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RE: ID is not science - 7/24/2008 12:36:01 PM
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Jhud
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quote:
I said that it is unpredictable, not unreliable. Two very different things.
At the quantum level you can not predict which way a gas molecule will go. However, heat is reliably distributed throughout a system.
The problem is the apparatus which is being considered is the very apparatus which must determine the degree to which it is reliable - and since it is unpredicatable, there is no way to know if it is reliable.
Unless of course one has a mind with which to consider the apparatus. Of course, a materialist can't claim that, and so is relagated to the unreliability of responding to external stimuli.
When it comes down to it, it simply shows the absurdity of the materialist position - they are of the opinion that everything is reducible to material processes, but of course, if that is true, they really can't have opinions as neither 'they' nor their minds actually exist.
_____________________________
Jack
It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first..
- Ronald Reagan
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RE: ID is not science - 7/24/2008 1:51:38 PM
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Veritas
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Jhud
quote:
You are assuming facts not in evidence here. Where do you think we've established your information was more reliable than mine? Or that my responses have a different basis than yours?
It has nothing to do with better and worse evidence, but the existence of a mind capable of discerning between the two. I have one, it appears atheists don't. There is no 'mine and yours', there is only mine.
Addendum: Not only my mind of course, but anyone else who claims to have a mind.
The only way that would make any kind of sense is if your mind created your reality and my mind created my reality. Are you really suggesting that because of your beliefs, your mind is fundamentally different from an atheist's? That you are able to discern things that atheists cannot?
I stll don't see what this has to do with ID's mechanisms. Or have you given up trying to come up with an answer.
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RE: ID is not science - 7/24/2008 2:03:59 PM
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Jhud
Posts: 7784
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quote:
The only way that would make any kind of sense is if your mind created your reality and my mind created my reality. Are you really suggesting that because of your beliefs, your mind is fundamentally different from an atheist's? That you are able to discern things that atheists cannot?
An atheist cannot have a 'mind' - they have a neural processing apparatus, nothing more. And what is at issue is not 'creating reality' but perceiving it - and according to the materialist view, the brain (the means by which reality is percieved), it is an unpredictable organ at best.
Personally of course I believe atheists, like all humans, have minds - they are persons with wills, intents, beliefs, opinions, etc. But who am I to impose my metaphysical beliefs on your unpredictable apparatus?
_____________________________
Jack
It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first..
- Ronald Reagan
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RE: ID is not science - 7/24/2008 8:12:05 PM
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Method
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Jhud
An atheist cannot have a 'mind' -
Define mind and show that it exists. That would be a start.
quote:
Personally of course I believe atheists, like all humans, have minds - they are persons with wills, intents, beliefs, opinions, etc. But who am I to impose my metaphysical beliefs on your unpredictable apparatus?
Wills, intents, beliefs, and opinions are the product of neuronal activity, are they not?
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RE: ID is not science - 7/24/2008 8:14:20 PM
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Method
Posts: 859
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Jhud
The problem is the apparatus which is being considered is the very apparatus which must determine the degree to which it is reliable - and since it is unpredicatable, there is no way to know if it is reliable.
The proof is in the pudding, as it were. My expectations of reality are met by what happens in reality. That is how we know our thoughts are reliable.
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Unless of course one has a mind with which to consider the apparatus. Of course, a materialist can't claim that, and so is relagated to the unreliability of responding to external stimuli.
Unless, of course, the mind is material.
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When it comes down to it, it simply shows the absurdity of the materialist position - they are of the opinion that everything is reducible to material processes, but of course, if that is true, they really can't have opinions as neither 'they' nor their minds actually exist.
Why can't we have opinions? Why can't opinions be the product of material processes?
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RE: ID is not science - 7/24/2008 8:25:18 PM
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Veritas
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Jhud
quote:
The only way that would make any kind of sense is if your mind created your reality and my mind created my reality. Are you really suggesting that because of your beliefs, your mind is fundamentally different from an atheist's? That you are able to discern things that atheists cannot?
An atheist cannot have a 'mind' - they have a neural processing apparatus, nothing more. And what is at issue is not 'creating reality' but perceiving it - and according to the materialist view, the brain (the means by which reality is percieved), it is an unpredictable organ at best.
Personally of course I believe atheists, like all humans, have minds - they are persons with wills, intents, beliefs, opinions, etc. But who am I to impose my metaphysical beliefs on your unpredictable apparatus?
