Taking “ID is science” out of the ID/Creation argument

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.

662 thoughts on “Taking “ID is science” out of the ID/Creation argument

  1. colewd:
    Sure it is. His character has nothing to do his arguments.

    Maybe not, but his intelligence, rather lack thereof, has everything to do with his arguments, and his character has everything to do with the way he responds to refutals.

    colewd:
    Why do you even mention it?

    Because you pointed to something that guy wrote. But enough of this. Let’s continue the conversation.

  2. Entropy,

    Because you pointed to something that guy wrote. But enough of this. Let’s continue the conversation.

    If I quote someone and you attack the person I quote that is not an argument against what I quoted.

    I think we have some common ground as you appear to be skeptical on UCD. I think Eric is right that copying information and incurring random change is not a reliable way to generate information or functional sequences. They are much more likely to erode than improve. The bottom line here is that micro evolution is a very solid theory but macro evolution is without any basic theory or mechanistic explanation to support it.

  3. colewd: The bottom line here is that micro evolution is a very solid theory but macro evolution is without any basic theory or mechanistic explanation to support it.

    Why doesn’t millions of years of microevolution accumulate into macro evolution?

  4. colewd:
    Entropy,

    I think we have some common ground as you appear to be skeptical on UCD. I think Eric is right that copying information and incurring random change is not a reliable way to generate information or functional sequences.They are much more likely to erode than improve.

    You would be entirely correct, were it not for this little thing called selection. If 99% (or even 99.99%) of mutations were not helpful, what you call “functional sequences” would still occur, because the 1% (or even .01%) of beneficial mutations would be retained (selected, conserved) and the remainder would be discarded.

    And if this “retain the very rare beneficial mutations, discard the rest” process should continue for a billion years, you get the biodiversity you see around you.

    What I don’t understand is, WHY do you consistently ignore both selection and time, and argue that without selection and time, macroevolution doesn’t work? Nobody would disagree with that statement. What people disagree with you about is that selection actually happens, and so does time. Because both of these are very real and very relevant, you MUST account for them somehow, or else your position is clearly based on selective (there’s that word again) ignorance.

  5. OMagain: Why doesn’t millions of years of microevolution accumulate into macro evolution?

    Well, see, a single step is not a journey. Reduce travel to single steps, and journeys cannot happen.

  6. colewd:

    …… micro evolution is a very solid theory but macro evolution is without any basic theory or mechanistic explanation to support it.

    If you accept microevolution, then the only explanation you need for macroevolution is the fact that small changes can accumulate into big differences over time.

    Are you denying this basic feature of reality? Is this somehow outside of your personal experience?

  7. OMagain,

    The best case scenario according to Art Hunts paper is 10 billion to one for 100 AA protein that it will drift toward function. A gene duplicates and it does not transcribe and it changes due to un repaired mutations. At some point through serendipity transcription starts.

  8. Fair Witness,

    If you accept microevolution, then the only explanation you need for macroevolution is the fact that small changes can accumulate into big differences over time.

    While degraded information can form simple adaptions it does not generate new complex features.

  9. colewd:
    I think Eric is right that copying information and incurring random change is not a reliable way to generate information or functional sequences.

    Of course not. But incurring random changes and selecting from them would be a very reliable way to generate new information. You keep forgetting selection Bill. Not only that, you keep asking us to also forget about selection. Sorry, but we already know that random changes alone wouldn’t do anything. You don’t need to convince me of that. But random changes and selection produce variability and thus new information. No way around.

    colewd:
    They are much more likely to erode than improve.

    Without selection? Sure. That’s what would happen. not so with selection/recombination/reproduction/etc.

    colewd:
    The bottom line here is that micro evolution is a very solid theory but macro evolution is without any basic theory or mechanistic explanation to support it.

    There’s plenty of theory and “mechanistic explanations” to support “macroevolution,” including “microevolution” itself.

    ETA: Seems like I’m repeating what’s been said already, but maybe this new version helps.

  10. colewd:
    Entropy,

    I think Eric is right that copying information and incurring random change is not a reliable way to generate information or functional sequences.They are much more likely to erode than improve.

