I have committed the unpardonable sin of promoting ID as theology and arguing ID is not science. ID is the lineal descendant of Paley’s natural theology (as in contrast to “revealed theology”). I’ve publicly disputed the use of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics as a general argument in favor of ID/Creation, and I’ve been mildly critical of the concept of specified complexity and its successors. I’ve suggested ID is most appropriately taught in college/seminary theology and philosophy departments. When I published a 2005 exchange between myself and Eugenie Scott of the NCSE regarding the appropriateness of ID being taught in college religion and philosophy departments, Eugenie was much kinder to me than some in the ID community who insist “ID is science.” See: Correspondence between Salvador Cordova and Dr. Eugenie Scott
To that end, in conjunction with university professors, deans of Christian and secular colleges (who are favorable to both Intelligent Design and belief in Special Creation), I’m helping build out the electronic component of courses that teach ID and concepts of Creationism for such venues.
The first order of business in such a course is studying Paley’s watch argument and modern incarnations of Paley’s watch. But I’ve found compartmentalizing the pure science and math from the theological issues is helpful. Thus, at least for my own understanding and peace of mind, I’ve considered writing a paper to help define terms that will avoid the use of theologically loaded phrases like “materialism”, “naturalism”, “theism”, and even “Intelligent Design”, etc. I want to use terms that are as theologically neutral as possible to form the mathematical and physical foundation of the ID argument. The purpose of this is to circumvent circular arguments as best as possible. If found what I believe are some unfortunate equivocations and circularity in Bill Dembki’s definition of Design using the explanatory filter, and I’m trying to avoid that.
VJ Torley was very kind to help me phrase the opening of my paper, and I have such high respect for him that I’ve invited him to be a co-author of the paper he so chooses. He of course is free to write his own take on the matters I specify in the opening of my paper. In any case, I’m deeply indebted to him for being a fellow traveler on the net as well as the example he has set as a meticulous scholar.
Here is a draft opening of the papers which I present here at TSZ to solicit comments in the process of revising and expanding my paper.
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Multiverse or Miracles of God?
Circumventing metaphysical baggage when describing massive statistical or physical violations of normative expectations
Intro/Abstract
When attempting to set up a framework for expressing the improbability of phenomena that may turn out to have metaphysical implications, it may be helpful to isolate the metaphysical aspects of these phenomena from the actual math used to describe them. Additionally, the probabilities (which are really statements of uncertainty) can be either observer- or perspective-dependent. For example, in a raffle or a professional sporting league, there is a guaranteed winner. Using more formal terminology, we can say that it is normative that there is a winner, from the perspective of the entire system or ensemble of possibilities; however, from the perspective of any given participant (e.g. an individual raffle ticket holder), it is by no means normative for that individual to be a winner.
With respect to the question of the origin of life and the fine-tuning of the universe, one can postulate a scenario where it is normative for life to emerge in at least one universe, when we are considering the ensemble of all universes (i.e. the multiverse). However, from the perspective of the universe in which an observer happens to be situated, the fine-tuning of that particular universe and the origin of life in that universe are not at all normative: one can reasonably ask, “Why did this universe turn out to be so friendly to life, when it could have been otherwise?” Thus, when someone asserts that it is extremely improbable that a cell should arise from inanimate matter, this statement can be regarded as normative from the perspective of human experience and experimental observations, even though it is not necessarily normative in the ultimate sense of the word. Putting it more informally, one might say that abiogenesis and fine-tuning are miraculous from the human point of view, but whether they are miraculous in the theological or ultimate sense is a question that may well be practically (if not formally) undecidable.
The objective of this article is to circumvent, or at least minimize, the metaphysical baggage of phrases like “natural”, “material”, “supernatural”, “intelligent,” when formulating probabilistic descriptions of phenomena such as the fine-tuning of the universe and the origin of life. One can maintain that these remarkable phenomena are not explicable in terms of any accepted normative mechanisms which are known to us from everyday experience and scientific observation, and remain well within the realm of empirical science. However, whether fine-tuning and the origin of life are normative in the ultimate sense, and whether they are best explained by God or the multiverse, are entirely separate issues, which fall outside the domain of empirical science.
