This offers the simplest “neutral” colloquial mixture of “design” and “evolution” that I’ve seen in a long time. The site is no longer maintained, but the language persists.
“As a designer it is important to understand where design came from, how it developed, and who shaped its evolution. The more exposure you have to past, current and future design trends, styles and designers, the larger your problem-solving toolkit. The larger your toolkit, the more effective of a designer you can be.” http://www.designishistory.com/this-site/
Here, the term “evolution” as used just meant “history”. The author was not indicating “design theory evolution”, but rather instead the “history of designs” themselves, which have been already instantiated.
The topic “design is history” nevertheless enables an obvious point of contact between “evolution” and “design”. They both have histories that can be studied. Present in the above meaning of “design” are the origin, processes and agent(s) involved in the “designing”. This differs significantly from the Discovery Institute’s version of “design theory”, when it comes to history, aim, structure and agency, since the DI’s version flat out avoids discussion of design processes and agent(s). The primary purpose of the DI’s “design theory”, meanwhile, is USAmerican religious apologetics and “theistic science”.
The quotation above likely didn’t come from an IDist, and it isn’t referencing “Intelligent Design” theory as a supposed “scientific theory”. The “designer” in the quotation above is a (more or less intelligent) human designer, not a Divine Designer. This fact distinguishes it “in principle” from the Discovery Institute’s ID theory, which is supposed to be (depends on who you’re speaking with in the IDM) about first biology, then informatics, and statistics. The DI’s ID theory is not actually focused on “designing by real designers”, but rather on apologetics using “design” and informational probabilism.
The Discovery Institute’s failure to distinguish or even highlight the differences and similarities between human design and Divine Design, and instead their engagement in active distortion, equivocation, double-talking, and obfuscation between them, are marks of its eventual downward trend to collapse.
Nonetheless, it hangs much too high for the unbeliever. Consider the position of archaeologists investigating prehistoric middens and habitats. In most of these, there are plenty of rocks and stones, of all kinds of shapes. SOME of those stones are now commonly regarded as having been put to some use, for arrowheads, for axes, for gindstones, etc.
Now, you or I probably would not be able to identify most of these (and sometimes archaeologists miss some, or ascribe false positives). How is it done in practice? Hint: those specialists do NOT start by examining the stones trying to derive “design”. That bassackwards approach would get nowhere. Instead, they ask “How did these people live? What did they eat, how did they capture and prepare food, etc.” In other words, they START with a presumed purpose, from there they can derive function to suit the purpose, and from there they can identify artifacts that could have performed those functions.
This is so important creationists run from it like roaches when the light is turned on. Because in order to detect “design” in any object, you have to follow in the footsteps of the archaeologists. FIRST, who was responsible? SECOND, what was their purpose? THIRD, how did they create the function to fulfill that purpose? What methods did they use? This is true of any object (though when we know people built something, we skip to the last step).
Creationists duck the first question, project human thought processes to answer the second, and ignore the third. Unfortunately, this results in idle speculation.
Their genes did it! God did it! What’s the difference? Weren’t you saying you liked to ask how?
No, he means that nearly ANY evolutionary development is unlikely, but nonetheless developments occur regularly. Your formulation is like saying “since lightning almost never strikes the exact same place twice, THEREFORE lightning isn’t natural and must be guided.”
And still, lightning continues to strike because, like evolution, there is a process that produces that result/
Well, prove it. Show where Behe gives a worked example of his “filter” detecting design.
Then using that as a guide we can surely try it on arbitrary things? Otherwise, what’s the point.
Prove it’s a straw-man. All you have so far is a you-tube video!
There needs to be more work done on how innate behaviours are encoded in genomes. It’s the start of a story, not the end.
As Flint points out, this is a misreading.
Then why are scientists looking for design principles?
What would such a thing look like? Which scientists, BTW?
Not protesting, just sharing my thoughts.
I agree. But to simply dismiss it as evidence of Intelligent Design is to adopt the position that there could be no evidence for Intelligent Design. Atheistic Dogmatism at it’s finest.
Better to admit that the appearance of design in biology is evidence for Intelligent Design but that given your personal ncredulity you have to reject Intekligent Design as the true source of that appearance of design. (“You” and “yours” not intended for you personally.)
You mean Design by God. Let’s cut the “Intelligent” crap. It’s a philosophical position, whether to attribute the universe’s origin and properties to a Creator.
Jesus Christ.
Repeat challenge for Abrahamists. Join dots between Creator of the Universe and the God of your choice.
How?
Surely the first thing to be determined is that the object has actually been designed. Some things are obviously designed, others not so obvious. They don’t just pick up any rock in a midden and ask: Who designed this?
When you have established that is was designed then you can go on to ask: By whom?
