Let me clarify that by saying that I mean a theory that purports to be a scientific theory, that makes testable predictions (“if ID was correct we should observe…, if ID were not correct, we should not observe…”) and is an alternative explanation for the diversity and extent of the pattern of life we see on Earth.
This is far from the first time I’ve asked this question. A quick search finds a couple of threads at Uncommon descent but I’ve had no satisfactory replies beyond the usual default that says something like:
The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system’s components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago.
I wonder if any of our contributors can finally enlighten me as to what the scientific, biological theory of “Intelligent Design” actually entails.
Of course they are. CSI is all about functional information. FITs refer to functional sequence complexity which is the same as CSI.
And then send them a copy of the wedge document, so what?
Yes, reality does win
No, they most certainly are not. If you think they are, you haven’t looked at the definition of either.
Go ahead, present the function for CSI and that for fits and prove them equivalent.
The point is that being seemingly capricious is neither necessary nor sufficient for being undetermined.
Of course they are.
Meyer makes it clear that CSI with respect to biology refers to sequence function and the specificity required.
and
Now compare with https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2217542/:
Now what?
I think you’ll enjoy this: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/31/durstons-devious-distortions/
Alan Fox,
This is a quote via live science. This seems very arbitrary because how do you determine if enough evidence has been achieved. The scientific method asks for repeatable testing as a part of its process. If testing were required I don’t think either the theory of evolution or intelligent design is ready yet. If testing is not required then both could be considered competing theories.
Probably not as much as Frankie will. Care to address Myers’ utter destruction of Durston’s metric, Frankie?
That’s utterly immaterial to the question at hand. The metric that Durston uses and Dembski’s CSI are not the same. They do not calculate the same value (Dembski’s can’t be used to calculate anything).
So if, for example, the theory of evolution and the theory of intelligent design were put to the test and evolution passed the test and ID failed it, you’d become a evolution supporter then as it’d be ‘ready’?
Can anyone think of a test we could use to differentiate between ID and evolution? Anyone, anyone, Beuler…., Beuler
I mean, what colewd seems to be saying is the score is 0:0 and the team that scores a point is then ‘ready’. Whatever that means.
So, gosh, where to begin…..
You mean besides all that has been mentioned and that he’s ignored while repeating failed claims?
Probably nothing.
Yes, one has to appeal to the entailed and discovered evidence, rather than blowing it all off to repeat inane claims. Yet one can still do the latter, and at least one does.
Glen Davidson
Exactly. If he genuinely gave a shit he’d go and look himself. It’s absurd to even pretend that ID is “testable”.
Do people really think they ought to be able to measure how much design is in something?
So educational, scientific, and patriotic?
So lots of designers. One for every niche. Sounds eminently testable.
Right,just like the Institute of Creation Research
Stonehenge probably had lots of designers
So theories are supposed to be explanatory?
GlenDavidson,
What specific failed claims? What was the method of falsifying these claims?
What makes you think Stonehenge was designed?
There are many theories of intelligent design, therefore there is no theory of intelligent design.
Humans have been know to move stones around and we have physical evidence that humans were in the vicinity at the same times it was constructed. Stonehenge also lines up with astrological events, humans elsewhere have been observed using those events as a measure of time.
Try that line at UD
What’s in Barry’s purse again?
Doesn’t make the slightest difference. If the observed complexity, hierarchical or whatever, is out of reach of evolution, there are three options to explain it from an IDC perspective
(1) The complexity arose as living forms were specially created in their present form or one such as all the complex systems were already present. This rejects UCD
(2) UCD is well supported by the evidence, but complex systems had to be introduced by the designer in one fell swoop. Dogs giving birth to cats, so to speak
(3) UCD is well supported by the evidence and the complex systems were formed gradually, generation after generation with some undetectable intervention of the designer here and there. This is no different than standard evolutionary processes and there’s no reason to believe any sort of intervention is needed to build complexity in a step wise fashion
All three options fall flat on their face
That’s utterly immaterial to the question at hand.The metric that Durston uses and Dembski’s CSI are not the same.They do not calculate the same value (Dembski’s can’t be used to calculate anything).
LoL! They are the same by definition, Patrick. I never said they used Dembski’s metric. That is irrelevant.
How do you know the stones have been moved around? Only humans move stones?
Just because we don’t know why they line up with astrological events doesn’t mean humans did it. You are using the Humans of the Gaps fallacy.
phoodoo,
There’ll be a post forthcoming on how we know what we know about stonehenge. You and Joe are welcome to calculate the CSI of stonehenge.
dazz,
Why?
Myer needs to reply in peer-review. He also has to demonstrate blind and mindless processes are capable of producing proteins.
For the trillionth time,
Option 1 rejects the huge body of evidence in support of UCD
Option 2 implies “dogs giving birth to cats”
Option 3 is simply the standard, gradualistic evolutionary model, if complexity can arise gradually, the premise that complexity poses a problem for evolution is falsified
Of course there’s a theory of intelligent design. Here it is:
Stonehenge was probably designed.
Cells are just like Stonehenge but even more so.
Therefore, cells were probably designed.
So even though nature can produce stones it cannot produce something as relatively simple as Stonehenge. Is it because the molecules of life are very small that you think nature can pull it off? I would think that would make it more difficult.
But anyway why couldn’t those people have come across a natural formation and set up camp there?
dazz,
Option one can also be evidence for common design. The is also a great deal of contrary evidence against common descent which includes the lack of a mechanism to support the concept and the large jumps that are hard to explain like prokaryotic to eukaryotic transition.
