ID folks make numerous assertions said to represent scientific challenges to conventional evolutionary theory. These claims are uniformly wrong, which is one of the reasons scientists generally ignore them.
But ID folks also claim that adopting a design perspective could lead to great progress in science, if only scientists would take off their materialist blinders. There is an acid test for all such claims: Go discover something! Writers are fond of saying “Show, don't tell,” and that adage applies very well here. If your perspective is so useful, then prove it by discovering something the conventional methods had overlooked.
Every once in a while an ID proponent claims to have done such a thing, but such claims invariably crumble after even the briefest examination. So I read with interest this post from ID hack and Dembski lackey Denyse O'Leary. It's title: Nine Predictions, if Intelligent Design is True.
Golly! That's a lot of predictions. Now, typically when scientists talk about a prediction of a theory, they are talking about something they can use to guide their research. Give a paleontologist a region of the world and rocks of a particular age, and they can tell you with considerable precision what sorts of creatures you ought to find in the fossils. We saw a dramatic example of this in 2006 with the discovery of Tiktaalik. Paleontologists were searching for a fossil with certain characteristics, and they had a good idea of where to look for the best chance of finding one as the result of evolutionary thinking. That is just one example. It is not difficult to come up with many more.
Can ID do anything like that? Of course not. If it could, it would have taken over as the dominant paradigm in biology long ago. This hasn't stopped various ID folks from trying to pretend otherwise. Let's have a look at O'Leary's efforts.
Here's one she was so proud of, she even cross-posted it over at Dembski's blog:
Complete series of transitional fossils will not usually be found because most proposed series have never existed. Eventually, researchers will give up on ideologically driven nonsense and address the history that IS there. They will focus on discovering the mechanisms that drive sudden bursts of creativity.
Here's another:
No account of human evolution will show a long slow emergence from unconsciousness to semi-consciousness to consciousness, let alone that consciousness is merely the random firing of neurons in the brain. However consciousness got started, it appeared rather suddenly and it permanently separates humans from our genetic kin, however you want to do the gene numbers and however much time researchers spend coaxing monkeys to stop relieving themselves on the keyboard and type something meaningful.
Get the idea? O'Leary's predictions look an awful lot like foot-stomping, arm-folding and head shaking. You will search her nine predictions in vain for any hint of something scientists can actually use in their research.
Evolution showed everyone that heredity was a subject of vital importance. Countless generations of creationists prior to Darwin overlooked that point. (Yes, I've heard of Mendel. And no, one lonely monk performing a handful of simple experiments does not count.) It is evolution that changed paleontology from the dreary business of bland description to the vital field of science it is today. Evolution gave paleontologists guidance as to how to do their work, and found itself enriched by what the paleontologists found. The same could be said for every branch of the life sciences. That's what useful theories do.
And here comes O'Leary to tell everyone that a century and a half of unambiguous usefulness should be discarded. Why? Because she is not convinced. Okay, what should scientists be doing instead? Nothing. What sorts of research or experiments are suggested by a design perespective that would not be undertaken with a more conventional perspective? Nothing.
The most generous explanation is that O'Leary does not understand what is being asked when sicentists ask for predictions stemming from ID. In addition to the purely negative predictions I have mentioned so far, O'Leary gives some postive predictions. After her petulant remarks about transitional forms, for example, she writes:
Positive prediction: Discovering the true mechanisms of bursts of natural creativity may be of immense value to us, especially if we need to undo some significant harm to our environment.
That, folks, is not a prediction in the scientific sense. Of course, I agree that uncovering the mechanisms of natural creativity could be a useful endeavor, which is why I note with pleasure that biologists have been busily doing just that for quite some time now.
And the one about consciousness?
Positive prediction: We will focus on what consciousness can do, especially in treatment of mental disorders. Yes, a drugged up zombie is better than a suicide, but only because the zombie isn't technically dead. Why stop there?
Well, that's just great. Millions of people are able to get on with their lives because medication allows them to keep their illnesses in check. To O'Leary they're all just drugged up zombies who are only technically alive. That's pretty tasteless and stupid, even for an ID proponent.
As for the treatment of mental disorders, drugs have been inordinately effective while “focusing on what consciousness can do” has led to nothing. I wonder why that is? And does taking a design perspecitve help us find treatments for mental disorders? O'Leary doesn't tell us.
ID is a complete dead-end scientifically. It just sits there and does nothing. For scientists this an even greater defect than being wrong. An incorrect perspective might still lead you to something useful and interesting, even if just the discovery that our perspective needs to be changed. ID doesn't even do that.
Life Science
Physical Science
Comments
I read through these "predictions" at Sandwalk, and struggled to differentiate them from predictions by an astrologer or someone like that. Someone that doesn't know science, but knows it is wrong. And then wants to re-define it.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | January 20, 2008 9:29 PM
Most of those positive predictions just amount to, "ID will come up with something at some point. Just you wait!".
I especially like Denyse's reply to her only commenter:
Posted by: Jon McKenzie | January 20, 2008 9:43 PM
Actually, he would have counted, except for the fact that the abbot who succeeded Mendel after his death agreed with church authorities in that puttering around in a garden with pea plants was behavior unbecoming of a man of the cloth, and burned all of Mendel's journals and notes. They would have had Mendel's report destroyed, too, but, it was already published and still in circulation.
Is she saying that by studying Intelligent Design, we can magically create species to replace the ones that we've driven into extinction?
Posted by: Stanton | January 20, 2008 9:45 PM
The thing about predicting something is that you have to give at least a descent justification for why you predict x rather than y, z or ~x. So, O'Leary's claim such as:
Complete series of transitional fossils will not usually be found because most proposed series have never existed.
is laughable since there is NOTHING about ID that says ANYTHING about the designer not making smoothish transitions (a la evolution) when designing new life forms. IDists often seem to think that just because ID says that evolution can't explain things such as gaps in the fossil record, ID also claims that there SHOULD be things such as gaps in the fossil record. It's an obvious logical fallacy they seem to have no problem with.