    It’s a standing joke on more than one C/E board that Bill just absolutely positively refuses to ever consider the effects of selection feedback in his pet anti-evolution argument. It’s like he’s afraid Yahweh will smite him with lightning if he even types the word selection. 😀

  11. Entropy: ETA: Seems like I’m repeating what’s been said already, but maybe this new version helps.

    It won’t. Bill has had his failure to include selection explained to him probably close to a hundred times in the last several years. Lots and lots of people have typed lots of lots of words with the same explanation but Bill just refuses to listen or learn. He’ll be back here tomorrow making the same idiotic argument – just wait.

  12. colewd: The best case scenario according to Art Hunts paper is 10 billion to one for 100 AA protein that it will drift toward function. A gene duplicates and it does not transcribe and it changes due to un repaired mutations. At some point through serendipity transcription starts.

    Yes.
    We need to get a way to put that “10 billion to 1” number in context.

    How many potential, novel open reading frames exist in nature at this very moment? Go out and pick some appreciably large geographical area(like a state, a country, or a continent), determine the total diversity of species in this area, sequence all their genomes, and then try to find out how much total genome there exists in all these species with the potential to serve as open reading frames(as in, how much total DNA is there which, if transcribed, could be translated into a protein sequence of 100 amino acids or longer?). How many such potential genes exist out there right now?

  13. Entropy,

    Of course not. But incurring random changes and selecting from them would be a very reliable way to generate new information.

    Then create a model without a target sequence and show you can generate new information. This is the science that would move evolution forward. Start with a 300 character string. The origin of life requires the organization of around 100k character string.

    BTW there is a 10 million dollar prize if you can do this. If you struggle here I will not engage again if you repeat the above claim.

  14. colewd:
    Then create a model without a target sequence and show you can generate new information.

    There you go again asking us to generate new information without selection. Here it goes again: without selection it won’t work. We already know this. Thus we introduce an element of selection in any simulation. It cannot work otherwise, and nobody expects it to work otherwise.

    colewd:
    This is the science that would move evolution forward.

    Generating useful/”information-loaded” sequences by pure randomness without an element of selection? I doubt it.

    colewd:
    Start with a 300 character string. The origin of life requires the organization of around 100k character string.

    Sorry, but you cannot know that. The origin of life is so far far away in the past that I’d think that there’s little to no trace of what it was like. Thus nothing, not even the very best phylogenetic reconstructions, can reach back there.

    Also, I have no reason to accept your speculations about what it would require. After all, you’re but following the fallacious thinking of apologists. I prefer a scientifically-informed position instead.

    colewd:
    BTW there is a 10 million dollar prize if you can do this.

    Well, if there’s a prize attached to generating “information,” or useful sequences, by mere randomness, nobody will be able to get it. If there’s one for generating useful molecules by random variation and selection, then the prize should have been given already.

    colewd:
    If you struggle here I will not engage again if you repeat the above claim.

    Struggle? The problem is that you seem to lack understanding of the role of selection.

    What’s the point of engaging if you want people to use your “model” of evolution, a creationist straw-man, rather than learn what evolution actually entails?

    Anyway, if this is it, then have a nice day/week/year/life/whatever.

  15. Entropy,

    Struggle? The problem is that you seem to lack understanding of the role of selection.

    You can put selection in your model just not a target sequence to select against. As far a OOL goes I think we know that a minimum of around 400 genes is required for reliable cell replication.

    Selection has become the buzz word. You need enough change and improvement to have something select against.

    Science is not about vague descriptions it’s about models and testing.

  16. Entropy: There you go again asking us to generate new information without selection.

    Struggle? The problem is that you seem to lack understanding of the role of selection.

    LOL! Told you. Like clockwork. 🙂

  17. colewd: Selection has become the buzz word.

    We’ll keep repeating it too as long as you’re stupid enough to keep demanding a model produce new information without it.

    After two years of being constantly corrected on your same remarkably stupid blunder don’t you think it’s time you learned some evolutionary basics?

