-sophist – you got broke! Maybe broke sometimes ain’t that bad … just bad for ideological skepticism. Spin the disenchanted replies at TSZ – deny.
Gregory
Just the facts, please.
Consistency, Alan.
If Gregory’s comments above don’t belong in Guano, then my comment doesn’t either.
Less moderation is better.
I thought your positions was, it’s Lizzie’s board and the moderators have a (sacred) responsibility to follow her rules.
A lot of the comments on this thread clearly have to be guanoed based on those (to my mind fairly crappy) batch of rules. And they obviously include yours.
I agree, however, that others are just as bad.
ETA: The moral is, your post SHOULD read, “Just as my post deserved to be put in guano, so too do several of Gregory’s.” [Instead of {Wah Wah}]
Lizzie’s rules don’t require every rule-breaking comment to be Guanoed, walto.
Besides, I’m not accusing Alan of breaking the rules. I’m pointing out that he’s Guanoing very inconsistently.
For the curious, dissolute, and decadent amongst you, my papers are all here.
It is, to coin a phrase, obvious and incontestable that a bunch of the posts on this thread contain nothing but insults (and not even funny ones).
The stated purpose of this (most holy) site, was to boldly, yet humbly, daintily, skeptically, diversely, invitingly, etc. etc. Hence……
Your own position, as is well known, is that nothing should be guanoed– especially, of course, none of your own priceless nuggets with their various incontestible “arguments” because, I guess, if they are seen on that equally accessible link they will somehow lose their luster or something. Although, of course, infinity minus 12 is still infinity.
Back in college, my friends and I coined the phrase, “beating a straw horse” — to mean, continually refuting a view that no one has actually held. That’s what Uncommon Descent has degenerated into — attacking again and again an extremely simple-minded view, “materialism” (in their sense).
Apparently the Uncommon Descent people need to believe that the vast majority of practicing biologists are so ideologically dumb, deaf, and blind that they all uncritically accept a view that does not withstand more than two seconds of critical scrutiny.
I think this is actually quite unfortunate, because there really are interesting problems with metaphysical naturalism. But one would never know, from the endless recycling of choice quotes from Lewontin, Provine, and Rosenberg, that there are metaphysical naturalists (Evan Thompson, Mark Okrent, and Joe Rouse being the ones I’m reading the most right now) who actually take these problems seriously and try to deal with them. (I’m also still wrapping my head around Steven Horst‘s project of using metaphilosophical naturalism to refute metaphysical naturalism.)
I’m not thoroughly convinced of these solutions myself, because they seem to empty the term “naturalism” of all content — though the views themselves seem basically right to me. And they all bear directly on the criticisms of “materialism” routinely offered up as “self-evident” at Uncommon Descent.
DEMISE!!!!
These last few years have seen top books, endless attacks from university presidents and everyone and even tv shows, Cosmos, that all agree iD/YEC is a threat and growing threat.
it is prevailing in thoughtful circles and the public has heard about scientists saying theres evidence in nature for god and evolution is unlikely.
These are better then ever. A embarrassment of riches.
in fact there is a threat of iD taking too much glory for the kill from yEC.
We were here first and do a lot of the public persuasion.
I note that ID leaders smell they will be seen as scientific revolutionaries and be noted as such in the future.
Their opponents will be the opponents in any story of a revolution. The old guard.
ID has not just struck at evolutions foundations but evolution has failed to strike back to protect itself. Evolution just waves away criticisms but doesn’t take back lost ground.
Its the sick man of modern science.
The next year coming will be another bad year for anti-creationists.
Iraqi minister of information!
On the subject of the post, there is no doubt that the interest in ID has subsided a lot. There are few or no new ID arguments, and this is reflected in the fading interest at blogs as well.
The Usual Suspects will of course continue to make the same arguments.
Indeed. Is there an ID argument? Other than an attempt to demonstrate inadequacies in evolutionary theory, that is.
