Since the time of the Dover trial in 2005, I’ve made a hobby of debating Intelligent Design proponents on the Web, chiefly at the pro-ID website Uncommon Descent. During that time I’ve seen ID proponents make certain mistakes again and again. This is the first of a series of posts in which (as time permits) I’ll point out these common mistakes and the misconceptions that lie behind them.
I encourage IDers to read these posts and, if they disagree, to comment here at TSZ. Unfortunately, dissenters at Uncommon Descent are typically banned or have their comments censored, all for the ‘crime’ of criticizing ID or defending evolution effectively. Most commenters at TSZ, including our blog host Elizabeth Liddle and I, have been banned from UD. Far better to have the discussion here at TSZ where free and open debate is encouraged and comments are not censored.
The first misconception I’ll tackle is a big one: it’s the idea that the evidence for common descent is not a serious threat to ID. As it turns out, ID is not just threatened by the evidence for common descent — it’s literally trillions of times worse than unguided evolution at explaining the evidence. No exaggeration. If you’re skeptical, read on and I’ll explain.
Common Descent and ID
The ‘Big Tent’ of the ID movement shelters two groups. The ‘creationists’ believe that the ‘kinds’ of life were created separately, as the Biblical account suggests, and these folks therefore deny common descent. The ‘common descent IDers’ accept common descent but argue that natural processes, unassisted by intelligence, cannot account for the complexity and diversity of life we see on earth today. They therefore believe that evolution was guided by an Intelligence that either actively intervened at critical moments, or else influenced evolution via information that was ‘front-loaded’ into the genome at an earlier time.
Creationists see common descent as a direct threat. If modern lifeforms descended from a single common ancestor, as evolutionary biologists believe, then creationism is false. Creationists fight back in two ways. Some creationists argue that the evidence for common descent is poor, or that the methods used by evolutionary biologists to reconstruct the tree of life are unreliable. Other creationists concede that the evidence for common descent is solid, but they argue that it can be explained equally well by a hypothesis of common design — the idea that the Creator reused certain design motifs when creating different organisms. Any similarities between created ‘kinds’ are thus explained not by common descent, but by design reuse, or ‘common design’.
The ‘common descent IDers’ do not see common descent as a threat. They accept it, because they see it as being compatible with guided evolution. And while they agree with biologists that unguided evolution can account for small-scale changes in organisms, they deny that it is powerful enough to explain macroevolutionary change, as revealed by the large-scale structure of the tree of life. Thus guided evolution is necessary, in their view. Since common descent IDers accept the reality of common descent, you might be surprised that the evidence for common descent is a problem for them, but it is — and it’s a serious one. Read on for details.
The Problem(s) for ID
I’ve mentioned three groups of IDers so far: 1) creationists who dispute the evidence for common descent; 2) creationists who accept the evidence for common descent, but believe that it can be equally well explained by the hypothesis of common design; and 3) IDers who accept common descent but believe that unguided evolution can’t account for macroevolutionary change. Let’s look at these groups in turn, and at why the the evidence for common descent is a serious problem for each of them.
The creationists who dispute the evidence for common descent face a daunting task, simply because the evidence is so massive and so persuasive. I can do no better than to point readers to Douglas Theobald’s magnificent 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution for a summary of all the distinct lines of evidence that converge in support of the hypothesis of common descent. Because Theobald does such a thorough and convincing job, there’s no need for me to rehash the evidence here. If any IDers wish to challenge the evidence, or the methodologies used to interpret it, I encourage them to leave comments. The good news is that we have Joe Felsenstein as a commenter here at TSZ. Joe literally wrote the book on inferring phylogenies from the data, so if he is willing to respond to objections and questions from IDers, we’re in good shape.
I have yet to encounter a creationist who both understood the evidence and was able to cast serious doubt on common descent. Usually the objections are raised by those who do not fully understand the evidence and the arguments for common descent. For this reason, I emphasize the importance of reading Theobald’s essay. Think of it this way: if you’re a creationist who participates in Internet discussions, the points raised by Theobald are bound to come up in debate. You might as well know your enemy, the better to argue against him or her. And if you’re open-minded, who knows? You might actually find yourself persuaded by the evidence.
The evidence also presents a problem for our second group of creationists, but for a different reason. These are the folks who accept the evidence for common descent, but argue that it supports the hypothesis of common design equally well. In other words, they claim that separate creation by a Creator who reuses designs would produce the same pattern of evidence that we actually see in nature, and that common design is therefore on an equal footing with common descent. This is completely wrong. The options open to a Creator are enormous. Only a minuscule fraction of them give rise to an objective nested hierarchy of the kind that we see in nature. In the face of this fact, the only way for a creationist to argue for common design is to stipulate that the Creator must have chosen one of these scant few possibilities out of the (literally) trillions available. In other words, to make their case, they have to assume that the Creator either chose (or was somehow forced) to make it appear that common descent is true, even though there were trillions of ways to avoid this. Besides being theologically problematic for most creationists (since it implies either deception or impotence on the part of the Creator), this is a completely arbitrary assumption, introduced only to force common design to match the evidence. There’s no independent reason for the assumption. Common descent requires no such arbitrary assumptions. It matches the evidence without them, and is therefore a superior explanation. And because gradual common descent predicts a nested hierarchy of the kind we actually observe in nature, out of the trillions of alternatives available to a ‘common designer’, it is literally not just millions, or billions, but trillions of times better at explaining the evidence.
What about our third subset of IDers — those who accept the truth of common descent but believe that intelligent guidance is necessary to explain macroevolution? The evidence is a problem for them, too, despite the fact that they accept common descent. The following asymmetry explains why: the discovery of an objective nested hierarchy implies common descent, but the converse is not true; common descent does not imply that we will be able to discover an objective nested hierarchy. There are many choices available to a Designer who guides evolution. Only a tiny fraction of them lead to a inferable, objective nested hierarchy. The Designer would have to restrict himself to gradual changes and predominantly vertical inheritance of features in order to leave behind evidence of the kind we see.
