Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Sal Cordova has left a very fascinating comment on an earlier thread and I want to move it up here because I don't want it to get lost. I think what he says is very, very revealing about the goals and tactics of the ID movement. Ironically, his comment was an attempt to answer my charge that ID doesn't exist as anything other than a label for a PR campaign and for an anti-evolution movement; I'm afraid what he wrote only supports my position all the more.
However you may wish to view ID in your own mind, is your choice. But even for the sake of argument, let's suppose many of modern ID's origins are of suspicious origin (not that I believe it, but for the sake of argument, let us suppose this). The question about its truthfulness still remains.
This might be a valid argument if there actually was an intelligent design theory that could be determined to be true or false, but there's not. No one has ever proposed such a theory, nor any means of testing it if one were proposed. As I said, at this point the term "ID" or "intelligent design theory" is nothing but a set of bad arguments against evolution, every one of which is copied virtually verbatim from old creationist material. There is not a single original argument in the bunch, though they have dressed up some of the old arguments in fancy new terminology.
One of the reasons ID finds sympathy in a measurable demographic in the general population as well as the population of physicians is that Darwinian evolution is failing on scientific merits in their eyes. Physcians and many in the general population have little to no institutional incentive to keep promoting Darwinian evolution, evolutionary biologists do.
This passage truly made me laugh out loud when I read it. The notion that the general population, including most physicians, have the necessary knowledge to make any judgment on the scientific merits of evolution is laughably absurd. The average American, including the average doctor (who may be smarter than the general population, but likely has little training in biology), knows as little about evolutionary biology as I know about 14th century Turkish agricultural techniques.
There is one and only one reason why ID "finds sympathy" with the general population, and one and only one reason why the general population doesn't accept evolution: because they perceive evolution to be against God and therefore, in their minds, it must be wrong. The average American can't tell allopatric from Danica Patrick. If you gave a basic high school biology exam to a random 1000 people from the general population, I'd be willing to wager that less than 10% would even get a passing grade on it, much less a grade indicating that they understood the material at all. And that's high school level, folks; understanding the many lines of evidence for evolution requires a much higher level of knowledge and understanding than that, yet even that level of understanding is present in only a very small percentage of the population.
What they do know, or think they know, is that evolution means no god and thus no morality, and that has to be bad. And of course, this is the cornerstone of the ID movement's entire strategy to convince the public. That's why they rant endlessly about the need to destroy "atheistic materialism" and its "corrosive moral effects". That's why they make all those speeches in churches, to convince people that if evolution is true their children will act like apes and kill each other on school playgrounds. The ID movement knows exactly why the general population is sympathetic toward ID and their entire PR campaign is predicated on exploiting those fears.
Whether ID is a formal research program or not in the present day, it will draw a sympathetic ear by many who have no institutional incentive to accept Darwinian evolution, and this includes a good number of University professors and up and coming scientists.You are focused on what is happening in the public school board rooms, the courts, and the elections, and peer-review committees. I am focused on what is on peoples minds. Your weblog is about culture wars. I do not view the main battle fields of this culture war as in the courtrooms or school boards but at the individual level. That is where the ID battle grounds really are.
For all practical purposes, this is an admission that you simply don't care about the scientific validity of ID, you care only about whether you're convincing people about it. That merely confirms my argument all the more; it is exactly how the success of PR campaigns are measured, but exactly the opposite of how the success of scientific research projects are measured. It's funny, I don't recall Alfred Wegener, when his ideas about continental drift were rejected by the scientific community, saying things like, "Whether or not my ideas are testable and supported by the evidence doesn't really matter; after all, I'm not focused on that aspect of this, I'm focused on what is in people's minds. And the general population is sympathetic to what I have to say, so that's all that matters."
You may argue there is no ID theory. For the sake of argument, suppose that is true. I'll respond by saying, "so what?". Why do I say that? Consider what happened when I encounter young students genuinely curious about ID vs. Darwinian evolution who do not care about such definitional minutia.
Translation: Who cares about whether we have an actual theory that can be tested? The people I talk to don't care about that, so why should I? I'm convincing them that I'm right, so who cares whether I have an actual theory that can explain something? Again, this only strengthens my argument. It only confirms exactly what I've been saying, that the ID movement only promotes "research" because it lends an air of truthiness to their claims (we need a good word for "truthiness" in a scientific context; any suggestions?)
That's why they continually exaggerate or outright lie about the results of those few papers that they claim support ID (as I've been documenting lately, with no substantive response whatsoever from the ID side). That's why they claim that Axe (2000) proves that "any slight modification" of an enzyme destroys "all possibility of any function at all", because they know that their followers, the people they're trying to convince, don't really care about what such studies actually say; they only care that evolution = no god = bad things. As long as you give it a little scientific-looking shine to the surface and a list of Really Smart People who agree with them, you've got a successful PR campaign.
The issues that come up are what empirical evidence exists and which framework gives a more adequate explanation. For example, I met a couple computer science students entering junior year who were Christians. I pointed out the cell is a computer with operating systems and software and compilers. I simply posed the question, "do you think Darwinian evolution can make that? You design computer systems, do you think Darwinian evolution can make something like a computer system?" They shook their heads and laughed that evolutionary biologists actually believe that Darwinian evolution can create such systems! And I can guarantee you there ain't an evolutionary biologist on the planet who can take first principles of information science and computer science and make a case that Darwinian evolution can account for these systems. Do you think someone like Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers will have any persuassive effect on these highly intelligent future citizens of society?
The fact that you, and the people you're talking to, actually find this analogy to be a persuasive argument that overthrows 150 years of productive scientific research in evolutionary biology only confirms my argument all the more. I'm sure that someone without any understanding of how such functional complexity can be built up through numerous evolutionary processes finds it a very compelling argument, but this is an artifiact of their ignorance, not of the validity of evolutionary theory.
And again, notice how much this argument admits that only feeds my position. It admits that ID is nothing more than a set of arguments against evolution, indeed the same old "golly gee whiz, that's really complex, I can't see how evolution could do that" argument dressed up in fancier language. And if Sal has a positive ID theory to offer, or thinks that one exists, surely he would have offered it by now; the fact that he hasn't is a tacit admission that no such model exists. This again only confirms my position that ID is not a scientific research program or a genuine scientific theory, it is a label for an old set of anti-evolution arguments and a label for a PR campaign.
For these students, there was no need to discuss peer-review, Biologic Institute, Dover, Cobb county, Kent Hovind, NCSE, or whatever. They could care less about that....For them, they are learning to design computer systems, and computer system design requires intelligence, therefore it is reasonable to them the computer systems in the cell are intelligently designed.
Maybe they ought to try studying evolutionary biology before reaching conclusions about it. I know, it's a crazy thought.
They'll have even less incentive to do so after PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins leave a foul taste in their mouth.
Well that part I agree on.
The ID war is being fought at the personal level one person at a time. That is where the action really is. For as long as you keep persuading yourself these highly educated and intelligent people are deluded by their religious views, you'll be missing the reasons they accept ID.
I rather emphatically do not claim that these people are deluded in their religious views. But I know damn well that those religious views are the primary reason why they accept ID. It simply cannot be because ID has succeeded scientifically because, as I keep saying and you don't dispute, there is no ID theory. It does not exist.
The fact that evolutonary peer-reviewed literature is being so readily dismissed speaks volumes about how much credibility some institutions command in the eyes of the next generation.
No, it speaks volumes about the (quite normal) ability of people to take cognitive shortcuts and dismiss anything they find threatening or disturbing whether they understand it or have studied it or not. More importantly, the fact that your exclusive focus is on convincing people who know nothing about evolutionary biology rather than on actually producing any research to confirm ID speaks even more loudly. It only confirms that ID is a PR campaign, not a scientific theory.
Comments
I'm glad that you've brought Sal to the top of your blog. He's been slinging crazy comment after comment during all the hubbub this past week.
Posted by: doctorgoo | January 2, 2007 9:26 AM
Well, I am a software engineer, and I know I could use selection and "reproduction" to make a computer program, but I do not think it would be cost effective. If I did I would do it that way. The concept it not hard, it just would take too long, but I usually don't have the long time it would take. My costumers don't want to wait thousands of years for results, while mother nature dosn't care how long it takes.
Posted by: Tulle | January 2, 2007 9:41 AM
A word like "truthiness" for science? Hmm... I nominate "hypothetude."
Posted by: Jim Anderson | January 2, 2007 9:51 AM
For good reason, research institutions don't depend on the winds of popular opinion. Sal Cordoba clearly has no view into the opinions that matter. Let me make it very easy for him: ID has absolutely no credibility among those who invest in biotechnology. It has absolutely no credibility among those who run pharmaceutical companies. It has absolutely no credibility among researchers who are actually making advances in the biological fields. Evolution is completely accepted in these circles. And these are the people who will determine the makeup of the next generation of biology research institutions. What the general population thinks about this won't matter any more than what they think about the direction of computer science research. Their sole vote comes from their purchases, not their opinions. As long as people want more effective medicines, easier, cheaper, and more sensitive diagnostic tools, and a variety of biological aids from cosmetics to vision correction, their dollars will speak loud and clear to the people making these decisions: "pursue scientifically sound research into the biotech fields."
The fact that many of those consumers personally believe in ghosts and gods, and reject biological science because of their religious views, will matter not a whit. If the religious right wants to put a damper on evolution and the institutions of scientific biology, rather than pushing a fake scholarly program like the ID movement, what it needs to do is convince its adherents to stop buying drugs from Pfizer, Merck, and the rest, and instead rely entirely on Binny Hinn and similar faith healers to treat their various ailments. Turn everyone in America into a Christian Scientist, and that will start to have some effect. Similarly, it doesn't matter if physicians reject evolution, as long as they want to practice scientific medicine. While they remain consumers of the results of scientific biology, they support evolution and its institutions, whether they like it or not. If they want to stop supporting the research institutions that use and teach evolution, what they need to do is to stop practicing scientific medicine, and start healing solely through prayer and bopping people on the forehead.