Posted by: Hawks | January 20, 2008 9:48 PM
On the plus side, she didn't claim that complexity of organisms is predicted by ID, unlike what Behe and Dembski attempt to claim.
On the minus side, nothing on that list is predicated on the present claims made about "the designer" (none, or at least they try to keep it at none), let alone on anything that we know about design. Actual design would involve combinations of rationality, purpose, the lack of evolutionary processes, novelty, and perhaps borrowing of the sort that we do not see in vertebrates.
They cannot predict anything that we'd really expect of design processes, because genuine marks of design do not occur in biology, save where we have left our marks on organisms.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | January 20, 2008 9:58 PM
Can't help but agree with the opinion that a lot of social sciences contain dressed up theology. How can you scientifically engage with non-empirical entities? If the objective is to establish the existence of free-will, how can you assume the existence of what you set out to establish? Gibberish. Now if only Denyse would be IDCreos's expert witness at the next trial.
Posted by: rimpal | January 20, 2008 10:02 PM
Good catch Hawks. I was thinking the same thing. And, besides, didn't Behe once say something along the lines that God is a tinkerer? It seems to me that "tinkerers" would create transitionals. Another laughable "prediction" of ID is that all junk DNA has a use. But, why it it necessary to believe that God made sure every piece of DNA has a purpose? I recently read an article by an IDist that claimed that psuedogenes exist because God reused DNA "code" from other organisms, but it might no longer have a purpose in the modern organism. With that logic, they no longer have a need for every bit of DNA to do something useful.
So, you're absolutely right in saying that IDist' predictions often take the form of evolution predicts "X", therefore, ID predicts y, z or ~x.
Posted by: tinyfrog | January 20, 2008 10:07 PM
Wow, and here I've been using evolutionary theory to improve the frequency and quality of my dating and sex life, not to mention improve my understanding of history, all for nothing.
Geez, it was working for me too.
Posted by: UAB | January 20, 2008 10:08 PM
This is uglier than the discussion of ATP synthase on uncommon descent.
Posted by: Sean Walker | January 20, 2008 10:13 PM
There are times that I feel a little sympathetic for these people. They really believe that God did it, and negative "predictions" are all they can offer. It's sad to watch them embrace a philosophy (science) that rules out their beliefs. It's like watching someone beat their head against a wall.
Posted by: Chris Bell | January 20, 2008 10:24 PM
That's odd. I could have sworn that consciousness comes from non-consciousness every time an infant develops into an adult, and that it most certainly does not "appear suddenly". But I guess no one should expect O'Leary to know about such cutting edge observations.
Posted by: Steve Reuland | January 20, 2008 11:27 PM
Eventually, researchers will give up on ideologically driven nonsense and address the history that IS there.
We can hope that will apply to so-called ID "researchers," but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Meanwhile, what will it take to convince these cretins that evolution and the scientific method are *not* ideologies?
Posted by: chezjake | January 20, 2008 11:37 PM
No account of human evolution will show a long slow emergence from unconsciousness to semi-consciousness to consciousness, let alone that consciousness is merely the random firing of neurons in the brain. However consciousness got started, it appeared rather suddenly...
That's odd. I could have sworn that consciousness comes from non-consciousness every time an infant develops into an adult, and that it most certainly does not "appear suddenly". But I guess no one should expect O'Leary to know about such cutting edge observations.
Posted by: Steve Reuland
That happens to me every morning when the fzzkin' alarm clock goes off.
Posted by: T. Bruce McNeely | January 21, 2008 12:04 AM
The original question on Dembski's site was:
"... can you or they provide any samples of things that intelligent design theory has predicted, which researchers have later determined to be true?"
Past tense. To date. What has ID (in the past 20 years, say?) predicted that has been determined to be true.
That's the question. Not, what will ID do or what can ID do, but what has ID done. What's the track record.
After 180+ comments on Dembski's blog and NO RESPONSE FROM Dembski who posed the challenge, Denyse provides even less of an answer.
Thus, so far, after a week of hemming and hawing the final tally for ID is ...
... drum roll please! ...
NOTHING!!!!!!
Thank you Dr. Dr. Dembski for demonstrating to the entire world that the sum total of ID results to date is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Posted by: Doc Bill | January 21, 2008 12:06 AM
O'Leary's post was prompted by one on UncommonDescent that asked for examples of ID predictions that have been validated. After reading about 150 posts I failed to see even one post that actually addressed the question.
Some of the commentators are trying to come up with predictions, but they do not know that a scientific prediction is along the lines of 'If we look at A and B under conditions Z and Y we expect to find Z'. Instead, they are producing horoscope-type predictions of a 'There will be increasing problems with Darwinism' nature. Although I knew their ideas are vacuous, I had not realized that they are such utterly clueless nincompoops when it comes to science.
Posted by: Richard Simons | January 21, 2008 12:14 AM
Given that some of those on UD try to say that Intelligent Design is not opposed to evolution or common descent, just a purely naturalistic explanation of it, doesn't this, her prized prediction, not follow from Intelligent Design? Ah, the vacuity of Intelligent Design strikes again.
Posted by: Mike | January 21, 2008 12:21 AM
Posted by: H. Humbert | January 21, 2008 12:25 AM
Clearly, since we know the universe was intelligently designed, ID Theory predicts exactly what we see!
Whatever that turns out to be...
Even the most rudimentary familiarity with the cognitive abilities of other living animals tells you that she doesn't have a clue what she's talking about. (As if that matters to proponents of ID.)