In other words, our ‘common descent IDers’ face a dilemma like the one faced by the creationists. They can force guided evolution to match the evidence, but only by making a completely arbitrary assumption about the behavior of the Designer. They must stipulate, for no particular reason, that the Designer restricts himself to a tiny subset of the available options, and that this subset just happens to be the subset that creates a recoverable, objective, nested hierarchy of the kind that is predicted by unguided evolution. Unguided evolution doesn’t require any such arbitrary assumptions. It matches the evidence without them, and is therefore a superior explanation. And because unguided evolution predicts a nested hierarchy of the kind we actually observe in nature, out of the trillions of alternatives available to a Designer who guides evolution, it is literally trillions of times better than ID at explaining the evidence.
One final point. Most IDers concede that if the evidence supports unguided evolution, then there is no scientific reason to invoke a Creator or Designer. (It’s Occam’s Razor — why posit a superfluous Creator/Designer if the evidence can be explained without one?) It is therefore not enough for ID to succeed at explaining the evidence (which it fails to do, for the reasons given above); it’s also essential for unguided evolution to fail at explaining the evidence.
This is a big problem for IDers. They concede that unguided evolution can bring about microevolutionary changes, but they claim that it cannot be responsible for macroevolutionary changes. Yet they give no plausible reasons why microevolutionary changes, accumulating over a long period of time, should fail to produce macroevolutionary changes. All they can assert is that somehow there is a barrier that prevents microevolution from accumulating and turning into macroevolution.
Having invented a barrier, they must invent a Designer to surmount it. And having invented a Designer, they must arbitrarily constrain his behavior (as explained above) to match the data. Three wild, unsupported assumptions: 1) that a barrier exists; 2) that a Designer exists; and 3) that the Designer always acts in ways that mimic evolution. (We often hear that evolution is a designer mimic, so it’s amusing to ponder a Designer who is an evolution mimic.) Unguided evolution requires no such wild assumptions in order to explain the data. Since it doesn’t require these arbitrary assumptions, it is superior to ID as an explanation.
Here’s an analogy that may help. Imagine you live during the time of Newton. You hear that he’s got this crazy idea that gravity, the force that makes things fall on earth, is also responsible for the orbits of the moon around the earth and of the earth and the other planets around the sun. You scoff, because you’re convinced that there is an invisible, undetected barrier around the earth, outside of which gravity cannot operate. Because of this barrier, you are convinced of the need for angels to explain why the moon and the planets follow the paths they do. If they weren’t pushed by angels, they would go in straight lines. And because the moon and planets follow the paths they do, which are the same paths predicted by Newton on the basis of gravity, you assume that the angels always choose those paths, even though there are trillions of other paths available to them.
Instead of extrapolating from earthly gravity to cosmic gravity, you assume there is a mysterious barrier. Because of the barrier, you invent angels. And once you invent angels, you have to restrict their behavior so that planetary paths match what would have been produced by gravity. Your angels end up being gravity mimics. Laughable, isn’t it?
Yet the ‘logic’ of ID is exactly the same. Instead of extrapolating from microevolution to macroevolution, IDers assume that there is a mysterious barrier that prevents unguided macroevolution from happening. Then they invent a Designer to leap across the barrier. Then they restrict the Designer’s behavior to match the evidence, which just happens to be what we would expect to see if unguided macroevolution were operating. The Designer ends up being an unguided evolution mimic.
The problem is stark. ID is trillions of times worse than unguided evolution at explaining the evidence, and the only way to achieve parity is to tack wild and unsupported assumptions onto it.
If you are still an IDer after reading, understanding, and digesting all of this, then it is safe to say that you are an IDer despite the evidence, not because of it. Your position is a matter of faith and is therefore a religious stance, not a scientific one.
Joe
Product what Joe? What is “it”? If “it” is “FSCO/I” then you give me a way to measure the FSCO/I in a string which can be applied programmatically and I’ll go and see how it can be generated once I have a way to measure it. But if I write a program to attempt that you’ll just say that’s not a blind and undirected process won’t you? So Joe, can you explain to me, in pseudocode, how to measure “it”? If you can’t how can you say that blind and undirected processes cannot produce it if you can’t even detect it in the first place? Give me a mechanism to detect it that can be implemented as a program and I’ll implement it. Go on.
Joe,
Wht?
So I guess that means when a member of those populations dies and fossilizes then a transitional fossil would be the result? A transitional fossil from a population of transitional organisms. Joe, if you finally understand that in reality every point along the branch is a transitional then you understand alot more then you are letting on. I think you may have forgotten your mask for a moment. Given that you’ve spent thousands of words saying that transitional fossils are not in fact transitional, you’ve just shown how incoherent your view really is. Way to trash your own argument?
Gpuccio,
Quite the opposite. I don’t make any assumptions about how the Designer would act. He has trillions of options open to him, and he could choose any one of them, regardless of whether it produced an objective nested hierarchy.
It’s the evidence that tells us that the objective nested hierarchy exists.
Given that the objective nested hierarchy exists, let’s compare how ID and unguided evolution explain the evidence:
1a) Out of the trillions of possibilities, unguided evolution predicts an objective nested hierarchy; we see an objective nested hiearchy; the prediction is successful, and unguided evolution fits the evidence extremely well.
1b) ID predicts neither an objective nested hierarchy, or the lack thereof; we see an objective nested hierarchy; ID proponents have to assume that the Designer chose to produce an objective nested hierarchy, which is exactly the same pattern that unguided evolution would have produced. There is no successful prediction, and a completely unwarranted assumption.
Unguided evolution is the better theory, hands down.
Physical laws don’t require an objective nested hierarchy. That’s why human-designed objects almost always don’t form objective nested hierarchies. See this earlier comment.
That suggests that your embrace of ID is not scientific. Keep thinking about this, but try to do so with the attitude that you want to discover the truth, whatever that may be — even if the truth turns out to be uncomfortable.
P.S The UD side of the discussion is happening on this thread, so you might want to repost your comment there.
Most criticism of Darwinism suggests there is some pre-existing knowledge about how to build human beings, which evolution just happened to have astronomically landed on. But this represents a fundamental misunderstanding about Darwinism.
The underlying explanation behind Darwinism, as apposed to Lamarckianism, ID or creationism, is that the knowledge of how to build biological adaptations was genuinely created, as part of this incremental process. Specifically, conjectured genetic variation, that is random in respect of any specific problem to solve, and refutation, in the form of natural selection. This results in the genuine creation of non-explanatory knowledge.