Speaking as someone who is a computer scientist, I would add that the the ID movement only pretends to make information theory arguments, and has no following that I can tell among computer scientists. I've read a couple of Dembski's attempts to define specified complexity, and none yet have been coherent. To almost anyone who has done research and read research results, it is clear that ID is fake research, intended only for show.
Posted by: Russell | January 2, 2007 10:10 AM
As a computer scientist, I see the parallels between evolutionary mechanics and programming. People generally do not understand that a thought is one generation in the process of development. Hammering out details on paper is x generations. Coding and recoding is another y generations. The final product rarely looks like the original thought but always has vestigal remnants of the original concept. While the exact evolutionary pardigm is not necessarily implemented, as products of evolution, we can't but help to use the algorithm.
Posted by: James Taylor | January 2, 2007 10:11 AM
I propose that the claims laid out in Trevors and Abel's paper can be falsified by a chemical experiment. There you have it Ed, that's one theory that's easily falsifiable. In fact, falsification of the principles laid out by Trevors and Abel have unwittingly been attempted by the abiogenesis crowd ever since Darwin, and attempts at falsification have been an abysmal failure. 100%
The Trevors paper published in Cell Biology International can be accessed here: Chance and necessity do not explain the origin of life
For an elaboration, see : Perfect Architectures Which Scream Design.
The theory is that a fundamental component of life, the self-replicating Turing Machine, will not arise from undesigned primordial elements. Easy enough to falsify.
Of course, if you demand to see the Designer, before accepting it a valid theory, that's your choice, and I respect that. You can go on believing our theories are inadequate and PR, but others will think the hypothesis at least reasonable.
You have the computer guys here on your weblog. You can ask them how plausible they think a computer and its operating system will emerge out of a soup of chemicals. Heck, ask a biochemist like Larry Moran. He's spending a lot of time berating you. Instead maybe he can spend time answering the problems posed by Trevors and Abel instead.
You may argue evolutionary biology does not explain Origin of Life (OOL). Fine, then that's an admission it hasn't solved a very fundamental design question. Not even 150 years worth of research.
Well apparently neither can evolutionary biologists, otherwise they'd be answering the problems posed by Trevors and Abel. I say again, its a bit premature at best to be claiming evolutionary theory is as proven as the sphericity of the Earth. To keep insisting that only instill reasons to distrust the evolution industry.
I respect your views, and I thank you sincerely for giving me an opportunity to respond to your criticism, especially since many on my side are reading these exchanges and forming their own opinion.
sincerely,
Salvador
Posted by: Salvador T. Cordova | January 2, 2007 10:58 AM
Sal:The theory is that a fundamental component of life, the self-replicating Turing Machine, will not arise from undesigned primordial elements. Easy enough to falsify.
That's not a theory; it's a hypothesis. And it's vacuous until you give us a scientific definition of "undesigned". And it's about as easy to falsify as the hypothesis that canyons as impressive as the Grand Canyon will not arise by chance.
Posted by: secondclass | January 2, 2007 11:12 AM
Mr. Cordova brings out the old "you haven't explained everything" ploy. This is in comparison to ID which hasn't explained anything. I'll stick with evolution myself.
Posted by: Don | January 2, 2007 11:19 AM
You want a science word in the vain of "truthiness"?
How about "Sciency". Like, when you expalain ID, it sounds "sciency" but isn't really science.
Posted by: Kevin | January 2, 2007 11:25 AM
Salvador Cordova:
No, it's an admission that we haven't yet answered an interesting question about earth's history. That's true. But also not surprising, no matter how much research has been done. The past reveals itself only through traces left in the present, and the more distant the past, the fainter those traces and the more difficult to know what happened.
Gaps in real knowledge in no way buttress fraudulent scholarship like ID.
Posted by: Russell | January 2, 2007 11:27 AM
Sal,
Your link doesn't allow one to pull up the entire text of the paper you reference. What precisely is the test that you would propose to falsify the claims made therein?
Posted by: Andrew | January 2, 2007 11:34 AM
Maybe I'm showing my lack of computer knowledge, but don't a lot of computer viruses work by reproducing themselves throughout the system, and by adapting to attempts to delete them?
Posted by: Matthew | January 2, 2007 11:43 AM
Ed says:
Theorocitude?
Theoryesque?
Posted by: Dave S. | January 2, 2007 11:46 AM
"Evidense"?
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | January 2, 2007 11:57 AM
There goes Cordova, hawking Trevors and Abel the creationists again...
Let me guess - they are 'world renowned scierntists', like Dembski?
LOL!
Posted by: slpage | January 2, 2007 12:05 PM
Of course there's never going to be "one and only one" reason when you begin to parse things out. Populist appeals seem to work particularly well in cultures which promote the idea that expertise and knowledge -- learning and education -- don't count as much as common sense, sincerity, and an open heart. The "little guy" gets it right over all the "smarty pants" because what really matters is faith. Faith in yourself, and faith in someone watching out for the little guy. It's not intelligence we value, it's wisdom -- and a little child who trusts in God is wiser than all the Phd's in the world.
In America I think there is a rather deadly combination of anti-intellectualism, a can-do personal attitude, and a belief that "wisdom" means letting go and letting God. The ID PR campaign seems to feed right into this.
Posted by: Sastra | January 2, 2007 12:13 PM
The theory is that a fundamental component of life, the self-replicating Turing Machine, will not arise from undesigned primordial elements. Easy enough to falsify.
Of course, if you demand to see the Designer, before accepting it a valid theory, that's your choice, and I respect that. You can go on believing our theories are inadequate and PR, but others will think the hypothesis at least reasonable.
See the Designer before accepting what as a valid theory? You guys don't have any theory to accept. You have a list of criticisms of evolution, which the overwhelming majority of the mainstream scientific community has rejected. Say somehow it turned out tomorrow that all the main ID objections to evolution were proven to be true. You still wouldn't have an actual ID theory, only a list of criticisms of evolution.
Are you able, without making reference to criticisms of evolution, to explain exactly what the theory of ID is?
Posted by: Boo | January 2, 2007 12:33 PM
1) Evolution explaining the 'origin' of life... hmmmmmm..probably not.. should probably replace that with 'scientific' rather than 'poof' explanation of life.
2) Even if we say 'evolution' doesn't solve the 'origin' problem that doesn't mean we have to have a 'design/poof' explantion which makes no useful predictions other than 'it looks designed' and 'there is a designer somewhere that you can't measure with a noodly appendage'
3) As several people have pointed out, this 'god of the gaps' explanation of things is bad science and even worse theology since it would imply that once all of the 'explanations' have been found, there is no room for Vishnu/Zues/Yaweh/God/Flying Spaghetti Monster anymore.
4)You should read the papers you cite. That paper is on the origin of the genetic code which probably happened after the origin of self-replicating molecules/thingamabobbers.
For instance "Peer-reviewed life-origin literature presupposes that, given enough time, genetic instructions arose via natural events. Thus far, no paper has provided a plausible mechanism for natural-process algorithm-writing."
Something I don't think many, if an, scientists would disagree with.
5) "There is an immense gap from prebiotic chemistry and the lifeless Earth to a complex DNA instruction set, code encryption into codonic sequences, and decryption (translation) into amino acid sequences. Sound reductionistic science should keep breaking down the immensity of the life-origin problem into its component problems. "--From Trevor & Abel
Here's a question for Sal (and I'd rather not get a dembski reply like 'it's not my job to come up with mechanisms'.
How does ID help to explain using 'sound scientific reductionism' the origin of the genetic code?
6)Trevor and Abel don't even mention ID... here's a fun one for you :)
Thus, we are left with three separate missing mechanisms of molecular evolution theory which remain to be explained:
" How did inanimate nature [note-no DESIGNER] write
(1) the conceptual instructions needed to organize metabolism?
(2) a language/operating system needed to symbolically represent, record and replicate those instructions?
(3) a bijective coding scheme (a one-to-one correspondence of symbol meaning) with planned redundancy so as to reduce noise pollution between triplet codon "block code" symbols ("bytes") and amino acid symbols?
(4) We could even add a fourth question. How did inanimate nature design and engineer a cell [Turing machine? (Turing, 1936)] capable of implementing those coded instructions?"
"Science must provide rational theoretical mechanism, empirical support, prediction fulfillment, or some combination of these three. If none of these three are available, science should reconsider that molecular evolution of genetic cybernetics is a proven fact and press forward with new research approaches which are not obvious at this time. "--That's the last sentences...
I'll be waiting for the rational theoretical mechanism along with empirical data from Sal?
Posted by: i_like_latin | January 2, 2007 1:02 PM
What a lot of arguing to support an empty idea. But to be really fair to Sal, "The question about its truthfulness still remains" might be taken to apply, not to a theory of ID but to its promoters. And that is a question easily dealt with. The closest we have of honest IDists are those who concede that there is not enough explanatory power to build a coherent theory of ID. In fact, there seems to be not enough to pitch ID to anyone who has any understanding of evolution, ecology, or biodiversity, which is why ID is invariably pitched to children and the scientifically naive.
Posted by: mark | January 2, 2007 1:03 PM
Golly, it must just be impossible that anyone else could succeed doing that then.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry | January 2, 2007 1:23 PM
How about the following definition (Portions blatently stolen from above; Dictionary.com definition of Sciene used as a template)
Sciency: -noun;
1)A set of theoryesque beleifs supported by researchiness that attempts to cast doubt on or provide alternative explanations to generally accepted scientific knowledge through the use of public realtions campaigns.
2)Popular knowledge of the physical or material world gained through a lack of technical understanding of the topic.
3)Any of the divisions of the Discovery Insitiute.
4)Deeply held, unverifiable beleifs in general.
Posted by: mess | January 2, 2007 1:35 PM
Tulle says:
As Wes points out, use of genetic algorithms in the computer biz is a burgeoning field. You don't have to wait for thousands of years. All you have to do is decrease 'generation' times down to milliseconds instead of decades. Computers can do that. A few evolutionary principles and some silicon technology lets you get creative and solve lots of interesting problems.
Posted by: Dave S. | January 2, 2007 1:53 PM
And as I'll point out genetic algorithms in the computer industry are products of design running in designed environments. Man-made GA's hardly constitute a counter-example to the questions I pose, and if anything tend to strenghthen the arguments.
