Hey folks. I thought given some of the wonderful intellects we have here it would be fun to have an “ask an expert” thread. Don’t get hung up on if you’re an expert or not, if you want to ask a question or supply an answer, have at it!

I was flying into LAX two nights ago and I could see the moon (nearly full) being reflected in a body of water. I began thinking about how the light of the sun had bounced off of the moon and the water create the image in my eyes, like a game of photonic billiards. Which brings me to my question:

If photons are being reflected (“bouncing”) off of the face of the moon, shouldn’t the edges of the moon appear dimmer because the angle should be less favourable to bouncing photons my way?

My take (not original) is the Bill Nye framed the debate as between evolution and young earth creationism.

As long as he wasn’t trounced, evolution wins.

Because ID is a big tent and allows YECs a free pass, it is associated with this debate. Unless it publicly distances itself from Ken ham, it has allowed the evolution debate to be framed as between science and biblical literalism.

Over in the ID Quiz thread at Uncommon Descent, Mark Frank asks;

“Here’s quiz on ID for you ID proponents:
On page 21 of “Specification: The Pattern That Signifies Intelligence” William Dembksi defines the context dependent specified complexity of given as
Consider the context of the bacterial flagellum.
1. What is ?
2. What is the function ?
3. How is  estimated?
4. What is ?
5. How is estimated?
6.  is meant to be a probability. Under what conditions might the answer exceed 1?”

This seems a fair question, asking IDists to use their own proposed methodology to detect design, empirically.
But instead of heartily embracing this opportunity to show the power of ID, he is set upon.
Joe moans that

“Really Mark? Then tell us how to determine the probability wrt unguided evolution. If you know the answers to your questions you should be able to do that.”

Sorry Joe, it’s your methodology, do your own work, if you can.
KirosFocus has a length moan from large numbers and incredulity, finishing with;

“We cannot stop such from those tactics but we can expose them and red ring fence off those who insist on such tactics.”

STOP. RIGHT. THERE.
If you can’t employ your own design detection methodology it is no ones fault but your own.
Either the methodology is unusable,
OR non of you are smart enough to use it,
OR you’re all secretly supports of Darwinian evolution and are making ID look as ridiculous as possible.

All Mark Frank has asked is for you to employ your own methodology. You can’t. ID is intellectually bankrupt, and only addressing the required calculations will change that.

[Edit: symbols latexed by Lizzie]

At UD, nullasalus has written a post in which he complains that critics of intelligent design often misrepresent ID.

In the near decade that I’ve been watching the Intelligent Design movement, one thing has consistently amazed me: the pathological inability of many ID critics to accurately represent what ID actually is, what claims and assumptions are made on the part of the most noteworthy ID proponents, and so on. Even ID critics who have been repeatedly informed about what ID is seem to have a knack for forgetting this in later exchanges. It’s frustrating – and this from a guy who’s not even a defender of ID as science.

But I’m interested in progress on this front, and I think I’ve come up with a good solution: let’s have an ID quiz. And let’s put this quiz to critics, in public, so at the very least we can see whether or not they’re even on the same page as the ID proponents they are criticizing.

Here are the questions:

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