We can see this sort of fundamental misunderstand in the case of GAI (General artificial intelligence), which assumes we can emulate induction in software. But, as Popper pointed out, our subjective experience that we actually use induction, in practice, does not withstand rational criticism. Any GAI will need to be able to create explanations, just as people do. You get more out of it than you put into it.
ID, per se, says nothing about the designer’s knowledge, let alone that that knowledge has always existed eternally. So, I do not think it is actually an issue with ID itself. Rather ID is tailor made to accommodate those who think knowledge comes from an ultimate authoritative source as it says nothing about how that knowledge was created. This is by design.
While we no longer think the decedents of kings have the right to rule because they are sons of the king, we still tend to think knowledge comes from authoritative sources. This occurs in both camps.
IOW, I’m suggesting that any authoritative, justificationist conception of human knowledge is fundamentally incompatible with Darwinism.
Joe,
In what way does that support ID?
Yet it’s not an explanation at all is it Joe? Unless you are from the bronze age .
So what does ID add then? Specifically?
Funny how there are more environmental permutations then you could store in an organism then huh? You are not following Newton’s rules Joe, you are adding agency where none is required (who built it in?)
Doing what Joe?
It’s funny but ID can always go back a level. No designer intervention seen in an experiment? Then the designer must have intervened before the experimental procedure had even begun. You see what I mean about there being no observation that can possible falsify ID?
Limits that the designer must then intercede to exceed? Finally, we’re getting somewhere. Why did that not happen in Lenski’s experiment Joe? Is the designer shy?
So the fact that we have an observed process (Evolution) is no good because evolution does not explain Nature itself? Is that right Joe? You realise you have a bankrupt position don’t you? X tries to explain Q. X does not explain Y therefore X explains nothing about Q.
Well then why don’t you give an example of such a thing that needs to be explained and explain how ID explains it?
Really? It’s just been voted most influential science book ever in the UK with 90% of the vote. I guess an internet nobody like you knows better however. On what page/sentence was the first factual error in Origin Joe?
You said “it”. I asked what “it” was. Your intellectual dishonestly is staggering. I notice you did not respond to my request for pseudocode that can be implemented to detect “CSI” or whatever you are calling it. Easier to just ignore huh?
That’s right. Consensus. Thanks for admitting that transitional fossils exist, in spite of everything you’ve said so far.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/education/ud-pro-darwinism-essay-challenge/#comment-436175
Perhaps this has been hidden from me in plain sight, but I just had an epiphany. If any ID advocate comes up with a way to calculate the CSI of a sequence, that calculation becomes a potential selection oracle.
That oracle, applied to any old generic GA, guarantees that the GA can generate CSI. QED.
How did I go wrong on this?
[A lost response to Upright Biped on the corresponding UD thread.]
Then why do keep making the same mistakes over and over again, despite being corrected on both counts? Again, what’s going on here? [It is] as if you simply cannot conceive of they idea that knowledge was created, rather than justified [from some authoritative source].
Note that UB still hasn’t explicitly clarified “anything”, yet again. What’s going on here?
Yes, I think my conception of human knowledge is an idea that is subject to criticism. See, it’s easy. Now it’s your turn. ___, I think my conception of human knowledge is idea that would be subject to criticism. Yes or No.
Elaborate on the details if you like, but first fill in the blank. Also, where is the rest of my comment?
Where is the actual criticism to what I wrote?
Again, you are conflating our ability to explain something with it’s cause. There are aspects of the physical world which are untraceable. Yet we can and have made progress regardless. We do not have to have an exhaustive explanation or justification for everything.
Not only is it [impossible], but it’s not necessary. How do you justify the the protocol specifier, [ad nauseum]? The majority of all physical interactions are currently untraceable. But in the majority of these cases, we do not find them interesting because they do not actually solve problems. What problem does your question solve? Whether we can explain the biosphere?
No. [We] define existence as something that can cause something to happen. To say something exists but causes nothing to happen is a contradiction.
You have clearly articulated what the intelligent design creationists at UD seem to understand intuitively — making testable claims must be avoided at all costs. They would rather turn their backs on the concept of CSI as described by Dembski, the hero of Dover, than risk showing how to calculate it objectively.
As long as there is confusion about what, if anything, they mean by CSI, there is room for their god.
Joe is denying that Darwinism actually created the knowledge of how to build organisms by claiming it existed in some form or another at the outset. He just keeps pushing the problem further back into some unexplainable realm. Being supposedly agnostic about the designer, this seems to come from somewhere other than ID itself. Human beings can be intelligent designers yet all knowledge need not ultimately come from some authoritative source. But this is incompatible with creationism.
Some abstract designer that was, “just was”, complete with the knowledge of how to build biological adaptations, already present, serves no explanatory purpose. This is because one could more economically say that organisms “just appeared”, complete with the knowledge of how to build their own adaptations in their genome, already present.
Neither of the above explains the origin of this knowledge. Adding a “designer” does not add to the explanation.
JoeG:
It does? Really? Why would that be necessary to the hypothesis that life is intelligently designed? And what does your comment really have to do with my question about an objective nested heirarchy?
What does the hypothesis that life was intelligently designed predict in relation to there being an objective nested heirarchy in a biosphere?
Why not ask some of your fellow commentators at U.D. for their answers to that question?
There’s a correct one word answer, and it’s easy to work out if you understand what prediction means when applied to hypotheses.
And? You are trying to recover the branching pattern (or see if a branching pattern can be supported) from the tips by the fact that, if they really are the tips of a branching pattern, regardless of lineage-specific change, changes to a particular ancestral sequence will normally be inherited by all its descendants but be absent from evolutionary individuals not descended from it. If those changes have not themselves become scrambled, and you can construct a non-overlapping (nested) hierarchy, a tree is the most robustly supported interpretation of what lies behind the tips, and it becomes really difficult to avoid the conclusion that it actually does derive from tree-like branching. Trees give nested hierarchies of twiglets. Unless the Designer is simply trying to fool all those taxonomists who do understand hierarchies, unlike yourself.
I know you know this, you’ve discussed it at inordinate length with Zachriel and countless others. You are never going to get it, whether through wilful or unavoidable ignorance I don’t know. Get Behe to give you a tutorial; you might listen to him.