Appealing to intelligently designed as proof that mindless forces can design is disingenous at best.
Furthermore, the evoltuionary biolgists must give reasonable accounts as to why the known physical world of the present and past should be modelled like an intelligently designed Gentic Algorithm.
Sal
Posted by: Salvador T. Cordova | January 2, 2007 1:59 PM
Salvador Cordova writes:
No, they need only show that the relevant chemistry does behave like a genetic algorithm. At that point, the notion that biological systems are somehow special goes out the window. Religious believers will, of course, drop back to arguing that physics must have been designed. That argument is no better today than when it was first made.
Posted by: Russell | January 2, 2007 2:20 PM
In that case you can't claim the argument has been discredited. So even if these are repackaged arguments (and frankly I could care less about the intellectual phylogeny of the arguments), they haven't been discredited, contrary to what Ed boldly asserts.
And regarding the confidence that it will be solved according to pure naturalism, I encourage you to read Trevors paper and my commentary on it. You might learn something about the art of "proof by contradiction". The paper has demonstrated the origin of life is outside provable naturalism, much like the origin of matter and the universe. Yockey independently came to that conclusion in two books on Molecular biology and information theory.
Posted by: Salvador T. Cordova | January 2, 2007 2:21 PM
Is that anything like a cdesign proponentsist?
Posted by: Coin | January 2, 2007 2:24 PM
Sal, design/development is a process with many generations between inception and final product as I have demonstrated above. Design occurs in stages which parallel generations. Please identify the designer and any intermediate prototypical steps created to get to the final human product. Without any evidence of the design process, then the hypothesis is meaningless. Design is a process that more closely parallels evolution than a magic poof. Please explain how the design process is not like evolution. Reasoning implies selection and recombination and without reasoning there is no design. How can one design something without using an evolutionary process? Please be as specific as possible.
Posted by: James Taylor | January 2, 2007 2:24 PM
And as I'll point out genetic algorithms in the computer industry are products of design running in designed environments.
Absolutely irrelevant.
You know absolutely NOTHING about modeling and computers, don't you? And even less about biology. And you keep demonstrating that time after time after time after time.
Posted by: gwangung | January 2, 2007 2:42 PM
Sal: And as I'll point out genetic algorithms in the computer industry are products of design running in designed environments.
The question is not whether genetic algorithms and the hardware they run on are the products of intelligent agents. The question is whether they themselves are intelligent agents. Can you give us a yes or no answer on this, Sal?
Posted by: secondclass | January 2, 2007 3:02 PM
That Salvador T. "A theory is just definitional minutia, yes!" Cordova, his admittedly deceitful PR efforts notwithstanding, can remain a prominent spokesperson for ID is actually encouraging to those who oppose this careening short bus of a movement.
Yes, the public is gullible, especially when faith in THE LORD is used to leverage dumb claims about science. But when a fellow as gleefully dishonest as Salvador T. "A computer system is a cell, yes!" Cordova is perseverating on behalf of your product, you know sales are foundering; when someone is all to eager to enshrine his own unapologetically dishonest outbursts in prominent places, eventually even the unenlightened will catch on, because people need not be aware of the intracacies and complexities of a given discipline to know when someone is lying about it.
Posted by: Kevin Beck | January 2, 2007 3:04 PM
Indeed, pointing something out is not the same as demonstrating it. I suppose one could as well look at any experiment in any field and claim that that was an instance of design. What experiment isn't designed at some level? Computer scientists are copying evolution, not inventing it. Such programs certainly show the efficacy of evolutionary processes, but the real evidence for the evolution of life resides within life itself. In the physical morphology, and increasingly, in the molecular 'morphology', the fossil record, temporal and spacial distribution, etc. etc.. As nice as computer programs are, they can't yet approach the subtle complexity of the real thing.
As for intelligent design it's totally useless since there is no ID theory. Even if we hypothetically allow a design conclusion (of the DI flavour), its still useless since there is no way to learn anything more. ID is a scientific dead end and has no value except as PR...something for the creationists to hang their hat on since 'creation science' fell over the legal cliff. ID is being dragged down too, especially by Dover, and so we're seeing a terminology shift towards "critical evaluation" language. No shift in arguments mind you, just a shift in terminology.
Posted by: Dave S. | January 2, 2007 3:12 PM
Sal sez:
Haven't cured most cancers either, in 150 years of research with thousands of times more researcher-hours than the origin of life question. Maybe cancer is directly caused by an intelligent agency. And who wouldn't want to identify the designer and throttle him if that's the case...
Posted by: Whatever | January 2, 2007 3:26 PM
Salvador Cordova:
There is no argument there to discredit. "Because we don't know how X happened, some god might have done it," is not an argument. It's merely a way for religious believers, their theology long since booted from most every realm of human study or consequence, to salvage some cranny where they can lodge a metaphysical belief, safe from empirical knowledge. For the time being. The God-of-the-gaps doesn't get disproven. He merely gets laughed at.
I don't have much opinion on how much we'll be able to determine about the origin of life on earth. As I pointed out, the problems of the distant past are particularly difficult, because so much of the evidence is no longer available. That gives believers some comfort, since there are always gaps in the distant where believers can say their god did something, in a way that cannot be refuted in the present. But that is comfort only to believers who don't understand logic well.
Given your missteps here, I seriously doubt you have much to teach about proof.
Posted by: Russell | January 2, 2007 3:27 PM
Sal writes...
Sal, do you know what a scientific theory is? Do you know what a scientific hypothesis is? It looks very much like you don't.
"Undesigned primordial elements" is an undefined term, especially as long as we have no means to differentiate between "designed primordial elements" and "undesigned primordial elements". Therefore, all claims using this terminology are meaningless.
Also, asserting, "Structure X won't be produced by process Y" is a statement about process Y only, not about anything else (in this case, ID creationism). You still seem to be stuck in that logical fallacy of the false dilemma, where you think ID creationism automatically deserves default status it hasn't earned.
It amazes me how you guys have utterly failed to learn even the most basic of lessons on how to present your arguments. Didn't Dover teach you anything? There's a reason why your arguments only work on those who are uneducated in the biological sciences and/or are religiously inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt. I look at your atrocious logic and I just shake my head in disbelief. I honestly believe you have to be at least a little bit delusional not to be able to see the enormous logical holes in your own arguments.
As far as Ed's request for a scientific equivalent for "truthiness", I nominate the word, "empiriosity".
Jason
Posted by: Jason | January 2, 2007 3:31 PM
Sal wrote:
"Furthermore, the evolutionary biologists must give reasonable accounts as to why the known physical world of the present and past should be modeled like an intelligently designed Genetic Algorithm."
Of course, that presupposes that the world is modeled like an intelligently designed algorithm. Most biologists can point to many things that do not appear intelligently designed (human knees, feet, and back, human eyes, hyena hemipenis, mammalian lungs, etc) - so we should first look at wether the world looks designed, or wether people perceive it as designed. And, if I'm not mistaken, there have been numerous theories and studies done showing how people perceive purpose/design/images without there being any (pareidolia anyone?). Far more likely a misperception of the world, aided by a lack of understanding and knowledge of it, than an actual design.
For other bits, why is the origin of life a problem for evolution? If Sal is going that route, why not cut to the chase and start with the Big Bang, like he really wants? There are a few interesting hypothesis on abiogenesis, and scientists are looking into the matter. Will we ever know with any certainty? Possibly, but it won't change the facts that life has evolved from "simpler" organisms through changes in genetic frequency.
Finally, a funny note - given the problems and ghastly security flaws, can anyone say that, for example, Windows Vista is intelligently designed?
Posted by: Badger3k | January 2, 2007 3:38 PM
In my 11:12 am post above, scratch "hypothesis" and replace it with "prediction". Brain cramp.
I'm really hoping that Salvador will tell us how to falsify his "theory" that's "easy enough to falsify".
Posted by: secondclass | January 2, 2007 3:44 PM
I don't think we actually need a scientific version of "truthiness". "Truthiness" adds a nice little hint of sarcastic disdain when applied to pseudo-science like ID, and I think that makes it a perfect descriptor.
Posted by: Jason I. | January 2, 2007 3:45 PM
Scientific Equivalent for Truthiness = BS, Lying, Dembski-esque, Cordova-like, smelly, completely wrong, "Straight To You From The Discovery Institute", bushwa, clueless, totally made up, having no relation to reality, dreamed up fact-like nonsense, Luskinized, Discovery Drivel, Religious, God's Word, more Yucks From Yahweh, crap, crapola, DaveTarded, Springer Speech, etc.
I must admit my equivalents are better suited to a thesaurus, but once I started jotting them down, I couldn't stop, and I relaized this is a never-ending task, as fruitless as a DI screed. I hope you all had as much fun reading them as I had writing them. Have a Happy New Year, and may it be Discovery Drivel Free.
Posted by: J-Dog | January 2, 2007 4:04 PM
This is what I was trying to point out to Sal earlier. In comment after comment, he repeatedly gives the game way, constantly trying to turn the subject back to who has the better PR advantages.
Who cares? I mean I know most of us care, but as an afterthought. Most of us are in the mindset of "let's get the science stuff right" and then preoccupied, we look from our work and realize we're not necessarily doing a very good job of doing the science education or the PR right. With Sal, it's again and again only the latter concern that seems to have any meaning or interest.
What a janitor thinks and believes about evolution seems to be far more important to Sal than, well, it likely is to the janitor. Myself, I'm happy to let the janitor believe or think what he wants, and if he wants to do science, he's welcome, but it's no big deal if he doesn't either. With Sal, that's not good enough: if that guy can be made to vaguely agree that evolution just doesn't seem right.... well, that's a victory for ID! The business of making sure evidence and argument and such are all in good shape never seems to come into it.
Posted by: plunge | January 2, 2007 4:09 PM
"And as I'll point out genetic algorithms in the computer industry are products of design running in designed environments. Man-made GA's hardly constitute a counter-example to the questions I pose, and if anything tend to strengthen the arguments."
You guys keep trying this same goofy category-error fallacy everytime GA's come up.