The problem is his model is a reasonable representation of biology. Your stupid strawman example has nothing in common with actual biology. That’s why everyone is laughing at you.
Spliceosome!
Spliceosome! Spliceosome! Spliceosome!
Spliceosome! Spliceosome!
Spliceosome!
therefore
Design!
(facepalm) Evolution doesn’t have to find a wing or an eye. It happened upon rudimentary forms of those particular features and then improved upon them since that increased the reproduction potential of their owners in their local environments.
How stupid does someone have to be when they need reminding ten times a day evolution doesn’t have any pre-selected targets?
Adapa,
There is no basis for this claim as his model oversimplifies the combinatorial problem assuming a fitter allele can become available with random change. My model shows this is unlikely even in a very small sequence.
Without explaining the origin of the spliceosome UCD fails. I see why you want to avoid this subject as it is very difficult to explain through know evolutionary mechanisms.
Everyone is still laughing at your “zxapa” brain fart Bill. Looks like Bill is still full of bull.
Didn’t you hear me I said SPLICEOSOME!!
Spliceosome!
Spliceosome! Spliceosome! Spliceosome!
Spliceosome! Spliceosome!
Spliceosome!
therefore
Design!
😀 😀 😀
Adapa,
So now 4 posts and you need to make a personal attack.
It’s showing how fast sequences with 26 substitutions in each place of the sequence break down. This round I made 5 changes. adbva this time. Interestingly enough the a in position one changed too u and back to a. Thats the inside straight Flint was talking about. I drew one but did not evolve.
There’s a lot written on this, so I’ll just give a very brief response. Specified Information is defined by taking a scale of some sort, often a fitness or function scale. The SI in an individual genome (or a sequence) is
, where 
is the fraction of genomes (sequences) in a null distribution that are as good as, or better than, that particular genome. I’ll come back to the null distribution in a moment. The SI is considered Complex (and thus is CSI) if 
is less than 
.
Functional Information (FI) is SI where the scale is the function, such as the activity of an enzyme.
Note that the value
is computed not just for the individual sequence, but is the total probability in the tail of the null distribution from the value for that sequence on up.
The null distribution has three major variants. We can (1) give all possible sequences equal weight, or (2) we can give them the probabilities that they would have in a distribution that would result from pure random mutation, with no natural selection. These are different, but not too much.
But there is a third distribution (3) the distribution that would result from mutation and natural selection, and all other natural evolutionary forces. In that case computing
is a lot harder.
Distributions (1) and (2) were the ones used by William Dembski in his 2002 book No Free Lunch, where he argued using a Law of Conservation of Complex Specified Information that natural evolutionary forces were inherently unable to achieve CSI. (His argument there was wrong). In a 2005-2006 article Specification: The Pattern That Signifies Intelligence Dembski instead argued for definition (3). I and others here have pointed out that this is a useless definition that rules out natural evolutionary forces by having you rule them out before you can decide whether one sees CSI.
Interestingly, ID advocates here often consider FI to be the same as SI. But FI always uses null distributions (1) or (2), whereas these days those who want to use CFI to rule out natural evolutionary forces always use definition (3).
One can also use a scale of how simply the DNA sequence can be described. This is what is used to compute ASC (Algorithmically Specified Complexity). I will argue in a post here, soon, that that quantity is totally useless in arguing against natural evolutionary processes having produced the adaptations that we see.
Where does your model have feedback from selection Bill?
What’s that?
It doesn’t?
So it doesn’t model evolution at all. It’s just a stupid Creationist brain fart as described. 😀
That is a puzzling summary. In evolutionary models, there is a fitness function (item #2). There is no target (#1) and the search strategy (#3) is simply for some organisms to survive and reproduce better, which is what results in the higher fitness. So there’s really only one thing to “line up”. Lining up one thing is not-so-hard.