OK, let’s test that prediction … {a fish, a spoon, a bike, a tooth, the latest Muse album, my wife, a bag of carrots} …
Or, restricting type slightly: {an ipod, a toaster, a guitar tuner, a webcam, a light switch, a digital wristwatch, fridge, lightbulb} …
There is, of course, nothing to stop you sticking nested curly brackets inside those sets and calling it a nested hierarchy. But what objective rationale would place any one ordering above any other?
It’s been almost three days since my post went up, so now is a good time to pause and take stock. My post explained why unguided evolution is literally trillions of times better than ID at explaining the evidence for common descent. As far as I can see, only four ID supporters have even attempted to respond:
Joe is still hopelessly confused about nested hierarchies.
Mung seems to think that if ID isn’t incompatible with the evidence, but is merely trillions of times less compatible with the evidence as compared to unguided evolution, that this somehow saves the day for ID. (I think he knows better; what it really means is that he can’t find a flaw in my argument and is grasping at straws).
Gpuccio claims that I am making assumptions about the Designer, and that the objective nested hierarchy is a constraint imposed by the laws of physics. I rebut those claims here.
Kairosfocus is confused about the difference between objective and subjective nested hierarchies and is still pushing the ‘islands of function” idea, despite having no evidence that actual biological fitness landscapes fit that pattern.
Nobody has addressed the critical issue, which is that unguided evolution explains the evidence trillions of times better than ID. It’s simply a better theory.
Are there any ID supporters out there who can (and will) answer the following questions?
1. Do you agree that unguided evolution fits the data far better than ID does?
2. If so, then why are you still an ID supporter?
3. If not, then identify a fatal flaw in my argument, and explain to us why it is a flaw. Be specific.
Some more questions for the ID supporters out there:
1. Bob is walking through the desert with his friend, a geologist. They come across what appears to be a dry streambed. After some thought, Bob states that every rock, pebble, grain of sand and silt particle was deliberately placed in its exact position by a Streambed Designer. His friend says “That’s ridiculous. This streambed has exactly the features we would expect to see if it was created by flowing water. Why invoke a Streambed Designer?”
Who has the better theory, Bob or his friend?
2. Bob is invited to the scene of an investigation by a friend who is an explosive forensics expert. They observe serious damage radiating out in all directions from a central point, decreasing with distance, as if an explosion had taken place. Bob’s friend performs some tests and finds large amounts of explosive residue. Bob says, “Somebody went to a lot of trouble to make it look like there was an explosion here. They even planted explosive residue on the scene! Of course, there wasn’t really an explosion.”
Who has the better theory, Bob or his friend?
3. Bob and another friend, an astronomer, observe the positions of the planets over several years. They determine that the planets are moving in ellipses, with the sun at one of the foci. Bob says, “Isn’t that amazing? The angels pushing the planets around are following exactly the paths that the planets would have followed if gravity had been acting on them!” The astronomer gives Bob a funny look and says “Maybe gravity is working on those planets, with no angels involved at all. Doesn’t that seem more likely to you?”
Who has the better theory, Bob or his friend?
4. Bob is hanging out at the office of a friend who is an evolutionary biologist. The biologist shows Bob how the morphological and molecular data establish the phylogenetic tree of the 30 major taxa of life to an amazing accuracy of 38 decimal places. “There couldn’t be a better confirmation of unguided evolution,” the biologist says. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Bob replies. “All of those lifeforms were clearly designed. It’s just that the Designer chose to imitate unguided evolution, instead of picking one of the trillions of other options available to him.”
Who has the better theory, Bob or his friend?
Share your answers with us. Did your answers to the four questions differ? If so, please explain exactly why.
And ponder this: If you are an ID supporter, then you are making exactly the same mistake as Bob does in the four examples above, using the same broken logic. Isn’t that a little embarrassing? It might be time to rethink your position.
Bob and his friend might also find themselves confronted with the outflows from a large number of pipes. They do not know how the pipes are fed – whether they each lead back to a separate source, converge through a series of branches to a smaller set of separate sources, or converge entirely onto just one source.
They note that the water issuing from the pipes contains different radioactive elements, but rarely the same set in the same pipe. There is no relation between the position of a pipe-end and the element(s) it contains.
They have competing hypotheses as to the way in which these different elements found their way to the pipe-ends. One hypothesises that they were injected multiple times into pipes that do not contact, apart from a small concession – not far from the pipe-ends, there may be the odd branch, so there was a combination of separate injection and derivation from a common origin.
The other invites consideration of the hypothesis that the whole pattern is the result of single injections of each element, with subsequent branching. Is there any expected pattern, if branching was the actual state-of-affairs, that we could test the raw data against to allow these hypotheses to be compared? Given that radioactive elements steadily decay, and the pipes may not be entirely watertight, there must be allowance that the alignment may not be perfect. Nonetheless, if the results strongly support a branching hypothesis, yet the other continues to insist that the same pattern could have arisen from separate injection designed to give, or incidentally giving, an apparent-branching result, what can we infer from that?
You could have just given the one word answer, Joe.
Onlookers, what’s interesting here is that Joe’s fellow IDists do not point out Joe’s mistake when he claims that the (unguided) theory of evolution is untestable and does not contain testable hypotheses. He does this often, and he’s directly contradicting all of I.D’s important claims. While that might be amusing for us, I’d have thought that making I.D. appear completely ridiculous would be something they’d want to avoid.
For example, one of his colleagues called, I think, PaV, has recently posted about a paper that describes a 520 million year old organism with a surprisingly complex brain. PaV seems to think that this observation causes immense problems for the theory of evolution; problems that certainly relate to nested hierarchies amongst other things. So, why doesn’t Joe go to PaV’s thread and explain to him that the untestable unguided theory of evolution cannot be tested against observations? And why doesn’t PaV, who clearly believes that the (unguided) theory of evolution makes testable predictions, tell Joe to shut up and learn what “testable” and “prediction” mean in relation to scientific hypotheses?
(I’m aware of the problem of turning this into too much of a “Joe” thread, but the predictions that various hypotheses make in relation to nested heirarchies are important to the subject of the O.P.).