It doesn't make a lick of difference that the scenarios of GAs are designed. What they demonstrate is that the solutions to various problems do NOT need to pre-programmed in. The computer simulation merely reproduces some natural conditions and adds a selection gradient. The result is, say, in the case of my screensaver, the evolution of random blocks and joints into fascinating little speedy walking objects. The program "knows" nothing about how the mechanics of walking works. It aims only at distance covered, not the solutions to the particular sorts of design challenges and functional ideas necessary to achieve walking. All of that shakes out without any explicit information being fed into the system as to how to solve those problems. If an engineer sat down and figured out how to improve the gait, you'd have no problem admitting that they used their intelligence to add information to the system. But for some reason, when a GA does exactly the same thing, without a mind figuring out anything or even knowing what it's doing, you can't bring yourself to admit what's happened, and can only try to change the subject to the inane "well, but mind chose what color to make the sky in your 3d world."
Posted by: plunge | January 2, 2007 4:19 PM
"Truthiness", as applied to ID: religiosciencefictioty. I know it is rather cumbersome, but not as much so as "Supercalifragi......", and everybody remembers that one.
Posted by: Jeff | January 2, 2007 4:35 PM
Any sufficiently well understood phenomenon (whether it is the product of intelligence or not) should be possible to model with an intelligently designed algorithm. Why should it be any other way? The fact that SPICE models electric current running through circuits doesn't necessarily imply that the behavior of electricity is intelligently designed.
Posted by: Troublesome Frog | January 2, 2007 4:46 PM
Sal, do you know what a scientific theory is? Do you know what a scientific hypothesis is?
I though Sal answered this in the negative many, many years ago....
Posted by: gwangung | January 2, 2007 4:57 PM
GAs would seem to contradict the irreducible complexity argument. That argues more than just the necessity for an initial design, or even Prime Mover, but that there was interference from an intelligent agent throughout the process. If GAs develop on their own, after being written, then this would seem to be a strong argument against the abstract idea of IC.
That's the problem with anti-evolutionists. They never say what it is that they think, so any time you point out a solution to one of their dilemmas, they are able to back peddle into another gap.
Posted by: Matthew | January 2, 2007 4:58 PM
Physcians and many in the general population have little to no institutional incentive to keep promoting Darwinian evolution, evolutionary biologists do.
The last time I checked, evolutionary biologists did not need nurses and were not being sued by anyone for malpractice. (Oh, and they don't mistakenly leave their own instruments inside the animals they're studying, either.) But today, biology is burgeoning with women, many of them putting forward uncomfortable new ideas about (female) sexual selection, so what could they know?
You have the computer guys here on your weblog. You can ask them how plausible they think a computer and its operating system will emerge out of a soup of chemicals...
Salvador Cordova, surely you jest! One could just as well ask you how anyone, no matter how brilliant, could design your iconic mousetrap without the wood of a tree or the metal from the ore, trees and ore never having been "designed" in your theology--oh, pardon, theory.
And as I'll point out genetic algorithms in the computer industry are products of design running in designed environments. Man-made GA's hardly constitute a counter-example to the questions I pose, and if anything tend to strengthen the arguments
Self-replicating programs and genetic algorithms are designed to simulate things that you deny can even work (but they do)--naturalistic biological functions (such as random mutation and natural selection). You are not claiming that the designer wrote random mutation and natural selection algorithms (which would make you a theistic evolutionist)--you are claiming that the designer intervenes via irreducible complexity, and you know perfectly well the difference.
These "designed" systems could one day replace traditional computer programmers; are you saying that "designed" biological systems have replaced your "designer"? I didn't think so. Obviously the two are not analogous.
And I assume you meant to include women in with "computer guys." Right?
Posted by: Kristine | January 2, 2007 5:17 PM
"Scienticity". By analogy with The Simpsons' term "scientician". Definition: the quality of possessing superficially scientific-sounding characteristics crafted to grant an air of legitimacy to claims "known or believed emotionally or instinctively, without regard to evidence or rational thought". (Quote from the definition of "truthiness".)
Posted by: Joshua | January 2, 2007 5:23 PM
Well, see, that's the fun thing about Salvador's mindset. Apparently there's a difference between an algorithm that was intelligently designed and an algorithm that just happens-- even if it's the exact same algorithm, the fact that human hands were involved in actually typing that algorithm out infects it irreparably with "intelligence". Apparently.
Posted by: Coin | January 2, 2007 5:40 PM
Your statement is a little backward from the sense of what I was arguing. The issue is not whether an intelligent agency can model a mindless process, (like electrons flowing through a wire), but whether a mindless process can mimmick an intelligent agency (like a programmer building and implementing a GA).
Also, we were talking about GA's not SPICE (simulation program for integrated circuits).
The community of evolutionary biologists continue to fail to argue why selection in the wild should behave like an the intelligently designer and builder of GAs which can build functionally complex entitities (like a VLSI circuit, which some man-made GA's can do).
Just for starters, is the environment an adequate operating system to sustain a fine tuned feedback loop? Are the feedback loops sufficient to create large scale functional complexity over time? I point out, in the real world (not the make believe world of Avida) we deal with things that would fly in the face of such an optimistic model. For starters, some of the issues challenging the optimistic view of the natural world be Haldane's Dilemma, the issues listed in Sanford's Genetic Entropy, Nachman's U-Paradox, etc.
And that's just for starters. In information science we have the concepts of information storage capacity and channel capacity. I'm afraid, even when these rudimentary questions are posed to evolutionary biologists we get indications they have hardly looked into the issue, or when they do, they find it incompatible with the prevailing paradigm. Rather than admitting the paradigm could be totally wrong, they sweep the problem under the rug and obfuscate it into oblivion....
Sal
Posted by: Salvador T. Cordova | January 2, 2007 6:30 PM
Sal wrote:
"The community of evolutionary biologists continue to fail to argue..."
You just can't get the basic idea of the scientific method through your thick, Christianist head. Scientific disagreements are not resolved by arguments or debates. Scientific disagreements are resolved by new data.
Neither you nor a single one of your ID comrades is even thinking about producing a single new datum from a test of a hypothesis involving ID. You're afraid of what you'll learn.
BTW, your recurrent mislabeling of hypotheses as theories looks more like dishonesty than incompetence.
"I'm afraid, even when these rudimentary questions are posed to evolutionary biologists we get indications they have hardly looked into the issue..."
What a hypocrite you are, Sal! Here you are, promoting ID, but you can't point to a single datum produced by a single ID proponent who is testing (looking into) an ID hypothesis.
Why are all of you such intellectual cowards?
Posted by: John | January 2, 2007 6:58 PM
Why would they argue such a stupid thing? Selection doesn't act like a computer programmer. Computer programmers model selection when they write GAs.
You've got things ack-basswards, there, Sal.
Posted by: dhogaza | January 2, 2007 7:14 PM
Sal, I'm confused. You said: Furthermore, the evoltuionary biolgists must give reasonable accounts as to why the known physical world of the present and past should be modelled like an intelligently designed Gentic Algorithm.
But in response to Troublesome Frog you said:
Your statement is a little backward from the sense of what I was arguing. The issue is not whether an intelligent agency can model a mindless process, (like electrons flowing through a wire), but whether a mindless process can mimmick an intelligent agency (like a programmer building and implementing a GA).
First you were talking about modeling physical laws (which most people consider to be mindless processes) as GAs, and then you switched to questioning whether mindless processes can design GAs. Which is it?
Sal: The community of evolutionary biologists continue to fail to argue why selection in the wild should behave like an the intelligently designer and builder of GAs which can build functionally complex entitities (like a VLSI circuit, which some man-made GA's can do).
Again, you seem to be conflating the design of the GA with the GA itself when you talk about selection in the wild designing and building GAs. But maybe I'm misreading you.
Posted by: secondclass | January 2, 2007 7:14 PM
The community of evolutionary biologists continue to fail to argue why selection in the wild should behave like an the intelligently designer and builder of GAs which can build functionally complex entitities (like a VLSI circuit, which some man-made GA's can do).
Of course they don't argue why selection should behave like a computer programmer, that's what half the people here have been trying to tell you. The programmer of an evolutionary algorithm doesn't do the selecting. The selection itself is mindless and yet it works.
Posted by: Boo | January 2, 2007 7:16 PM
Your statement is a little backward from the sense of what I was arguing. The issue is not whether an intelligent agency can model a mindless process, (like electrons flowing through a wire), but whether a mindless process can mimmick an intelligent agency (like a programmer building and implementing a GA).
Yes, but YOU have everything ass backwards in your argument.
Again, it's irrelevant--and you have no idea WHY it's irrelevant, showing that you have no conception of what science is. And frankly, you're showing that you have no idea of how intelligent design would workas science.
But what else is new.
Posted by: gwangung | January 2, 2007 7:26 PM
The issue is... whether a mindless process can mimmickQ an intelligent agency (like a programmer building and implementing a GA).
Even if this were relevant: surely not only the GA, but also the programmer in this case would be an example of a mindless process mimicking an intelligent agency. After all, the human brain is itself simply a collection of mindless processes-- electrical and chemical synapses firing, hormones, neurons growing receptors as dictated by mindlessly executed genetic programs. Yet these mindless processes interact to produce an intelligence. Is this not so?
In information science we have the concepts of information storage capacity and channel capacity.
You mean information theory? Information science is about librarians.
Posted by: Coin | January 2, 2007 7:30 PM
And that's just for starters. In information science we have the concepts of information storage capacity and channel capacity. I'm afraid, even when these rudimentary questions are posed to evolutionary biologists we get indications they have hardly looked into the issue, or when they do, they find it incompatible with the prevailing paradigm. Rather than admitting the paradigm could be totally wrong, they sweep the problem under the rug and obfuscate it into oblivion....
Probably because the questions posed to information theorists solving engineering difficulties in computers are wholly different from those who study biological systems. It's highly ironic that you accuse evolution defenders of "obfuscating into oblivion" when it is your side who keeps bringing up mathematical and computational trivialities that are almost completely irrelevant to biology.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | January 2, 2007 7:50 PM
In information science we have the concepts of information storage capacity and channel capacity.
You mean information theory? Information science is about librarians.
Nah, that's just the pathetic level of detail that IDists don't feel is necessary for their work....
