There was a time when people believed the moon craters were the product of intelligent design because they were so perfectly round “they must have been made by intelligent creatures living on the moon”. That idea was falsified. If hypothetically someone had said back then, “The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) made the moon craters”, the claim would have been falsifiable, but it really doesn’t make a positive case for the FSM, doesn’t make the FSM directly testable, doesn’t make the FSM science. Substitute the word “ID” instead for “FSM”, and one will see why I think even though ID is falsifiable, I don’t think ID has a positive case, and I don’t think ID is directly testable, and I don’t think ID is science at least for things like biology.
I accept stonehenge was intelligently designed because I’ve seen humans make similar artifacts. The case of design in life is a different matter because we have not seen a designer of such qualifications directly. If we saw God or some UFO sending flames down from the sky with a great voice and turning a rock into a living human, then I would consider ID a positive case at that point. For now there is no positive case, but a case based on some level of belief. One might redefine science to allow ID to be defined as science, but I prefer not to promote ID as science. I’m OK with calling ID science for man-made things, but not for God-made things, unless God shows up and gives us a visual demonstration.
NOTES:
Johannes Kepler
The invention of the telescope led scientists to ponder alien civilization. In the early 1600s, astronomer Johannes Kepler believed that because the moon’s craters were perfectly round, they must have been made by intelligent creatures.
Is Anybody Out There?
There is equivocation (maybe not deliberate) in that statement. Until somebody can come up with a meaningful definition of “Intelligent Design” it’s pretty misleading to talk about belief in this essentially (and possibly deliberately) meaningless concept.
It’s rather that ID proponents are very reluctant to state clearly what ID is.
PaV,
No-one ever sees a mutation happen. They are too small. But then, Creation is never observed either.
Commonalities between species have long been held to indicate commonalities of ancestry (one can be misled, of course). It does not require ‘belief’ as such, it is a reasonable inference. The inference was supported in bucketloads when we got our grubby hands on DNA sequences. If common ancestry is accepted in the genomes of relatives, and between species very closely related, there is no obvious reason to dismiss the same logic when divergence has progressed beyond a certain point. Of course, we can’t get in a time machine, and would struggle to track the alleles in the population even if we could without changing the trajectory. But it requires no ‘faith’ to suppose that a process of descent with modification would lead to the patterns we have. It seems more of a faith-based position that, somehow, it did not.
In the case of life too. ‘Order’ is a very poor metaphor for chemical entropy, which is the operational arena for living energy cascades.
Quite. I don’t believe that.
Conversely, how do you know you have it right and scientists (with whom the concept originated) have it wrong?
phoodoo,
TSZ is very fortunate to have you around to help sweep the floors and clean (and clog) the toilets.
PaV,
That would be incredible. Good thing no scientist is suggesting that’s what happened.
Do you also consider complex organisms being poofed into existence by an invisible sky fairy to be “incredible”?
Well that’s convincing. I guess we can toss out all of thermodynamics based on your faulty memories of what someone else wrote.
So “the energy of the sun is plenty enough to fuel the increased entropy of cellular life” is wrong but “there’s enough energy available for something like that to happen” is correct? You realize you just restated the same claim, right?
The whole point from the reality based community is that claims that the second law of thermodynamics prohibits evolution are simply wrong because the Earth is not a closed system. That’s it.
Yeah, we know you like to be “quite clear” in your interactions with women:
And yet you never managed to actually calculate CSI for any of the four scenarios provided. It’s almost like it’s an utterly useless metric. Care to try again?
stcordova,
If you had any evidence, one of you would be enough.
Mung,
My response is in Moderation Issues.
Please! One of the many distinguishing differences from UD here is… math.
You aren’t one to talk about evidence, Patrick
ID is simply the detection and study of (intelligent) design in nature. And both Intelligence and Design have been properly defined
Patrick- Gene duplication requires the existence of prior CSI. EV starts with CSI- all GAs do. Replication is the very thing that requires an explanation. However using Crick and Shannon, we can measure information wrt biology. And it has been done in peer-review.
What does evolutionism have for a metric so we can compare?
There is evidence, according to my epistemology, but not yours.
No one here is really in a position to declare “no evidence”. What you really mean is that there are no sets of facts you would consider evidence — that is not the same as saying “no evidence exists”, especially if one has an epistemology that is systematically flawed from detecting such evidence.