You say an atheist cannot have a mind, then you turn around and say you believe that all humans have minds -- in the same post?!?!?
Why do you say things you don't really believe? Are you confused?
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RE: ID is not science - 7/25/2008 10:31:00 AM
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ferdgoodfellow
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Method
quote:
ORIGINAL: ferdgoodfellow
Snot surprising that evolutionary biology (EB) has all the mechanisms and ID has none. After all, tis EB that contends that material mechanisms are capable of accounting for all biological complexity. ID contends that it cannot, and that design must be brought in as well to fully account for complexity. The particulars of how and when this design was introduced may some day be investigated, but for now the inquiry is whether or not design is detectable and present.
There is already a methodology that proposes non-materialistic, supernatural mechanisms which produce design. It is called religion. Your need to bend the definition of science in order to fit your relitious beliefs is a tacit admission that science is better than religion. In order for you to take your own religious beliefs seriously you need people to call it science.
If you seriously think that religion is a more powerful tool for investigating the natural world then do away with all science. Embrace all possibilities, the possibilities that maybe, just maybe, gravity is caused by invisible pink fairies. It could be true, right? So science is wrong for rejecting this idea, right?
The fact of the matter is that you are fighting the wrong fight. Science is not about ideology. It is about results, usefulness, and pragmatism. Scientists need theories that work, not theories that best fit their ideology or religious tenets. That is why there is no such thing as Hindu physics or Muslim chemistry. Science is science, and when you read a scientific paper there is simply no way that you can discern the religious convictions of the authors. What you read is straightforward facts and a pragmatic approach to the data.
ID/creationists, on the other hand, treat science as a battle ground of ideology. This is why they lose. They think that yelling the loudest wins. It doesn't. Data wins. Supported hypotheses win. Acceptance of your ideas by your peers, who you are in strong competition with you for grant money and publications, wins. Being able to make specific and testable hypotheses wins. DOING ORIGINAL RESEARCH WINS.
If ID/creationists really do buy into their rhetoric they would be telling school boards that they should abandon science classes and replace them with bible studies.
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ID is refutable by demonstrating that undirected natural processes fully account for specified complexity in any instance. Until EB succeeds in doing that, design will be a nagging possibility.
If ID is science then it needs to succeed on it's own. Why is it that when we ask if ID is science the first words out of the mouths of ID proponents is "But evolution . . . ". If the theory had not been discovered what would ID proponents do? Without a shadow to stand in ID would wither quite quickly.
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And EB has certainly not succeeded to date.
Hundreds of thousands of research papers say differently. The purpose of the theory of evolution is not to convince bull-headed creationists that evolution is correct, or that God does not exist. The purpose of the theory is to give biologists a tool for investigating biodiverisity, and it has great, great success in doing so.
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At a minimum, biology should allow the possibility of design in cases of biological SC.
Science allows for invisible pink fairies producing gravity. However, theories are only accepted when they are able to make accurate and testable predictions. Science follows curiosity and evidence. ID has neither.
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So it seems EB proponents are the ones guilty of promoting pseudo-science. They accept no burden of evidence.
That's completely false. Ever heard of the twin nested hierarchies?
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Debmski says (p. 279): "Instead of empirical evidence deciding between evolutionary biology and intellignet design, evolutionary biology is declared the winner by default. This isn't science. This is dogmatism."
Oh really? Let's see what you said before.
"ID is refutable by demonstrating that undirected natural processes fully account for specified complexity in any instance. Until EB succeeds in doing that, design will be a nagging possibility."
In this quote you treat ID as the default answer. Care to explain?
Hi Method,
Not a whole lot of time to respond.
The way I look at this whole ID thing is this: Until relatively recently, everyone was a design kind of guy. To do science was to be actively seeking the Mind of God, the Grand Designer. But then design was consigned the rubbish heap of world views and doing science meant just looking for naturalistic explanations. In biology Darwin proposed a way for complexity to arise by random variation and natural selection. IOW, its all chance and necessity. No design needed. And it wasn't just that the natural explantions were doing quite fine, thank you, it was that design in principle was exclude. Hume supposedly dealt the death blow to idea of design, such that henceforth and ever after Science would no longer be allowed to entertain design as a possible explanation.