  18. Adapa,

    We’ll keep repeating it too as long as you’re stupid enough to keep demanding a model produce new information without it.

    And you still make the unsupported claim that it is responsible for the information in the genome. Let’s see if Joe and Entropy can come up with a model to support your claim.

  19. colewd:
    And you still make the unsupported claim that it is responsible for the information in the genome.Let’s see if Joe and Entropy can come up with a model to support your claim.

    It is not an unsupported claim. Whether you like it or not, you should not forget that selection is part of the way evolution works. Forgetting it makes you look pretty bad. So, stop forgetting about it. Stop asking us to make models that don’t include selection. A target sequence is put there to have something to select against. But, if you don’t like something that direct, remember that evolutionary algorithms do not include sequences as targets, but functions, like whether a circuit can perform some task (engineers then have a very hard time figuring out why the “evolved” circuits work, but they do work when built).*

    Maybe you should start here and then continue looking for Joe’s posts, and focus on those about information.

    Warning, Joe’s models can be a tad hard to understand. You didn’t like it that I write about complex stuff, but, as I told you, making shit up, the way creationists do, is easy. Actual understanding is not.

    *ETA: There’s also experiments where sequences are evolved in the lab, and there’s no target sequence, but function. For example, people have evolved proteins that degrade some antibiotic, and they then had to figure out which changes did the trick. So, “target” sequences weren’t known to anybody when the experiments started.

  20. colewd,

    Science is not about vague descriptions it’s about models and testing.

    Fnurk! That’s the several versions of scientific creationism dispensed with then!

  21. colewd: This is the science that would move evolution forward

    For some unknown reason Bill seems to think evolutionary theory is stuck and in deep trouble. 😀 Funny that all those hundreds of thousands of scientists who work in all aspects of evolutionary biology every day haven’t noticed.

    Any chance you may be wrong and just engaged in Creationist wishful thinking Bill?

  22. colewd: And you still make the unsupported claim that it is responsible for the information in the genome. Let’s see if Joe and Entropy can come up with a model to support your claim

    LOL! Bill you disproved your own stupid claim here, remember?

    bill–> bill bill –> bill bull

    There’s new functional selectable information in a string with no target, just duplication and mutations i.e known evolutionary mechanisms.

    You lost Bill, you’re just to dumb / dishonest / both to admit it.

  23. colewd:
    Entropy,

    You can put selection in your model just not a target sequence to select against.As far a OOL goes I think we know that a minimum of around 400 genes is required for reliable cell replication.

    Selection has become the buzz word.You need enough change and improvement to have something select against.

    You are still struggling with the idea of a target. Now, your target is a current gene, which took billions of years to develop. And in that vast period, it has become quite complex. And you want selection to kind of forget about all that time, and come up with something as complex from scratch. But eons ago, genes billions of years in the future weren’t a target. Only replication reliable enough not to self-destruct.

    Imagine billions of organisms, all changing little by little, in tiny incremental steps. Every step that does NOT kill an organism, has reached a new “target”, and possibly started a whole unique lineage.

    The keywords are time, selection, and viability. Try using these words in one of your posts, in a positive way (i.e. not just rejecting them).

    Also please note that you have injected the notion of “improvement”, which you use as a substitute for “fitness”. Unfortunately, it’s not. A change which involves a change in environment, or lifestyle, might involve fitness for a different environment or lifestyle. And it might be a change away from complexity – parasites have often dispensed with big chunks of functionality, using their hosts for those functions. They are no longer “fit” for the lifestyle their ancestors lived.

  24. Adapa: Funny that all those hundreds of thousands of scientists who work in all aspects of evolutionary biology every day haven’t noticed.

    Let’s hope these scientists aren’t working for the Trump administration, or they might find themselves facing immediate relocation to Nome.

  25. Flint,

    You are still struggling with the idea of a target. Now, your target is a current gene, which took billions of years to develop. And in that vast period, it has become quite complex. And you want selection to kind of forget about all that time, and come up with something as complex from scratch. But eons ago, genes billions of years in the future weren’t a target. Only replication reliable enough not to self-destruct.