Facebook User: Kabvf Adbva
Looks like Bill shot himself in the foot again. 😀
Adapa,
Finding a better looking person than you and more likely to reproduce. So far only O Magain found a possibility but the next set of mutations lost that possibility so we could not make a selection. Since most mutations are neutral this sequence is rapidly moving to garbage. Another 5 letter random search gets tdast. Not much help here although the letters symbolize an organization.
For Joe’s argument to work he needs to show that random change to allele sequences can consistently improve fitness and not break it down. This can happen occasionally but how many times does it have to happen to produce an eye? Why would fitness improvements move a blind object toward an eye with 10000 organized nucleotides needed just for a light sensitive spot (first selectable point)? We are struggling to get 15 organized (3 by 4 code translated to 26 letters) to find a common name and the more we mutate the closer we get to garbage.
Looks like Bill shot himself in the foot again.
Is he selectable?
BruceS,
To answer your specific question, in my 2012 post here I used CSI, with the scale for the specificity being fitness. It was not FI or ASC.
LOL! What a lame dodge. The trait you were varying is the 5 letter sequence, not looks or reproductive ability.
Like always you’ll say anything when you get caught claiming something stupid, which is most every time you post.
TDAST: Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal
http://www.tdast.gov.in
Damn Bill, you face planted yet again. Doesn’t that hurt?
A brief skim tells me he is looking only at the matured protein – ie not DNA. Some DNA is involved in those sequences, for sure. But for a holistic analysis, one should consider the gene in its entirety. We find that there are zones of high conservation – they correspond to exons – and zones of lesser conservation: introns.
That even within ‘conserved’ genes we find regions that can be subject to phylogenetic analysis. If one attempts to use the conservation of exons to dispute phylogeny, right next door are regions holding vital … information. (Eta – see also silent substitution within exons)
Even so, 41 of the damn things. Isn’t that a little .. baroque? The number of potential permutations is astronomical. You’d only need a couple, I’d be willing to bet.
I despair of ever writing so clearly my point can’t be evaded, but I can keep trying. First, I repeat that evolution has no targets!!. Next I repeat that every step (small change) must be viable, by which I mean the organism possessing it must be able to live.
Next, to explain the drunkard’s walk metaphor. Each small step in some unpredictable direction finds a new viable location in variation space. We know this because offspring survive and sometimes breed – even when they are not exact duplicates of their parent(s).
Now, the implication of this is, there is an essentially infinite number of viable variations, or (if you will) features “out there” to be stumbled on. With some imagination, you might speculate on some of the infinite number of features no organism has yet stumbled on. How about telekinesis, or telepathy, or immortality, or concepts we don’t even have words for. I can assure you countless features possessed by no organism are awaiting chance discovery.
The next thing to realize is that the odds of stumbling on any new feature are infinitesimally small no matter what that feature might be! Even the simplest features are incomprehensibly unlikely, yet SOME new features are guaranteed, simply because so many billions of organisms are constantly changing in unpredictable ways.
Here is an analogy: imagine tossing a stone high in the air. It will come to rest in some precise location. Before the throw, the odds of it landing exactly there and nowhere else are nearly zero. AFTER the throw, we realize that the stone had to come to rest somewhere, and the odds of it landing where it does were nearly zero no matter where it comes down! And this is true even if you closed your eyes and spun around 3 times before throwing it.
If you regard the precise landing spot as a target, you just witnessed a miracle that almost requires a supernatural designer. If you realize the stone had to land somewhere, what you witnessed was boringly normal.
Evolving organisms are like that stone. They are guaranteed to produce SOME result and after they do, if we presume this random result was a target, we can marvel at its prohibitive improbability, absent some Designer.
Adapa,
Not a selectable sequence. Remember the criteria.
Flint,
Then how does it explain the arrival of a new sequence?
Flint,
I will give you the point that this may explain simple adaptions. Not much beyond that without ID.
Allan Miller,
I would bet on one variation only so I agree. The reason for the introns may be gene expression control.
