Welcome back guys!

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Well, a welcome of sorts.  Unfortunately, the hackers emptied the user file, and so we are down to three users right now (which is a considerable improvement from zero, as I can at least now access the admin panel!)

The bad news of course is that that means that you may get a bunch of spam from the hackers 🙁

I am slowly registering more people, as I can get details from your posts, but I don’t think there will be any problem in you just re-registering.  I’m still wall-to-wall with stuff, but should have some time on Sunday to find out whether there is any other damage, and try to fix it.  Also, maybe, post 🙂

Missed you guys.

Cheers,

Lizzie.

109 thoughts on “Welcome back guys!”

  1. My guess is that page views at UD have gone down significantly since the bannings. If so, then ideological purity and message control has proven to be less financially valuable then heated debate and tolerance of skepticism.

    FYI: Alexa only has UD’s trends for the last three months.
    http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/uncommondescent.com#

    Incidentally, has anyone else been unable to access the UD site since they were banned? I have had to use a proxy ever since…

  2. I think WJM’s argument is an yet another attempt to bolster his “evil Darwinist conspiracy” position.
    Whereas truly Dunning-Kruger-stupid IDists believe that they and their heroes have uncovered an insight that destroys evolutionary theory (but biologists are not smart enough to understand this), those IDists who are slightly less stupid recognize that there are a LOT of biologists, and some of them are quite clever. Therefore, there must be a conspiracy of silence, an omerta enforced by the Darwinist police. Hence the “Expelled” idiotrope.

    WJM is once more arguing that anyone who is not a professional biologist must be merely an uninformed cheerleader.

    When WJM tried to make this argument here,

    Why the NDE/ID Debate Is Really (For Most) A Proxy Fight


    he even insured himself against the idea that informed amateurs might exist, by pre-emptively labeling them as having an “obsessive compulsion”.

    His faith in the existence of a Darwinist Conspiracy leads him to make statements such as the following:

    Yes, it’s in the interests of the average scientist to be a maverick – to attack and attempt to bring down those theories that others have established long, fruitful careers and reputations upon. There’s nothing that specific scientific communities embrace like those who reveal most of their work as flawed or entirely erroneous. Academics in particular are fond of students that attempt to prove their professors in error, or that their whole way of thinking about a scientific issue is flawed.

    Sarcasm. You are doing it wrong.

  4. In fact, I’d say it was almost too true. It’s harder to get replications published than falsifications. Journals are much more interested in something novel than a boring replication.

  6. It’s sort of sad that these IDists have so little understanding, not just of science, but the way in which science is done.

    William J Murray wrote at UD:

    I think that what most anti-ID advocates fail to understand is that when an ID advocate states that there is no evidence for “evolution”, what they usually mean is that there is no evidence that necessity and chance (in terms of natural selection and chance mutation) are sufficient explanations for all that we see in biology and in the fossil and molecular record.

    What most ID (all?) ID advocates fail to understand is that when scientists say that an ID inference is unwarranted, they are not claiming that “necessity and chance.are sufficient explanations” – they are claiming that there is no evidence that they are insufficient explanations.

  7. WJM calls sarcasm to his aid again re: the hacking.

    here

    Hacked? How can they possibly know they were hacked unless they know the identity of the hacker? How unscientific, to assign “design” to what should be explained as a coincidental accumulation of random errors emerging as what only appears to be deliberate hacking.

    That subterfuge to human-designed software is typically human-caused is non-controversial. One does not need to know that it was perpetrated by Hacker X to find it reasonable to assume it was a human (even though it is possible that it was not). Among their number are individuals with the necessary capability, so there is no in-principle reason to invoke a non-human cause.

    For biological design, I personally would be happy to waive any demands to know the individual deity/alien responsible. But some reliable means of identifying the operation even of ‘unknowable’ designers is essential to inferring their existence. There isn’t one, though WJM gaily alludes to CSI, dFSCI and IC as ‘metrics’.

  8. kairosfocus needs to upgrade his FSCO/I acronym.

    I propose, HNBD FSCO/I, where HNBD stands for “Human Non-Biological Design”.

    You can see HNDB in things like computers and the ASCII text I am composing right now just like kairosfocus said.

    You can find HNDB all around us.

    Now where can we find “non-human” design to draw an inference?

    What about an example of a new human “biological” design like a T.Rex to replace the one we lost?

  11. What most ID (all?) ID advocates fail to understand is that when scientists say that an ID inference is unwarranted, they are not claiming that “necessity and chance.are sufficient explanations” – they are claiming that there is no evidence that they are insufficient explanations.

    Indeed, scientists don’t assume sufficiency; there is no logical justification for such an assumption in the construction of theories based on partial and changing knowledge.