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrm2530
https://books.google.com/books?id=Lg3MDwAAQBAJ
Need more?
Scientists believe there is design in biology and seek to understand the principles of those designs, even though they are not human originated designs.
Sorry Gregory.
Flint,
Different artifacts have different degrees of design detectability. There is lots of low hanging fruit of artifacts with strong detectability. For instance imagine they found a cell phone. The design inference here is strong.
As I said to Alan once you become convinced from the evidence we live in a created universe step 2 IMO is the Jewish Tanakh step 3 is the New Testament. There are lots of tools not to help you piece these together without reading all 1000 plus pages.
Please understand we are all suspicious of each others motives and not to be cynical but the let’s figure out the designer path can be a tool to try and derail the argument. This is a tactic to create a straw-man in order to defeat a pretty sound argument which is hard to defeat on its own.
It’s inseparable from what process might have produced the result. I Can’t see how you can determine if an object is an artefact without an idea of how it came to be and who or what was capable of engineering it.
You just Googled and posted! 😉
Lightening can be observed to strike all over the place. This is common and is expected.
A better analogy for spiders developing the ability to build webs independently would be like lightening striking the same spot several times. In that case it might be asked: What is attracting the lightening to this spot?
Hmm! Yes, need more!
Bloody isn’t. I could have died from the shock!
Bill your ignorance based personal incredulity argument “this is too complex to evolve so it must be DESIGNED!” has already been defeated. So has your equally stupid “I see purposely arranged parts so it must be DESIGNED!”.
The only question is why are you so insecure in your faith you desperately need to find a “sciency” explanation?
Shouldn’t the very first question be::Is behaviour encoded in the genome?
Yes. Spiderlings hatch from eggs fertilized by male sperm which effectively are packets of DNA. Spiderlings are capable of spinning webs as soon as they leave the protection of the nest. There is no other source for this information.
Why? The man himself said that he could not see convergent evolution being a very likely explanation because of the complexity involved. And he can see only one other explanation.
Can you be more specific?
Yes, I did for you that which you could have done for yourself. Do you still doubt that scientists are looking for design principles in biology? This is something that’s been going on for years.
I knew He was a carpenter
For instance , triple positive breast cancer, what does tell us about Him and His capabilities?
Adapa,
Hi Straw-man. Are you intending to evolve or remain a one trick pony?
newton,
Maybe his intent. He gave us a brain and the tools to solve such problems. Also the motivation to solve them. When you resurface the argument from evil I start to miss Keiths 🙂
You should be sorry, Mung. I’m not sure why your head is so hard on this. It may be the way your mind has been trained to think structurally.
The article in Nature uses “design principles” in scare quotes, after first using it without scare quotes, going against standard usage. (This is one of those “biologists are actually a lot dumber than they look” examples.) Then uses the term “design” twice in non-theoretical, insignificant ways. Then concludes with confidence, “we have drawn a number of general conclusions about
the design principles of biochemical oscillators”. Yet it never defined what it means by “design principles” and just left a scare quote without explanation. Is this poor scholarship?
2nd, are you now shoveling the philosophistic IDist nonsense like a pre-teen adolescent that “systems biology”, therefore supports “Design” theistic science “inferences” in biology? It would have been better to stay away Mung with your inference-begging. Haven’t you upgraded past IDism yet – I thought we’d been through this?!
Religious theists believe everything is Created. We don’t snivel & argue for proof of Creation by calling it sneakily lowercase “intelligent design” in biology. IDists are deserters & rebels damaging the discourse through their theistic scientism = IDism.
Should natural scientists be looking for “design principles” in biology? If it’s a misnomer based on a category error, then they shouldn’t. Can you adjust your way of thinking to see how that may be true, or to understand that most biologists don’t consider “design” the right terminology (even if sometimes, they slip such terminology in)? You’re not a biologist, Mung, so you’re just on the bandwagon with the IDM (still?!?) trying to force your way in there with tricks, not wisdom or good balance.
Still haven’t learned to actively speak any new language rather than being stuck in outdated IDism in these months away from TSZ, Mung?
Hi Liar For Jesus! Are you intending to keep lying about science to prop up your weak religious faith? 🙂
Gregory,
Whats your band wagon? So far it seems pretty incoherent but I am hopeful. I agree with everything is designed including biology. Why not look at biology from the perspective from design. Why not look at physics from the perspective of design. The only reason is some materialist manipulators wanted to bury God and manipulated a portion of our population that we were living in a random accident.
Life has the appearance that it is designed for a reason but it isn’t.
I was one of the fools that believed this for a long time.
