Uncommon Descent is starving

[latexpage]If Uncommon Descent (UD) is not suffering from our departure, then why has the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture stooped to lame promotion of the site? I’m referring to an ID the Future podcast, “Eric Anderson: Probability & Design.” It begins with Casey Luskin singing the praises of UD.

[Eric Anderson…] for the past year has been a contributing author about intelligent design at the great intelligent design blog, Uncommon­Descent.com. So, quick plug for Uncommon Descent. If you’re an “ID the Future” listener and you’ve never checked it out, go to Uncommon­Descent.com. And it’s a great ID blog, kind of like EvolutionNews.org. It has many participants, and many contributors, of which Eric is one of the main authors there.

And it ends with Casey Luskin steering listeners to UD.

And I would encourage our listeners to go check out the blog Uncommon Descent. That’s Uncommon, and the last word is spelled D-E-S-C-E-N-T, dot com. So “descent” like you’re going down into something. So Uncommon­Descent.com.

Well, it doesn’t quite end there. Anderson, whose “main focus is analyzing the logical and rhetorical bases of arguments to help people understand the strengths, weaknesses, and underlying assumptions used in the debate over evolution and intelligent design,” closes by tacitly characterizing us as illogical fools:

Well, I’ll just add that when we look into some of these arguments — this is just one example of an argument, that we’ve analyzed today — but when we have critics put forward arguments against intelligent design, what I’ve typically noticed, and found upon closer scrutiny, is that when you parse through it, you find that it actually underscores the whole validity of the approach that’s been taken by the major proponents of intelligent design, in formulating a careful approach to design detection.

Anderson lives up to Jeff Shallit’s characterization of him, revealing that he is laughably far behind the curve. He’s not worth my time. And there’s something wrong if you think that he’s worth yours. Then again, he was about the best choice Luskin had for the interview.

UD degenerated into a madhouse long ago. Barry Arrington has done everyone a favor, having finally gone too far, and given us a clear reason to do what we should have done already. I know that some of you are itching for him to post something that permits you to rationalize a return to UD. Please work to kick your UD habit for good.

I offer as “methadone” the Discovery Institute releases on ID, including the news feed Evolution News and Views, the podcast series ID the Future, and the YouTube channel Discovery­Science­News. There’s also the DI’s Center on Human Exceptionalism, with prime pickings for the philosophically inclined. Now, I know that you get no rush at the thought of this. None of the big fish would argue (and argue about arguments, and argue about argu­ments about argu­ments) with you. But you would get a rise out of the UD minnows — a fix, though not what fully feeds your habit. For a change, they’d be responding to you, rather than you to them. Wouldn’t that be an improvement?

To close on a positive note, I want to emphasize how amazing it is to see the travesty of discussion at UD shut down. To be honest, I didn’t think you could do it. You have my sincere thanks for exercising the discipline that you have.

290 thoughts on “Uncommon Descent is starving

  1. Mung,

    Why don’t you invite Eric to TSZ where he, his supporters, and his critics can have an open discussion, free of the threat of censorship and banning?

  2. Mung,

    IDists can ‘feed the 5000’ in Mung’s fantasy world. But theists who reject IDism? They must starve because they’re simply stupid, conformist cowards. UD feeds only those ‘intelligent’ enough to swallow IDism.

  3. Gregory:
    Hello CharlieM,

    Before I respond to your previous response to me, can I ask a basic question? Can you give an example of something that is *not* ‘designed,’ in your opinion?

    To do that we need to be clear about what we mean by “design”. Words have become so fragmented these days that people spend ages arguing over their meaning and never get to the real issue.

    Is there such a thing as natural design and is it equivalent to human design? I don’t think that its appropriate terminology to say that the universe and everything in it is intelligently designed.

    When we consider a designer and the product of design, we think of the product as being external to the designer as in human design. In nature I believe that the designing intelligence is innate in the being which the designed feature is part of. And although something like shark’s skin can be viewed as a designed object it must always be remembered that it never exists in isolation, it is part of a living, ever-changing, dynamic being.

    I can sympathise with Behe when he said:

    “I remember the first time I looked in a biochemistry textbook and I saw a drawing of something called the bacterial flagellum, with all, all of its parts in all of its glory. It had a propeller and hook region and the, the drive shaft and the motor and so I looked at that and I said, that’s an outboard motor. That, that’s designed.? That’s no chance assemblage of parts.”

    But we should note well the difference between a flagellum and an outboard motor. To call then equivalent would be like saying that there is no difference between a skeleton and a living person.