The systematic flaw in the your epistemology is the insistence that ID must be repeatable and therefore scientific. Though the demand for ID being scientific to be true is understandable, if ID in biology came about by non-repeatable mechanisms, then even if ID were true, you’d never know it. Don’t you see that’s a problem?
What it seems to me that you are saying is “there is no evidence that would convince you.” That’s fine. But your subjective evaluation and flawed epistemology is not the final judge.
That’s not to say I’m right either, but just saying, you’re assertion about there being “no evidence” is your assertion, it is not necessarily fact.
You left some loose ends after your last visit. Here, for instance.
I disagree, and that’s why I don’t like calling ID science for God-made objects.
In the case of man-made objects, we can often ask the designer, “did you design this?” If he says, “yes”, then the need of definitions is moot.
An example:
http://www.Genetic-ID.com
I think it is perfectly reasonable to regard their work as design detection of man-made GMOs as science.
Pity the ARN forum database went belly-up. My favourite bit of that thread was JoeG claiming Doug Axe had used the explanatory filter and Doug Axe confirming in an email that he certainly hadn’t.
ETA didn’t Dave Springer have something to say about this at UD?
ETA2 Ah yes
stcordova,
No, all I’ve seen from you is arguments from incredulity and gods of the gaps. If you have actual, objective, empirical evidence that supports a positive entailment of ID, please present it.
All you have are loose ends left everywhere, Alan. So you are not one to talk of such things
No, all I’ve seen from you is arguments from incredulity and gods of the gaps.If you have actual, objective, empirical evidence that supports a positive entailment of ID, please present it.
Until you can say what the testable entailments are for your position there is nothing to compare ID to and you can just deny, deny, deny when the case for ID is presented
Alan is a moderator here, Joe. So he is one to talk of such things, and you are not one (especially given your history).
Alan Fox,
And yet another distinction without a difference.
“No, I didn’t use a knife, I used a small, straight blade, that only looks like a knife.”
The EF says to first eliminate necessity and chance. Axe did that. Next the EF says to find some specification and Axe also did that.
And Dave was overruled by Bill Dembski himself, that’s why was given the all-clear to post that discussion despite Dave’s protestations.
You can gather that from the OP, that Dave really didn’t like Bill ruling in my favor there.
In any case, I think man-made designs qualify as designs.
The GMO architecture is a man-made design (as far as the man-made quality anyway).
Well, I see that’s a problem for ID.
Not only is this hypothetical ID “mechanism” not repeatable – that’s obvious – it’s not even a candidate for being called a “mechanism” to begin with. What mechanism? Does god have immaterial fingers that twiddled with individual electrons to prod its planned mutations into biology?
I said in the title:
If you won’t accept ID without positive entailments, I respect that.
But your epistemology doesn’t work for me, I felt I showed why the demand for repeatability is flawed.
If the mechanism is repeatable, it’s a law of physics, not a God-like intelligent designer who can work miracles and enjoys playing hide and seek.
So your epistemology as a matter of principle is logically incapable of recognizing God and miracles if they exist and if the Designer is wanting to elude those who want to close their eyes to Him or who despise him as a matter of principle.
I’m not saying I’m right, but I think I’ve demonstrated you’re approach is most certainly wrong for the questions at hand. Nevertheless, I respect you have the right to believe what you believe. But your approach doesn’t work for me, sorry.
OK how can natural selection, drift and neutral construction producing a bacterial flagellum be repeated, seeing it can’t even be tested?
Hypocrites
stcordova,
ID is just a matter of faith for you, then. That’s fine as far as it goes, but don’t try pushing it into schools or abusing children who are too young to critically evaluate it.
Is my demand outrageous? Is it my demand? I addressed an issue Sal brought up. Look at the original context. I was telling Sal that if he thinks that not being able to see the Intelligent Designer at work invalidates ID, then he should make the same demand of Darwinism. And, of course, Darwinism doesn’t hold up. A stalemate.
We can see cumulative selection at work. Humans have been designing plants and animals for thousands of years with the same process that occurs in nature without human intervention.
Humans selectively breeding plants and animals have no control over the arrival of desirable traits. They do not create teacup poodles or black roses. they just select.
Which is why the first few chapters of Darwin’s Origin is about artificial selection.
I do personally believe ID is true. God will settle the issue on the final day, so I’m not worried about making anyone else agree with me if they aren’t inclined to.
