Scordova has posted something that caught my attention at UD.
William Dembski:
It’s up to ID proponents to demonstrate a few incontrovertible instances where design is uniquely fruitful for biology. Scientists without an inordinate attachment to Darwinian evolution (and there are many, though this fact is not widely advertised) will be only too happy to shift their allegiance if they think that intelligent design is where the interesting problems in biology lie.
Can we say that as there’s been no significant shift in allegiance to Intelligent Design, ID proponents have in fact failed to to demonstrate a few incontrovertible instances where design is uniquely fruitful for biology?
By this definition provided by ID’s own Dr Dembski, ID has failed as a project.
The grand quest never left the dock.
What if organisms instantiate designs that have no functional significance but that nonetheless give biological investigators insight into functional aspects of organisms. Such second-order designs would serve essentially as an “operating manual,” of no use to the organism as such but of use to scientists investigating the organism.
I will watch the thread @ UD with interest. I think it would be the discovery of the century were an “instruction manual” to be found in our genetic heritage. But I am skeptical that it exists if we’ve not even seen the merest hint of it yet.
Dembski’s talk was delivered in 2002. What progress has ID made in the twelve years since?
Not widely advertised by IDiots, that is. Most scientists say that they’d welcome such evidence, if it were ever to appear. The evidence-free conspiracy theory of the IDiots cannot allow this to be so, however.
Meanwhile, the uniquely fruitful applications of evolutionary theory (sans intelligent guidance) remain routine, and unacknowledged by the likes of Dembski.
Intelligence remains a useful consideration in archaeology, while life remains extremely and absurdly (by the standard of intelligence) derivative, constrained by the patterns of heredity of the various life-forms.
Glen Davidson
I wish someone (paging Tom English) would do an NGram / content analysis of UD for science words vs. religious words over time. Its just shitty apologetics these days.
ID has become more famous and more successful since this old talk.
In fact its a threat.
Remember its very few people who get paid to think about these things and few who seriously do it on their own private time.
This is why error is so easily lingering and why YEC/ID easily can bring down the error.
Its small gangs fighting each other.
Anyways its about public opinion. Its what is persuasive to most people about evidences for God and gEnesis and against evolution and company.
these are heady days of wine for creationism on every side.
We truly are changing modern concepts in certain subjects.
We are the future.
The future? Back in the year dot everyone was a creationist. Nowadays no-one whose scientifically savvy or remotely smart is a creationist…
But Robert, that’s the point. The YEC/IDers have said if no biologists are moving to YEC/ID then YEC/ID has failed. They are not. Therefore it has.
It’s not my logic/rules it’s their own.
Feel free to actually say what those concepts and subjects are, why don’t ya.
No, it’s not. Public opinion is one thing, science is another. 100% of the public believing in Creationism does not make Creationism true or scientific.
If that’s the only victory you want then as Richard points out you’ve had that for almost all of recorded history. The fact that *anyone at all* does not believe in YEC/ID now is a loss for you, not a victory. You started with 100% remember?
I doubt many people believed in the bible back then. it was a minority in europe.
YEC has always been a minority in the world but simply big in Europe.
Its about present day opinions.
Evolutionism was unquestioned in these small circles that studied these things and not its well questioned.
The public does matter as they are a judge of the evidence. not just paid researchers.
Id/YEC is judged by how persuasive its case is to the public and likewise the evolutionists.
Otherwise its making just a few people to matter and them under suspicion perhaps.
We are very well taking on all origin subjects and are today the talk of the town.
Everyone moves to our fiddle beat. Everyone must address the modrn creationist movement in the establishment.
We are winning this intellectual attrition.
Ah, so all you are concerned with is public opinion rather then who is right. Fair enough. Thanks for actually admitting that.
William @ UD
Interesting that their starting point in the argument is that it’s obvious that ID is true. Hardly what I’d call a convincing argument, obviousness.
Obviously! Damm those people who want to define terms so we all understand what we are talking about!
Damm those people who deny the blatant nature of the design in front of their eyes!
What I find interesting here is that ID advocates already believe this, and they’ve done nothing with it. Great, so biology is designed ID advocates, now what?
Darwin made a start on this in his quite famous book, have you read it WJM?
And it’s not about proof, it’s about evidence. The evidence you have is “obviousness”. I don’t think you know what the word “evidence” actually means.
And WJM, how does the definition/usage of FSCO/I in that thread compare to your “demonstration” of the calculation of “raw FSCO/I”, any differences?
OMagain,
Sadly, OM, one cannot argue with those who deny the obvious.
Perhaps he does, but he just doesn’t find it pragmatic enough, for him.
Creationism was accepted without demand for further proof maybe 3-4 thousand years ago. A goatherd chewed his stylus contemplatively and wrote: “In the Beginning …”. Now, to supplant it, extraordinary evidence is required, way beyond that gathered over the last 160 years. Priceless.