So, any I.D.ists, what does the general hypothesis that life on earth was intelligently designed predict about objective nested heirarchies? Someone must know the answer.
Nggggh! Rarely the same set in different pipes! Out with the birch twigs. Learn … [thwack] … to … [thwack] … proof … [thwack] … read … [thwack] … asshole!
Gpuccio,
Gpuccio, Oct. 3rd:
keiths, Oct. 4th:
I guess you’ll have to admit another error. 🙂
We need to reuse things because we have limitations. Auto manufactures need to reuse explanatory knowledge of how fuel injection systems work, in general, but this knowledge can be implemented using completely different components to solve the same problem. They reuse concrete fuel injection components and computers because it allows them to make them significantly cheaper in larger quantities by reducing setup costs, taking advantage of pre-tested systems, etc. All of these things would unnecessary for an abstract designer with no limitations. Even then, if we had the explanatory knowledge of how to store more energy in batteries smaller sizes, auto manufactures may not need to reuse the explanatory knowledge of how fuel injection systems work at all.
However, ID’s designer is abstract and has no defined limitations. As such, none of these thing would be necessary. For example, ID’s designer would not need to perform safety tests on impact absorbance systems because such a designer is not defined as lacking the knowledge of that systems performance under any crash conditions. As such, any cost saving of reusing aspects of these systems across vehicles would be unnecessary. It could create one-off systems optimized for specific for each type vehicle because it would not be necessary to incur the cost of testing each implementation.
While we have moved some of this testing to computer simulations, making it cheaper to roll out new designs, it is still necessary for us to do real world testing, which is still costly and still needs to be amortized over significant production runs.
However, 3D printers are part of a growing trend to make entire systems as complete one-offs. This would include vehicles that need not share any components at all. Each could represent a completely different version of the same knowledge in a different implementation. What will help make this possible is future advancements in our knowledge of 3D printing, not resources, because resources are plenty.
We also share parts because no single person possess the knowledge required to build every single part of any complex system. We must specialize in areas and exchange that information as components. However, if someone did possess all of the right knowledge, they could design and build their own cars, homes, health care systems, etc., and each could be unique, end to end. But no single person possess this knowledge. So, we build on, and with, the knowledge of others in the form of shared components and specialized organizations.
On the other hand, ID’s designer has no necessary dependance on anyone for anything. Again, this is because ID’s designer is abstract and has no defined limitations on knowledge, efficiency, time, etc. And since each organism builds itself from raw materials, it does not need to be compatible with other organisms except in the case of consuming shared resources. But, again, the knowledge of how to utilize resources can and do take the form of unique implementations. Cars can run on gas, electric, compressed air, etc. So could biological organisms. They need not share any of the same infrastructure.
Furthermore, ID’s designer could have created entirely separate infrastructures on demand when new knowledge was created.
As concrete designers with defined limitations, we cannot immediately role out new technologies, such as cars that run only on electricity, due to the cost and time required to implement the infrastructure to actually use them, in practice. This includes building recharging stations for every x number of cars, teaching end users and service personnel how to use and repair them, etc. But ID’s designer would have no such limitations. It could role out an entirely new infrastructure or even upgrade every pre-existing systems to be compatible when new technologies were developed because it has no defined limitations on resources, efficiencies, personnel, time, etc.
To use another analogy, ID’s designer could rolling out new computer hardware and software at will. This is because it has no defined limitations, such as being unable to program new versions of every existing piece of software to use new APIs, distribute them to each user, inform every single user of how to use the new updates, and even upgrade hardware to run it should they choose to. Everyone could be running the latest version of everything, and informed of how to use it as soon as it was developed.
IOW, backwards compatibly would not be necessary for ID’s designer. But it is necessary for us, because we have these limitations.
Previously, software updates required receive physical disks in the mail or by going to a store. Now it requires huge server farms connected to vast networks to download them over the internet. The cost may have dropped, but significantly new infrastructure was required to be rolled out first. Even now, some people still order OS updates on CDs or USB sticks because they have slow internet connections. We can explain this state of affairs via our current limited knowledge of how to distribute information cheaply and efficiently.
However, assuming we do not go extinct before then, we will eventually create the necessary knowledge to build entirely unique, complex systems from the ground up – by renting time and computing resources on specialized knowledge systems – despite being finite designers.
If you want to a new “car” you could simply tap into the necessary knowledge systems, on demand and at a cost, and design one. Then you can simply have it printed for you, possibly even on site. At some point, it would become cost effective enough build or recycle your current “car” into a new one every month or on special occasions. Or design and build a vehicle just for a specific occasion, such as a vacation, or long distance trip.
Specifically, if something is not forbidden by the laws of physics, the only thing that would prevent us from doing it is knowing how. So, it is a question of knowledge, not resources, as resources are plenty.
IOW, it is only due to our current level of knowledge that today’s cars need to look anything like each other, share any parts or exist in any remotely sort of nested hierarchy. It’s our specific limitations on knowledge which make us good explanations for the specific things we design.
In the same sense, it is Darwinism’s specific explanation as to how the knowledge used to make improvements in organisms was incrementally created that make it a good explanation for the biosphere as well.
So, it is not just merely about making accurate predictions of what type of progress we should observe but whether that specific kind of progress is necessary a consequence the case of Darwinism, but is not a necessary consequence in the case of ID. This important distinction that Joe, and other ID proponents, seem to have missed.
Specific variants of salamanders can regrow entire limbs, including nerves, bone, etc. This is because all organisms already contain the knowledge of how to build themselves from raw materials. Yet, the majority of all organisms do not share the ability to regrow limbs when lost – this includes human beings. Research is currently underway on how to possibly enable this in human beings. We know it is possible because each of us already contain the necessary knowledge to grow limbs from raw materials as we mature from single cells.
Again, if something is not prohibited by the laws of physics, the only thing that could prevent us from doing so is knowing how. Growing limbs is not prohibited by the law of physics because this is part of each person’s natural development. So, In this case of the biosphere, the genome of each organism already contains this knowledge. Unfortunately, it is not in the form of explanatory-knowledge. Rather it’s in the form of useful rules of thumb, which is non-explanatory knowledge.