    Then model it. Computers can model billions of years and large populations. This needs to be moved beyond a story to a real model or the claim needs to be dropped as it is only ideology at this point.

    What do you think is getting in the way of making a working model?

  26. colewd: What do you think is getting in the way of making a working model?

    What do you think is getting in the way of you telling the truth about the many working models of evolution you’ve had explained and shown to you ad nauseum?

  27. Adapa,

    What do you think is getting in the way of you telling the truth about the many working models of evolution you’ve had explained and shown to you ad nauseum?

    Working models of evolution 🙂

  28. Entropy:

    colewd: And you still make the unsupported claim that it is responsible for the information in the genome.Let’s see if Joe and Entropy can come up with a model to support your claim.

    It is not an unsupported claim. Whether you like it or not, you should not forget that selection is part of the way evolution works. Forgetting it makes you look pretty bad. So, stop forgetting about it. Stop asking us to make models that don’t include selection. A target sequence is put there to have something to select against. But, if you don’t like something that direct, remember that evolutionary algorithms do not include sequences as targets, but functions, like whether a circuit can perform some task (engineers then have a very hard time figuring out why the “evolved” circuits work, but they do work when built).*

    Maybe you should start here and then continue looking for Joe’s posts, and focus on those about information.

    Warning, Joe’s models can be a tad hard to understand. You didn’t like it that I write about complex stuff, but, as I told you, making shit up, the way creationists do, is easy. Actual understanding is not.

    *ETA: There’s also experiments where sequences are evolved in the lab, and there’s no target sequence, but function. For example, people have evolved proteins that degrade some antibiotic, and they then had to figure out which changes did the trick. So, “target” sequences weren’t known to anybody when the experiments started.

    In case you didn’t see that.

  29. Entropy,

    In case you didn’t see that.

    I did and if you stay on this track to forming a model I think failure is certain.

    You are hoping that sequence space is always abundant in all problems you are solving through protein evolution. The evidence is contrary to this assumption. A deterministic mechanism is the right tool for this job.

  30. colewd:
    I did and if you stay on this track to forming a model I think failure is certain.

    Weird. I talk about successful uses of evolutionary algorithms, and of experimental evolution and you say that will lead to failure? So, if we don’t use a target sequence, but function, it is still wrong fro some undefined reason?

    colewd:
    You are hoping that sequence space is always abundant in all problems you are solving through protein evolution.

    Nope. I’m not hoping for anything. I’m pointing to experimental and computational validation of the use of selection against variability produced by a background of random mutations.

    colewd:
    The evidence is contrary to this assumption.

    And your assumption about what I “hope” is wrong. So, whether the evidence is contrary to, or in line with, the “hope,” it doesn’t matter.

    colewd:
    A deterministic mechanism is the right tool for this job.

    For which job? For evolution? The results rely on random variation, and then on the more deterministic thing called selection. This has two components at least Bill. remember, this is not purely random, this is not purely deterministic. It has both kinds of elements.

  31. @ Biil

    Sure, you’ve been taking a bit of stick in this thread but, really, you bring it on yourself. The exasperation you generate in others is understandable. And it isn’t limited to TSZ. I see John Harshman’s irritation laid bare elsewhere.

    I know it’s a bit out of date now (2005), but you might find Sean Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful useful in avoiding straw men.

  32. Alan Fox,

    Sure, you’ve been taking a bit of stick in this thread but, really, you bring it on yourself. The exasperation you generate in others is understandable. And it isn’t limited to TSZ. I see John Harshman’s irritation laid bare elsewhere.

    I know it’s a bit out of date now (2005), but you might find Sean Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful useful in avoiding straw men.

    It’s not a problem Alan. I don’t expect competent moderation here. The comment that I bring it on myself is just your bias. You are part of a group pushing an ideology disguised as science and Harshman is part of the scam. Theories that are modeled and tested don’t need to be marketed and sold.