I wrongly predicted the demise of ID within five years of the Dover decision. I now think it will be a generational matter. No-one will replace Dembski and Behe as theorists (*avoids temptation to use scare quotes*) but perhaps while there’s still money to be made from book sales, the fiction will be maintained.
Nobody can be this bad! He’s a Poe!
Come on, Robert, de-cloak!
Re comments up-thread. There’s a thread for issues about moderation.
A soft answer turneth away wrath! 🙂
When you examine the regions which are interested in ID ,we can see
United States Denmark Sweden Australia Canada New Zealand Netherlands Norway United Kingdom and Belgium
but for evolution , we see Mozambique Cape Verde Venezuela Dominican Republic Angola Cuba Colombia Panama Ecuador and Mexico
Is the interest for Evolution waning in countries where it matters ?
BYstander: I’d ask you if you are related to Robert BYers, but I think that would break a TSZ posting rule about breaking anonymity. So I am not asking you that.
But the posts share a whimsical sense of humor which I appreciate. Of course, many have questioned my sense of humor based on some of my attempts here, so I could be wrong about the humor part.
I would like to try to respond to this claim, but I have been unable to find a list of countries that matter and a list of countries that don’t matter.
I also don’t know what you mean “interested in ID”? Do you mean, like, as a possible girlfriend?
Thanks for any info on these crucial matters.
Alan Fox on September 30, 2014 at 9:34 am said:
Re comments up-thread. There’s a thread for issues about moderation.
Physician, heal thyself.
See how one hypothesis was accepted and another wasn’t:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22+evolution+%22%2C%22+intelligent+design+%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2C%22%20evolution%20%22%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%22%20intelligent%20design%20%22%3B%2Cc0
Maybe none of the mattering countries speak English?
The thing is that ID is only the most recent incarnation of the idea that the world is too complex not to have been designed. Creationists once pointed to the eye as an example of such a thing. So what? I don’t know. A battle has been won, but the war…not yet. Physicalists can take a breather, but a nice long vacation? No.
Hi Paul
At least you didn’t say “materialists”.
Not to speak for others, but I have no issue with William Paley. His ideas were sincerely expressed. My gripe is with the cabal that subscribed to the Discovery Institute’s “Wedge document”. The plan was to get “Intelligent Design” taught in public schools as an alternative scientific theory. There is no scientific theory of ID and the intent was to insert disguised creationism into school curricula.
Any new theory that better explains how life on Earth diversified would demand attention.
Richardthughes,
Should we be worried?
Not really – try again, I can’t replicate your results.
Oh, hell. Not another hockey stick.
Here is the URL. I don’t know if it is affected by my computer tending to locate me in France.
ETA
When I click the link and then click the “search” button, it works for me.
“Waterloo!”
Didn’t Dembski once say something like this: “Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.”
I suppose it isn’t worth mentioning that interest in ID peaked around the time of the Dover trial, and fell sharply thereafter. The chart barely shows the thereafter. Also the chart only show mentions of ID, not support for it.
petrushka,
And it just counts the appearance of the phrases in Google books. Christopher Hitchens added a few “intelligent designs” to the count in God is not Great.
And book sales is what ID is best at.
Worried?
Nah!
Alan Fox,
Alan,
I wouldn’t want to see ID, or creationism in general, taught as a scientific theory either. I don’t think it’s true. I don’t think the world is about 6000 year old etc. I went to Catholic schools through high school. I was never taught any of that.
Sometimes I’ve thought that teaching the history of the theory (evolution) would help to stop people repeating old arguments. I’ve thought that that would be enough to satisfy creationists. I was wrong.
What I want more than anything is for both sides to learn from each other. I think that’s happening, but slowly.
To be fair, their strategy has always been book-centric (not scientific papers). Anne Gauger confirms this in her latest interview.
Paul Amrhein,
I think we’ve learned quite a lot about bad thinking from the IDists.
Since the same bad thinking is repeated sans end by them, I suspect that they’ve learned almost nothing from us.
Glen Davidson