(Seriously, Sal, you HAVE to be precise if you're working in science. This type of sloppiness about details won't do. And this level of sloppiness has been part and parcel of your rhetoric---if you can't bother to do the detail work, then you have no business making any sort of arguments about biology),
Posted by: gwangung | January 2, 2007 7:53 PM
The process in question isn't the implementation. It's the execution. The algorithm itself simply bounces around through a selection landscape. I have seen a lot of arguments involving the "front loading" of information into that landscape, but those arguments invariably miss something obvious: The environment is loaded with "information" in that sense. That's the way the real world environment is. These simulations are made to show that a very simple algorithm (the type that occurs naturally without any intelligent agency) can traverse that landscape and produce complex structures. The fact that the program was written by a guy with a brain has no bearing on the fact that the algorithm itself accurately reflects the simple mutation and selection algorithm that we observe in nature.
I don't see why not. The environment seems to be full of them, what with weather patterns and such.
Well, I think that we can acknowledge that the breed/select/breed again feedback loop exists in nature and appears to have existed for a very long time. Taking that feedback loop and reproducing it in C and setting it to work adapting to all manner of environments seems to produce exactly the type of functional complexity you're looking for. So yes, I think so.
Now you're jumping from the question "Can a simple, naturally occurring algorithm create lots of complicated results?" to "What about X detail of evolutionary theory?" Without getting into the latter, I think that the former has been answered. I am generally very wary of people who try to prove mathematically that something that's observed on a daily basis is not possible.
When I see meaningful values used for storage and channel capacity in those arguments, I'll certainly take notice. As it stands, we still have ethereal and apparently unmeasurable quantities like specified complexity to deal with before I start to take the ID take on information theory seriously.
Posted by: Troublesome Frog | January 2, 2007 7:59 PM
Coin said of Sal: It's highly ironic that you accuse evolution defenders of "obfuscating into oblivion" when it is your side who keeps bringing up mathematical and computational trivialities that are almost completely irrelevant to biology.
Let's not forget that pathetic little detail that the mathematicians overwhelmingly reject the IDers "math" arguments, and likewise, there seems to be a deafening silence among the vast majority of information theorists on the ID information theories. You would think if the IDers had really made a breakthrough, other groups would be supporting them. After all, evolution means nothing (professionally speaking) to a mathematician, so they would have no reason to be biased in its favor. And obviously the potential book sales are staggering.
Troublesome Frog said: I am very wary of people who try to prove mathematically that something that's observed on a daily basis is not possible.
Thats just the IDers once again giving away their religious bias in the way they see things. Holy writ and idle theory trump facts. This one reason why they use the term "Darwinism". It's not 100% PR. Most can't fathom information coming from anywhere but some authority.
Posted by: MarkP | January 2, 2007 8:25 PM
Coin said of Sal
Just to be clear, the text you quote there was posted by Tyler DiPietro. I agree with it though :)
Posted by: Coin | January 2, 2007 8:29 PM
MarkP,
Exactly right. It's also pathetic that IDers seem to think that they can appeal to other disciplines to compensate for their lack of progress in biology, when they've arguably made even less progress in the other areas they claim status in. If Dembski is really convinced of his own ridiculous claim that he's "The Isaac Newton of Information Theory", he could bring his CSI twaddle to the professional literature. And yet the IDers behavior in CS and information theory is oddly similar to their behavior in biology.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | January 2, 2007 8:35 PM
It may exist, but the question is unanswered is whether it is sufficient to create complexity. To say "yes" is pre-mature at best. And besides, it doesn't answer the question of self-replicating Turing Machines that I posed at the beginnning...
Not any old feedback loop will work to create functional complexity, and that is especially true in engineering applications of GA. If any old feed back loop would suffice, we wouldn't have to put much thought and we would need intelligent designers constructing GA's that can solve a VLSI or other intricate problems.
As it turns out, empirical studies suggest the feedback loops in nature are insufficient to create functional design. Sanford goes a little bit into it, but Allen Orr really gave away the store when he criticized Dennett by saying, "Selection does not trade in the currency of Design". There is no a priori reason in other words that selection should favor large scale increases in functional complexity. In fact, a long standing enigma is the appearance and persistence of large scale complexity when simpler organisms have on average have a demonstratable differential reproductive advantage....
You may argue more research is needed to solve these problems. I would then say, fine, that only demonstrates claims that evolutionary biology are as proven as gravity are pre-mature at best. And it doesn't endear itself as a field to students like I described. You may believe evolutionary biology and that's fine. But if Ed and those reading his weblog are distressed it's not getting widely accepted, in addition to whatever personal resistance may exist out there, it's only multiplied by the kind of questions that I've touched on.
Regarding the channel capacity issues, ReMine and Sanford describe it in terms for populations genetics. Sanford especially does a good job connecting parameters in population genetics with signal to noise ratios....
And if I may clarify my personal opinion about legistlatures and school boards. I'm generally ambivalent to the issue of ID in public school science classrooms. If parents want to raise their kids as Darwinsits, much as I think it is a mistake, I respect their right to do so...
Sal
Posted by: Salvador T. Cordova | January 2, 2007 8:45 PM
"You may argue more research is needed to solve these problems..."
Sal, have you really not noticed that when you reference something completely outside the realm of biology (not to mention passable English) and label it a problem for biologists, the biologists in the audience -- not to mention those familiar with information theory -- are well aware of what you've just done? You're like some perseverating bot that generates endlessly repetitive gibberish about how contradictory it is that cats and dogs can't type as well as people, then notes importantly that "Perhaps veterinarians plan to address these problems but they have yet to try..." You're not merely wrong, you plain don't make sense, and the tactic you've admitted on this very board to gleefully using on susceptible people (i.e., spouting a bunch of frivolous criticism of evolution in lieu of formulating even a rudimentary theory about ID creationism) is not going to get you far here.
"And if I may clarify my personal opinion about legistlatures and school boards. I'm generally ambivalent to the issue of ID in public school science classrooms. If parents want to raise their kids as Darwinsits, much as I think it is a mistake, I respect their right to do so..."
That's magnanimous of you to not want to impede the teaching of biology in biology class (we'll even pretend you're not lying). But if you're lukewarm about teaching ID and think teaching Darwinism is a mistake, what do you propose should be taught? Straight-up creationism? This should be easy to answer.
Posted by: kemibe | January 2, 2007 9:10 PM
[the breed/select/breed again feedback loop] may exist, but the question is unanswered is whether it is sufficient to create complexity.
What is "complexity"?
What would be an example of "complexity" which could potentially be the output of a computer program-- for example, which could be meaningfully represented by a sequence of numbers?
I can hear the goalposts moving already...
And besides, it doesn't answer the question of self-replicating Turing Machines that I posed at the beginnning...
You didn't ask a question about "turing machines" in this thread, and the comment you made about turing machines is unrelated to evolution or "darwinism"; it concerned whether self-replicating systems can arise from "undesigned primordial elements", and evolution is a theory which concerns the behavior of self-replicating systems that already exist. The theory of evolution still functions perfectly well if one takes it on faith that abiogenesis is impossible without supernatural intervention; all evolution needs to produce all the complexity of life is that one single common ancestor, and it doesn't matter where the single common ancestor came from.
There are of course theories that explain potential origins of the single common ancestor without any reference to supernatural intervention whatsoever, but that isn't the same as "Darwinism".
Posted by: Coin | January 2, 2007 9:13 PM
Really, as far as I can tell Cordova is by himself proof of the idea that complexity can be generated by mindless process which attempt candidate strings at random and promptly discard those which do not function; this in fact appears to be his entire strategy for constructing comments.
The comments that result aren't very good, of course, but they do sometimes demonstrate functional complexity, and this is what matters; I don't think anybody ever said evolutionary processes produce absolute optimums.
Posted by: Coin | January 2, 2007 9:23 PM
Define complexity in a meaningful, measurable way and we may have ourselves a game. I frequently see people give touchy-feely definitions of things like "information" and then turn around and pretend that the "information" they're talking about is the same type of "information" used by various tools of information theory If I were to complain about pressure from management at work and then, with a straight face, use gas laws to explain why it's a bad thing, people would laugh at me. Somehow, this standard isn't applied to information theory.
I'm not seeing the relevance of Turing machines to what you're asking here. Is it the fact that one could implement a Turing machine based on DNA? Again, I'm not nearly as interested in the origins of DNA as I am in in the broader idea that somehow information theory brings evolutionary theory to a halt.
I'm interested. Where?
I'm very interested in the definition of functional design and how it was measured in those studies. I'm also curious as to who is suggesting that there's a reason for selection to favor large scale increases in the aforementioned complexity.
Posted by: Troublesome Frog | January 2, 2007 10:22 PM
(we need a good word for "truthiness" in a scientific context; any suggestions?)
How about "proximal factuality" because it means pretty much the same thing and sounds suitably scientific (or at least intellectual.)
Posted by: twincats | January 2, 2007 10:33 PM
Apologies to Coin and Tyler for my sloppiness.
Now...double-checking...
Coin said: The theory of evolution still functions perfectly well if one takes it on faith that abiogenesis is impossible without supernatural intervention; all evolution needs to produce all the complexity of life is that one single common ancestor, and it doesn't matter where the single common ancestor came from.
Gee, another inconsistency from the IDers. Their hypothesis requires a designer, but they steadfastly refuse to identify it, talk about aspects of it, even sometimes go so far as to say they have no interest in pursuing information on it at all.
Yet, in the case of the necessary common ancestor of evolutionary theory, they demand exact details of what it was, and exactly how it came about.
Their sense of the burdon of proof is truly bizarre.
Posted by: MarkP | January 2, 2007 10:47 PM
In addition to the computer metaphor there is also an economic metaphor for evolution that is particularly pertinent in dealing with the Christian Right. Free market economies are not intelligently designed - they are a direct result of a large number of independant agents with no concern for the big picture. The good ideas thrive and are copied, the bad ones die out, the whole thrives and through random processes (people getting ideas) grows better and stronger.
There have been people who beleived (and some still do) that a vibrant, complex market economy is impossible without intelligent design. These people are called communists and the 20th century proved then exactly wrong. Any proponent of free market capitalism beleives in emergent complexity, whether they realise it or not.