    More annoying, however, is the ID/creationist’s penchant for distorting scientific concepts and evidence in their accusations against science. When Henry Morris and Duane Gish started out taunting scientists into public debates back in the 1970s, they used some of the most infuriating caricatures they could come up with. They wanted to make scientists angry.

    You see it in the snarky presentations given by their protégés like Thomas Kindell. Gish was a master at provoking his opponents to anger; and he used to show up unannounced in the biology classrooms in Kalamazoo, Michigan and badger biology teachers in front of their students. He was a mean one.

    I think this has become a habitual characteristic of the ID/creationist movement. These people really are angry about the success of science; and they are jealous of the power and influence of science in secular culture. It is a characteristic of authoritarian subcultures rooted in sectarianism to be jealous of competing “religions” and authorities.

    UD seems to have become a forum for nurturing this anger while wallowing in conspiracy thinking. It is far easier to engage in censorship than it is to defend that kind of groupthink.

    And, of course, they believe science is groupthink; but when an ID/creationist makes accusations about scientists and about science, he is telling you all about himself.

  12. What a strange way of carrying on a conversation! Oh well.

    Eric Anderson:

    Lizzie @49 via Joe:

    Gotta love Lizzie. Always good for a laugh.

    It is good to know, however, that scientists acknowledge chance and necessity are not sufficient explanations. That is an important admission and is a first step in the right direction.

    For people on a board that mandates that arguments follow classical logic, this is very strange.

    William J Murray assumes that scientists claim that “chance and necessity” are sufficient. I point out that they do not – that they simply claim that there is no evidence that “chance and necessity” are insufficient.

    So Eric “laughs” at Lizzie for the “admission” that “scientists acknowledge chance and necessity are not sufficient explanations”.

    um, where did he see that “admission”?

    “There is no evidence that Chance and Necessity are insufficient” ~= “there is evidence that Chance and Necessity are insufficient.”

    She is wrong, however, that there is no evidence chance and necessity are insufficient.

    Every experience we have suggests they are insufficient. Every reasonable calculation of what would be involved in the resources and timeframe of the universe suggests they are insufficient. So there is very good reason to think they are insufficient.

    Well, I simply disagree that any “reasonable calculation”, nor indeed any calculation at all “suggests they are insufficient”. The only calculations I have seen that “suggest” this have been unreasonable.

    Now, if what she is really saying is that it cannot be affirmatively proven that they are insufficient, then congratulations, she has just noted that it is not possible to prove a universal negative of this kind. Big deal.

    No, I don’t think it’s a very big deal at all. Which is why I think ID is pointless. It’s a “universal negative”. But it seems to be all ID has.

    Everyone knows that and it is not how science operates.

    Exactly.

    We can’t prove that there aren’t little mice on a treadmill in the middle of the Sun to power it. But we have good reason to think there aren’t. If the lack of a universal negative proof is the foundation on which Lizzie wants to base her materialist creation myth, that is a very shaky foundation indeed.

    And awry goes the logic again. Let me repeat: no scientist (qua scientist) is claiming that they have proven there is no little mouse/ID involved in creation. All they are saying is: there is no evidence that there is.

    If you want to propose little mice/ID, you need more than the claim that there might be. And it’s up to the proposer (the little mousers/IDists) to support their claim. Not the people who don’t think see any reason to think so.

    Finally, on the positive side of the evidence, we have lots of experience that intelligent beings are capable of producing functional complex systems — in other words, unlike chance and necessity, design is a sufficient explanation.

    So, what was it again that ID advocates fail to understand, Lizzie?

    That scientists merely claim that there is no evidence that “chance and necessity” are insufficient to explain our observations. That “designer”, isn’t an alternative to “chance and necessity” but a result of it. That’s the whole point. We think that designers evolved. We see no evidence that they didn’t.

    And we certainly see no evidence that an unevolved designer pre-existed the evolved ones we know about.

    Although it is possible, just as it’s possible that there are mice inside the sun.

    [Although I have to say, although I love Monod’s book, I do think the “Chance and Necessity” distinction is a false one. My own position is that I do not think there is good reason to postulated a disembodied (or even a bodied) designer in order to account for the patterns and interractions of matter and energy that we observe in the natural world, prior to a time where bodied-designers existed.]

  13. Well, at least William gets it:

    If scientists do not know if necessity and chance are sufficient, they cannot say agency is unwarranted. The best they can say is simply “We don’t know if chance and necessity is sufficient, and we do not know if agency is warranted”.

    Exactly.

    What we query is the claim, by IDists, that agency IS warranted.

    It is that inference that is, IMO, unsupported by evidence or argument (and no, Dembski’s math doesn’t do the job).

  14. I think you need to point out that the chance element in producing mutations or variants has been very thoroughly considered for many decades. It’s not something that has just been accepted a priori.

    The most visible competent evolutionary biologist to express sympathy with ID — James A. Shapiro — dealt explicitly with the “foresight” problem in producing variation and rejected foresight.