LOL! Bill every sequence you’ve come up with so far has shown a functional use. That makes them all selectable.
Face it, your “gotcha” example blew up right in your face. Now you’re just looking for a graceful exit. 😀
In every generation random changes are made to already functional sequences. The changes which are neutral or beneficial pass through selection and become the next functional baseline.
Why do you ask the same stupid question 100X over and ignore the same scientific answer you are given every last time?
You bitch about people being mean to you but you keep up the same stupid sea-lion trolling for years with no end in sight. You earned the treatment you receive Dory.
But every single change to any organism is simple. Most are not even adaptations – they are just differences. I think it IS a bit too simple to say that environments guide evolution, because many differences (resulting from “random” mutations) result in an organism that is LESS adapted for the current environment, but might fit better into some adjacent environment. Take something not requiring a lot of magic, like (say) thicker fur. The recipient of this mutation might fare poorly unless it moves to a colder climate. The colder climate didn’t exactly select for thicker fur, and the organism may not have survived long if no colder climate were available.
The thing about a drunkard’s walk is that if it goes on long enough, some drunks (only a very few, perhaps) are going to wind up a LONG way from their starting point. And yet, they got there one random step at a time. So the question you need to answer is, exactly how far from the drunk’s starting point does he need to get, before ID is required to get him there?
And, once again (this gets tiresome), he has billions of years to stagger around. You need to make it clearer that the brand of ID you are pushing assumes a very short time span. If life did start only 6000 years ago, I agree anything beyond simple adaptation would require magic.
This question is confused. EVERY MUTATION is the arrival of a potential new sequence. So long as the mutation permits its recipient to survive and breed, the new sequence starts right there. So we’re back to asking how many steps the drunk must take, before you would consider him to be in a “new” location. I would say every single step moves him to a new location. You seem to define “new location” as somewhere that cannot be reached from here.
So your designer must have been with the earth from the beginning of life to present day, tinkering as it goes?
Is that a deity or an alien you believe in?
You still don’t need 41 separate introns for that.
Introns are quite a bad idea in many respects. They form crevices where fluff can accumulate. It’s true that one can make lemonade, by potentially utilising the slowdown of transcription in a beneficial manner (in that respect, introns act as information, albeit non-specific). But transposons and retroviral sequences are over-represented in introns, for mechanistic reasons.
Hi Bill. I won’t be joining the discussion, but I noticed you using the phrase “evolutionary separation”.
Just wanted to know whether that means you accept common descent o’ mice an ‘men?
(Apologies to Robert Burns)
Come on Bill, I’m sure you can do better than this. Yes, the current view is that most of the mutations that we observe, those that have survived, are neutral to semi-neutral. That doesn’t change the fact that beneficial mutations are more likely to survive and spread than deleterious mutations. The neutral and semi-neutral add variability in the meantime. They’re part of the game. Some semi-neutral mutations can be beneficial under new circumstances and thus spread. Etc. It can get very complicated, but the basic ideas are very easy to understand Bill, and I’m sure you can understand them, even if you’d rather not.
gouccio is an ass-hole who doesn’t understand the difference between random mutations and systematic ones. He will insult everybody based on his confused view. His idiotic admirers will celebrate such insulting, showing the they don’t understand anything either.
Oh, but if he finds the difference to be convenient to him, then he understands it all right.
So, sorry, but I prefer not to go and read what that imbecile has to say about spliceosomes. I cannot stand those in-your-face hypocrites.
It’s the other way around, no ID before a lot of that.
Entropy,
Disrespecting someone is not an argument. Underestimating people shows a lack of intelligence as in my world this is how business fail. Gpuccio is not perfect but he makes a lot of good points.
Disrespecting people who have repeatedly shown their incompetence and intellectual dishonesty in the subject is to be expected Bill.
Have you said that to gpuccio? He disrespected us here many times over, and all because of his own “confusion.”
Sure. That idiot underestimated me too many times, to the point of making ridiculing remarks when the confusion was all his. Thus, I concluded that he lacks intelligence and honesty.