    So to answer your question, in my opinion this physical universe is the product of two opposing processes we can see working at all levels. Examples are Cosmos and Chaos, order and disorder, anabolism and catabolism. The products of the latter of each of these pairs I do not consider to be designed.

    I ask because you seem to have fallen into the bottomless-pit that both the Intelligent Design Movement (IDM) and Adrian Bejan inhabit on both theist and atheist sides re: “design in nature”. To the IDM, that “Design” is intended by an unnameable Creator/Designer (thus the implicationist apologetics that disgust both theists and atheists about IDism). Bejan, otoh, abuses English language (from his native Romanian) by claiming even the possibility of ‘design without a designer’.

    From a theological key of music, the ‘design argument’ has of course existed for many centuries. So to claim that nothing is not ‘Designed’ is understandable, according to (Abrahamic) theology. But what makes the IDist claim specific (and potentially impinging) is that “Intelligent Design” is a ‘strictly scientific’ theory.

    Can you thus please clarify in which key you are singing (or trying to sing) – theology or science or both – because it is not clear to me from what I’ve heard so far.

    I am neither a scientist nor a theologian and I sing from my own songbook. Science to me deals with findings that should be made available to all; religion is something that each individual should follow (or not follow) as a matter of personal choice.

    Also, when you use the verb form in English, indeed, the agent-like sounding ‘nature’s design’ (with ‘nature’ not capitalised, not personified, as for example, some physicists do), one might wish to compare that with ‘nature’s selection’, don’t you think?

    I wouldn’t read to much into my lack of use of capitals. I feel I would be criticised whichever way I used the word.

  4. hotshoe_: Go fap in the other thread if you really want to discuss god and “She”.

    Just my attempt at humour. Not sure if I can handle more than one thread at the moment,

  5. CharlieM,

    In short, it seems your answer is “nothing is not designed.” Revolution, baby – IDism, IDM, Discovery Institute, evangelical protestantism, donate!

    “I don’t think that its appropriate terminology to say that the universe and everything in it is intelligently designed.”

    We are agreed, then. Nevertheless, the classical ‘design argument’ is that the world is designed/created by our Creator.

    As decent a Catholic as Behe may be, CharlieM, he is sure one weak and lousy philosopher, who doesn’t seem to pay attention to other Catholics who are more insightful than he is. Theists who reject IDism sure seem to have pretty good reasons for doing so.

  6. Gregory:
    But theists who reject IDism? They must starve because they’re simply stupid, conformist cowards.

    Actually no. For example, I am a big fan of Edward Feser and I am currently reading his Neo-Scholastic Essays.

  7. It does seem to have slowed down there some. I’m enjoying Barry’s ‘I’m persecuted’ type posts. He surely has it the hardest of all of us.

  8. CharlieM: In nature I believe that the designing intelligence is innate in the being which the designed feature is part of.

    That pretty much describes evolution, which some of us think of as a designer.

  9. CharlieM: In nature I believe that the designing intelligence is innate in the being which the designed feature is part of.

    Neil Rickert: That pretty much describes evolution, which some of us think of as a designer.

    That is about the furthest thing from evolution one could think of and in no way “describes” evolution. That’s just silly talk.
    .

  10. Rich,

    I’m enjoying Barry’s ‘I’m persecuted’ type posts. He surely has it the hardest of all of us.

    I do feel sorry for Barry sometimes. Gregor Samsa just woke up as a cockroach, but Barry wakes up as Barry — every single day.

  11. CharlieM: The archetypal gecko incorporates all the features that have ever been expressed in physical geckos. It was designed in accordance with that archetype.

    Elizabeth: How do you know?

    How does anyone know anything?

    The idea of the archetype explains why Cetacea conform to the pentadactyl limbed bodyplan without any of their ancestors ever needing to have left the water. It explains why there are anomalies in the evolutionary tree of hominoids. It has no need of a putative horizonal gene transfer to account for genes which seem to be out of place.