Now that I think about it, is this the reason Bush et al decided to take your country on a big government binge?
Posted by: James | January 3, 2007 12:55 AM
Coin,
The comments that result aren't very good, of course, but they do sometimes demonstrate functional complexity, and this is what matters; I don't think anybody ever said evolutionary processes produce absolute optimums.
And indeed they don't. One question evolutionary biologists pose to IDCers is one concerning why a designer would accumulate as many biological screw-ups as are known in biological organisms. The eye is an often peddled, though faulty example of something that must have been designed. The only problem is that the construction of our eye is so ad hoc that our brains have to generate illusions to compensate for the faultiness of it's mechanics.
You can pose a similar question with code. What sort of computer scientist would write a means of data representation that contains large areas of non-functional code, and is prone to random post-hoc additions from the environment (like ERV's are to DNA)?
But in the end I have to slightly take issue with one thing in your post, and that is that Cordova is producing a sort of complexity. Given the Kolmogorov formulation of complexity (the one that computer scientists most often actually use) Sal would have to give us the least compressible description of his ideas. But every post he's made here can be compressed down to "neener neener! you guys can't prove me wrong!"
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | January 3, 2007 2:02 AM
I posted this on the thread with the comment, but since it seems relevant to the discussion here I repost with corrections:
Seems like Sal is giving away the IDiot strategy.
So that is why Sternberg is so important - to put up a wall to hind the lack of progress behind.
This PR argument will get little traction, since the peer-review system is similar and is vouched for by all scientists.
So you propose that since Behe's IC argument isn't an argument against evolution developing biological systems (futile, since evolution predicts interlocked systems), you will switch to a Turing argument.
It is still futile.
You can build an algorithmic system by adding properties until it becomes an efficient computational system, a turing system. In fact, since the distinguishing property is recursion, evolution among replicators is turing complete. So it isn't surprising to find that DNA and thus cells are turing complete, nor that the brain is.
The power of that mechanism shows itself because this is the road some biologists researches to see how evolution picks up information from the environment. One possible way is that population models of asexual organisms looks exactly like bayesian inference models used in machine learning. (Each individual is a "hypothesis" which after selection improves the "theory" of the environment.)
The new papers:
It is true that Darwinian evolution with variation and selection ("chance and necessity") on replicators is not relevant for abiogenesis, since we are studying the very problem of how replicators arise. This is not a new problem. And considering the comments here, the paper isn't making any predictions from ID.
He doesn't mention turing systems much, except to contradict what Trevors and Abel says (that cells are turing complete) in a failed argument from ignorance against evolution. He makes no predictions from ID whatsoever.
Mostly he discusses why gödel incompleteness makes formal systems (like algorithmic ones) open and flexible. This is of course a good property to have, both for evolutionary systems and brains.
A critique of Voie's paper from a professional computer scientist is already existing ( http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/07/peer_reviewed_bad_id_math.php ). It rips everything apart and ends with: "This stinker actually got peer-reviewed and accepted by a journal. It just goes to show that peer review can really screw up badly at times. Given that the journal is apparently supposed to be about fractals and such that the reviewers likely weren't particularly familiar with Gödel and information theory. Because anyone with a clue about either would have sent this to the trashbin where it belongs."
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | January 3, 2007 2:04 AM
It should be a rule that claims that have answers listed in the talkorigin CC list should not be mentioned without saying anything new.
This should also extend to arguments. Why mention Trevors and Abel work on abiogenesis here, when it has nothing to do with evolution? And why point out papers here if they don't have any predictions made from ID?
The Turing argument will fare no better than the IC argument. Obviously life has both turing and interlocked systems, and evolution predicts both. Why even bother to mention it here? These arguments will only impress the ignorant. Perhaps it is floaters under test. Well, the test failed.
The best is that the turing argument can be turned around. Since brains are turing (ID says so by Voie!), men are akin to computers, minds are emergent symbol processors. No soul for the OEC/YEC crowd. I'm sure that will go down nicely.
Since Voie's paper on CS slipped through into a magazine about chaos, that argument is rather self-defeating. Good for pseudoscience is not good for science, and ID points out the errors in the system.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | January 3, 2007 2:33 AM
A mistake:
"Each individual is a "hypothesis" - each allele
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | January 3, 2007 2:42 AM
"As it turns out, empirical studies suggest the feedback loops in nature are insufficient to create functional design." - Sal
Wow Sal, now you are saying it is impossible for humans to design something as man's reason is a feedback loop as I described above. I am still waiting for you to explain how design differs from an evolutionary algorithm. I have explained that the process of thought is an evolutionary algorithm, select/recombine, select/recombine, ad infinitum. So, please explain how an intelligence can design something without prior knowledge, experimentation and the process of reason. The only concept of design humans have is one that uses evolutionary principles. We have no model for poof.
Posted by: James Taylor | January 3, 2007 5:31 AM
Yes, and Chu-Carrol has little inhibition about resorting to disingenuous arguments. Did you notice this claim by Chu-Carrol which a straw man knockdown:
To give and idea of Chu's disingenous argument, consider this little paragraph which I write to illustrate Chu's strawman:
That is exactly the kind of disingenuous argument he used against Voie. Was Chu willing to also point out to the reader, like in the case of a computer/printer system, that mechanical systems that can make canonical incompleteness statements need intelligence to orignate them in the first place? Did any of his fan club bother to call him on his disingenous argument and highly uncharitable rendering of Voie's work? No. He's given a free pass by the Darwinist community. It only strengthens the perception defenders of Darwinism are willing to stoop to using rather shady methods of argumentation. Chu is very bright, and apparently quite willling to use his intelligence to follow through with his biases in making rather shady arguments...
Salvador
Posted by: Salvador T. Cordova | January 3, 2007 10:53 AM
No. Care to try to represent what I say more accurately before I attempt a response?
Posted by: Salvador T. Cordova | January 3, 2007 10:57 AM
Maybe the imperfection is by design. This is a rather important philosophical question so I will at least touch on in, the problem of bad and malicious design.
1. if the Intelligent Desiger is imperfect, well then, no need to worry about asking if cancer was in the mind of the Designer since we're not expecting perfection from him
2. if the Intelligent Desiger is Perfect, why would we expect Him to make something as Perfect as Himself? Who knows the answer to that? And since answers would be difficult if not impossible to arrive at without invoking some axiomatic ideas about perfection, the bad design argument can't be used as evidence against the existence of a Perfect Designer.
What remains therefore is that philosophical objections to the design argument based on the "bad design" argument are inadequate. Therefore, the theoretical and empirical considerations take priority.
Regarding the identity of the Designer or His attributes, it is not a necessary condition to infer Design, but I'll give the readers of Ed's weblog a bonus, I'll suggest the identity and attributes of the Designer (mind you, this is an extra to ID proper, but since I'm in a charitable mood, I'd give away my hypothesis for the Designer's identity and attributes for free). See: Peer-Reviewed Stealth ID Classic : The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1987).
Sal
Posted by: Salvador T. Cordova | January 3, 2007 11:08 AM
Sal: That is exactly the kind of disingenuous argument he used against Voie.
Before making accusations of disingenuousness and shadiness, you might want to make sure that you actually understand Chu's point. It's clear that you don't.
Sal: Was Chu willing to also point out to the reader, like in the case of a computer/printer system, that mechanical systems that can make canonical incompleteness statements need intelligence to orignate them in the first place?
We have repeatedly explained the fallacy in this reasoning. Not only do you not respond to our refutations, but you keep committing the same fallacy.
The provenance of Chu's Godel sentence generator is completely irrelevant to his point. Once again I'll ask the question that you haven't answered: Are genetic algorithms intelligent agents? How about Chu's Godel sentence generator? Yes or no?
Posted by: secondclass | January 3, 2007 11:34 AM
Sal, on a side note, what is the basis for your frequent claim that The Anthropic Cosmological Principle is peer-reviewed? I'm not saying that it isn't; I'm just looking for a source. Thanks in advance.
Posted by: secondclass | January 3, 2007 12:49 PM
Since Cordova mentions creationist electrical engineer Walter ReMine's misdirection re: Haldane's dilemma, I was wondering if Sal might be able to answer the simple questions that ReMine and his online mouthpieces cannot/will not answer:
What traits do we have that our apelike ancestor did not have that are differences in 'kind', not degree?
How many beneficial mutations are required for these traits to be produced?
Without the answers to those questions, all ReMine's bloviating and posturing are just empty rhetorical devices to fool the ignorant.
And Cordova keeps the lie alive...
Posted by: slpage | January 3, 2007 1:15 PM
Sal:
First of all, what is so damned hard about my name? My name is not "Mark Chu". It's "Mark Chu-Carroll". It's on my blog, it's in every post, and it's in the comment by the person who brought up my criticism of Voie. I'm really sick of people who feel like they get to decide what my name is.
Second: you're the one pulling a strawman out of your hat. My criticism of Voie has absolutely *nothing* in common with your little analogy about a printer. *Voie* formulates a meaningless distinction, and uses it to build an argument that conflates the distinct concepts of self-reference and self-referential paradox. My response was to point out that
distinction: there are plenty of non-paradoxical self-references. This post contains a self-referential statement right here in this sentence. Is there anything paradoxical about that? Voie's argument *requires* that any self-referential statement be paradoxical!
Voie *also* muddles the line between self-referential *statements* and self-referential *devices*. You *can* create self referential *statement* that contain Godel paradoxes. You *cannot* create self-referential *devices* that contain Godel paradoxes. The latter is a meaningless
concept. (And there I go again; "the latter" is a self-reference within the post. Another paradox?)
Posted by: Mark C. Chu-Carroll | January 3, 2007 1:38 PM
What is most interesting about this exchange is how clearly it demonstrates that Sal, who at point was capable of at least trying to respond to points made has become (as somebody pointed out) a "bot": push his button and he regurgitates boilerplate text.
Sal's entire argument consists of
if NOT(some combination of known evolutionary mechanisms) then DESIGN.
That's it. That's all the Turing machines (something he's particularly fond of) argument says; that's all he ever says.