    If variation is not weighted toward functionality, then the remaining candidates for the designer are purifying selection and differential reproduction.

    Shapiro argues that variation is weighted, but only in the sense that some large scale genome changes — duplication and translocation — are safer and less likely to be lethal than changes to protein code.

  15. I don’t see access to HTML in the reply box anymore, and I don’t see the option to edit my reply after posting it.

    Are these broken from the site hack or am I doing something wrong, or ??

  17. whoopsies, missed William’s preceding post:

    If an ID inference is unwarranted, that necessarily means that chance and necessity are sufficient because those three exhaust all the known possibilities.

    um, no. William has gone and excluded a middle. Careless.

    There are three possible conclusions here:

    1. Chance and necessity are sufficient
    2. Chance and necessity may be sufficient.
    3. Chance and necessity are not sufficient.

    If an ID claim is warranted (because some IDist produces some killer argument or evidence), then we must conclude 3.

    If it is UNwarranted (because, for instance, the claimant messed up the math), we are left with 1 or 2. And as we can never, in science, prove that our models are “sufficient” (all our models are necessarily incomplete), that leaves us with 2. Not 1.

    William has mistaken “ID is unwarranted” for “ID is untrue”. As Eric helpfully points out (helpfully to me, that is, not to him), we have no warrant (at least on present evidence) for saying there is a mouse on a treadmill inside the sun. That is not the same as saying that there is no mouse on a treadmill inside the sun.

    If we accept the premise that:

    There are only three fundamental descriptions of how phenomena behaves; (1) lawful (regular, predictable), (2) chance (which some would claim is really subsumed by 1, and (3) directed by agency.

    To make the positive claim that (3) is unwarranted, one must be able to show that (1) and (2) are sufficient. But then, this only applies to those that abide by the principles of right reason. Those not so confined can say any foolish thing they want as if they are engaging in reasoned debate.

    No. To make the positive claim that 3 is untrue, one would have to show that 1 and 2 are sufficient. But that is quite different from saying that an ID inference is unwarranted, just as it is quite different to claim that it is untrue that there is a mouse on a treadmill in the sun, than to say that the inference is unwarranted.

    This is where we come across (again) the lack of symmetry between ID and science: All science can say (and scientists do, including me) is that ID claims, as made so far, are unwarranted (they are based on fallacious arguments or dubious data), not that they are uncleartrue. What IDists claim is not only that ID is warranted (which is fair enough, in principle, if they could mount a decent argument), but that scientists claim to have ruled it out, and that this is because we are bad, or something.

    We haven’t, and we aren’t. We just don’t see any reason to posit mice in the sun without good reason to support the hypothesis.

  18. Yeah, I’ll slowly add the plugins back. But I’m not in any hurry, because it was a plugin that contained the malicious code, and I need to be a bit warier 🙂

  19. In short, as I seem to be on a roll:

    IDists set up a straw man of evolutionary claims, and then pile fallacy on fallacy by interpreting their demolition of their straw man as support for ID.

  20. Okay, no problem for me as long as I know it’s not my fault …. sorry you’re having to deal with this at all for the (dubious) pleasure of providing some of us with a place to rant.

    Thanks so far!

  21. I have been posting HTML directly in the reply editor without the HTML box. It seems to work. I don’t know what has changed, but if this continues to work, it is more convenient.

  22. Lizzie,
    When you wrote “All science can say (and scientists do, including me) is that ID claims, as made so far, are unwarranted (they are based on fallacious arguments or dubious data), not that they are unclear.” did you mean to say “_or_ that they are unclear”? I certainly think that the both the alphabet soup of CSI/dFSCI/FSCOI etc. and Upright BiPed’s claims here are unclear to the point of being nonsensical.

  23. Let’s take a look at kairosfocus’s explanatory filter. (We will also make this a test of the HTML editing after the hijacking of this site.)

    Suppose we come upon a rock in a heath.

    Suspicious of the fact that such a rock was here in the heath, we carefully note its position and orientation, pick up the rock and take it back to our lab where we place it under a microscope and subjected a sample of it to electron microscopy and x-ray diffraction.

    Suppose for example the rock weighs approximately 60 grams, and is a mixture of polycrystals of mostly SiO2 and some polycrystals of other compounds as well (about 3 atoms per molecule on average).

    This allows an estimate of approximately 1027 molecules in the rock with approximately 1018 molecules per polycrystal on average.

    Let N = 1027, the number of molecules.

    Let P = 109, the number of polycrystals.

    There are P! permutations of all the polycrystals in the sample.

    Each polycrystal has an orientation in a 3-dimensional space; so we choose three perpendicular axes about which rotations can be made. There are 360 degrees, 60 minutes, 60 seconds per complete rotation about each axis, therefore each polycrystal can have 12960003 orientations in 3-dimensional space.