    From
    Anschauung and the Archetype:
    The Role of Goethe’s Delicate Empiricism in Comparative Biology
    by Malte C. Ebach, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France

    Comparative biology is a field that deals with morphology. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe recognised comparative biology, not as a passive science obsessed with counting similarities as it is today, but as an active field wherein he sought to perceive the inter-relationships of individual organisms to the organic whole, which he termed the archetype. I submit that Goethe’s archetype and his application of a technique termed the Anschauung are rigorous and significant ways to conduct delicate empiricism in comparative biology. The future of comparative biology lies in the use of the Anschauung to communicate the archetype as a set of inter-relationships of homologues that we perceive intuitively. In this essay I present how the extension of our own intuitive perception forms the foundations of a method for seeing and discovering the archetype in comparative biology…

    The intuitive mind does not model ‘Wholeness’ and assume its parts. The whole cannot be split into smaller parts; rather, the parts reflect the whole in certain manifestations. The familiar forearm, fin and wing analogy can be seen as three individual parts that can be summed up by statements of similarity, or intuitively they are seen as the one structure that has three types of manifestations. The forearm is present in the archetype and so the archetype is present in you. The individual is not a part of the whole, but a multiplicity of the whole. The multiplicity is no more than the inter-relationship of the archetype. Our forearm is present in whales, in bats, in tapirs and in the archetype – the organic or biological whole. The different manifestations of our forearm do not make them different structures, but the same thing appearing many times.

    Goethe’s delicate empiricism, die Anschauung, is a necessary step for comparative biology. Evolutionary biology, with its analytical mindset and generative models, has dominated biology for too long. In order to establish a holistic comparative biology there needs to be a change in the way we think and lead our investigations into phenomena. The competitive nature of comparative biology, struggling to survive has, ironically, created a Darwinian milieu for most comparative biologists. Ideas, as Richard Dawkins’ ‘selfish gene’ concept would have us believe, are competing. Only the most fundable, ‘exciting’ and politically correct ideas are surviving…

    The Anschauung can never explain ‘how things have to be.’ Things are as we experience them, they need no further explanation. The means by which to do Goethe’s way of science are available by applying our experience and our active minds. We just need to open ourselves to trusting them as being a delicate empirical way for discovery. Goethe’s delicate empiricism is in fact being practised in comparative biology, albeit by a small community, under funded and under siege by a dogmatic neo-darwinist agenda of unifying multiplicity.

    In order to use the Anschauung and discover the new archetypes in systematics and biogeography we need to acknowledge and embrace Anschauung as a science that gave birth to morphology and sees through to a unity that is comparative biology.

  12. Mung:
    That is about the furthest thing from evolution one could think of and in no way “describes” evolution. That’s just silly talk.

    “…the negative, anti-Aristotelian element of the [mechanistic] program – the resolve to avoid any appeal to immanent teleology, to the notion of an end to which a natural substance or process is directed given its nature or essence – has remained, and remained definitive of a mechanistic approach to nature, down to the present day.”

    – Edward Feser

  13. keiths:

    Rich,

    I’m enjoying Barry’s ‘I’m persecuted’ type posts. He surely has it the hardest of all of us.

    I do feel sorry for Barry sometimes. Gregor Samsa just woke up as a cockroach, but Barry wakes up as Barry — every single day.

    Ooh, I pray that Barry is reading this thread all along, or that some UDist spy informs him of this thread. I hope he’s heartbroken.

  14. Mung: “…the negative, anti-Aristotelian element of the [mechanistic] program – the resolve to avoid any appeal to immanent teleology, to the notion of an end to which a natural substance or process is directed given its nature or essence – has remained, and remained definitive of a mechanistic approach to nature, down to the present day.”

    – Edward Feser

    I don’t avoid it. I attempt to explain it.

  15. CharlieM: How does anyone know anything?

    By testing predictive hypotheses derived from your theory.

    CharlieM: The idea of the archetype explains why Cetacea conform to the pentadactyl limbed bodyplan without any of their ancestors ever needing to have left the water. It explains why there are anomalies in the evolutionary tree of hominoids. It has no need of a putative horizonal gene transfer to account for genes which seem to be out of place.

    Can you explain why this is a better model than the evolutionary model?

  16. Neil Rickert: I don’t avoid it. I attempt to explain it.

    Nice.

    In response to Mung’s quotation about “immanent teleology” I suggest that what evolutionary process do is to substitute “intrinsic teleology”, or teleonomy”, to describe a thing that serves a function, rather than a goal.

    A point I’ve been trying to make for a very long time now, is that evolutionary processes and intelligent processes are very similar (even at brain level). The difference is quite subtle: evolutionary processes are reactive, not proactive, hence the “Blind Watchmaker” analogy. Dawkins did not propose a “Stupid Watchmaker”, merely one that can only react to the present, not foresee the future.

    And that subtle difference predicts that the outputs will also be subtly different:

    Evolution can only produce things that self-replicate; and it cannot readily import solutions from one lineage into another (at least not polygeneic solutions). It also has to retrofit when new demands are made.