But then things changed in the last century. First fine-tuning arguments started emerging, and this led to the developing of ID, which provoked a fire-storm of protest. Academic equivalents of degradation rituals, excommunications and burnings at the stake were conducted. But the idea took hold anyway and peoples started talking out loud what they felt in theirs heads and thought in their hearts: "This looks an awful lot like design!" Just as a proposition of philosophy of science, folks had to concede that design can be a propery subject of inquiry for science. This argument is over, and now the debate is whether design actually explains part of the complexity we see in biology. There are plenty who still deny the first proposition, but they, IMHO, are not being reasonable.
It does has to be admitted, though, that what gives the idea force is the utter failure of EB to explain stuff. Plus the fact that very smart guys now openly doubt that EB is the "universal acid" that explains everything.
Can't address all your points.
Have a great weekend.
cordially
ferd
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RE: ID is not science - 7/25/2008 11:03:45 AM
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Method
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ferdgoodfellow
The way I look at this whole ID thing is this: Until relatively recently, everyone was a design kind of guy.
Define "recently".
The last popular "design guy" in science was William Paley and his 1802 book "Natural Theology" in which he made the famous Watchmaker argument. Darwin was very aware of Paley's work and many of his arguments in Origin of Species are focused directly at the arguments made by Paley. Science accepted Darwin's theory over Paleys because Darwin produced a mechanism capable of producing design and also capable of producing the nested hierarchy that had puzzled many as to it's existence.
As it turns out, understanding natural mechanisms is useful in a very pragmatic sense. Upholding religious tenents does not have a pragmatic use and did not help us to understand how the natural world worked. The "design guys" had 1700 years to figure things out. They didn't. It wasn't until science focused on finding naturalistic explanations that our understanding of reality really took off.
If you think ID is still useful in a scientific setting then show how it is useful. Outline a research program that would use ID to discover new things about nature. Give us the experiments you would do in the lab and field and show us how ID is applied in those experiments. Give us positive predictions that ID makes which differs from the theory of evolution. By positive predictions I mean things we will find, not things that we will not find.
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To do science was to be actively seeking the Mind of God, the Grand Designer. But then design was consigned the rubbish heap of world views and doing science meant just looking for naturalistic explanations.
Many scientists also sought the Mind of God by looking for naturalistic explanations. Einstein was famous for claiming this, but I have a feeling that you two would not agree on your definition of God.
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In biology Darwin proposed a way for complexity to arise by random variation and natural selection. IOW, its all chance and necessity. No design needed.
I would define it as chance and probability. Evolution is a stochastic process, the same type of process that allows casinos to make money. The fitter individual has a much higher chance of having the more grandchildren just as the house has a higher chance of winning.
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And it wasn't just that the natural explantions were doing quite fine, thank you, it was that design in principle was exclude.
The problem is that ID proponents can not show us how ID can be included. Science is not an ideology. It is an activity. For ID to be science it has to be useful in a very pragmatic way. The lack of original ID research demonstrates to me that ID is not science. This is the yard stick by which all theories in science are judged, the research that is being done using the theory.
Also, given the fact that ID proponents are skipping the entire research and peer review process and going straight to school boards indicates that they don't expect to produce research or original peer reviewed literature. They are pushing an ideology.
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Hume supposedly dealt the death blow to idea of design, such that henceforth and ever after Science would no longer be allowed to entertain design as a possible explanation.
Science will consider design once there is something scientific to consider.
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But then things changed in the last century. First fine-tuning arguments started emerging, and this led to the developing of ID, which provoked a fire-storm of protest.
The rise of ID was due to creationism being struck down in courts as inappropriate for high school science classes. ID is driven by ideology, not science. The Wedge Strategy lays this out quite nicely.
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Academic equivalents of degradation rituals, excommunications and burnings at the stake were conducted.
No, they weren't. This is perhaps the best example of how ID is an ideology. It needs martyrs so badly that they are invented.
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This argument is over, and now the debate is whether design actually explains part of the complexity we see in biology.
A scientific explanation must include testable mechanisms. What are the mechanisms of ID?
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It does has to be admitted, though, that what gives the idea force is the utter failure of EB to explain stuff. Plus the fact that very smart guys now openly doubt that EB is the "universal acid" that explains everything.
The theory of evolution will always be incomplete. This is true of every scientific theory. The stuff that the theory of evolution has not explained is the focus of new research. That is the sign of a healthy scientific theory, it asks important questions that people then try to answer. ID does not do this. It imposes the answer without asking the questions.
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Can't address all your points.
If you only have one thing to focus on I would be interested in how you think ID can produce research. This question really gets to the root of the whole debate, is ID science. If ID is science then it should produce fruitful research.