IMO our progress in understanding animal "thought" and behavior during the past half century is one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time.
ID isn't *supposed* to do anything -- other than to convince hoi polloi that whatever form of creationism they believe in has scientific support.
Posted by: Bobby | January 21, 2008 12:46 AM
[*] OK, maybe they have "Some unknown being with unknown capabilities and unknowable motives did something (of no interest!) that makes the universe different than it would have been otherwise." Good luck deriving any predictions from that.
Posted by: Bobby | January 21, 2008 12:54 AM
DO'L or WD have no idea how to construct an experiment to test their "predictions." They (and this is also true of many of the contributors over at UD) haven't spent a single day in the laboratory actually *doing* science. But as armchair scientists, they have the hubris to tell practicing scientists how to interpret their work. They have no idea of the mental *and* physical effort it takes to do good science--to go in at 3 am to collect a key data point, or to repeat an experiment until the results are convincing--not just to you--but to your peers. And what really burns me is that a scientist like Behe knows what a testable prediction entails, yet is unwilling to do the work to test his predictions, because it is a "waste" of his time.
But they have a limitless capacity to misinterpret the data obtained by working scientists. Their co-option of the results of the ENCODE study are a case in point. But as is often the case, the science marches on ... destorying their "interpretation." A key paper that puts these results in perspective will soon be published in Nature. A good summary of this paper is over at Ars Technica in their science section under "Organisms awash in useless RNA."
Every Idist should be made to read Platt's 1964 paper "Strong Inference," published in the journal Science. I know scientists that require their graduate students to read and put its principles into practice. And at least one of these is a HHMI fellow, and by far is the most successful scientist that I know.
Posted by: jeh | January 21, 2008 12:59 AM
What this does show is that the IDologists are listening to our criticisms and are really keen on patching up their illusion of doing science in order to make those criticisms go away. We pointed out that they don't publish in the peer reviewed literature, and they started a fraudulent campaign of making it look like they do. We pointed out that they don't do any actual research, and they founded the Biologic Institute (and fired the spokesman who spoke to honestly about what they were up to). We pointed out that ID "theory" doesn't make any predictions, and we get this kind of drivel.
Expect all this to continue until the money runs out.
Posted by: Bobby | January 21, 2008 1:03 AM
This is par for ID/creationists. When challenged to come up with a testable prediction from ID or creationism, it is invariably either
1) Something that is already known to be true
2) Some variant of "Natural selection will never be able to explain X"
3) Some variant of "In the future, we will prove that we are right and evolution is wrong."
EVen Behe, who is arguably the only real biologist in the ID/creationist camp (which is probably why he has been embraced by them, even though some of his views, such as his acceptance of common descent are anathema to many ID/creationists) when challenged in the Dover trial, was unable to come up with anything any better than "Biologists will never manage to get a bacterium to evolve a flagellum in the laboratory."
Posted by: trrll | January 21, 2008 1:10 AM
Firstly, O'Leary doesn't even answer the question. The question was what predictions HAS ID made that have come true. She obviously decided to come up with a bunch of airy-fairy future predictions. On her blog somebody poited this out and she got quite uppity with them! (humility has never been her strong suit). Pretty sad for somebody who considers herself such a top-notch journalist.
Positive prediction: We will discover the functions of many brain areas whose functions we did not know before.
Positive prediction: We can have a better grasp of what consciousness does and how it relates us to our environment.
Positive prediction: Better health care for people with complex illnesses
Well, duh, one doesn't have to be a prophet to realize that these are all likely to come true and it will be thanks to conventional science already happening based on evolutionary theory, and absolutely NOTHING to do with ID.
Looks like O'Leary is rightly already getting a lot of flack for her post. To me it looks like she just came up with these from the top of her head with no foresight and no editing. In other words, a pile of sloppy, crap...
I read her blog regularly, and every once in a while she'll come up with a total fatuous clunker that takes your breath away. This is one of those occasions.
Posted by: Timcol | January 21, 2008 1:22 AM
Bwa? Neuronal firing is a subtle process with feedback loops on multiple levels of analysis, taking low-level systems that operate in a probabilistic fashion and using them to construct elegant and ornate patterns of patterns. To the degree that we understand how our behaviors arise from these systems, we know that there is profound structure.
And she calls this most intricate computational device in the known universe 'random'?!
Well, maybe her neurons fire randomly. It would explain a lot...
Posted by: Caledonian | January 21, 2008 1:27 AM
More on the Theory of Intelligent Design:
Here's a link to a PDF that is supposed to be the Discovery Institute's "A Briefing Packet for Educators": http://www.ntskeptics.org/creationism/discovery/ID_Org_Educators_Packet.pdf
(I say "supposed to be", because I didn't get it from the DI. Please let me know if you don't think this is the real thing.)
It gives two versions of the Theory of ID:
That's a claim about whose explanation is best, not a theory or a hypothesis. Maybe we could say that it "predicts" that ID will actually prove to be the better theory?(Lurkers should notice that calling natural selection an undirected process is foolishness, since in the theory of evolution natural selection *is* a process that directs evolution.)
Where to start with that load of misinformation?1) ID doesn't begin with any observation that intelligent agents produce CSI. Last I heard, only Dembski can detect CSI, and he has never formally demonstrated it in any biological system. He needs to define it well enough for other people to detect it, before anyone starts claiming that it has been observed as the product of some process.
2) What the heck is a designed natural object???
3) The assumption (not observation!) that intelligent agents produce CSI does not actually imply that a designed object will contain high levels of CSI, as stated. (That implication would require a hypothesis that intelligent agents *always* put high levels of CSI in *everything* they design.)