    Since there are P polycrystals, there are 1296000(3P) ways to orient all the polycrystals.

    The number of permutations of the individual atoms is conservatively (3N)!.

    There is also the number of possible orientations of the original rock when it was noted in the heath; and this is again 12960003.

    Therefore, the number of possible arrangements and orientations of polycrystals and atoms and rock is

    Ω = (3N)! x P! x 1296000(9P).

    The amount of information in this particular rock is thus log2 of Ω, a number that far, far exceeds 500.

    Therefore we can conclude without hesitation that this particular rock was designed; and since this is an arbitrary rock picked up in an arbitrary location, we can say that any rock is designed after we examine it and carefully specify its structure.

    But we haven’t even dealt with function yet. Suppose this rock was found with bird droppings on it. The rock therefore had the function of preventing the droppings from directly hitting the ground. It could also serve as shelter for insects and worms. It also can divert water; divert the path of a growing plant root. In fact there is literally no limit to the functions that a rock can perform.

    So we can take that extremely large number of functions and raise it to a power equal to the number of rocks in the universe and conclude that there is specified functional complexity in rocks as well as specified complexity in each and every rock.

    But rocks can also be organized into unified larger rocks and planets and moons; so there is specified organizational complexity in rocks as well. They don’t even have to be melded together, they can be disjoint clusters of rocks that prevent erosion or divert a river, or provide shelter. The organizational complexity of rocks is enormous.

    Therefore ALL rocks are intelligently designed.

    (HTML isn’t working in the reply editor after all)

  24. OK, I’ve reinstalled the user-edit plug-in, as well as a live preview, but I’ll leave the wysiwyg editor out as a lot of people don’t like it, and anyway it’s good for us to retain our html skills 🙂

    I’ll see if that autoquote plug-in is still available. I liked that, although it was incompatible with some of our old stuff. Now we’ve had a clearout, I could try it again.

  27. Mike Elzinga: (HTML isn’t working in the reply editor after all)

    Ah. Is for me. Not for everyone. I think I have to edit the script to sort that out. Will do, but probably not before the weekend.

  28. I’d say one way we can tell the difference between an intelligently designed complex object and an evolved one, is that the intelligently designed ones are usually much cruder.

    Also they can’t reproduce (or not yet). Once they can, of course, they will continue to evolve, undirected by us.

  29. Lizzie,

    I have been using the blockquote tag and the a-tag for embedding web addresses; and they seem to work.

    I have also been using the ampersand/semicolon combinations to get Greek characters and other symbols, and the italics and bold tags.

    The sub and sup tags don’t seem to work however. I haven’t tried everything yet, but I seem to remember we had trouble with sub and sup tags before. Those got fixed with the HTML editor.

  30. Mike Elzinga: The sub and sup tags don’t seem to work however. I haven’t tried everything yet, but I seem to remember we had trouble with sub and sup tags before. Those got fixed with the HTML editor.

    I think I’ve fixed those. Check your post, I’ve replaced your ^ with sup tags, also sub tags for log base2.

  31. Lizzie,

    Thank you, Elizabeth. 🙂

    (This is a test: logNPQ)

    OK; it appears to be working if I don’t edit. The tags go away upon editing. Wierd.

  33. Mike Elzinga:
    Lizzie,

    Thank you, Elizabeth. :-)

    (This is a test:logNPQ)

    OK; it appears to be working if I don’t edit.The tags go away upon editing.Wierd.

    That’s very weird. I’ll check the edit plug-in, and see if there is something I can fix.

  34. heh, they also go away in quotes. I think I know why. Not sure I can fix it. WordPress has changed how it handles allowed tags.

    I’ll see if I can do it the old way.

  35. *raises loud hailer”

    HI WILLIAM!!!

    GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN!!!!

    WOULD YOU LIKE TO COME OVER HERE AND CHAT IN PERSON?

    *goes back to semaphore*

    William writes at UD:

    Dr. Liddle says:

    And awry goes the logic again. Let me repeat: no scientist (qua scientist) is claiming that they have proven there is no little mouse/ID involved in creation. All they are saying is: there is no evidence that there is.

    Dawkins disagrees when it comes to biology:

    “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”

    When a scientist finds marking that appear to be the result of water erosion, or finds markings on a land sonar image that appear to be artifacts of some sort, that appearance offers the first direction on how to go about further investigation. They might find out that the appearance is deceiving, and that what they have found is the result of something else, but what a thing appears to be is the first evidence used in organizing additional scrutiny.

    So we’re not talking about mice on treadmills in the sun that have appeared to no one; we’re talking about an appearance of design that is apparent to virtually everyone, and is so pronounced that atheistic, materialist biologists cannot even talk about it without inserting the language of design and purpose.