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RE: ID is not science - 7/25/2008 12:31:50 PM
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essentialsaltes
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ferdgoodfellow
The way I look at this whole ID thing is this: Until relatively recently, everyone was a design kind of guy. To do science was to be actively seeking the Mind of God, the Grand Designer. But then design was consigned the rubbish heap of world views and doing science meant just looking for naturalistic explanations.
It's not so much that design or God were consigned to the rubbish heap, but that science moved on from goddidit to an actual explanation. If we look at Harvey's book on the circulation of the blood, he writes:
quote:
When I first gave my mind to vivisections, as a means of discovering the motions and uses of the heart, and sought to discover these from actual inspection, and not from the writings of others, I found the task so truly arduous, so full of difficulties, that I was almost tempted to think, with Fracastorius, that the motion of the heart was only to be comprehended by God.
It seems Fracastorius could find no explanation, and was content to attribute the heart's action to God's design, and there was an end of it.
Harvey persevered, and without explicitly excluding God or design, he came up with a sucessful hypothesis about the circulation of blood. Perhaps he saw this as seeing the Mind of God, or understanding God's design, but by pressing further into the matter, his theory allowed us to actually know something more than we did when the whole matter was simply attributed to God. The structure and function of the heart had been explained, whether or not it had been designed. Harvey speaks of nature as "ever perfect and divine," but this did not stop him from picking divine perfection apart to see how it worked.
_____________________________
"My object in all arguments is not to make any preconceived opinion of mine seem right, but merely to discover and establish the truth, whatever the truth may be."
-- HP Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard 7/27-28/34
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RE: ID is not science - 7/25/2008 12:47:43 PM
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gluadys
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ferdgoodfellow
The way I look at this whole ID thing is this: Until relatively recently, everyone was a design kind of guy. To do science was to be actively seeking the Mind of God, the Grand Designer. But then design was consigned the rubbish heap of world views and doing science meant just looking for naturalistic explanations.
This is not quite true. What we tend to call naturalistic explanations today have always been the goal of science. But earlier (medieval and early modern times) they were often referred to as "secondary causes".
This name alluded to God as the primary cause of all things, with natural mechanisms as secondary causes which could be discovered by observation and reason. It was well understood that science could only discover secondary i.e. natural causes, the primary cause, God, being beyond the capacity of unaided human reason.
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RE: ID is not science - 7/25/2008 1:45:07 PM
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Jhud
Posts: 7784
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quote:
Define mind and show that it exists. That would be a start.
I don’t have to show that it exists – only that if it doesn’t exist, whatever one believes is irrelevant. The lack of a mind renders the idea of having beliefs and opinions moot. My belief that I have a mind is logically consistent with having a mind – asserting one doesn’t have one is inherently absurd.
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Wills, intents, beliefs, and opinions are the product of neuronal activity, are they not?
It would be impossible to know without a mind. How can ‘you’ have a will, when what your mind does is merely an unpredictable response to external stimuli? There is no ‘you’ to have a will – or a belief, opinion or intent. It’s simply a machine.
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The proof is in the pudding, as it were. My expectations of reality are met by what happens in reality. That is how we know our thoughts are reliable.
‘Expectations’ are a belief about the future. A neural apparatus has no such things as beliefs – or at least, not in a way that matters.
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Unless, of course, the mind is material.
A brain is material, a mind must be something else, or else the mind is simply an illusion of the machinery of the brain.
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Why can't we have opinions? Why can't opinions be the product of material processes?
An opinion is a claim that something is true – how does a machine which is responding unpredictably to external stimuli decide to ‘believe’ something, and claim that is true in any reliable fashion?
_____________________________
Jack
It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first..
- Ronald Reagan
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RE: ID is not science - 7/25/2008 1:48:33 PM
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Jhud
Posts: 7784
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From: Lake Wobegon
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quote:
You say an atheist cannot have a mind, then you turn around and say you believe that all humans have minds -- in the same post?!?!?
Sorry, I will try to clarify for your neural apparatus.
An atheist cannot claim to have a mind. I can claim an atheist has a mind, but an atheist cannot accept what I believe because of the metaphysical implications.
_____________________________
Jack
It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first..
- Ronald Reagan
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RE: ID is not science - 7/25/2008 1:59:08 PM
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Veritas
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Jhud
quote:
You say an atheist cannot have a mind, then you turn around and say you believe that all humans have minds -- in the same post?!?!?