4) IDologists have never performed experimental tests on natural objects to determine whether they "contain" CSI. (Dembski pretends to in his book, but offers more handwave than analysis. And it certainly didn't involve any experimentation!)
5) Irreducible complexity is not a kind of CSI as defined by Dembski. (They're welcome to redefine CSI, but they need to actually do it, rather than just claiming that IC is a form of it.)
6) Even if you treat IC as a form of CSI, their stated hypothesis does not actually predict that ID will *necessarily* produce IC, nor that any detected IC is *diagnostic* of ID. I.e., detecting IC tells us nothing useful about their stated hypothesis.
7) Regarding dignosis, IC was a predicted result of evolution before the Discovery Institure ever started offering this kind of argument. (Even if you ignore all the other problems with the "theory" described above, detecting IC would not test the ID hypothesis, because the existing theory predicts it too. You might as well hypothesize "if dogs are intelligently designed, they will usually have four legs".)
8) AFAIK, IDologists don't experimentally reverse engineer biological structures to see if they require all their parts to function. They merely take Behe's word for it that this or that has IC. (And in some cases he has been shown to be wrong.)
9) The conclusion described in their final sentence is a non sequitur, even if you ignore all the other problems with their "theory". (The stated hypothesis does not claim that *only* ID can cause IC.)
They could have done better by stating the hypothesis "Intelligent design sometimes results in CSI", though they'd need to define CSI in a way that other researchers could actually detect it. Or they could say "Intelligent design sometimes results in IC", but the competition already predicted the same thing; such a "prediction" would be useless as a way of testing the hypothesis.
What they actually argue (which is not what they stated in their description of ID theory above) is the hypothesis "*Only* ID can result in x", where x is CSI, IC, a privileged planet, etc. From that hypothesis they could actually predict "No undesigned object can feature x". However, they would need a rigorous definition of design (does evolution count as design?) and a rigorous definition of x (how much CSI is in the arrangement of the stuff on my desk?). A *useful* prediction would also require choosing an x that competing explanations do not also predict.
But even then I'm not sure the hypothesis is falsifiable. Given their no-nuttin attitude toward who the designer is, what the designer's capabilities are, and even what "design" means, how could anyone ever demonstrate that something with x is *not* designed?
Of course they aren't interested in such things; they just want to convince people that their favorite version of creationism has scientific support. Otherwise they might have stated something clear and useful about the Theory of ID in their Briefing Packet for Educators. Can you imagine a professional scientific body producing such a Briefing Packet with such sloppy thought and expression regarding their field?
Posted by: Bobby | January 21, 2008 4:55 AM
I think that the purpose of Michael Behe's book "The Edge of Evolution" was to "predict" that Darwinian evolution is unlikely to produce substantial changes in unfavorable situations by showing that it has limited ability to produce change in favorable situations. Behe reasons that if the Darwinian mechanisms of random genetic variation and natural selection have limited observed ability to produce change in highly favorable situations, i.e., microevolution in enormous populations of simple organisms with very short generational times, then it is very unlikely that those Darwinian mechanisms can produce huge changes in highly unfavorable situations, i.e., macroevolution in small populations of very complex organisms with long generational times. Behe, by showing that microevolution is limited, challenges the notion that microevolution is unlimited and that macroevolution is merely an extension of microevolution.
I think that Behe and others have been making important contributions to ID, but I am no big fan of ID myself. I don't even like the name because it implies the existence of a supernatural designer, and then people start asking who the designer is and what the designer looks like. I am more interested in the mystery of the co-evolution of total co-dependence of two different organisms, e.g., bees (or other pollinators) and flowering plants. Such co-evolution presents problems not only for Darwinian evolution but also for front-loaded evolution and even ID. In such co-evolution, unlike in evolutionary adaptation to widespread fixed physical features of the environment, e.g., water, land, air, and climate, there may be nothing to adapt to because the corresponding co-dependent traits may be initially absent in the other organism, and also pre-adaptation would be fatal because of the total dependence on the corresponding traits in the other organism. Darwinists have not even conceded that co-evolution presents much greater difficulties than does evolutionary adaptation to widespread fixed physical features of the environment.
Another challenge to evolution is the natural occurrence of isolated groups of the same species of aquatic freshwater organisms -- e.g., fish and aquatic plants -- in different lakes, rivers, and streams that apparently were never connected to each other.
Also, IMO something need not make predictions to be considered scientific. Merely showing the weaknesses in scientific theories can be scientific without making predictions.
As for Denyse O'Leary's "predictions," some of them are not really predictions at all because they can never be proven true, though some could conceivably be proven false. Also, some of her "predictions" are like the "fortunes" in Chinese fortune cookies -- not really fortunes but just advice or maxims.
Posted by: XYZ | January 21, 2008 5:10 AM
Has any IDer addressed in good faith (I know, I know) the conflict between not constraining the designer and making testable predictions. I don't personally believe that any of the prominent IDers are arguing in good faith, but that doesn't mean there aren't people out there who are. Surely they must realise that they can't make useful, testable predictions without making some assumptions about the designer and/or the design mechanism.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | January 21, 2008 6:14 AM
A fine example of cluelessness if there ever was one. Sentences including the words "we will" or "may be" have nothing to do with scientific predictions. And between "no transitional fossils will usually be discovered because the proposed series never existed" and "no transitional fossils will usually be discovered because fossilisation is a rare and difficult process", how does Mrs ID propose to decide ? Also, "[the researchers] will focus on discovering the mechanisms that drive sudden bursts of creativity" doesn't say it all : an ID scientist (if there ever was such a thing) would be glad to discover the "fingerprints of the Creator", but would never dare to go more in depth about exactly what happened, and how.
