ID is based on three premises and the inference that follows (DeWolf et al., Darwinism, Design and Public Education, pg. 92):
1) High information content (or specified complexity) and irreducible complexity constitute strong indicators or hallmarks of (past) intelligent design.
2) Biological systems have a high information content (or specified complexity) and utilize subsystems that manifest irreducible complexity.
3) Naturalistic mechanisms or undirected causes do not suffice to explain the origin of information (specified complexity) or irreducible complexity.
4) Therefore, intelligent design constitutes the best explanations for the origin of information and irreducible complexity in biological systems.
So to falsify ID all you have to do is show that undirected causes such as natural selection and drift can produce CSI and/ or IC.
The positive case can be simplified by:
Our ability to be confident of the design of the cilium or intracellular transport rests on the same principles to be confident of the design of anything: theordering of separate components to achieve an identifiable function that depends sharply on the components.- Behe in “Darwin’s Black Box”
” Might there be some as-yet-undiscovered natural process that would explain biochemical complexity? No one would be foolish enough to categorically deny the possibility. Nonetheless, we can say that if there is such a process, no one has a clue how it would work. Further, it would go against all human experience, like postulating that a natural process might explain computers.” Ibid
The positive case for ID is very similar to the positive case for archaeology and forensic science- we look for signs of work and/ or counterflow.
Dr Behe responds to some critics:
Now, one can’t have it both ways. One can’t say both that ID is unfalsifiable (or untestable) and that there is evidence against it. Either it is unfalsifiable and floats serenely beyond experimental reproach, or it can be criticized on the basis of our observations and is therefore testable. The fact that critical reviewers advance scientific arguments against ID (whether successfully or not) shows that intelligent design is indeed falsifiable.
In fact, my argument for intelligent design is open to direct experimental rebuttal. Here is a thought experiment that makes the point clear. In Darwin’s Black Box (Behe 1996) I claimed that the bacterial flagellum was irreducibly complex and so required deliberate intelligent design. The flip side of this claim is that the flagellum can’t be produced by natural selection acting on random mutation, or any other unintelligent process. To falsify such a claim, a scientist could go into the laboratory, place a bacterial species lacking a flagellum under some selective pressure (for mobility, say), grow it for ten thousand generations, and see if a flagellum–or any equally complex system–was produced. If that happened, my claims would be neatly disproven.(1)
How about Professor Coyne’s concern that, if one system were shown to be the result of natural selection, proponents of ID could just claim that some other system was designed? I think the objection has little force. If natural selection were shown to be capable of producing a system of a certain degree of complexity, then the assumption would be that it could produce any other system of an equal or lesser degree of complexity. If Coyne demonstrated that the flagellum (which requires approximately forty gene products) could be produced by selection, I would be rather foolish to then assert that the blood clotting system (which consists of about twenty proteins) required intelligent design.
Let’s turn the tables and ask, how could one falsify the claim that, say, the bacterial flagellum was produced by Darwinian processes?
Even the explanatory filter demands a positive case for ID- one of specification on top of the elimination of necessity and chance. And the elimination of necessity and chance before considering a design inference is mandated by science- see Newton’s four rules of scientific reasoning.
“Thus, Behe concludes on the basis of our knowledge of present cause-and-effect relationships (in accord with the standard uniformitarian method employed in the historical sciences) that the molecular machines and complex systems we observe in cells can be best explained as the result of an intelligent cause.
In brief, molecular motors appear designed because they were designed” Pg. 72 of Darwinism, Design and Public Education
Cause and effect relationships-> science 101.
Your bald declaration isn’t evidence, cupcake.
Rumraket,
Yes, there is plenty of evidence that the earth was designed.
Rumraket,
Look, make your case. Games are for infants.
That is a necessary accompaniment of ID. Again, science 101
If one could see experimentally, a bacteria flagellum without a flagellum after a gene knock-out, mutate it back, would that debunk IC?
You make it clear that any argument I make about what happens after the first genome arises will be waved aside, saying that I am “starting with the very thing that needs to be explained”.
So yours is a front-loading argument. In arguing from Specified Complexity, you argue that all of it was present right at the beginning.
Thus you do not argue that there is some barrier to natural selection (differences of viability and fertility among genotypes) bringing about highly-fit, well-adapted organisms that are Specified by being far out on the scale of fitnesses.
Socratic Logic: A Logic Text using Socratic Method, Platonic Questions, and Aristotelian Principles
But I thought logic was all frowned on and such here at TSZ. You know, all that A=A stuff.