Dawkins Blind Watchmaker and Darwin’s Natural Selection, in terms of the way they conceive things, has actually been falsified in lab and field observations in the present day. ID has not been falsified.
Something I pointed out elsewhere, and bears mentioning here.
Spontaneous Generation was hailed as evidence against Special Creation until it was actually experimentally refuted by Pasteur whose experiment was financed by the Catholic Church. Here is an example where a religiously motivated idea, a creationist idea, actually advanced medical science significantly. Pasteur’s anti-spontaneous generation experiment led to the process of Pasteurization which has led to enormous benefit to society.
Whether creation/ID is right or wrong in the end, it can’t be said that it is immediately damaging to science as a matter of principle. The case of Pasteur is an example….
From the data we now have, it would seem the Blind Watchmaker hypothesis, like Spontaneous Generation, has been falsified.
Artificial selection is a mechanism of Intelligent Design
And yet not one evolutionist critically evaluates the claims of their position. Strange, that
Selecting for new alleles of existing genes is not cumulative in the way that is needed to accumulate substantially new function.
At issue is the ability to accumulate to create new genes and features such as things like an insulin regulated metabolism in vertebrates.
The positive case for ID is very similar to the positive case for archaeology, SETI and forensic science. Archaeologists determine if something is an artifact by finding signs of work. SETI looks for signs of ET by finding evidence of counterflow. And forensics also looks for signs of work and counterflow.
Both CSI and IC* are such signs.
*to refute IC as an indicator of ID it is not enough to show nature can produce a minimally IC structure. That would be like saying that by showing you can carry one pound that you can carry one ton.
PaV,
Yes PaV, they get upset when asked to test the claims of their position. They think that by attacking ID that is enough. Yet out of the other side of their mouths they say that showing evolutionism to be false is not support for ID. I call that blatant hypocrisy
No scientist would ever suggest such a thing exactly because it would be incredibly silly. All this means is that they have good sense, and science has NO answer for how proteins came about in the first place. Does that slow you down any? I didn’t think so.
This proposition makes a whole lot more sense than thinking random causes can bring about complex specified instances of information.
Did I anywhere even suggest that we “toss out all of thermodynamics”? Did I? Well? I said that it is possible that what Sal had been taught had a flaw that gets in the way of understanding “how” the laws are to be understood.
Why don’t you read Provine’s Random Genetic Drift, which has as its premise that the entirety of population genetics is built upon a misudnerstanding of Sewell Wright. You might find it interesting.
So, in the case of those who say, “Oh, everyone knows that the earth is an open system and the energy of the sun is plenty enough to fuel the increased entropy of cellular life,” well, they’re simply wrong. You can’t come to that conclusion. You can only say that there’s enough energy available for something like that to happen; but is says absolutely nothing about how amino acids could align in the proper order—they’re not quantums of energy, but atomic systems.
You should think a little harder before you respond. Here’s an example: there’s enough electrical energy available via control panels to run a factory; but that same control panel can also light up a WalMart, or be used to make auto parts. IOW, the ‘energy’ is there, but how it will be used is something different. Looking just at the control panel tells you nothing of what the energy will produce. Other things have to happen. The right machinery has to be in place. Function so intelligence, of course.
They are not simply wrong. They are, in fact, correct, properly understood. But it’s a weak argument, IMO. There are stronger ones to be made.
I explained myself sufficiently well up above. You simply don’t care to understand. It’s not ignorance on your part; it’s belligerence. I have no remedy for that.
That’s a restatement of the fact that we don’t know the details of OOL.
Good job of restating the obvious, with extra scarey profundity sauce.
Why is that an issue. Are you saying new genes do not arise?
How can you test the claim that natural selection, drift or neutral changes produced new genes?
Allen:
There are incredible discontinuities in both the fossil record and in animal life. We don’t see “intermediates.” Without “intermediates” it takes some kind of leap of faith to assume “common descent.” Common inheritance, well, that it a reasonable assumption.
Now, your position is that while animals were giving rise to other animals, changes occurred, and a sufficient amount of change occurred for new species to arise. And, so, how is that to be distinguished from an Intelligent Designer (God) from intervening in this succession of animals and bringing about a “sufficient amount of change . . . for [a] new species to arise.” You see my point?