    Human Intelligence, in contrast finds it hard to produce self-replicating things, but can easily import solutions from one design lineage into another, making retrofitting unnecessary.

    And these are precisely the differences between the Watch on the Heath and the wildlife that lives there.

    Evolution cannot produce an iPhone. Human designers cannot produce a giraffe.

  17. “Evolution cannot produce an iPhone. Human designers cannot produce a giraffe.”

    It depends on how far you take your ‘evolution.’ Even Bill Dembski accepts ‘technological evolution.’ Some people argue that everything that ‘changes’ also ‘evolves’, including man-made things.

    Whereas your expression of ‘evolution’ as being able to ‘produce’ things, i.e. ‘evolution produces’ = an agent-like quality, other uses of ‘evolution’ simply mean that within a certain environment, something is produced (e.g. technologies) – in a passive sense, non-agent-like.

    In this case, the starvation is no less extreme at TSZ, which is why you and UD are suitable dancing partners – you need each other to survive. A bunch of ‘skeptics’ gathering to discuss … well, anything possible to be ‘skeptical’ about wouldn’t likely gain much traction.

    iPhones are obviously engineered by people, who are more or less ‘intelligent’. But the terms ‘intelligent’ + ‘design’ are so stained by the IDM that I wouldn’t want to or even need say that iPhones are ‘intelligently designed.’ Everyone knows that already; the more important questions are: why and how?

  18. Elizabeth:
    Evolution cannot produce an iPhone.Human designers cannot produce a giraffe.

    Evolution produced the swallow who built nests.
    Evolution produced the human who built iPhones.

    Or are you saying that humans are not the product of evolution?

  19. Acartia: Sorry, but no woman I know would design a parasite that causes intense suffering, only to be followed by a cure that also causes intense suffering. Only a man would be so cruel, and so stupid.

    From Goethe: Aphorisms on Nature

    T. H. Huxley

    NATURE! We are surrounded and embraced by her: powerless to separate ourselves from her, and powerless to penetrate beyond her.

    Without asking, or warning, she snatches us up into her circling dance, and whirls us on until we are tired, and drop from her arms.

    She is ever shaping new forms: what is, has never yet been; what has been, comes not again. Everything is new, and yet nought but the old.

    We live in her midst and know her not. She is incessantly speaking to us, but betrays not her secret. We constantly act upon her, and yet have no power over her.

    The one thing she seems to aim at is Individuality; yet she cares nothing for individuals. She is always building up and destroying; but her workshop is inaccessible.

    Her life is in her children; but where is the mother? She is the only artist; working-up the most uniform material into utter opposites; arriving, without a trace of effort, at perfection, at the most exact precision, though always veiled under a certain softness.

    Each of her works has an essence of its own; each of her phenomena a special characterisation: and yet their diversity is in unity.

    She performs a play; we know not whether she sees it herself, and yet she acts for us, the lookers-on.

    Incessant life, development, and movement are in her, but she advances not. She changes for ever and ever, and rests not a moment. Quietude is inconceivable to her, and she has laid her curse upon rest. She is firm. Her steps are measured, her exceptions rare, her laws unchangeable.

    She has always thought and always thinks; though not as a man, but as Nature. She broods over an all-comprehending idea, which no searching can find out.

    Mankind dwell in her and she in them. With all men she plays a game for love, and rejoices the more they win. With many, her moves are so hidden, that the game is over before they know it.

    That which is most unnatural is still Nature; the stupidest philistinism has a touch of her genius. Whoso cannot see her everywhere, sees her nowhere rightly.

    She loves herself, and her innumberable eyes and affections are fixed upon herself. She has divided herself that she may be her own delight. She causes an endless succession of new capacities for enjoyment to spring up, that her insatiable sympathy may be assuaged.

    She rejoices in illusion. Whoso destroys it in himself and others, him she punishes with the sternest tyranny. Whoso follows her in faith, him she takes as a child to her bosom.

    Her children are numberless. To none is she altogether miserly; but she has her favourites, on whom she squanders much, and for whom she makes great sacrifices. Over greatness she spreads her shield.

    She tosses her creatures out of nothingness, and tells them not whence they came, nor whither they go. It is their business to run, she knows the road.

    Her mechanism has few springs — but they never wear out, are always active and manifold.

    The spectacle of Nature is always new, for she is always renewing the spectators. Life is her most exquisite invention; and death is her expert contrivance to get plenty of life.