Formally speaking, what is being tested is the probability of certain events happening by chance, not ID in the strictest sense.
A specific ID claim might be falsified, but it does not imply that lack of falsification is positive evidence for ID.
I think IDists are mistaken to claim they have a “positive case”. “Positive case” to most, at least to me, means seeing the intelligent designer in action at least once, that would be a positive identification.
Using the phrase “positive case” is an abuse of language, it’s over salesmanship hence not a credible claim.
We learned at the feet of the Master.
By the way, there are two or three new ID papers out now. You could show us the ways they rely on reasoning from statistics.
I didn’t ask if you can link to it, I asked if you ever studied it.
Confirmed for not understanding what the word “entails” means.
Kids, Frankie is your brain on intense religion. Just say no!
Time to face the truth IDists. YOu guys are stuck with the same old Paley’s watch, First cause arguments and have been completely unable to come up with something innovative or meaningful for centuries. It failed the first time around, what’s the point of rehashing the same stuff over and over again besides selling books to the gullible?
To test ID you need a design mechanism. If you want to make the claim that no naturalistic process can result in design (or apparent design) you imply that you know everything about all possible naturalistic processes that might result in design. Which is just silly.
We hope to be one day visited by an ID advocate who understands statistics. And ID.
And logical fallacies, and evolution
Yes, I wonder if there is any possible way to falsify intelligent design.
I mean, it’s not like organisms are derived from earlier (and often common) ancestors according to the limitations of reproduction and heredity, is it?
You mean they are?
Well that’s it, then, it’s falsification of any honest intelligent design hypothesis (no, I don’t care about claims that design might be indistinguishable from evolution, as real science would be interested in observable differences). ID fails, and, in its most current form, always did fail, sans the endless special pleading.
Glen Davidson
This is what you think the argument of IC boils down to? You can knock out one part of the gene, render a feature useless, and then restore the original gene sequence, then ID is false?
Well Dam, its not wonder you don’t have a problem with irreducible complexity, you can’t understand it at all!
How many parts does a flagellum need to work properly? How many of those parts are useless to the organisms separately? 10? 20? 100? Where did each part come from?
Now, that’s just a bacteria, let’s move on to complex stuff how about. Explain how an octopus can change its body include colors, shape, texture,to hide in its environment; how does that system come about through a series of fortunate accidents? How many parts are needed. Maybe you can test that.
I’ll play, if you agree to give the corresponding design narrative.
To test Biology you need a Life mechanism. Sadly, you have none.
You mean origin of life? No, but we have a proposed mechanism for the variety of life forms that we see. Darwin’s insight was the mechanism of variation + natural selection leading to speciation. It’s what evolutionary science has been exploring ever since with great success (the discovery of DNA was a pretty spectacular confirmation of his theory). So, if you want to replace that with a new paradigm, you need a new mechanism. Otherwise it’s all just a critique of what variation + natural selection can or cannot do, and that’s not science. Even if you could somehow prove that evolutionary processes aren’t sufficient to explain life, that doesn’t ipso facto lead to a designer, it could simply be that some other hitherto unknown natural process is at work. You really need a mechanism I think.
PS I had to look up “ipso facto” 🙂
Evolutionary processes do not explain life. They can’t explain life, even in principle. Evolutionary processes are what happen as a result of living beings. The theory of evolution does not tell us what life is, and it certainly does not tell us that life is mechanical.
No, and it might well be supernatural or magical. But you still need a mechanism to test that hypothesis. And if you think it is supernatural, it’s pretty hard to imagine what such a mechanism would look like, and how you would go about testing it. In the meantime we have some very well studied mechanisms; we know that natural selection actually does happen and we know that mutations lead to variations in populations. I don’t see a problem with saying “Yes, those are the mechanisms by which a designer did the designing.” That would be the theistic evolutionist perspective. Seems like a win to me. The fact that ID does not embrace that point of view implies that no naturalistic process is acceptable. Which brings us back to trying to test a supernatural explanation. I’m not sure how you would do that.
No, the knock out removes the flagella entirely, the alleged IC system is now missing a part and left on it’s own. If some of those bacteria can evolve the flagella back (no restoring it, just random mutation), does that refute IC or not? I’m asking because IC’s definitions seem to “evolve” from ridiculous to tautological all the time.
This works both way. What makes you think that living organisms are machines and that life can be reduced to mechanical laws?
There is nothing in the laws of physicals or in chemistry that entails living organisms. As far as we know. This is why Schrodinger called for a new physics.