Sorry, I will try to clarify for your neural apparatus.
An atheist cannot claim to have a mind. I can claim an atheist has a mind, but an atheist cannot accept what I believe because of the metaphysical implications.
I am an atheist.
I have a mind.
You are mistaken.
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RE: ID is not science - 7/25/2008 3:57:52 PM
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Jhud
Posts: 7784
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quote:
I am an atheist.
I have a mind.
You are mistaken.
Actually, I am happy you have broken with the like of Dawkins, Provine, and Harris.
What does your mind do?
_____________________________
Jack
It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first..
- Ronald Reagan
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RE: ID is not science - 7/25/2008 7:59:16 PM
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Veritas
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Jhud
quote:
I am an atheist.
I have a mind.
You are mistaken.
Actually, I am happy you have broken with the like of Dawkins, Provine, and Harris.
What does your mind do?
I find it very difficult to believe that anyone would deny having a mind. Can you support that Dawkins, Provine or Harris say an atheist cannot claim to have a mind?
Your question is rather broad. Are you fishing for something?
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RE: ID is not science - 7/25/2008 9:25:41 PM
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Method
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Jhud
I don’t have to show that it exists – only that if it doesn’t exist, whatever one believes is irrelevant.
I was hoping that you would define "mind" so that we could discuss more about it. I think we have a different idea on what a mind is.
For me, a mind is an emergent property of brain activity in the same way that wetness is an emergent property of a collection of water molecules. Individual brain cells are not a mind, but their interconnectedness results in a mind. With enough sophistication a mind could emerge from a computer processor type system.
How does your idea of mind differ from mine?
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How can ‘you’ have a will, when what your mind does is merely an unpredictable response to external stimuli?
What I want to do in any situation is unpredictable, but what I want to do does exist once an idea is settled on. If minds were predictable why would we have such things as ink blot tests and association tests?
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There is no ‘you’ to have a will – or a belief, opinion or intent. It’s simply a machine.
Isn't that what ID argues?
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‘Expectations’ are a belief about the future. A neural apparatus has no such things as beliefs – or at least, not in a way that matters.
A neural apparatus that has WRONG beliefs is unreliable.
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A brain is material, a mind must be something else, or else the mind is simply an illusion of the machinery of the brain.
Which is it? I don't expect a simple and jaw dropping answer. Afterall, this has been an ongoing debate in philosophy since there was philosophy. Personally, the tie between being human and being physical is too obvious to deny. In my ever so humble opinion (stop laughing), people balk at the idea of the mind being physical because they hope there is more. I have made peace with being part of the universe, but some people insist on being separate from it. All I know is if I am right I don't get to say "Told you so".;)
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An opinion is a claim that something is true – how does a machine which is responding unpredictably to external stimuli decide to ‘believe’ something, and claim that is true in any reliable fashion?
By referring to reality.
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RE: ID is not science - 7/25/2008 9:26:15 PM
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FreddieD
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Jhud
An atheist cannot claim to have a mind. I can claim an atheist has a mind, but an atheist cannot accept what I believe because of the metaphysical implications.
I know spiritualist like to distinguish the difference between the mind and the brain as two different entities, but this is an improper usage of the word. Wikipedia clearly identifies that the mind is a combinations of thought, perception, memory, emotion, will and imagination. And everybody has one.
So lets use it in that term.
FreddieD
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RE: ID is not science - 7/26/2008 9:32:19 AM
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ferdgoodfellow
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Hey Method,
quote:
If you only have one thing to focus on I would be interested in how you think ID can produce research. This question really gets to the root of the whole debate, is ID science. If ID is science then it should produce fruitful research.
In the Design Revolution Dembski lists various research themes that can be explored:
1. Design detection
2. Biological information
3. minimal complexity.
4. evolvability
5. the principle of methodological engineering
6. technological evolution (TRIZ)
7. Autonomy versus guidance.
8. Evolutionaary computation
9. understanding continuity
10. steganography
Will try and amplify later
cordailly
ferd
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RE: ID is not science - 7/27/2008 8:55:51 AM
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ferdgoodfellow
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1. Design detection. Does the explanatory filter reliably detect design?
2. Bio Info. What is the nature of bio info? How do function and fitness relate to it? What challenges face material mechanisms in generating bio info? What are the theoretical and empirical grounds for thinking that ID is indispensible to the origin of bio info?