Now scale up the concepts above to the level of the biosphere using what we would new consider exponentially more powerful computers. From this knowledge based view, ID’s designer does not look very moral or intellectually interesting, does he?
keiths:
The nested heirarchy that Darwinism ‘predicts’ is one which ‘evolves’ over time. After all, Darwin said: “varieties give rise to species, species give rise to genera, genera give rise to families….”
Well, this happens over time. What does the fossil record reveal? Per Stephen Gould it shows species arising, staying the same, and then disappearing. Where is this predicted Darwinian “nested heirarchy”?
OTOH, you arbitrarily delimit what the Designer can do. Why? Why do this arbitrarily? It amounts to setting up a strawman argument, much as Darwin did with his constant contrast to special creation–a position that no Christian held at the time—fundamentalist Protestantism was only just beginning.
The sensible, rational understanding of what a Designer might do is this: (1) use the same set of tools over and over again (2) design a basic “type” (or “kind”) that is plastic (flexible) in its ultimate outward construction (phenotypic plasticity), and (3) set in place mechanisms that allow this/these type/types to ‘adapt’ to changing conditions.
With these guiding principles in place, you would expect to see: (1) a new ‘form’/’type’/’kind’ appearing suddenly, to be followed by (2) more and more diversity as this principle ‘type’/’types’ adapt.
Isn’t this just what we see?
Moving on:
You’ve failed to address another segment of the ID community, one which includes myself and Wm Dembski: i.e., those who believe in what can be called “common ancestry”, but not in “common descent.” The difference is this: neither Bill Dembski nor myself believe that one ‘type’ simply morphed little by little into another ‘type’. IOW, just as in mathematics, we see a distinction between a continuous and a discrete function at work; “common ancestry” is discrete (the Designer has infused information), while “common descent” is continuous.
Against this position, you have not argued–and you need to. And you won’t succeed.
Share with us a specific example of two current organisms assumed by mainstream biology to be cousins but which are not.
Allan,
Let kairosfocus take care of that for you. He’s good at corporal punishment:
It seems that JoeG is selectively quoting me over at UD, even though I’m banned from actually posting there.
Let’s see if he likes it?
JoeG: So sorry but I cannot deny that which there isn’t any evidence for.
CR: Unless Joe thinks current and fossilized remains of organisms are “empirically grounded” evidence that a designer existed in the past, which would be begging the question, then apparently JoeG cannot deny that ID is not “empirically grounded”.
JoeG, this is essentially what you did to my comment. Do you think it’s a fair representation of what you wrote? Is misrepresenting my comments somehow justified, in your case, because you think I’m wrong and your right?
Why would a designer who could design “LifeForm_1” from scratch, suddenly lose that ability to design from scratch, when he decides to design “LifeForm_2”?
Toronto:
<i>Why would a designer who could design “LifeForm_1″ from scratch, suddenly lose that ability to design from scratch, when he decides to design “LifeForm_2″?</i>
Who said anything about the Designer “suddenly losing” the ability to design from scratch? I was talking about being sensible and rational. Anytime we’re dealing with the physical world, we’re dealing with constraints of one type or another. When the Model-T Ford was built, should the “designers” then have made a car using clay and emeralds? No, but you can build a better car. Which they do today, using the same system of building materials: steel, wood, glass, etc.
Just because, per “keiths”, the Designer has 3 trillion options doesn’t mean the Designer has to choose all 3 trillion, or that the Designer can’t use the same choice over again. What rule of logic requires this?
I’m confused. If I posted speculations regarding the motives and capabilities of the Designer at UD, I would be banned, or have my comments deleted, or at the very least, be attacked unmercifully. But PAV and gpuccio do so frequently and recklessly without encountering any opposition.,
That’s the point, that he has NOT lost the ability to design from scratch, which means he could design optimum life-forms for the niches they occupy instead of being faced with hacking existing designs.
While Chrysler might have to re-use components because of design logistics, a designer with the ability to “fine-tune the laws of nature” would have no such constraints.
If you don’t agree with the “fine-tuning argument” used by some IDists, let me know and I won’t use it again.
PaV: The sensible, rational understanding of what a Designer might do is this: (1) use the same set of tools over and over again (2) design a basic “type” (or “kind”) that is plastic (flexible) in its ultimate outward construction (phenotypic plasticity), and (3) set in place mechanisms that allow this/these type/types to ‘adapt’ to changing conditions.
See my comment above. Any sense we have about “what a Designer might do” is fundamentally based on our own limitations as designers. Specifically, the limitations of the knowledge the designer possess at the time it designed something.
Assuming we do not go extinct first, we will not continue to use the same tools over and over again. The move to 3D printing will be just one of many changes that will have a significant impact on how we design and build things. And that’s just what we can conceive of today. What of the advances we haven’t even though of yet?
People in the 1920 did not consider the internet or nuclear power “unlikely”. They simply did not conceive of them at all. As such, they couldn’t have used them to form a “rational understanding” of how they would change what a designer might do.
French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange often said that Newton was the greatest genius who ever lived, and once added that Newton was also “the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.”
Are you not making the same sort of assumption in that, “[using] the same set of tools over and over again (2) [designing] a basic “type” (or “kind”)” is something an ultimate designer would do. It’s unclear how this is a rational assumption when it fails rational criticism.
It’s as if you think everyone is the way it “ought” to be, so it will not change. Do you think this is the case? If so, why?
We have been lectured at great length about how the semiotic relationship embodied in the genetic code is arbitrary. There could be dozens, even millions of such arbitrary codes.
We have an obvious example of such variety — human languages.
There is no logical or rational basis for limiting the genetic codes to those that suggest common descent. In fact, if one wants to get into the designer’s motives, separate genetic codes could have been employed to prevent disease and parasitism.
Unless the Designer gets of watching parasites devour the eyeballs of small children. But I digress. Apparently only ID advocates are allowed to speculate about the motives of the Designer.
I am still waiting for a specific list or specific example of current organisms that are not cousins.
Mung,
What do concrete countertops have to do with anything?
As if a trained geologist would be fooled by a fake streambed in somebody’s garden.
Also, I notice that you didn’t answer the question (highlighted below for your convenience):
What is your answer to that question and the other three I posed in the same comment?