While I admire folks energy and patience in trying to explain to Sal why he's wrong (and that's been done pretty clearly here and devastatingly clearly by Chu) - what's the point?
Sal has admitted in this thread that his concern is faith, not science; that there is not ID theory to even discuss; that he is incapable of distinguishing between a conjecture, a hypothesis, and a theory; and that he can't even follow a simple mathematical argument like Chu's.
Sal may be the finest propaganda machine for the ID-opposition ever created: every post makes it clear that this is all about religion, not sciencece. And for that, I applaud him.
Posted by: Scarlet Seraph | January 3, 2007 1:43 PM
Sal - In fact, a long standing enigma is the appearance and persistence of large scale complexity when simpler organisms have on average have a demonstratable differential reproductive advantage....
mmmmmmmmmmm........simpler organisms........yummy
Posted by: scripto | January 3, 2007 1:58 PM
The interesting thing there to me is, if I'm reading this right: Cordova in his comment above read a specific criticism of the Voie paper; inexplicably concluded the criticism was directed at him Cordova personally; and then claimed the criticism was a straw man because he Cordova personally had claimed something different in the past from the argument taken from the Voie paper which was being criticised.
Salvador T. Cordova, center of the universe
Posted by: Coin | January 3, 2007 2:16 PM
"we need a good word for 'truthiness' in a scientific context; any suggestions?"
empiricicity?
Posted by: John Armstrong | January 3, 2007 2:23 PM
[/ironic juxtaposition]
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | January 3, 2007 3:18 PM
We could always go with "Cordovaness", to relate the last two comments.
Posted by: Badger3k | January 3, 2007 3:20 PM
Edit - oops - Coin's and Hohn Armstrong's posts. Someone posted while I was reading.
Posted by: Badger3k | January 3, 2007 3:21 PM
Edit to an edit - "John" - aargh! In a way, I wish you could edit comments, but then we might not have a lot of fun with Sal's comments. Too much "editing" with the ID crowd. Anyway, I'm done. :)
Posted by: Badger3k | January 3, 2007 3:24 PM
Forgive my conflating Darwinism with the Origin of Life question, but since they are related in terms of overall ID thinking, it seems suitable here for me to address both:
If the Universe is in fact only 10 to 20 billion years old, then it's at least possible to rationally ask if sheer chance accumulations of the building blocks of life resulting in the complexity of DNA and cellular structures might not have occured by sheer chance in the allowed time frame; some kind of teleological force might be at work to accomplish DNA in only 20 billion years.
Of course, one might recognize that the big bang isn't really an explosive "beginning" at all (instead, it can be seen as the perceptual limit of our instruments and imaginations to the infinitely small). Or, if you believe that the universe's expansion that we see is merely local and temporary, then the resulting possibly infinite time frame could allow for life easily via sheer chance combinations of particles. Or, if you're amenable to the Many-worlds interpretation of Quantum Dynamics, this universe is but one of a possible infinite # of universes in which every highly improbable circumstance will exist in some universe somewhere.
And "intelligent design" need not refer to any anthropomorphic "God" (christian or not) at all. It may instead refer to an inbuilt property of chaos science: given the right circumstances, entirely unpredictable emergent properties may manifest. Life and human consciousness and teleology may be among these properties.
So although it's true that the superstitious religionists who automatically assume that teleology must refer to their particular god of choice are clearly exhibiting an agenda-driven pov, I think it's important to point out that some kind of "design," or "intelligence," or "purpose," or "organizing principle," or "teleology" (for lack of better words) may be involved in the origin of life and even the cosmos.
And we shouldn't forget the crucial role that semantics plays in choosing language to explain our povs. For instance, what is meant by the word "design"? There are "designs" everywhere in nature. The human mind is clearly capable of design, and is itself the result of the "designs" of Nature (if not of "God"). Seems clear that we can all agree that the present state of things is the result of long processes of Nature, and no one can answer the question "what is the First Cause" of Nature itself (any answer to that question is not science but metaphysics or poetry at best and literalistic religious dogma at worst).
So ID can be valid philosophical inquiry, but it shouldn't be taught as science.
Posted by: Norm Breyfogle | January 3, 2007 4:32 PM
Norm, thanks for your comment: And "intelligent design" need not refer to any anthropomorphic "God" (christian or not) at all. It may instead refer to an inbuilt property of chaos science: given the right circumstances, entirely unpredictable emergent properties may manifest.
I don't know of any IDer who has proposed a usable definition of "intelligent design". But whatever they mean by the phrase, I think their usage excludes emergent properties of chaotic systems. They seem to have something else in mind, although they won't say exactly what.
Posted by: secondclass | January 3, 2007 4:46 PM
Norm -
First...way cool drawings.
Second...You can always ask if an intelligent agent is at work somewhere in the system. But the scientist would then proceed to formulate a hypothosis derived from their theory and look for some empirical evidence of that. This is what archeologists do for example. IDists of the DI stripe do not do that. They try to shoehorn "design" wherever they can find a gap in knowledge.
One can certainly envisage an intelligent design that does not depend on some supernatural deity (I wonder who it could be??), but that is not the intelligent design we've come to know and love (primarily for the humour content). An intelligent design that's not accessable to scientific inquiry may be something interesting to talk about over a few brewskis, but is of little use to scientists.
Posted by: Dave S. | January 3, 2007 4:48 PM
secondclass:
You're right, and I clearly agree. I probably should have instead written, "And "TELEOLOGY" need not refer to any anthropomorphic "God" (christian or not) at all.
Clearly, the ID crowd is distinct from those merely speculating about Cosmic Teleology, and the IDists often try to hide their political agenda (though not very well!lol).
Dave S.:
Thanks for checking out my site, and for your compliment.
I tend to think of the universe (or multiverse) as fundamentally all about designs. The very nature of existence is design (which I consider synonomous in this context with information), and so all "designers" are part of that infinite design.
When we think of a "designer," the knee-jerk reaction is to envision an anthropomorphic consciousness, but I submit that our human design is but one design in the infinite pattern of designs. Seems to me that whether we call the entire pattern a "design" or a "designer" is a mere semantic distinction since it functions as both (unless we have an agenda like the IDists do and by "designer" we mean our god of arbitrary, non-scientifc, choice/faith).
Posted by: Norm Breyfogle | January 3, 2007 5:37 PM
"This passage truly made me laugh out loud when I read it. The notion that the general population, including most physicians, have the necessary knowledge to make any judgment on the scientific merits of evolution is laughably absurd. The average American, including the average doctor (who may be smarter than the general population, but likely has little training in biology), knows as little about evolutionary biology as I know about 14th century Turkish agricultural techniques."
This is a really important point about physicians embracing pseudoscientific twaddle like ID or animal rights. I have taught in first-year "basic science" courses in medical school, and I can assure you that the scientific method is not taught. The classes are for memorization, designed for students to pass the questions on their boards, which are not about the scientific method either. It's a vicious circle that can only be stopped by changing the content of the boards.
Posted by: John | January 3, 2007 5:41 PM
Sal Cordova:
For those who can't readily access the full text of the paper, I'll note that Sal is (as usual) trying to pull a fast one here; Trevors and Abel make no testable "claims" in their paper whatsoever (and indeed, do not even claim to have done so). The paper is not so much a scientific paper as an opinion piece expressing the authors' doubts regarding the viability of the currently favored hypotheses in origins-of-life research. They are certainly entitled to their opinion, but they don't make a very compelling case, and it seems to me to be mostly handwaving.
Posted by: tgibbs | January 3, 2007 6:51 PM
Sal,
Nachman's U-Paradox:
Not so. Sex changes things:
If mom and dad have N deleterious features in their genome, then their offspring will have on average N deleterious features. But they will have a somewhat random selection of their parents' genomes, and thus a somewhat random selection of their parents' deleterious features. The number of deleterious features they inherit will have a standard deviation of approximately 1/2 sqrt (N). For N = 100, approximately 39% of the offspring will have N-3 or fewer deleterious features in their genome. Now there are a couple of provisoes to this figure: the normal distribution is only an approximation, and in particular it may be quite a bit off off if the parents share many of their deleterious genome features. (And genes lying close together on the genome will not be selected independently in meiosis; important for larger N.) But if you want better figures I would suggest looking to evolutionary biologists rather than your current sources (I am not one). BTW: considerable selection occurs prenatally; a fair chunk of embryos die with their parents none the wiser.
As for "Haldane's Dilemma", he may be making the same mistake as "Nachmann", but the page never actually gets around to specifying his model, so it's hard to tell. And as for Genetic Entropy, a bald assertion that "When subjected only to natural forces, the human genome must irrevocably degenerate over time." does not an argument make. There may be an argument in the book, there is none on the webpage.
P.S. I am making the dangerous assumption that Haldane and Nachmann have not been misrepresented on the pages given.
Posted by: Andrew Wade | January 3, 2007 8:14 PM
I'd much rather see the DI spend their research dollars honestly and test the hypothesis that human civilization is incapable of "goodness" without belief in a Monotheistic God and its subordinate ideological texts.
Posted by: Rhampton | January 3, 2007 8:22 PM
Sal:
Mark can answer for himself (and does, here and at http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/01/stupidity_from_our_old_friend.php#c306060 ). However, your argument is exactly that Voie assumes and what Mark shows is false by his argument since the actual process of generating the statements is mechanical and isolated from any human participation. The only strawman raised here is yours.
A sufficiently intelligent student understands that a model is an abstraction from reality. A sufficiently intelligent worker understands that the products of a hammer isn't the hammer or decided by the construction of the hammer. A sufficiently intelligent animal understands that the reflection in the mirror isn't an animal. A sufficiently intelligent IDiot ... well, here we seem to have the self-referential paradox in full use.
Another strawman. Darwinism is a part of evolutionary theory, computer science and neuroscience has very little to do with it.
Nothing the papers say is supportive of ID, since there are no predictions that can make it a science. The Voie paper should not have been published. Your arguments only underline that fact.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | January 3, 2007 11:57 PM
Ah yes, the little woman gets ignored again. Story of my life--up to a point. ;-) Beware of that point.
And I can guarantee you there ain't an evolutionary biologist on the planet who can take first principles of information science and computer science and make a case that Darwinian evolution can account for these systems.