    She wraps man in darkness, and makes him for ever long for light. She creates him dependent upon the earth, dull and heavy; and yet is always shaking him until he attempts to soar above it.

    She creates needs because she loves action. Wondrous! that she produces all this action so easily. Every need is a benefit, swiftly satisfied, swiftly renewed.— Every fresh want is a new source of pleasure, but she soon reaches an equilibrium.

    Every instant she commences an immense journey, and every instant she has reached her goal.

    She is vanity of vanities; but not to us, to whom she has made herself of the greatest importance. She allows every child to play tricks with her; every fool to have judgment upon her; thousands to walk stupidly over her and see nothing; and takes her pleasure and finds her account in them all.

    We obey her laws even when we rebel against them; we work with her even when we desire to work against her.

    She makes every gift a benefit by causing us to want it. She delays, that we may desire her; she hastens, that we may not weary of her.

    She has neither language nor discourse; but she creates tongues and hearts, by which she feels and speaks.

    Her crown is love. Through love alone dare we come near her. She separates all existences, and all tend to intermingle. She has isolated all things in order that all may approach one another. She holds a couple of draughts from the cup of love to be fair payment for the pains of a lifetime.

    She is all things. She rewards herself and punishes herself; is her own joy and her own misery. She is rough and tender, lovely and hateful, powerless and omnipotent. She is an eternal present. Past and future are unknown to her. The present is her eternity. She is beneficient. I praise her and all her works. She is silent and wise.

    No explanation is wrung from her; no present won from her, which she does not give freely. She is cunning, but for good ends; and it is best not to notice her tricks.

    She is complete, but never finished. As she works now, so can she always work. Everyone sees her in his own fashion. She hides under a thousand names and phrases, and is always the same. She has brought me here and will also lead me away. I trust her. She may scold me, but she will not hate her work. It was not I who spoke of her. No! What is false and what is true, she has spoken it all. The fault, the merit, is all hers.

  20. Acartia:
    CharlieM, I suspect that we may be drawing a false conclusion about your arguments from the limitations inherent in comments on a blog. I suggest that you take Elizabeth up on her offer to post an OP. in that way you can draft your ideas in a way that is not possible in a comment.

    I wouldn’t know where to begin but I might consider it some time.

  21. CharlieM: Don’t you mean “she designed”?

    OMagain: It’s a serious point. The logical answer, to me, is multiple designers, warring against each other. It sort of makes sense.

    Or working in harmony. Lions killing wildebeest may be disasterous for the individual, but I would argue that it benefits the group as a whole.

  22. CharlieM: Or working in harmony. Lions killing wildebeest may be disasterous for the individual, but I would argue that it benefits the group as a whole.

    Please apply the same logic to HIV and cancer.

  23. CharlieM: Or working in harmony. Lions killing wildebeest may be disasterous for the individual, but I would argue that it benefits the group as a whole.

    Well, “working in harmony” in the sense that the Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine of the arms race was the superpowers “working in harmony” to “benefit the world as a whole” BY competing to ensure that their forces were more or less matched?

    Ecosystems are indeed an “arms race” – each organism’s design helps it eat but not be eaten. If you want to design that “intelligently” the best approach is to have multiple designers, each trying to perfect their own organism, knowing, possibly that other designers will be doing the same, but happy that the collective results of their efforts will be a balanced ecology. Right?

    Do you think this is how the putative designers who designed life worked?

  24. GlenDavidson: Why don’t seals have “shark’s skin”?Was a lesser designer responsible for seals?

    Your question demonstrates the error of looking at things in isolation and not taking the whole organism into account. I could give several good reasons why seals don’t have shark’s skin, but I will just stick to one; mode of locomotion. Sharks move through the water by moving their bodies or parts of their bodies sideways thus the skin is constantly bending. Thus the denticles are not static and it is their movement that contributes to the drag reduction and possibly gives an increase in thrust. In the case of a seal it is the flippers which gives the thrust and they are fairly rigid. Denticle like structures would be ineffective. What does benefit the seal is a streamlined body. To be of any use individual features must be in harmony with the whole of the animal. Racing car engines may perform much better than lawn mower engines but they are totally inappropriate to fit to a lawn mower.

    Or is it as evolution without much HGT predicts, that good traits in one lineage almost never transfer to another, separate lineage?