Posted by: Christophe Thill | January 21, 2008 6:28 AM
XYZ: There is no "mystery" inherent to coevolution. It is merely a positive feedback loop. Species A takes consistent advantage of a trait of species B. This need not be anything special, just something that species B has or does that is used by other species (not necessarily just species A). Species B evolves an exaggerated or specialised version of that trait -- something more successful at taking advantage of whatever traits species A is using that make species B so useful to it. At the same time, species A evolves a more sophisticated and specific version of the trait that it uses to take advantage of species B -- and so on. Each generation of each species is more tightly adapted to take advantage of the other species, and eventually each is committed to take advantage of the other. That is all that there is to coevolution.
(It is of course possible that one species can develop a dependence on another without the reciprocal dependence developing (as often occurs with parasites, although their hosts often coevolve defences against the parasites as well). This too can develop into a coevolutionary situation, if the other species later develops a dependence on the species that has already committed itself.)
I am curious to know what you mean by traits that "may be initially absent in the other organism". Plants had pollen before flowers evolved, and many insects like to consume plants' sap. Plants direct a lot of resources to reproductive organs, so sap would not be in short supply near where pollen would be produced and required. I could go on from here, but it does not take much imagination to come up with an obvious evolutionary scenario for the evolution of flowers. As for specificity between species, all that is required is any genetically transmitted preference on the part of the insect for one plant over another, and any genetically transmitted capability for a plant to attract one species of insect more than another -- and these certainly exist. The feedback loop that I described above merely requires that and time, and coevolution is inevitable in the absence of other factors.
Posted by: Opisthokont | January 21, 2008 6:39 AM
read her predictions and she lucky if she could predict Sunday comes after Saturday
Posted by: Ex Partiot | January 21, 2008 6:59 AM
In which we learn that O'Leary had a cow...!
Posted by: Ian | January 21, 2008 7:11 AM
So-called intelligent so-called design always results in CSI if CSI means "crime scene investigation" because what these IDolators are doing is a crime. It's a crime which real scientists are then forced to waste time investigating and addressing so as not to give ID a free pass..
Posted by: Ian | January 21, 2008 8:08 AM
"Another challenge to evolution is the natural occurrence of isolated groups of the same species of aquatic freshwater organisms -- e.g., fish and aquatic plants -- in different lakes, rivers, and streams that apparently were never connected to each other."
I can only assume such an objection was made by someone who did not birds exist. Birds are a well known method by which both flora and fauna can spread.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | January 21, 2008 9:03 AM
Denyse could not even predict the correct spelling of the word header, (Says I am not changing the hedder [sic] for tech reasons ;-)
Great fun reading the clueless IDers trying to come up with predictions. It clearly shows that they have never done any science and they believe scientists follow like sheep their leaders.
The ID people are hiding the predictions made by ID when it was ruling philosophy of thought. For example ID predicted that telescopes were instruments of Satan.
With Design, everything is designed and everything has a purpose. What is the purpose of the eyes? God gave us eyes so that we could see his Creation. So what about the telescope, that shows something bigger or nearer than it really is? It is a visual lie. It lies about the Magnificent Creation. It must be an instrument of Satan. Looking through a telescope is misuse of God given eyes. So reasoned a bishop and refused to look through a telescope Galileo was trying to sell to him.
[Paraphrasing from memory. The source is the book, "The Discoverers", by Daniel Boorstein, Chief Librarian and a Pulitzer prize winning historian]
Posted by: Ravilyn Sanders | January 21, 2008 9:14 AM
Misspelled his name and failed to clarify that he was the Chief Librarian for the Library of Congress .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Boorstin
The book The Discoverers is selling in half price books and other used book stores for less than 10$. It was a best selling book, so many copies are floating around. A must read for anyone trying to understand the mindset of people and philosophers before science came along. Should send choice excerpts to the Florida Education Board.
Posted by: Ravilyn Sanders | January 21, 2008 9:32 AM
Meanwhile, a post entitled Does Darwinism predict anything? was closed without explanation on an ID blog after only 3 days, although at least several substantive responses were still waiting in the queue for approval.
Posted by: ivy privy | January 21, 2008 10:03 AM
I think that it is clear that ID predicted, at least, one thing. If the IDiots did not predict that ID was going to be a failure they would not have cooked up the replacement scam back in 1999, and they would not have run the bait and switch scam on the Ohio rubes in 2003. ID had enough predictive power to allow them to do what they have done. The replacement scam is being perpetrated by the same guys that ran the ID scam and it doesn't even mention that ID ever existed in it's public face.
Posted by: Ron Okimoto | January 21, 2008 10:17 AM
I was having a hard time not imagining O'Leary speaking with a store-bought Jamaican accent while recounting her 'predictions'.
This woman is like a cross between Ms. Cleo and Ms. Anne Elk (Monty Python reference): complete ignorance with a marketing spin to sucker in those whom are more intellectually void than a door stop.
Posted by: Jesse | January 21, 2008 10:28 AM
This leads to the positive prediction that O'Leary should have written an entire book on the subject of consciousness --- and low and behold, she has.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Spiritual-Brain/dp/B000UZPH2Q/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200929009&sr=8-4
Posted by: Foggg | January 21, 2008 10:28 AM
Wow, no big surprise here.
I commented that ID made no real predictions and that I really wondered how they were going to distinguish between Fossils being rare because it is a stochastic process and rarely happens to certain types of creatures as opposed the "massive" creative effort that ID "predicts" gag... Of course I can't remember the exact tone of what I wrote, it was probably very blunt. However, guess what... never made it to the comments section Denyse's blog!
Teaching the controversy only applies to Evolution I guess.
Posted by: Sean Walker | January 21, 2008 10:29 AM
It's great to see you back, Jason! Hope it isn't to long before we hear more from you.