And tell us: why do you continue to accept the ‘theory of intelligent design’ when 1) you have been shown that unguided evolution fits the evidence far better, and 2) you are unable to identify a fatal flaw in the argument that explains this?
Can you identify such a flaw, or do you concede that the argument stands?
Gpuccio and PaV,
Thank you for your responses. I’ll address them later today when I have more time.
Toronto:
“While Chrysler might have to re-use components because of design logistics, a designer with the ability to “fine-tune the laws of nature” would have no such constraints.”
But, of course, the laws of nature NEED to be “fine-tuned” or else life could not exist, the so-called “Anthropic Principle.”
Similarly, one is always working within some set of “constraints” when attacking any given problem. E.g., you can’t build a boat out of boulders.
The point is that whoever the Designer is, when it comes to the world of nature the laws of nature cannot be negated.
And then there’s the law of parsimony.
And then there’s theological considerations—making all of creation linked together in some fundamental way, manifesting glory, etc.
Again, here we are, arguing about evolution, and evolutionists invoke metaphysical and theological objections. I thought this was science.
petrushka:
“If I posted speculations regarding the motives and capabilities of the Designer at UD, I would be banned, or have my comments deleted, or at the very least, be attacked unmercifully.”
Were you trying to be “sensible, rational”, or were you just being silly?
petrushka:
“I am still waiting for a specific list or specific example of current organisms that are not cousins.”
I’m sure there is some sort of semiotic structure to this sentence, but, please, help me out and translate it into normal English.
petruskha:
“There is no logical or rational basis for limiting the genetic codes to those that suggest common descent.”
So, you’re suggesting that we can make “life” out of silicon?
IOW, do you think that the laws of physics/chemistry become meaningless before a Designer?
Why don’t you design some code in base 10 for a computer? Wouldn’t the circuitry be far easier in base 2, where everything becomes “on” or “off”?
Again, constraints.
In fact, if one wants to get into the designer’s motives, separate genetic codes could have been employed to prevent disease and parasitism.
Here we go again, theological arguments. Have you ever heard of the Devil? Do you think he could subvert Design?
The point is: keep the theological arguments/metaphysical arguments of “good” and “bad” out of this. But, of course, as Dr. Cornelius Hunter points out, that’s the whole justification for Darwinism; so, in the end, you MUST resort to these kinds of arguments since you have nothing else. ………………. But it is tiring.
critical rationalist:
I should have used the phrase, “the same building blocks” rather than the “same set of tools.” My apologies—you ended up having to develop a full argument against it. Sorry for wasting your time that way.
Just a thought for all of you: if you use different “building blocks” or if you use different codes, etc., then this would limit the ability of various life-forms to interact. What affect would that have on various organisms to adapt to one another, and the building up of ecosystems.
Again, constraints.
So, you’re suggesting that we can make “life” out of silicon?
No.The code is arbitrary with respect to the assignment of bases to translation. There could be any number of alternate codes.
Petrushka:
PaV:
Wait… You’re suggesting that life shares a universal genetic code because the Devil made it that way???
PaV
But that is exactly what happens when the designer reaches in and pushes something over that otherwise would not have fallen.
How can it be otherwise?
What affect would that have on various organisms to adapt to one another, and the building up of ecosystems.
Again, constraints.
What constraints? As it is now there are poisons and such that limit interaction. A benevolent designer could easily have made a world without carnivores simply by isolating bunnies from wolves by making the bunnies inedible. Why weren’t adults put in charge of design?
But if the designer cannot fine-tune the “laws of nature”, then someone more powerful did the fine-tuning.
So who is more powerful than your designer?
If there is no one more powerful, then your designer is not constrained by any “laws of nature”.
However, if your designer is not the power that fine-tunes the “laws of nature”, then he also was not alive since he was the designer of life, and sits between the designer (of nature), and created life.
So you now have at least two designers, …unless…, the designer is not constrained by any “laws of physics”.
PaV on Uncommondescent:
The most important part:
Then the gem:
This is from someone who wishes to comment on a major scientific theory on the internet. He declares that the theory isn’t testable. He declares that it makes no testable predictions. Then he makes an observation about a finding and proceeds to test the “untestable” theory against his observation, then seems to claim the “death-knell” of the theory, implying that his observations are either very damaging to a prediction of the theory, or perhaps are even a falsification of the theory.
He also doesn’t know the difference between an I.D. hypothesis (front loading) and a prediction, describing that hypothesis as a prediction.
PaV, a prediction is anything that necessarily follows from an hypothesis. For example, the theory of evolution predicts that the big complex organisms we see today (like ourselves) must have been preceded by simpler ones. If we found things like elephants at the beginning of the fossil record, that would be a falsification of the theory.
So, would you please try this little exercise:
Hypothesis: Life on earth was intelligently designed.
Predictions: ?
Falsifications: ?
Can you think of things that would necessarily follow from the hypothesis to fill in the blank after predictions. And can you think of any conceivable observations that would contradict the hypothesis? (Potential falsifications).
Of particular interest to keiths’ O.P., you might want to consider whether or not objective nested heirarchies are necessary to the hypothesis.
Gpuccio,
Thanks for responding to my argument. Kairosfocus, on the other hand, seems to have lost the courage of his convictions.
You wrote:
I’m not aware of any argument that succeeds in showing that unguided evolution cannot generate biological complexity. Your ‘dFSCI’ argument certainly doesn’t, because as several commenters have pointed out (most recently Zachriel), it’s a circular argument. You define dFSCI as something that cannot be produced by unguided evolution, which you consider to be a “deterministic explanation”:
And then you triumphantly point out that unguided evolution can’t produce dFSCI:
Well of course it can’t, because you defined dFSCI that way. It’s trivially true. A tautology.
The theory that the angels are pushing the planets around is also compatible with the evidence, but no one believes it. Why? Because there is another theory — gravity — that explains the evidence far better. For exactly the same reason, biologists reject ID because there is another theory — unguided evolution — that explains the evidence far better — trillions of times better, in fact.
Look at what you’re doing:
1. You use a circular argument to claim that unguided evolution can’t produce dFSCI.
2. Having asserted that unguided evolution can’t do the job, you invent an immaterial Designer to produce dFSCI.
3. You don’t have an explanation of how an immaterial Designer can “modify matter from consciousness”, so you invent a mysterious mechanism that allows the Designer to do so.