Option 2 can easily unfold without dogs turning into cats.
Option 3 does not falsify that complexity is not a problem for either RMNS or the neutral theory because option 3 hypothesizes that design direction is required for speciation. Option 3 is not a blind guided process.
colewd,
derp. bye
There’s an interesting contradiction between what ID advocates here are saying about CSI, and what Dembski and Ewert say about it.
The local advocates are pointing to Durston’s use of CSI, saying it is the same as the use by Hazen et. al. (2007). I more or less agree — at least Durston stated his intention of using the Hazen et al. concept. Jonathan McLatchie has also pointed to that definition of CSI in his use of it in his 2-minute One Minute Apologetics contribution.
Hazen et al.’s definition lacks an important part of Dembski’s 2005/2006 definition. Hazen et al. consider probabilities over a uniform space of all possible sequences. In effect that is considering what pure mutation can do — with no natural selection.
But Dembski’s 2005/2006 concept explicitly asks us to compute the probability that a sequence as good as, or better than a given level of function when this is computed to include the probability that natural selection can get us there. He doesn’t say how this is to be done — all of that heavy lifting is casually left to the user, rendering the declaration that CSI is present something you do only after you have shown that natural selection couldn’t do the job with any reasonable probability.
So it is blatantly not true that Hazen’s (and Durston’s) concepts are identical to Dembski’s. But they are used by ID advocates including McLatchie, and other luminaries such as Denyse O’Leary and Barry Arrington. (And, I continue to argue, by Dembski himself in 2002 before he changed the definition). None of these people have a way of showing that natural selection could not put that type of CSI into the genome.
There are two types of CSI. One of which lots of people use in arguments, but their argument does not work. The other of which is defined so as to win the argument, but can only be declared to be present if you, the reader, can first do the hard work of showing that it cannot have been put there by natural selection. Which of course was what we were trying to figure out in the first place.
Umm I just showed that they are basically identical:
and
Now compare with https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2217542/:
In signature in the Cell Meyer points to sequence specificity, that is the specific sequences needed to get functionality.
There isn’t any difference between CSI in a biological context and FSC.
The only reason I reject universal common descent is due to the fact no one can account for all of the differences observed between the different types of organisms. No one can show, on a genetic level, that changes to genomes can account for the anatomical and physiological differences observed.
And no one knows how to test the claim that blind and mindless processes were up to the task.
Variation- height, eye color, hair color, etc, are not the types of changes that can fuel UCD. There is a disconnect between microevolutionary changes and macroevolutionary changes. Antibiotic resistance cannot be extrapolated into macroevolution. Peppered moths don’t explain the moths. The different varieties of birds of paradise don’t explain the birds.
Developmental biology is been the hope of uncovering macroevolutionary change but all they talk about is stripes and spots. The genes that dictate variation are different from the genes that have any hope to produce change on the grand scale. And those genes are regulatory genes, the existence of which strongly supports the design inference…
You’ve had the mechanisms of evolution explained to you ad nausuem. Either you have selective amnesia or are flat out lying. Which is it?
They can and have been shown to knowledgeable folks with the scientific chops to understand them. Too bad for you that list doesn’t include unemployed toaster repairmen.
He didn’t say anything about it being out of reach of evolution. Go back and read again what he actually wrote. All he suggested was that there would be a distribution over the hierarchies with there being more with fewer levels and fewer with a greater number of levels. It’s quite reasonable.
But I think he’s wrong in that if that distribution wasn’t seen, evolutionists would find ad hoc ways to explain it away, like they always do when it comes to missing evidence. e.g., well, it was once like that, in the distant past, but evolution happens and the evidence for it gets lost some times. LoL.
Humans and gods. And volcanoes (which could be the gods). And meteors (also could be the gods). #godsdidit is trending.
Cells are more like Stonehenge than Stonehenge is like Stonehenge?
Why? How do you get from evolutionary theory to that? And how do you get from ID “theory” to the conclusion that we shouldn’t expect such a hierarchical limitation if ID is true? Let’s see how you explain that without tons of ad-hoc and non sequiturs
And why did you ignore the rest of my post, where I present the relevant argument?
(shrug) It’s Mung. Misrepresenting evolutionary science is what he does..
Adapa,
So making the claim that the mechanisms of evolution are not up to the transition I am describing is not ok?
You still appear to have reading comprehension problems or you think that evolutionary mechanisms are above reproach which would make TSZ discussions irrelevant.
When all you do is continue to argue from your own ignorance-based personal incredulity instead of presenting any supporting evidence then no, it’s not OK. Especially after you’ve been corrected on your ignorance and blunders several dozen times. Unless your goal is just to troll and/or make yourself look like an ass in which case you’re doing fine.
Seeing that 3. Naturalistic mechanisms or undirected causes do not suffice to explain the origin of information (specified complexity) or irreducible complexity. is part of ID’s claims by demonstrating naturalistic mechanisms or undirected causes suffice to explain the origin of information (specified complexity) or irreducible complexity, you falsify ID.
ID is falsifiable.
The nearest source of the material is some distance away. Yes phoo, water, ice are both means of transport of stones . Both leave distinctive evidence on the landscape, none of which are observed. The presence of human habitation and independent evidence that humans use stone to build habitations is also supportive.
Correct, it could be completely happenstance, however the other sites nearby like Durrington Walls show the same orientation as well as signs of habitation, this supports the assumption that the structures as well as non henge structures were the result of human design.
What exactly is Human of the Gap fallacy?
If ID isn’t anti-evolution talking about “mechanisms of evolution” borders on equivocation and intellectual cowardice.