Matt Pennfold wrote, in response to XYZ:
Or possibly wind, although perhaps not as much for aquatic species (although some algae species do produce spores that might travel this way).
Or the fact that topography changes, sometimes separating populations of a species. Events like floods can also transport them, while perhaps not as far as a migrating bird it is easy to see how a flood plain might affect the surrounding area, and so on. Over several millions of years of temperature and topography changes it isn't difficult to imagine how an isolated aquatic species might be able to propagate. I can also imagine that river drainage basins like large lakes or even saltwater bays could work as networks for species to migrate up other rivers, and still other lakes. I'm not even familiar with this topic and I can think of several ways this could occur.
Still, specific examples from XYZ might have been better, since these are just examples of how it might have happened.
Last, as Hawks and others noted above: none of this results as a prediction of ID. If these things can not be addressed within an evolutionary framework (which I think would be a cynical prediction at this point), ID would certainly not be able to step up and fill in the gaps. At least not with anything approaching a coherent scientific explanation.
Posted by: Leni | January 21, 2008 10:41 AM
Until you alleged scientists come up with a rational alternative to The Flood, which you cannot unless you See the Work and Word of God with a truely open mind, your words of derision will be ignored by simple people who want to understand His creation in all of its Glory no less than you. BTW, in a vision from Him, He showed me that The Good Mrs. O'Leary will one day become an internationally recognized Professor of Christian Astrology, for doing Good Things in His name.
Posted by: Hipple, Rev. Paul T. | January 21, 2008 11:16 AM
Am I feeding a troll? Well Rev Paul T Hipple, the Global Flood was real and the scientists have documented it very well.
It happened at the end of last ice age, 9000 BCE (or 11,000 years ago) and almost all cultures recorded it. Including the semetic tribes of Israel. One small difference, it was not brought about by 40 days and 40 nights of rain. Just 1000 years of melting of the glaciers. It was not big enough to submerge Mt Arrarat, just about 300 feet rise in sea levels. That is all. And except for the scriptures in Indo-Aryan languages (Thorah, OT, NT, Quaran, Gilgamesh Legends, Hindu Flood legends) all other cultures record the rising of sea level as a natural phenomena without any moralizing. Only in these languages it is reported as a sudden catastrophic event, caused by God as punishment for immoral world. The speculation is that the proto-Indo-Aryan speaking settlement/civilization was abruptly scattered by this Flood event and the folk memory is recorded in these scriptures. The best candidate for the location of this proto-IndoAryan tribe is in the north/eastern shores of the black sea. Black sea would have been disconnected from the Mediterranean and it could have even been a fresh water lake. But it could have even been a catastrophic flood in
Tigris and Euphrates.
Posted by: Ravilyn Sanders | January 21, 2008 11:45 AM
Prediction: Commenter XYZ is either Larry Fafarman or a reader of his blog (but not the comments), based on the exact quote of Larry's post on freshwater species being a problem for evolution and the topic of co-evolution.
Posted by: David vun Kannon | January 21, 2008 11:48 AM
It sounded more coherent than Larry usually does, didn't it? It's definitely trying to be a concern troll though.
I just figured it was easier to answer the charges since they were so trivial.
Posted by: Leni | January 21, 2008 11:58 AM
Are you unfamiliar with that alternative? Do you have some reason to be dissatisfied with it, other than the fact that it isn't consistent with your religious beliefs?
Posted by: Bobby | January 21, 2008 12:03 PM
1. Folks, Hipple is a satire.
2. XYZ's comments sounded familiar, so I did a search. Sure enough, the same stuff was posted as Andy H on Panda's Thumb and people were referring to him as "Larry".
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/02/entomologists-u.html#comment-74379
Posted by: pough | January 21, 2008 12:56 PM
Opisthokont said ( January 21, 2008 6:39 AM ) --
That is what I mean -- a typical nonchalant, pooh-poohing, "elementary-my-dear-Watson" Darwinist response to a perplexing problem with evolution. A pig that suddenly sprouts wings can fly immediately. However, a pig that suddenly develops an alimentary canal that will only digest nectar will not survive if there are no nectar-producing plants around. You won't even concede that the co-evolution of co-dependence is at least more difficult than evolutionary adaptation to widespread fixed physical features of the environment, e.g., water, land, air, and climate. I am talking about the co-evolution of total co-dependence. In the evolution of other kinds of interspecies relationships -- e.g., parasitism and commensalism -- an immediate evolutionary response from the other species is not required.
You are ignoring the complexity of the interspecies relationships involved. The flowers have special colors and scents to attract pollinators and sometimes have pollen that can be carried only by pollinators -- for example, some flowers have "buzz" pollination, which requires the vibrations of pollinators' wings to shake the pollen free. As for the insects, they don't consume sap just because they "like to" -- they are dependent on the sap for survival.
At the very least, the difficulties of co-evolution greatly slow down an evolutionary process that has only a few million years to take place.
Matt Penfold said (January 21, 2008 9:03 AM) --
The birds can carry the flora and fauna only short distances and can spread them only by accidentally dropping them in another body of water.
Spreading freshwater species by means of tornadoes has also been suggested -- but it doesn't seem that birds and tornadoes are alone capable of accounting for all the spreading of freshwater species.
Yet another problem with evolution is the propagation of beneficial mutations by means of sexual reproduction.
Posted by: XYZ | January 21, 2008 1:36 PM
Pray for speciation.
Posted by: Epistaxis | January 21, 2008 1:37 PM
XYZ = Larry, how many times does the co-evolution thing have to be explained to you? It must be half a dozen times now (I've done it twice, including on this very blog), and every time you come back with the exact same assertions as if no-one has ever said a word about it to you.