    Well, some of us have less problem than Dawkins does, but fair enough. The issue is: why should things that have clearly not been designed by a biological agent have the appearance of having been designed by a biological agent? It’s a good question, and one that Darwin gave a very good answer to.

    Hawking disagrees with Dr. Liddle’s “no evidence” claim on the cosmic scale:

    “A bottom-up approach to cosmology either requires one to postulate an initial state of the Universe that is carefully ?ne-tuned — as if prescribed by an outside agency — or it requires one to invoke the notion of eternal in?ation, a mighty speculative notion to the generation of many different Universes, which prevents one from predicting what a typical observer would see.”

    Darawinistic scientists have to purposefully turn a blind eye to the apparent design;

    Darwin’s theory of biological evolution is irrelevant to the question Hawking is asking. IDists challenge “evolutionists” to account for “the appearance of design” in biological organism. Darwin provided an excellent answer. So now the goalposts move – oh, but there is appearance of design in the fact that the universe exists. So do we have an answer to that that does not involve an intelligent agent? Sure we do. It could be wrong – the answer might well be an ID. But there is no evidence to suggest such a thing.

    The viability of a hypothesis (“it could have been a designer”) is not the same as evidence to support it. Sure, it could have been a designer. We certainly cannot exclude such a thing. But nobody is doing so – which is the point I keep trying to make. Scientists aren’t saying “there is no Designer”. They are saying “there is no reason to suppose that there must be”. And yet, over and over, IDists attack the straw man: that “evolutionists” claim that there is no ID. We don’t. What we claim is that IDists have failed to demonstrate that there is.

    they virtually all agree that the universe appears to be fine tuned, and that biology appears to be designed for a purpose; but here is Dr. Liddle saying that there is “no evidence” that would even warrant research about whether or not chance and necessity could be sufficient explanations, or if ID is warranted as per the appearance of that which one is attempting to explain.

    Well, there isn’t. There is a set of data (“fine tuning”), and a few hypotheses, one of which is “intentional design”. But there is no evidence that “intentional design” is superior as a hypothesis to any of the other hypotheses that have been advanced. It may be that there will never be – we will just have to say: “we don’t know”. But at least alternatives to a disembodied intentional agent are testable. And we have absolutely no evidence for disembodied intentional agents in any other domain of observation. It’s without precedent. All the designers we know of are biological.

    If a scientist is going to attempt to truthfully and factually explain something, and everyone agrees that it looks designed, Dr. Liddle would have us believe it is perfectly good science to simply not investigate the possibility that what appears to be designed perhaps necessarily was designed.

    Not at all. What on earth makes you think that? Of course I think it’s good science to investigate whether it was designed. But the fact that it “looks designed” is not evidence that it was. It’s the explanandum, not the explanation. I think you are confusing the two.

    Dr. Liddle would have us believe that it is perfectly good logic and science to happen upon a scene that everyone agrees looks like murder, but then to simply ignore that possibility and focus completely upon a Darwinistic explanation, no matter how anti-common sense or absurd or mystifying that explanation is (according to Lewontin).

    No, I most certainly would not, and do not. I have no problem in investigating the possibility that an event or object was the result of action by an intentional agent. I just see absolutely no evidence that this is the case when it comes to either biological organisms or the cosmos. Sure, both have “the appearance of design”. But, as I said, that is the explanandum, not the explanation.

    And so, when the investigators focus entirely upon finding Darwinistic explanations for the “murder” scene, and interpret everything in terms of that heuristic, and set up experiments in terms of that heuristic, she thinks that it is not equivocating for those investigators to say “there is no evidence of a murder”, even though they haven’t looked for it and have a deliberate mindset to explain, describe and interpret everything in “natural death” terms and conclusions.

    Tell me how you would look for “evidence of murder” where “murder” is a metaphor for “the creation of biological organisms by an intelligent agent”, or, better still, an example of where someone has done this.

    A better metaphor is this: IDists come on the scene of a mangled corpse at the bottom of the cliff. The IDsts says: “this looks like murder”. The Darwinist says: “this looks like an unfortunate accident”. Both could be wrong, as you will agree. Your allegation is that the Darwinist says to the IDist: “but we know, a priori, that murderers do not exist and that all deaths by falling are accident: this is axiomatic.”

    I say that the Darwinist says no such thing. Rather, she says: “OK, yes, it could be murder, and to demonstrate that, we must find either find a person with means, motive and opportunity, or, failing that, at least injuries that distinguishes an intentional push from the injuries we’d expect to be sustained during a fall”. But the IDist says: “you can’t rule out murder, and people that have been pushed off cliffs look like this, therefore we must infer murder”.

    Even though when those investigators more closely examined the scene, it looked even more like murder to everyone involved in the investigation.