    I think Joe Felsenstein argues in good faith and I personally enjoy, You, Newton, Flint, Neil and Entropy among the skeptics for different reasons. The others I really don’t take very seriously.

  33. colewd: You are hoping that sequence space is always abundant in all problems you are solving through protein evolution. The evidence is contrary to this assumption.

    False, Bill.
    The evidence supports the idea that the solutions to most (if not all) ‘problems’ can readily be found in sequence space.

    See, for example, USP 6,261,804.
    I may have mentioned this before.
    That thread also serves as a rather revealing example of gpuccio’s tenuous relationship with reality.

  34. DNA_Jock: That thread also serves as a rather revealing example of gpuccio’s tenuous relationship with reality.

    The guy is a weasel.

  35. DNA_Jock,

    False, Bill.
    The evidence supports the idea that the solutions to most (if not all) ‘problems’ can readily be found in sequence space.

    This is an assertion. So I will answer with one 🙂 I believe gpuccio has argued successfully that you are probably wrong on several occasions. The ubiquitin case and the vertebrate case to add a few. I do believe catalytic activity can be found randomly but this is an adaption issue primarily. I did however enjoy your explanation of how rare sequence space is found. They fell in it 🙂

    The evidence for highly preserved proteins is real and growing.

    What evolution needs is a viable model to get started. I would suggest looking at the deterministic mechanism bin first.

  36. Why are we still talking about finding solutions?

    There are copy errors

    Most don’t result in death in the succeeding generation.

    Sometimes, by chance a non-fatal error becomes commonplace in a population.

    Sometimes a non-fatal error is useful.

    That’s a simplification, but it’s truer than anything being said by ID proponents.

  37. petrushka,

    That’s a simplification, but it’s truer than anything being said by ID proponents.

    We are caught between a limited explanation that we can model and another that we cannot model. How the f did we get here 🙂

  38. colewd:
    This is an assertion.

    No it isn’t. It’s what the evidence means. We cannot explore the whole sequence space. So, if a solution is found, the solution is within the sequence space explored. It’s straightforward.

    colewd:
    I believe gpuccio has argued successfully that you are probably wrong on several occasions.

    Now that’s a mere assertion. The poor guy doesn’t even understand that affinity is a necessary part of catalysis.

    colewd:
    The ubiquitin case and the vertebrate case to add a few.

    Talking about particular “solutions” doesn’t mean anything Bill, except that the person doesn’t understand that post-facto “probabilities” are meaningless for guessing how probable some solution was before it landed on what’s now ubiquitin.

    colewd:
    The evidence for highly preserved proteins is real and growing.

    Sure. I could give you lots of examples of highly preserved proteins. So what?

    colewd:
    What evolution needs is a viable model to get started. I would suggest looking at the deterministic mechanism bin first.

    We look at that. Why do you think we keep reminding you of selection?

    You don’t seem to follow your own advice though. Information is about organization, and lots of deterministic processes result in organizations. There’s a path from energy flows to patterns to information. Thus, such deterministic processes ensure that information can be produced by everyday natural phenomena without the intervention of the particular natural phenomenon of intelligence. Not only that, without those deterministic processes, intelligence would never be able to exist itself, nor perform any designs.

    See? We do think of deterministic processes. It’s creationists who imagine that nature is all about mere randomness, that evolution is all about mere randomness, as if creationists themselves didn’t then turn around and make claims about “laws” of nature, and such. Do you think that what we describe as natural “laws” are mere randomness Bill?

  39. colewd,

    I know I’ve recommended Arrival of the Fittest to you. Did you ever get around to reading it?

  40. colewd: What evolution needs is a viable model to get started.

    Er Bill, evolution has been started and going strong for 160 years. Complaints like yours by Creationist imbeciles haven’t slowed it down even a teeny bit.

  41. colewd: We are caught between a limited explanation that we can model and another that we cannot model. How the f did we get here

    The main reasons seems we have ignorant Creationist sea-lions spreading their religious anti-science garbage all over the web, then lying and saying their objections were never addressed.