Posted by: Dave S. | January 21, 2008 2:23 PM
I went through Ms. O'Leary's comments somewhat
swiftly, lacking the time or inclination to
dig into them, but (as often happens in reading
Darwin-basher literature) one jumped out of the
page and grabbed me by the nose:
"We will learn more about the real nature of our
universe and our place in it, and how best we can
explore it when we accept the fact that it
didn't 'just happen'."
I sat there and blinked at that, thinking: "But
I thought that was what ID was all about. Instead
of JUST SO stories, ID provides JUST HAPPENED
stories."
I can suspend judgement on the rest. After reading
that I wasn't inclined to expend any more effort
on it.
Posted by: MrG (Greg Goebel) | January 21, 2008 2:24 PM
"It's title"
Posted by: it's contraction | January 21, 2008 2:25 PM
Hardly. Sexual reproduction, while very expensive on the face of it, is one of the best means for good genetic variations (good here meaning more appropriate for survival and reproduction in the current environs) to be able to decouple themselves from bad genetic variations.
Posted by: Ritchie Annand | January 21, 2008 2:28 PM
(My name doesn't display correctly because I'm posting from a Mac here.)
Not one mention of falsifiability or parsimony... <sigh>
------------------
You are the one who has to concede something -- to yourself: your own ignorance.
Just because you haven't seen the research doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Now, look: Most or all pollinating insects eat pollen, too, not just nectar. Pollen was available in huge quantities long before flowers existed. Imagine such a pollen-eating insect... if it recognizes flowers from afar, it will have an advantage in finding pollen, and if this trait is inheritable, it will have an evolutionary advantage. Got that so far? Good. Now, the plant will also have an advantage: instead of going to the trouble of eating a flower empty, pollen-eating insects fly from one flower to the next and scoop the most easily available pollen off. In the process pollen gets stuck in their hairs and whatnot and is thus spread from plant to plant. So, the better the insects recognize flowers, the better is it ascertained that the plant will be pollinated. The evolutionary advantage is obvious, isn't it? This makes a feedback loop that results in petals, fragrance, and all that jazz. Now imagine a mutation that makes the plant secrete water and sugar in the flower. Result? The insect has an advantage, because nectar is as close to pure energy as food can get (and any idiot can digest it -- it's just sugar). The plant has an advantage, because it needs to produce less pollen (the proteins and sporopollenins are complicated and energy-intensive to make) for the same effect. In short, the insect gains a guaranteed food source, and the plant gains a guaranteed pollinator. What's difficult to understand here?
Really, you act as if you had read nothing on that topic that was published after 1859.
And? In the first case, inevitable vibrations from landing shook the pollen free so often that the plant eventually was able to rely on this. This is no different from how we (apes) get vitamin C from our food so often that we are able to rely on it and were able to drop the production pathway for vitamin C. All mammals except us and the guinea pigs still can produce it.
In the second case, start with an insect that consumes sap because it likes to and has such a great supply of it that it doesn't need to eat anything else, so that it has no disadvantage if it loses the ability to eat anything else (but see above under pollen), and in fact has a slight advantage because it doesn't need to waste energy growing and maintaining a longer gut and producing many different digestive enzymes.
This is not even worthy of Sherlock Holmes. It's trivial.
Not that it matters (what I've outlined above can certainly evolve fast), but where did you take "only a few million years" from? Aren't we talking about several tens of millions of years, the entire "middle" part of the Cretaceous?
This is nonsense. If you have a parasite and can't do anything against it, you get sick if not dead.
In fact, the hypothesis exists that the recent increase in allergies comes from our immune system being adapted to the presence of parasites, which are now lacking due to modern hygiene and medicine: the immune system is hyperactive because it is adapted to parasites downregulating it. That many parasites downregulate the immune system is a fact, and that the immune reaction to parasites is done by the same cells as allergic reactions (eosinophils, mast cells) is also a fact.
Yeah, and? Show me one case of a distance that is too large.
Nonsense. The birds in question -- ducks, for example -- actually land in the water.
Don't get ridiculous. In places where tornadoes exist, this is certainly a factor, but in most places they simply don't occur.
Give me your e-mail address, and I'll send you the PowerPoint slides of a university lecture (as a pdf) that answers this question.
You forget that establishing that evolution is wrong and establishing that ID is right is not the same thing. Both could be wrong, for example. Trying to poke holes in the theory of evolution is fine, it just doesn't do anything positive for ID. For instance, it doesn't offer any way to distinguish ID creationism from Hindu creationism.
Posted by: David Marjanovi? | January 21, 2008 2:53 PM
Plus, it means that mutations don't have to happen in the right order and in a single ancestor-descendant lineage. It speeds evolution up quite impressively.
Posted by: David Marjanovi? | January 21, 2008 2:56 PM
Meanwhile, here's the latest gem from O'Leary in response to a comment about her "predictions":
"As for my predictions, I am simply waiting to see if they pan out. I only argue about such things with publishers."
This was in response to a comment arguing that her predictions did not really cut it from a scientific perspective.
But in the bizarre world of ID, science really doesn't matter too much - it's all about PR. Who cares what actual, real scientists think - as long as her publisher think they can make a buck out of her nonsense, then that's what really counts!
She has also turned off comments (she always does when the going gets hot) and has made some bizarre comments about 'fogies' needing to get a life etc. (apparently, she has one). I really don't know why even bothers with comments, as far as I can tell, most comments never make it, and the ones that do are disdainfully dismissed in her usual haughty manner.
I don't know if she gets just how plain wacko she sounds at times - but then she is a Catholic, so I guess she's used to believing all sorts of bizarro things...