You are deeply confused.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mechanism
We’ve discovered somewatches since Payley’s era:
And there are clocks we pretty much know must exist but which we don’t know how they are implemented:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/cdb/research/stern/stern_lab/Bioessays98.pdf
Yes, what’s the point of rehashing Darwinian theory as an explanation for the majority of molecular evolution even though Kimura refuted it long ago.
How else would you propose we study life? If you think it’s not understandable by naturalistic processes, what then would research look like? Other than a constant confirmation of “it couldn’t have been done like that”. There has to be some way forward in our understanding of nature and “not that” is not a way forward.
Great, an unknown. How would you propose we discover how they are implemented? Or is the fact that we don’t know proof of what you’re looking for?
We can say, “we don’t know for sure.” That would be honest.
It would be honest for a creationist to say, “we believe it was created”.
It would be honest for an evolutionist to say, “we believe it evolved.”
It’s a stretch for either side to say, “we KNOW” for sure.
stcordova,
Knowing is hard, Confidence is … statistical.
Agreed, but how about “let’s figure out a possible mechanism that we (as mere) humans can understand, and test this proposed mechanism against what we observe in nature”. Belief does not enter into this equation. Observe. Hypothesize. Test. Repeat until satisfied.
You read dictionaries and I’ll read science books. Deal?
A Comprehensive Inquiry into the Nature, Origin, and Fabrication of Life
Essays on Life Itself
I think I’ll learn more.
I bet that watch is worth a fortune.
Mung,
You might need to know what words mean by themselves before looking at groups 😉
But, inquiring minds want to know. Does frequency equal wavelength?
“Could people live on such a planet? And what prevents it from falling into the star?” ;P
“For ONE, the earth/ moon system would fall into the Sun without any counter-balance- we need that external pull to help keep us in place.
Obviously you don’t have much of a physics background. And obviously all you have are “why” questions that 5 year olds ask.”
For the curious:
Could people live on such a planet?
As for the frequency equals wavelength stuff, that’s just too stupid to link to.
Words don’t mean anything by themselves, which is one reason we have dictionaries.
False.
It was ridiculous that anyone used language before dictionaries were invented.
Why talk, when you have no idea what words mean?
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
How did the first word come about without other words to help it?
OMG design miracle CSI FIASCO!!!111
There are comments in this thread that should go to guano but as they’re mostly comments by the opening post author, I’ll let them pass.
So, ID proponents; a theory of ID and how to test it? I don’t see any coherent example of such a thing so far in this thread. How does ID theory work? What are the proposed mechanisms? What are the entailments? What predictions follow? How can we test them?
Richardthughes,
Ok start, how many parts does a bacteria flagellum need to function as it does? How many mutations is that? Are each of the mutations along the way beneficial or neutral or detrimental before the flagellum is complete?
Is that level of detail required to be able to say the flagellum is an evolved entity?
What’s next, you want the complete world-history for every quark and lepton that makes up the Mt. Everest or plate-tectonics is false?
What a brilliant come back Sal. Another “we don’t know”, argument from ignorance type of argument and a reference to someone who extended evolutionary theory, precisely when my point was that ID is the same old crap it’s always been.
Kimura did not overthrow natural selection, you know it full well, but if you claim he did, then you should roll with it and all it’s consequences, namely, that evolution would be purely random. Of course that doesn’t sit with your beliefs all too well, so what are you going to do? Wait until another biologist refutes Kimura and claim victory again?
Why, is explaining the bacteria flagellum equally complex?
I guess it is actually.
I’m asking you, because there seem to be so many definitions of IC, and interpretations of it’s implications that it almost looks like it’s completely useless! I’m sure you can clarify this. What does IC predict will happen if one removes the flagella from bacteria flagella genetically?
You haven’t answered my question. And the point, which you seem to have missed, is that you can always sit back and arbitrarily declare that you haven’t been told in a sufficient level of detail how something came about. It’s the ever-moving goalposts.
When is it enough? At what level of detail is it rational to conclude the flagellum evolved and why is that the level of detail you decide on? Try to go in-depth about the reasons for why you give the answer you give.
Rumraket,
So far the level of detail of explanation for how the flagellum evolved sits at zero, so its perhaps a bit premature for you to declare any moving of goalposts.
phoodoo,
So, you’ve eliminated evolution to your satisfaction (due to the lack of a detailed step-by-step audit of genetic change). Now what? How does Design Theory propose to provide the detailed audit for which we are all apparently gagging?