    Indeed, what we found by going deeper into the cells was not **less and less** appearance of design, but an appearance of design that is so overwhelming that it would probably shock Darwin himself back into the church.

    And that is where I profoundly disagree. Not simply because there is no trace of murder weapon, or murderer, but because the “appearance of design” is, like a corpse at the foot of a cliff, indistinguishable from the “appearance of something that has evolved to survive in a range of environments”. This was Darwin’s insight,. and we have shown, over and over again, that the mechanism he proposed (replication with variance in reproductive success) results in populations of extremely simple things evolving into populations of extremely complex things. So much so that we now substitute the Darwinian algorithm for intentional design in many applications.

    That scientists merely claim that there is no evidence that “chance and necessity” are insufficient to explain our observations.

    Well, there isn’t. It would be almost impossible to do so – to prove that negative. That’s why the onus is on IDists to demonstrate that an IDer was involved, not simply infer it from the insufficiency of current explanations.

    Apparently, Dr. Liddle is equivocating “not looking for evidence” with “there is no evidence”.

    I think you mean “conflating” not “equivocating” 🙂 No, I’m not. None of the supposed “evidence” for ID does the job, in my view. This is largely because with the odd exception, it isn’t “evidence” at all – it is merely a restatement of the explanandum: “this thing looks designed”. Sure, “design” is a possible explanation as to why something looks designed, but merely observing that it does look designed is not the same as inferring that it was. Otherwise we’d be stuck with “the sun looks as though it goes round the earth, therefore it does”.

    The only way to find evidence that chance and necessity are insufficient is to develop a metric of some sort that can (provisionally) make such a determination, such as IC, FSCO/I, or finding a semiotic state.

    Well, no. Actually, there is no way to “find evidence that chance and necessity are insufficient”. The only way to find evidence for an ID is to, well, find evidence for an ID. You can’t prove a negative in science, no matter how tempting it is. IC, and all the other ingredients of the alphabet soup simply don’t work. As we have shown, many times. Even Dembski agrees that CSI can be produced by Darwinian algorithms (except that the somehow suggests that the Darwinian algorithm must have been designed, which rather shoots his own argument in the foot, and takes us back to, well, the universe is full of chance and necessity, therefore it must have been designed, which is rather weaker).

    Where has any scientist other than ID advocates attempted to develop a metric to test whether or not the apparent design in biology should be dismissed as a false appearance?

    Nowhere, because it’s not within scientific methodology. Science advances by the testing of positive hypotheses, not the retention of nulls – if we retain our nulls, we conclude “we don’t know” not “therefore ID”. It can be shown mathematically and empirically that Darwinian algorithms produce the appearance of design. So you can’t distinguish between the two. It is still unclear, however, how the first self-replicators (a prerequisite for the Darwinian algorithm) came about, but again, we have no good reason to think it was anything other than chemistry. It’s not as though the simplest self-replicator had to be anything but, well, simple.

    We may fail to find a really persuasive hypothesis, but there is nothing intrinsically designed-like about a self-replicator. The vast majority of things that we know to have been designed by intelligent designers do not self-replicate, after all. In fact, I’d say that self-replication was the hall-mark of things that were not designed by things-with-brains, at least until recently (now we can, at least in cyberspace).

    Most Darwinists that I know claim there is no metric for making such a determination, so according to them there is no means by which to collect rigorous evidence either way – to show N+C sufficient, or to show ID necessary.

    Absolutely right. It’s not how science works. We do have the methodology to show that a model is sufficient, only to show that it is a better model than some alternative model. We cannot show that ID is necessary, unless we have an actual testable ID model. Which is the job of the ID proponents to produce. I have seen one. As far as I know it is still a work-in-progress. (I mean the front-loading hypothesis).

    But – there is such evidence; the overwhelming appearance of design, the FSCO/I metric, the presence of irreducibly complex features, and (which is also IC) the existence of a semiotic state.

    1. The appearance of design is not evidence of design – the explanandum cannot also be the explanation – that would be circular reasoning. Which you are allowed to do on this blog, but it remains fallacious.
    2. The alphabet soup metrics do not distingush the products of design from the products of the Darwinian algorithm
    3. IC features, on any definition so far provided, can evolve by the Darwinian algorithm (see Lenski and AVIDA)
    4. I am still waiting for an operational definition of a semiotic state

    Investigators that are admittedly committed to a “natural death” explanation are not trying to find evidence for murder in the first place, and interpret all evidence that might support a finding of murder in terms of natural death in the second place.

    This analogy has a fundamental flaw: no investigator rules out “murder” as a possible explanation because we know that it is possible to demonstrate murder and that murder happens. A better analogy is of investigators that are committed to non-supernatural causes of death, on the principle that there is absolutely no evidence of murder-by-ghosts, and that even if the thing had been a murder-by-ghost there would be know way of demonstrating it – the best the investigators could do would be to say “well, this death is a mystery and we can’t rule out ghosts”. We know that Darwinian mechanisms can result in “the appearance of design”. We know that Darwinian mechanisms can only operate if the putatively designed thing in question is a self-replicator. We know that the putatively designed thing in question is a self-replicator. Therefore there is no reason to suppose that anything other than a Darwinian mechanism was responsible.