ETA: Since his business at UCD is to keep fools gasping in astonishment, I doubt that his underestimating us will lead to his business’ failure any time soon. The fools don’t understand, and they prefer gpuccio’s “conclusions.” They go by preference because the reasoning is beyond them.
Nah. He’s an idiot with illusions of grandeur. He thinks he has a superior intellect just because he uses tools that make his admirers gasp in astonishment. But me? Nah. I am not impressed by apparent good intentions, and apparent hard work. He accompanies his delusions with dishonesty, hypocrisy, pedantry, and lack of self-awareness. His “points” are but convoluted confusions.
If I could only be this succinct.
LOL, no, he can’t
Entropy,
I have to admit you have made the ad hominem logical fallacy an art form 🙂
It’s not ad hominem Bill. I refuted his “arguments” back then, and my conclusion about his intellect and honesty come from his pretentious “answers” to my refutals, and the point you just made: you said that underestimating opponents shows lack of intelligence. Well, gpuccio did just that. See? You agreed with me. Given your own reasoning, gpuccio lacks intelligence.
Remember, ad hominem is when the argument is dismissed on the basis of the arguer’s character/etc, rather than on its own merits. But it’s not ad hominem when we examine the arguments, find them lacking, and conclude from them, and the inability of the arguer to understand the answers, that the arguer is a dishonest idiot.
After being corrected again and again, Bill still thinks that if you say something bad about your opponent, you are committing the ad hominem fallacy.
Entropy,
As hominem is when you attack a person that you are engaged in argument with. You are a smart guy and I am trying to give you advise from an old man. Make your arguments about substance. Gpuccio’s IQ is of very little interest 🙂
No it’s not Bill. It’s when you claim someone’s argument is wrong because of an unrelated personal flaw of that person (i.e they’re ugly, their feet stink, etc.). That’s not what happened with gpuccio’s nonsense and it’s not what happens to the stupid science-free arguments you post.
Like most ignorant Creationists you think yelling AD HOM! is a magic bullet which invalidates all scientific criticisms.
There’s a good reason Bill has picked up the nickname “Dory” in the C/E sites he frequents. 🙂
Adapa,
This is where you live Tim. Maybe someday you will grow out of it.
That says exactly what we’re saying Bill. Check it carefully and you’ll see.
ETA:
See? It’s not ad hominem if we conclude that the person is a dishonest idiot based on the idiocy displayed in the argument, and the lack of intelligence to understand the refutals, mixed with dishonesty in the arguer’s strategy to deal with such refutals.
Now, let’s continue our exchange, please.
Perhaps you meant “acting like” a dishonest asshat.
I too find the inability of understand what ad hominem means rather annoying. But it is revealing too.
Entropy,
Sure it is. His character has nothing to do his arguments. Why do you even mention it? This strategy is contrary to the culture of this blog. It should stand for everyone and until it refrains I really don’t want to participate.
Maybe someday you’ll stop being such a sweet honest Creationist 😀 and quit ignoring all the free science lessons people give you, then coming back the next day with the same stupid claims.
No one is holding their breath Dory.
When someone makes the same dumb arguments dozens of times after being shown the refutation with no mention of the refutation then the person’s character is fair game to be commented on. You are an expert on that for sure.
Then go back and hide at UD where your science-free stupidity and sea-lioning will be embraced instead of being pulverized.
Something of a gray area here. Your repeated errors, despite repeated corrections, are the source of these characterizations. However, a true ad hominem occurs when the arguments presented are being ignored. To say “I disagree with you because you are a dunce” is an ad hominem. But to say “here is what is wrong with what you say, and only an idiot would make such an error”, is not quite an ad hominem because the argument itself is being rejected on the merits.
However, I agree that personal attacks add nothing to the discussion even if the pejorative characterizations are richly deserved. Honest (and informed) readers can draw this conclusion without someone else pointing it out.
Flint,
We don’t always agree but I respect your way of arguing.