Posted by: Timcol | January 21, 2008 3:15 PM
An excellent example of an incorrect perspective was the luminiferous ether that ostensibly conducted light waves through the vacuum. The search for it led to many experiments, the crowning example being the Michelson-Morley experiment. The perspective was wrong though, that experiment failed to find what it was looking for, and that was actually far more interesting and successful at pushing science forward than a positive result would have been.
Posted by: Paul Flocken | January 21, 2008 3:20 PM
Posted by: mark | January 21, 2008 4:13 PM
In a pig's eye.
For an animal to be capable of powered flight, wings are the final (outermost) characteristic of interest. Said porker would need a seriously revamped metabolism and a considerable number of neural system upgrades, not to mention significant musculoskeletal workovers in a number of areas.
Even a glider pig would need considerable re-engineering, starting from the strictly terrestrial model.
Posted by: Shebardigan | January 21, 2008 5:52 PM
David Marjanovi? said (January 21, 2008 2:53 PM) --
Speak for yourself.
You are missing my point. Adaptation to widespread fixed physical features of the environment, e.g., water, land, air, and climate, can produce an immediate evolutionary advantage in natural selection. In contrast, co-evolutionary adaptation to another organism's corresponding trait that does not exist locally (even if that corresponding trait exists, existed, or will exist at another place and/or time) produces no evolutionary advantage and may be fatal if the adaptation requires the local existence of that other organism's trait. If the corresponding traits in both organisms are fatal in the absence of the corresponding trait in the other organism, then co-evolution may be virtually impossible. At the very least, co-evolution is much more difficult than evolutionary adaptation to water, land, air, climate, etc..
The vibrations are from the wing beating -- not from landing.
The inability to produce vitamin C provides no evolutionary advantage in natural selection -- and is an evolutionary disadvantage to people who get scurvy.
Sheesh -- that's an evolutionary advantage, even just a slight one?
A few miles can be too large -- a fish can live for only a few minutes out of water. And what is the likelihood that the bird will drop the fish in another body of water? And what about aquatic plants? So now you are arguing for me.
A species may be able to live with the parasite, and even if the parasite would eventually cause extinction of a species, that species may still have some time to develop resistance to the parasite. In contrast, some cases of co-evolution of co-dependence require immediate local evolutionary adaptation by the other organism. Ducks don't eat fish and probably swallow their plant food before reaching another body of water. I didn't activate PowerPoint on my computer. I didn't activate any of the Microsoft Office programs because I don't use them. I am getting tired of seeing "ID creationism." There is nothing in the bible about irreducible complexity, bacterial flagella, blood-clotting cascades, etc..
Ritchie Annand said (January 21, 2008 2:28 PM) --
I read somewhere that sexual reproduction breaks up favorable gene combinations that have accumulated through natural selection.Posted by: XYZ | January 21, 2008 5:59 PM
There is only one single prediction from ID.
At any point in time there will be phenomena that cannot be explained by the current formulation of evolutionary science.
It is also a truism. It is true for every branch of science. In fact it is a defining point of science. IN contrast, there is no phenomenom that ID cannot "explain" with ##God did it##.
Posted by: Chris Noble | January 21, 2008 6:34 PM
On a smaller time scale:
"No account of human evolution will show a long slow emergence from unconsciousness to semi-consciousness to consciousness"
This is merely introspective anecdotal evidence, but it sure feels to me as if I emerge from unconsciousness to semi-consciousness to consciousness every morning when I wake up in bed.
I recently tested this more rigrously by having emergency major abdominal surgery in a hospital. I'm home now, 3rd day, after 9 days in said hospital. BUT:
It sure felt to me as if I emerged from unconsciousness to semi-consciousness to consciousness in the Recovery Room as the anaesthetic wore off. My throat was sore where a nasal-gastric tube had been shoved without me conscious to assist by swallowing. I was in pain, though numbed by a narcotic painkiller. Also annoying, they did not know where my eyeglasses were, and I'm very near-sighted. The Recevery Room was a sci-fi blur.
Point is: unconsciousness to semi-consciousness to consciousness would seem to be a transition performed by almost everyone about once a day.
How does ID "explain" that?
Or does it deny that I wake up?
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | January 21, 2008 7:35 PM
XYZ:
Coevolution is not all that perplexing -- it just requires two things to interact over evolutionary time. The same thing happens with more general relationships: predators may become faster or acquire better senses, and their prey may get better camoflage. (There is a name for this: the Red Queen hypothesis. It has been around for a good few decades now.) The only difference between that and coevolution is the fact that the coevolving traits are relevant only to one other species. There is nothing particularly special about that.
If that does not convince you, look at it from the organism's perspective: it is all about environment. Your predators are as much a fact of life as the rocks, sky, water, or whatever abiotic components of your environment are relevant. Any vairable heritable trait that improves your ability to leave fertile offspring will be selected for. Your environment evolves. Coevolution merely means that there is something in that environment that happens to produce offspring that are more suited to your needs than it is itself.
Your hand-waving dismissal of my point is indicative of a failure to grasp something more fundamental about evolution: it is a process. Creationists claim that there are no transitional fossils, but in fact all fossils are transitional (except for the infinitesimally small set right before a mass extinction). Living things are always evolving into other things. What looks now like an inextricably linked pair of species are the descendants of two less tightly linked species, which are themselves the descendants of two species that happened to have some ecological relationship, which could well be descendants of two species that had no interaction whatsoever.
Meanwhile, you say that you are tired of ID being referred to as creationism. The fact that ID buzzwords are not mentioned in the Bible does not mean that it is not creationism. You will find plenty of Muslims who are also creationists, and a good number of Hindus, the latter of whom have no particular regard for the Bible or the Koran. Creationism is not tied to any one religion.
The operational definition of creationism is the belief that at least some species, or features of species, had a separate abiotic origin from others. The only ID propo