    On the other hand, a watch-on-the-heath is a good candidate for designed artefact because it doesn’t reproduce, and, in addition, we have evidence of watchmakers. Neither is the true in the case of biological organisms.

    And Dr. Liddle claims to not be equivocating or prevaricating. If you’re committed to conclusion X, and interpret everything in terms of X even to the point of Lewontinian absurdity, what does it mean to say there is no evidence of not-X?

    And indeed I am doing either. I am certainly not “committed to conclusion X”. Indeed, I was a believer in an intentional deity for half a century. It didn’t stop me seeing the fallaciousness of the design inference. If you were to show me clear evidence that an intentional agent (a green alien, for instance) had seeded the earth with simple DNA bearing cells, I’d be perfectly happy to get excited about it. I’m not ruling out intentional agency at all – I’m simply not seeing any evidence for intentional agents. And I do not accept that because a thing could have been intentionally brought about by a disembodied intelligent agent, the fact that we do not know exactly how it was brought about in any other way allows us to infer said agent. It doesn’t. All it does is tell us that we don’t know. Which certainly, in itself, doesn’t stop me believing that an intelligent deity was involved.

    But the deity I believed in was one that wouldn’t have left detectable fingerprints anyway. Hence the need for faith.

  36. William responds:

    Does Dr. Liddle really not understand that I’m using “appearance” in the observation sense, and not in the instantiation sense, after I began my post with repeated references to what biological features and the fine tuning “appear” to be (look like) when observed?

    I mean … really? Surely she doesn’t think I believe observing and interpreting a thing explains that thing?

    It’s difficult to know quite what William thinks. But if our “observation” consists of observing that “this thing looks designed” then we are faced with an explanandum, and ask ourselves: “why does this thing look designed?”

    To answer: “if it looks designed it must have been designed” is not valid reasoning because we know that some things look designed but weren’t (just as some apparent murders turn out to be accidents).

    And yes, I assumed that William was using “appearance” in the “observation sense”. I’m not quite sure what other sense there is. Perhaps William could explain what he thought I thought he meant.

  37. If an ID inference is unwarranted, that necessarily means that chance and necessity are sufficient because those three exhaust all the known possibilities.

    um, no. William has gone and excluded a middle. Careless.

    There are three possible conclusions here:

    Chance and necessity are sufficient
    Chance and necessity may be sufficient.
    Chance and necessity are not sufficient.

    If an ID claim is warranted (because some IDist produces some killer argument or evidence), then we must conclude 3.

    If it is UNwarranted (because, for instance, the claimant messed up the math), we are left with 1 or 2. And as we can never, in science, prove that our models are “sufficient” (all our models are necessarily incomplete), that leaves us with 2. Not 1.

    William has mistaken “ID is unwarranted” for “ID is untrue”. As Eric helpfully points out (helpfully to me, that is, not to him), we have no warrant (at least on present evidence) for saying there is a mouse on a treadmill inside the sun. That is not the same as saying that there is no mouse on a treadmill inside the sun.

    I would say there’s another alternative as well:

    1. Chance and necessity are sufficient/ID is unwarranted
    2. Chance and necessity may be sufficient/ID may be warranted
    3. Chance and necessity may be sufficient/something else unknown may be warranted/ID may be warranted
    4. Chance and necessity are not sufficient/ID warranted
    5 Chance and necessity are not sufficient/something else unknown may be warranted/ID may be warranted.

    In other words, ID is not the default explanation against evolution and I don’t find any reasonable evidence to suggest that it’s the only possible alternative explanation.

  38. Historically, all explanations are incomplete. But when Einstein replaced Newton, he did not reinstate geocentrism.

    ID proponents are not interested in furthering the detailed understanding of evolution. Many are just no kin to monkeys.

    Or, like VJ Torley, they might concede nominal kinship, so long as a Designer was in charge of the incremental changes.

    Has VJ noticed that he has abandoned irreducible complexity in favor of an endlessly meddling creator?

  39. OK, so Mung says:

    I had been posting at TSZ, but then someone accused me of child abuse. Well, yeah, but they are supposed to be grownups.

    Anyone got a link?

  40. I don’t recall seeing that (though absence of evidence and all that).

    I would acknowledge that ‘religion=child abuse’ is a popular view among some atheists, and it is entirely possible that someone may have pulled that one – it is, after all, open house. Equally, “atheists are amoral” and “Darwinism -> genocide” are demonisation tactics I have encountered at UD. I tend to argue rather than take my ball home, and not tar the entire collective with the same brush, but MMMV.