Allen:
Because the author I was reading was an expert in the field who looked at problem in particular depth, and who was able to give meaning to the explanation given for that problem. The particular problem is for a system of gases. And anyone who has studied thermodynamics knows what the right answer is. And it is a problem which would not normally arise anywhere else except in a system of gases. Hence, you can misunderstand the significance of the ‘right answer,’ yet know what that ‘right answer’ is, and then use thermodynamics in a completely proper way without ever having need of the proper understanding of this ‘right answer.’
IOW, in the everyday life of a scientist, this meaning is non-essential. It only becomes an issue when you start applying the 2nd Law to OOL and evolution that this meaning becomes critical. That is, scientists don’t “have it wrong.”
Do we see intermediates between wolves and dogs?
Is the fossil record complete on the wolf to teacup poodle transition?>
It is not just a matter of faith. There is plenty of evidence. Dawkin’s himself says that life looks as if it has been designed. He thinks, though, that it is a ‘mirage,’ just like thinking the sun revolved around the earth was a ‘mirage.’ But one mirage does not a dozen make. Some things are just as they appear.
So, if the world appears ‘designed’ according to Dawkins, then maybe that should be included in schools simply by saying that in the Christian tradition the world is considered to be designed. Why is only one side given?
And it is a side that is, per Dawkins, counterintuitive. How do you know you’re not abusing children by teaching them to not “believe their lying eyes.” Just a question to ask yourself as you throw words around like ‘abuse.’
I do. And they’re all “man-made”; you know, “intelligently designed.”
What I really have in mind are things like “feathers,” and the amniotic egg, etc.
You didn’t answer the question. Where in the fossil record are the transitional fossils linking wolves and teacup poodles?
PaV: Where is the molecular transition record linking wolves and teacup poodles?
If you found wolf and teacup poodle fossils in some ancient strata, would you judge them as the same species, based on the criterion generally used for such determinations? What about wolves and bulldogs? If all we had were a few fossils?
How long do you think it takes to make a morphological transition that would be regarded in the fossil record as a distinct species?
How do you know there should be such transitional fossils?
Dogs and wolves can interbreed, and as far as I know they share the same genes, maybe different alleles, likely different transgenerational epigenetic heritable factors. Who knows, but if they can breed with each other, or if a interbreeding ring can be formed (as in ring species), they are the same species.
Creatures with different genes and mechanisms for utilizing these genes is another story than just alleles.
If the rate of gene deletion vs. gene emergence is negative, then that is consistent with the ANNIHILATOR model. Given that reductive evolution by natural selection (as in deletion of genetic material ) is the dominant mode of evolution for species that survive, then ANNIHILATOR wins out over WEASEL as a more accurate model of real evolution.
But that’s not all. In interspecies competition – say a human, vs. a variety of endangered plants — natural selection wipes out huge amount of plant complexity for next to zero gain in human complexity. Thus the ANNIHILATOR model is superior to Dawkins WEASEL in that regard as well.
So then how did biological organisms emerge with so much complexity if Dawkins and Darwin’s claims are falsified?
It seems obvious life emerged by means other than what Darwin and Dawkins claim, regardless of whether we invoke ID/creation or not. If I were an evolutionist, I’d go with Koonin for OOL and maybe some unknown mechanism for events after OOL — how about a godless Black Swan process. Though space aliens has problems of its own as a theory, it’s at least entertaining — as in 2001 a Space Odyssey
But if the only evidence we had of wolves and dogs was the fossil record, would they be judged to be the same species?
How long does it take for enough morphological change to occur so that the fossil record appears to indicate separate species?
If we have no fossil record for the wolf to dog transition, what is the point of calling gaps in other records? The gaps that exist are almost entirely at the species level.
Why is a program that doesn’t work superior to one that does?
Indeed. Speciation involves breeding isolation so that populations of the same species will accumulate variation that, due to different selection pressure in different niches, will eventually result in sufficient differences to prevent interbreeding. It’s not cut and dried. It’s a process needing time.
Yet, oddly, Doug Axe reported that he had not used the explanatory filter in his work. Does Frankie know Douglas Axe’s mind better than Doug Axe?
Where does that leave cladistics?
Below is comparison between half a maned wolf skull and half a thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) skull.
But we know that maned wolves are more closely related to bulldogs than to thylacines. In fact they are closer to elephants than they are to thylacines. Do you think that putative evolutionary trees would reflect this fact if all we had were a few fossils?