  42. colewd:

    We are caught between a limited explanation that we can model and another that we cannot model. How the f did we get here

    It’s called science — the models and explanations we have are inevitably incomplete. Creatonist “sea lions” habitually point out that the models of evolutionary biologists have some limitations. They demand complete explanations or they will not agree that we know anything. Meanwhile, in an amazing display of double standards, they utterly refuse to present any models or explanations for their alternative view.

    It is no wonder that they are not taken seriously or respected.

  43. GAE theorist S. Joshua Swamidass called former TSZ Moderator Mung a ‘sea lion.’ Mung was (likely still is) an IDist, however, he did not come across to me as a creationist. In any case, I did not find such pretense to civility in him. Rather he made a decision of intentional speech acts specifically against atheism, agnosticism & specifically anti-IDism.

    While I disagree with Mung’s embrace, or at least deep respect for, ID theory qua ‘theory’, at least I could accept his strategy as an understandable one. To suggest he was merely a ‘sea lion’ is clearly a caricature

    But hey, people are welcome to cluster around terms of endearment or ridicule as they choose. I’ve seen just as many atheist & agnostic sea lions as (young earth) ‘creationist’ ones.

    Once one removes the fiat proclamations of the Discovery Institute in Seattle over the meaning of the terms ‘intelligence/Intelligence’ & ‘design/Design’ & their repetitive ad nausea claim that ‘ID is a strictly scientific theory,’ freedom in the conversation grows and understanding increases.

    Likewise, however, and equally important, once an Abrahamic monotheist or even ‘spiritual’ person simply presses ‘mute’ on the atheist & agnostic sea lion voices of argumentation & discord, conversation-derailing & diverting many discussions with irrelevant materialism & other ‘western’ decadence, particularly those anti-religious & anti-theists, not just anti-religion & anti-theology, freedom would also increase & grow.

    Who would disagree that extreme atheistic, anti-religious rhetoric damages most public conversations, rather than aiding them? I suggest the minority of people around the world, including myself, colewd & a few others. Yet it would seem that a majority here would disagree. Why is that?

    Calling colewd a ‘sea lion’ might just mean you don’t get his strategy because: ‘it’s hard to know what it is if you’ve never had one.’ The rest of us get it well enough to understand how & why TSZ intentionally fails to inspire.

  44. Joe Felsenstein,

    What’s hilarious, Joe, is that Billy thinks evolution is the theory we can’t model, and ID is the incomplete one we can model, and by model he means “what I do when I type a sentence and generate a sequence”.

    We should all simply ignore him, IMO.

  45. colewd:

    DNA_Jock:

    False, Bill.
    The evidence supports the idea that the solutions to most (if not all) ‘problems’ can readily be found in sequence space.

    This is an assertion.

    which ‘assertion’ was supported by the citation of evidence in the following sentence: “See, for example, USP 6,261,804.”
    Pro-tip: such selective quoting makes you look really bad.
    ETA: FYE, I uploaded a “look at the deterministic mechanism bin”

  46. Joe Felsenstein,

    It’s called science — the models and explanations we have are inevitably incomplete. Creatonist “sea lions” habitually point out that the models of evolutionary biologists have some limitations.

    I appreciate that you are trying to find a mechanism capable of making more sense of evolution. I also find your exchange w Eric interesting. I thought you defended your claim successfully against the evolution is impossible crowd.

    Have you looked at potential deterministic models such as Shapiro is touting?

  47. DNA_Jock,

    which ‘assertion’ was supported by the citation of evidence in the following sentence: “See, for example, USP 6,261,804.”

    Do you really think the support matches the claim?

    You claimed that sequence space is easily accessible in almost all proteins. Pretty cool smoke and mirrors 🙂 I see Harshman just used your labeling strategy at PS congrats.

    Joe makes the claim that design guys are “Sea Lions” taking cheap shots at evolutionary theory. I will happily stop this activity when you stop making claims you cannot support.

  48. colewd: Joe makes the claim that design guys are “Sea Lions” taking cheap shots at evolutionary theory

    🙄

    colewd: I will happily stop this activity when you stop making claims you cannot support.

    🤣

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