    That’s one of the problems of “great design” bandied about by IDists/creationists, the “designs” aren’t “portable” like they are when actual known designers are involved, unless you start looking at organisms where HGT is common, at which point there is an evolutionary explanation.That, and the slavish derivation of adaptation of both “bad design” and very “good design” from ancestors of birds, sharks, and geckos, are tests that evolutionary theory passes, and that the design idea does not pass.

    Glen Davidson

    Did you forget the data from the link given earlier?:

    The authors compared genetic information in multiple species of gecko and built an evolutionary tree based on this comparison. They postulate that adhesive toepads evolved 11 times and were lost 9 times, the leaf-toed morphology evolved in parallel 13–15 times and paraphalanges evolved nine times independently.

    I would like to take a closer look at what you consider to be “bad design”.

  25. CharlieM: Evolution produced the swallow who built nests.
    Evolution produced the human who built iPhones.

    But there is a big difference there.

    The swallow builds a nest for its own use.

    The human builds an iPhone to sell to other people.

    Or, as I sometimes put it: if you want to find the designer, follow the money (see who benefits).

    For evolution, the primary beneficiary is the organism itself. For the iPhone, the primary beneficiary is Apple Corporation (and its owners and employees). For William Paley’s watch, the beneficiary is not the watch.

  26. Which is why, in another thread, I brought up llamas.

    My purpose in breeding llamas (if I did, which I don’t) might be to carry my pack.

    The llama’s own purpose, while carrying my pack, is to eat as much hedge as she can.

    I don’t see that dropping the idea that we were made for some Designer’s purpose means that we no longer have any purpose. Indeed, it is rather more dignifying to think that humans have their own purposes than that they were made for the ulterior purpose of some designer!

    cf breeding slaves.

  27. CharlieM: Evolution produced the swallow who built nests.
    Evolution produced the human who built iPhones.

    Or are you saying that humans are not the product of evolution?

    Not at all. But the optimisation of the iphone was done by humans, by virtue of their evolved capacity to design things with distal goals in mind.

    Evolution can produce the brain and dexterity that allows designers to design and build things for their own purposes. And we call those things “artefacts” because they were made by “art” rather than “nature” – and the process is a bit different. Not terribly different, but different in ways that are detectable, I would argue, in the product.

  28. “The human builds an iPhone to sell to other people.”

    Sorry, Neil, but you are obviously not familiar with the literature on this topic.

    E.g. Radovan Richta or George Basalla’s “The Evolution of Technology” for starters (http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/history-science-and-technology/evolution-technology)

    For a guy who ‘believes in’ evolutionary algorithms, your lack of faith in ‘technological evolution’ smells funny.

  29. Elizabeth: I think it can be useful to think of it (the genome) as a database.

    And in that case the organism to which it belongs can thought of as the computer operator who has intimate knowledge of her machine

  30. “done by humans, by virtue of their evolved capacity to design things with distal goals in mind.”

    Well, I’d substitute ‘our’ for ‘their,’ as a human-social scientist. It seems Elizabeth wants so much to ape naturalistic methods that she would prefer to dehumanise humanity through objectification – ‘they’, not ‘we’. That’s fine, in so far as she is interested as a ‘scientist’ in mere ‘brains’ and ‘mechanisms’, not in ‘people’.

    We (human beings) do ‘design’ and ‘manufacture’ things. Wrapping our understanding of this in ‘blind variation and selective retention’ language is surely a cop out. But hey, the atheist anti-creationists often want to be hyper-evolutionist so badly that they give teleology sneakily to ateleological themes.

  31. CharlieM: And in that case the organism to which it belongs can thought of as the computer operator who has intimate knowledge of her machine

    No,not really. Just because one part of analogy works, it doesn’t follow that it all works.

    And I’d say the next unit up is the cell. The “cell” is the analogue of the computer, and it uses the database to determine the output it needs in response to input. The input can be come from elsewhere in the cell, or from the rest of the organism, or from the wider environment.

  32. Gregory, why do you use so many pejoratives when addressing me, or referring to me? It’s tiresome.

    Please TRY to assume I am posting in good faith.

  33. More food for starving UDers:

    William Dembski and Robert Marks have shown that no evolutionary algorithm is superior to blind search — unless information is added from an intelligent cause, which means it is not, in the Darwinian sense, an evolutionary algorithm after all. This mathematically proven law, based on the accepted No Free Lunch Theorems, seems to be lost on the champions of evolutionary computing. Researchers keep confusing an evolutionary algorithm (a form of artificial selection) with “natural evolution.”

    Evolutionary Computing: The Invisible Hand of Intelligence

    Sorry Tom. They’re not quite dead yet.

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