4. This already baroque hypothesis still doesn’t explain the evidence, so you add yet another assumption: that the Designer either chose to or had to work in a way that mimics unguided evolution by producing an objective nested hierarchy.
Four wild and unjustified assumptions. Unguided evolution can explain the evidence without crazy assumptions like these. It’s a better theory.
No, that doesn’t explain the objective nested hierarchy. This is a crucial point. As I wrote in the OP:
Mung, the gift that never stops giving! 🙂
PaV,
Yes. The tree grows over time. So?
Right in front of you. You really need to read Theobald, PaV. If you don’t understand evolution, how do you expect to be able to criticize it effectively?
I don’t “delimit what the Designer can do.” It’s IDers who impose limits on what the Designer can do or chooses to do. See my reply to gpuccio above.
That position is just a hybrid of creationism and ‘common-descent ID’. The same arguments I applied against them apply to the hybrid.
I missed this earlier comment from Mung because he posted it in the wrong thread:
Yeah, that’s why you haven’t rebutted my argument. It’s not that you can’t, you just don’t care enough. Right.
A pattern of descent with modification where inheritance is primarily vertical and change is not too rapid. Why don’t you read Theobald so that you won’t have to ask these questions?
There wouldn’t be an objective nested hierarchy if genomes were just random assemblages. Real genomes aren’t random assemblages. Selection is highly nonrandom.
“I assert”? 🙂
So you don’t know?
Ask gpuccio to clarify CSI.
Then ask Joe.
Then ask KF.
Then ask Dembski.
Then start “flipping coins” to see which explanation you should “assert”! 🙂
Mung,
Design is not ruled out a priori. It is considered alongside the geological explanation. Read the vignette again, and this time pay attention:
Tell us, Mung: who has the better theory, Bob or his friend? If you came across a dry streambed while walking through the desert, would you jump to the conclusion that it was designed, or would the naturalistic explanation seem more plausible?
PaV: I should have used the phrase, “the same building blocks” rather than the “same set of tools.” My apologies—you ended up having to develop a full argument against it. Sorry for wasting your time that way.
Unless you should have used the word, “atoms” rather than the phrase “the same building blocks”, It’s unclear how I have wasted my time. As I pointed out, adopting different “set of tools”, such as 3D printers will allow us to build completely unique, end to end systems that do not need to share “building blocks”. If someone needed a replacement part, they could always re-print the same custom part from the original file. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Also…
CR: We also share parts because no single person possess the knowledge required to build every single part of any complex system. We must specialize in areas and exchange that information as components. However, if someone did possess all of the right knowledge, they could design and build their own cars, homes, health care systems, etc., and each could be unique, end to end. But no single person possess this knowledge. So, we build on, and with, the knowledge of others in the form of shared components and specialized organizations.
On the other hand, ID’s designer has no necessary dependance on anyone for anything. Again, this is because ID’s designer is abstract and has no defined limitations on knowledge, efficiency, time, etc. And since each organism builds itself from raw materials, it does not need to be compatible with other organisms except in the case of consuming shared resources. But, again, the knowledge of how to utilize resources can and do take the form of unique implementations. Cars can run on gas, electric, compressed air, etc. So could biological organisms. They need not share any of the same infrastructure.
Even then, the origin of the word “atom” is from the late 15th century: from Old French atome, via Latin from Greek atomos ‘indivisible,’ based on a- ‘not’ + temnein ‘to cut.’
No one in the year 1900 could predict splitting atoms could have such a huge effect on our future. This is because we simply did not conceive of them at all. What of the discoveries we simply cannot conceive of at the moment and have yet to make, let alone what we know must be possible due to the laws of physics as we currently know them, such as hard AI?
To think we live in a privileged point in time would be the same mistake that Lagrange made. Ironically, Lagrange’s own work help replace Newton’s “system of the word” with Einstein’s. Furthermore, we know Einstein’s theory is incomplete as it does not unify gravity at the small scale. All theories contain errors to some degree and are incomplete, so we know they can continue to be improved, or potentially even replaced.
Pav: Just a thought for all of you: if you use different “building blocks” or if you use different codes, etc., then this would limit the ability of various life-forms to interact. What affect would that have on various organisms to adapt to one another, and the building up of ecosystems.
Again, in less you mean “atoms”, rather than “building blocks”, then I have though about it. There are a number different forms of energy on the planet that can be utilized via a great number of implementations. None need share these exact implications. Nor can we easily repair one species with parts from another. We’ve tried it, and in the majority of cases where it actually solves a specific problem, they are not very comparable.
Even people with organ transplants from other human beings often require a lifetime regiment of drugs to prevent rejection. These drugs represent knowledge we created to adapt organs for use where they would have otherwise been incompatible.
Also…
CR: As concrete designers with defined limitations, we cannot immediately role out new technologies, such as cars that run only on electricity, due to the cost and time required to implement the infrastructure to actually use them, in practice. This includes building recharging stations for every x number of cars, teaching end users and service personnel how to use and repair them, etc. But ID’s designer would have no such limitations. It could role out an entirely new infrastructure or even upgrade every pre-existing systems to be compatible when new technologies were developed because it has no defined limitations on resources, efficiencies, personnel, time, etc.
We interact with systems that are quite different from us. And we do it on a regular basis. And yes, we have and will have an impact on “the building of of ecosystems”. That’s what designers do – design different, yet compatible ecosystems, or even intentionally incompatible ecosystems. If we had not, there are many places on the earth were people simply could not survive for any reasonable length of time. And we will continue to do so, when we setup on the moon or on other planets. It’s just a matter of degree.
Pav: Again, constraints.
Who’s constraints are you referring to – your’s? Again, it as if you think everyone is the way it “ought” to be, so it will not or should not change. Do you think this is the case? If so, why?
Mung,
Yeah, using the wrong fitness function. It’s easy to make a program run fast if it’s allowed to give the wrong answer.
Demanding, aren’t we? Why, are you having trouble with your own code and need some help? Okay. Here you go.
It’s written for Linux. Use ‘gcc -std=c99 lizzie.c’ and run it in a terminal window. The parameters are all in a block of #defines near the top. It’s currently configured to show the population after every generation.