Yeah, I'll take that up those "first principles" with my professors when my second semester of classes in Library and Information Science start up next week. (It has "science" in the title! That must make me a scientist!) *eye-roll*
People have words for women who act like that--maybe someday they'll apply those words to the men who are similarly confused.
Posted by: Kristine | January 4, 2007 12:12 AM
Andrew:
The talkorgin CC list explains both why Haldane and ReMine (Cordova's link) is wrong.
"Haldane's "cost of natural selection" stemmed from an invalid simplifying assumption in his calculations. ... With corrected calculations, the cost disappears (Wallace 1991; Williams n.d.).
Haldane's paper was published in 1957, and Haldane himself said, "I am quite aware that my conclusions will probably need drastic revision" (Haldane 1957, 523). It is irresponsible not to consider the revision that has occurred in the forty years since his paper was published.
ReMine (1993), who promotes the claim, makes several invalid assumptions." ( http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB121.html ) The largest problem is that he disregards neutral drift, which is seen to be the major effect in evolution.
His answer:
"My argument states that Haldane's Dilemma only limits the beneficial substitution rate. In addition, my book has an entire chapter on neutral evolution, and argues that the vast majority of substitutions would be neutral, due to genetic drift, not selection. Talk.origins misrepresented my argument." ( http://saintpaulscience.com/talk_origins.htm )
TalkOrigins page was updated 060608, and ReMine 061112. So actually Cordova presented new arguments. However, I can't see that ReMine does what he says, includes fixation of drifted genes when they become selectable due to changes in the population or environment. (I have emailed TalkOrigin and asked for an update.)
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | January 4, 2007 12:29 AM
Mark Chu-Carroll's points out that the claims of turing capability are premature. ( http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/01/stupidity_from_our_old_friend.php )
I run away with Sal's turing claims, but I think it is pretty clear that even if he is right it doesn't invalidate evolution by being an obstacle. Models for abiogenesis shows a stepwise accumulation of properties before the first "stand-alone" replicator occurred.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | January 4, 2007 2:10 AM
I think the word you're looking for to indicate like science, but not, might be:
scientifish
'cos it's kind of like scientific but very fishy indeed.
Anthony K
Posted by: AnthonyK | January 4, 2007 8:29 AM
I would like to read the Trevors and Abel paper, but Sal's link doesn't work. I asked Sal for (1) a real link and (2) his summary of the testable claims made in that paper 50 posts ago, and Sal replied to other people, but not me.
To me, that's suspicious behavior; it looks like Trevors and Abel is a hurled elephant designed to deflect criticism rather than an answer. *shrug*
Posted by: Andrew | January 4, 2007 12:38 PM
I'd like Sal to answer this: even if we could prove that the existence of any part of the universe or even the entire universe couldn't be attributed to sheer chance (a task beyond our abilities to do anything more than speculate about), that still wouldn't prove that it's guided by or created by an anthropomorphic designer. So what do you and other IDists REALLY mean to refer to when you point to a "designer"?
Why not just come right out and admit that you're pointing to some version of the fabled Judeo-Christian God and that you're only using science as a springboard to push something that's not science at all, namely, faith?
Posted by: Norm Breyfogle | January 4, 2007 4:09 PM
Norm's question is not exactly like mine, but I'd love to see an answer to that, too.
Posted by: Kristine | January 4, 2007 6:07 PM
Kristine and Norm, don't hold your breath. Sal owes a lot of answers to a lot of people, and he keeps getting further in debt.
Posted by: secondclass | January 4, 2007 7:39 PM
*Turning blue* Oh, really? ;-)
Posted by: Kristine | January 4, 2007 9:36 PM
you must keep in mind one fundamental fact: Sal is no longer a rational human being. To expect him to reason, to accept new facts, to behave ethically is to ask too much. This is the man who stated that he gave up science and logic because it was getting in the way of his faith.
Posted by: Scarlet Seraph | January 4, 2007 9:57 PM
"...lends an air of truthiness to their claims (we need a good word for "truthiness" in a scientific context; any suggestions?)"
How about "empirulence"?
It's not even a word as far as I'm aware, but you *know* you just want to start using it right away, don't you?
Ian
Posted by: Ian Wood | January 5, 2007 3:48 PM
I see that all the usual supects are holding forth here, offering, as usual, nothing of substance to the great mystery of phylogeny.
The primary error that the "Fundies," led by Reverend Dilliam Wembski, made right at the onset was to present Intelligent Design as an "inference" thus presenting it as a subject for debate. Naturally enough debating societies such as this one sprang up like mushrooms contributing absolutely nothing to the study of evolution.
Both the "Fundies" and the "Darwimps" are full of it right up to the gunwales. Intelligence Design is a mandatory assumption without which nothing in either ontgeny or phylogeny can ever make sense. Chance has never played any role whatsoever in either.
"Neither in the one nor in the other is there room for chance."
Leo Berg, Nomogenesis, page 134
I only wish he had used the past tense because phylogeny is finished and has been for a very long time. The death of the individual is the counterpart to the extinction of the species. Ontogeny remains the perfect model for phylogeny. Everything now being revealed in the world's laboratories clearly points to a predetermined evolution in which chance has played no role whatsover. Furthermore, nothing in the fossil record can ever be reconciled with the Darwinian model, absolutely nothing.
I am certainly not the first to reach these conclusions as they were independently arrived at by Leo Berg, Pierre Gtasse. William Bateson, Robert Broom and Otto Schindewolf. My "prescribed" Providence, if it may be called that, was to resurrect these real scientists from the oblivion that the sedentary, pontificating, "Darwimpian" atheists have tried so desperately to bury them. They have, largely through my efforts, fai1ed miserably.
It is hard to believe isn't it?
I love it so!
"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."
John A. Davison
Posted by: John A. Davison | January 6, 2007 6:41 PM
What world are you living in? Because it clearly isn't the real one, in which the fossil record inspired the Darwinian model.
Posted by: Squiddhartha | January 6, 2007 8:40 PM
Ah, Mr. Davison, you are not welcome here. I've witnessed your trolling on more than enough webpages and it's not going to be allowed here. I know you'll tell yourself that this means you win and that it means that we're "afraid" of your ideas; feel free to tell yourself that, I couldn't possibly care less. But you won't be posting your nonsense here.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | January 6, 2007 8:54 PM
Wow. Three separate signature lines, plus the superfluous name signing. How about an open thread contest to develop John A. Davison's fourth signature?
Or were they all front-loaded and have gradually unspooled, and are almost certainly finished?
"A little John A. Davison goes a long way."
Boo
Posted by: Boo | January 7, 2007 10:20 AM
Ya gotta feel bad for the old boy. Its sad when your career peaks and burns out 30 years ago with a couple frog pigment papers, and all you have left is to troll one website after another.
Posted by: Dave S. | January 7, 2007 11:08 AM
With all the commenters coming out of the woodwork lately, maybe we should all chip in to buy Ed a 55-gallon drum of Trol-B-Gon.
Posted by: Squiddhartha | January 7, 2007 1:42 PM
John A. Davison:
As do all IDists, you've failed to define "Intelligent Design" in a testable manner. Until one does so, such speculation remains a merely semantic debate.
But I like philosophical speculation and I like semantic debate, so let's speculate, and let's debate the semantics. What do you mean by "intelligent design"? Can you define it? If "intelligent design" simply refers to the fact that the universe - perhaps expecially life - is an amazingly complex pattern, then that is fine and I would think that all could agree that it is at least somewhat, in *some* semantic sense, "intelligently designed" (after all, it gave rise to the moderately intelligent human race). But the "designer" of such a pattern need not be an anthropomorphic one at all. In fact, the designer may be infinite existence itself, composed of an infinitely complex mixture of animate "intelligence" and inanimate matter and forces. There need not be a single, "intelligent" first cause (see my above comments about Multiple Universe Theory or merely local expansions of the galaxies to illustrate that statistics can't prove anything about ID).
The problem with and debate over I.D. is one of first causes and how to find and define such, since, until we can truly know the ultimate answers to the largest cosmic questions, unknown variables make any proposed first causes impossible to study scientifically. And, with no provable grand unified theory available due to the inevitable limits of our investigative tools, this will remain the case, perhaps forever. Hence, evolution as a testable hypothesis is proposed (instead of blatant speculation or superstition offered about the unknowable) for the limited range of variables we do indeed know about biology, and it gains weight by support of objective evidence. Evolution isn't about first causes except in a limited sense: it's limited to the provable, objective facts.
First causes are beyond the purview of testable science, and lie instead within the realm of sheerest speculation and/or faith.
Posted by: Norm Breyfogle | January 7, 2007 5:18 PM
It is precisely at the level of your "probable objective facts" that the Darwinian myth collapses... It had repeatedly failed the acid test which must be applied to all hypotheses, experimental verification.
Okay, so where's the "experimental verification" of your alternative theory?
PS: What about the prosecutor's description of the relevant events at a criminal trial? Should such theories be discarded for lack of "experimental verification?"
Posted by: Raging Bee | January 8, 2007 11:04 AM
Then you must weep every time you look in the mirror.
Posted by: Norm Breyfogle | January 12, 2007 5:12 AM
John: I'm not an atheist, and I've told you so at least twice already. Got that? Write that down!
Ed: Could you delete my "Then you must weep every time you look in the mirror" comment? The post from John that my comment was responding to is now gone.
Posted by: Norm Breyfogle | January 12, 2007 10:14 AM
Since John's posts are not appearing any more, everyone can ignore this post of mine and my last two posts. Or Ed can delete them ...
Posted by: Norm Breyfogle | January 14, 2007 6:51 PM
Norm,
I just noticed your posts. I just want to tell you that I grew up reading your artwork in Detective.
Nice to see you post here.
Posted by: Jon Rowe | January 14, 2007 8:45 PM
Thanks, Jon. I'm just doing my best to avoid making a fool of myself here, and on some other science blogs. I'm very impressed with the quality of thinkers I've found on these blogs; Much or most of the time what's conveyed is frankly over my head.
Posted by: Norm Breyfogle | January 15, 2007 1:04 AM