It is the biggest hoax ever played on mankind as far as I can tell. So if some advocacy group is going to make people aware of the hoax why fight them? The initial information that made me aware of the hoax came from the IDM guys. For me they added value. Initially I was skeptical of these guys and they can put out some pretty iffy propaganda but they also do some good. Is it really time to through the baby out with the bath water?
Adapa,
Hi straw-man. Any original ideas today?
LOL! Every last thing the DI has produced is anti-science propaganda bullshit. That includes the pseudoscience dreck by your boyfriend Behe. You slurp it down as fast as they produce it because they tell you what you want to hear. When people show you evidence just how bad the DI’s garbage is you ignore it with some lame-ass excuse like “strawman!” or “you just don’t understand!”. You’re just one more clown in the DI’s clown circus Bill and everyone realizes it but you. 😀
Adapa,
Hi straw-man. This comment is pretty extreme. Who here agrees with straw-man?
Everyone who is not an IDiot, basically
Hi Liar For Jesus! Want to tell us why if the DI knows “DA TROOTH” they have to “put out some pretty iffy propaganda”? Your words Liar For Jesus.
It would appear that the idea that all design is human design isn’t accepted by practicing scientists.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22821459/
dazz,
One Evotard is there another?
Hey Liar For Jesus, you gonna tell us why the DI has to put out so much iffy propaganda if they have DA TROOTH about your IDiot claims?
colewd,
Traditional Abrahamic monotheism with cooperative and collaborative dialogue of science, philosophy, theology.
No, that’s the only reason you can see. There are other reasons too. You obviously have yet to see a single reason that an Abrahamic monotheist has given who rejects calling “ID theory” a “strictly scientific” theory like the DI insists it is. If the DI stopped insisting & admitted it’s actually theistic science, or more accurately, “philosophistry,” that would be the end of the IDM.
And then colewd wouldn’t have any reason to waste our time with his personal brand of evangelical IDist apologetics, that no one here is even close to accepting, anymore. Right Bill?
Gregory,
We have common ground on the Abrahamic religion. Do you see an issue with materialist/atheistic propaganda? In the schools, media, entertainment?
Mung,
That fails as an answer. What’s wrong with you, Mung? Did you fall back into IDism? Something seems amiss.
First, before I look at this paper. Have you actually read it? Or even skimmed the paper itself, not just the abstract? Your level of “scientific” knowledge is no more than beginner to low-intermediate in the fields required to make a contribution or to even really understand the core arguments involved. Flat fact.
Above you just scholar bluffed with an article that turned out to prove nothing. Now, without answering to that, you just flip out another one. Please, guy, is something wrong with you right now? We’ve been through all of this before. Sure, people get the term “design” published in all kinds of surprising venues. One paper alone doesn’t mean much, and certainly not if it’s only been cited 9 times since 2012. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22on+the+search+for+design+principles+in+biological+systems%22&btnG=
Unlike Mung & his IDist teacher-ideologues, most traditional and contemporary religious theists see it as a category error and temptation to try to force “Intelligence” into natural science; it becomes “theistic science.”
You’re feeding into “theistic biology” Discovery Institute-style, Mung, by not admitting the category error in your own personal quasi-/wannabe-/but-not-really-IDist philosophy. Care to try again?
colewd,
Peace be with you.
Have you read anything I’ve written on science, philosophy, theology discourse?
In addition to weaponized evangelical IDist propaganda, yes, I “see an issue with materialist/atheistic propaganda”.
I was trained as a sociologist, so perhaps this means I am now able to see these particular things you speak about in a way you are not. If so, it might also mean that you’re asking me only what is on the surface of what is actually “going on”.
What were you trained as, Bill? I ask because you spend a lot of time pretending to be a scientist. And no surprise, you fail every single time, apparently since you think it enough that “they also do some good”. What you haven’t realised yet, is the damage the IDM, DI & “ID theory” has caused in science, philosophy, theology discourse. The evangelical science lobby like the Discovery Institute’s “think tank” has held the USA back & continues to do so; “making America weak again” scientifically.
You essentially admitted to ID not being science when you agreed that everything is “evidence” for ID (everything is designed). It’s not my fault if you’re not smart enough to figure out why
Gregory,
My education is Applied Math and Economics. I was an executive in the high tech industry and managed technical and marketing organizations. I retired young and became and investor for both private and public equity. This is the first biological research I did evaluating biological research programs to judge investment opportunities. I was recruited later to do pubmed research on vitamin d and its blood levels and cancer studying mechanistic causes. This is where I learned most of what I know about the cell.
At this point we agree on the basic principles of the issue and I am open to any improvement that is not throwing the baby out water. Saying they do nothing good is not credible but let’s do a strengths and weaknesses analysis. The strength is that they are a counter to pro materialist/atheist marketing organization like the NCSE that are pushing bullshit science on students.
The weakness is they sometimes put out poorly thought out material.