  41. Allan Miller:
    I don’t recall seeing that (though absence of evidence and all that).

    I would acknowledge that ‘religion=child abuse’ is a popular view among some atheists, and it is entirely possible that someone may have pulled that one – it is, after all, open house. Equally, “atheists are amoral” and “Darwinism -> genocide” are demonisation tactics I have encountered at UD. I tend to argue rather than take my ball home, and not tar the entire collective with the same brush, but MMMV.

    Thanks. I like to get facts straight. Joe says he wasn’t banned for posting porn, but he was – it’s as simple as that. He posted a direct link to a pornographic image. I can provide a link to the post in which he did so (though not to the image, which obviously I deleted). Mung claims he was accused of of child abuse. I’d like to know whether this is true. If it is, Mung should provide a link, and I will deal with it. If it isn’t, he should retract his claim.

    Facts matter.

  42. Searching “mung child abuse site:theskepticalzone.com” gives three hits, none of which support Mung’s claim. Shortening that to “mung abuse site:theskepticalzone.com” adds one more hit, which also does not support his claim.

    “mung child OR children OR kid OR kids site:theskepticalzone.com” gives 20 hits. The only two I can see that remotely touch on child abuse are the threads “David B. Hart and the problem of evil” and “A specific instance of the problem of evil.” Nowhere in those threads are any such accusations made towards Mung.

    The only comment that directly mentions Mung and children in the same sentence is this one:

    This Mung character didn’t show up here to learn science or carry on any kind of adult conversation; he came here to taunt and get in some punches at some smart kids. This is a manifestation of the emotional scars he has retained and continues to nurture in the comfort of his sectarian community over at UD. In his emotional world, he is beating up on some smart kids to get the approval of his equally ignorant, authoritarian parents.

    Does anyone think that qualifies as accusing him of child abuse?

    If he can show that someone here did make that accusation without evidence, he would of course be due an apology. If he can’t support his claim, though, he should retract it.

  44. That’ll be it then – “aiming punches at smart kids”.

    hmmm. Not actionable in my view.

    ETA: except that it’s a violation of the general precept to address substance not motivation. So a reminder might be in order.

  47. And for those following along at UD, Joe responds:

    Yaes William, Lizzie lies:

    Joe says he wasn’t banned for posting porn, but he was – it’s as simple as that.

    It wasn’t porn, Lizzie. Not by the standard and accepted definition of porn. However if what I posted was porn then what you posted- the statue of a naked man- was also porn.

    What I posted was disgusting, but it wasn’t porn.

    And I posted it because the ilk at the septic zone is disgusting.

    It was a link to a crotch shot of a partially dressed woman. The “statue of a naked man” was Michelangelo’s David. The first is most definitely NSFW. The second is SFW.

    And that is the point.

  48. In response to my comment above that:

    ID is dead, not because it’s wrong, but because it’s a failed attempt to “prove” that God exists, coupled with the apparent assumption that “Darwinists” think that science “proves” that God doesn’t.

    William J Murray writes:

    Honestly, Dr. Liddle can only now be lying for whatever reason. There’s simply no way that she doesn’t know better.

    I don’t know which part of that William things is the lie. Candidates are:

    ID is dead

    Well, I honestly think it is, as a movement. I don’t mean that the idea that there is an intelligent designer is dead, because that will probably go on for ever, but the idea that you can infer an intelligent designer from the complexity of biology, is, I think, dead. Dembski goofed. I could be wrong, but that makes me wrong, not a liar.

    ID is dead not because it’s wrong, but because it’s a failed attempt to “prove” that God exists

    Again, this is not a lie, but what I think to be the case.

    coupled with the apparent assumption that “Darwinists” think that science “proves” that God doesn’t.

    Well, to me that is pretty apparent. It is certainly the assumption made by all those UD posters who define “Darwinists” as “atheist materialists”. And frequently implicit in the challenges they present to biologists: “prove that chance and necessity is sufficient”. What is that but an assumption that we think that Darwinian theory disproves any role for a designer?

    Of course if he means that I am equating their “designer” with God, then of course I do – if the designer was material alien, that would only move the question back a step.

  49. I think the L-word should be given a long holiday; a chance to put its feet up. It is pressed into service far too often – one cannot simply hold a contrary opinion or be mistaken, one is instead engaged in a deliberate campaign of deceit. “Ad hominem” too. Poor little “insult” is constantly overlooked in favour of its more important-sounding cousin, despite the fact that they cover different ground.

  50. Yes indeed. I make it a point of principle myself to assume that people are not lying – that they are making their points in good faith, no matter how mistaken (or even self-contradictory) they are. Mostly I think it’s a good assumption (far more often right than wrong) and even when it isn’t, it does little harm.

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