3..Minimal complexity. How does pruning away the complexity of bio systems affect their ability to perform some function? How much complexity can be pruned away without losing function? Once a complexity barrier is reached below which function can't be preserved, could coevolution overcome that barrier by swithing function? Are there systems that not only are minimally complex with respect to some function, but for which any reduction of complexity eliminates all possibility of bio function?
4. Evolvability.
5. Principle of methodological engineering. What would it take, in terms of bio engineering, to, say, change a bear into a whale?
6. TRIZ. Technological evolution of human inventions.
7. Autonomy v guidance.
8. Evolutionary computation. study of bio-genetic algorithms.
9. discontinuity.
10. steganography. cryptography principles and theory applied to bio systems.
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RE: ID is not science - 7/27/2008 11:26:41 AM
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ferdgoodfellow
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That's still pretty sketchy. You'll just have to get the book. The Design Revolution attempts to exhaustively to meet all objections to ID raised to date.
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RE: ID is not science - 7/28/2008 9:00:52 AM
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hellohellohi
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quote:
4. Evolvability.
???
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RE: ID is not science - 7/28/2008 11:51:41 AM
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RCC
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ferdgoodfellow
That's still pretty sketchy. You'll just have to get the book. The Design Revolution attempts to exhaustively to meet all objections to ID raised to date.
I don’t have the book, so I’d be interested to know whether Dembski answers the following objection. Actually this isn’t really an argument against ID per se; rather, it concerns the implications of ID if it is true:
Suppose for the sake of argument it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that ID was necessary for various biological organisms and features thereof to come into existence. Now there are two possibilities:
I. Unknown space aliens designed and constructed these features/organisms. Besides the fact that no one seems to be seriously proposing this as a possibility, it would leave unanswered the question as to the origin of the aliens and their intellectual capabilities.
II. God did it. God thus turns out to be a cosmic Mr. Fix-It who didn’t get it right in the initial Creation, so He intervenes in the operations of nature at various points for undisclosed purposes. God engineered flagella and attached them to various species of bacteria, enabling them to cause horrible diseases, while He refuses to lift a finger to save children who die from said diseases or in earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis.
Have I understood the implications of ID correctly?
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Richard
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RE: ID is not science - 7/28/2008 2:29:30 PM
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Method
Posts: 859
Joined: 9/19/2007
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ferdgoodfellow
1. Design detection. Does the explanatory filter reliably detect design?
Well, does it reliably detect design in biological systems? What experiments have been done? What experiments can be done?
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2. Bio Info. What is the nature of bio info? How do function and fitness relate to it? What challenges face material mechanisms in generating bio info? What are the theoretical and empirical grounds for thinking that ID is indispensible to the origin of bio info?
What are the ID mechanisms for producing bio info? How does one construct an experiment to test for ID bio info?
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3..Minimal complexity. How does pruning away the complexity of bio systems affect their ability to perform some function? How much complexity can be pruned away without losing function? Once a complexity barrier is reached below which function can't be preserved, could coevolution overcome that barrier by swithing function? Are there systems that not only are minimally complex with respect to some function, but for which any reduction of complexity eliminates all possibility of bio function?
How does this relate to ID? Or is the answer to every question going to be "it can't evolve, therefore ID"?
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4. Evolvability.
Can ID stand on it's own or not?
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5. Principle of methodological engineering. What would it take, in terms of bio engineering, to, say, change a bear into a whale?
Change bear DNA into whale DNA?
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6. TRIZ. Technological evolution of human inventions.
Are humans the intelligent designer of ID?
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7. Autonomy v guidance.
I think Paley's Watchmaker argument illustrates this quite well. As Darwin spoke of in Origin of Species, species are autonomous. They do not contain adaptations that only serve other species without any return. This is very different from a watch and all other designed things. Designed things serve a function for the designer. That is the first hallmark of design. Life does not have this feature.
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8. Evolutionary computation. study of bio-genetic algorithms.
What does evolution have to do with ID?
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9. discontinuity.
Hmm?
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10. steganography. cryptography principles and theory applied to bio systems.
How does this apply to biological systems?
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RE: ID is not science - 7/29/2008 8:53:18 AM
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ferdgoodfellow
Posts: 237
Joined: 4/11/2005
Status: offline
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Hi Method,
1. Design detection. Does the explanatory filter reliably detect design?
You sed: Well, does it reliably detect design in biological systems? What experiments have been done? What experiments can be done?
Well, I'm no biology or chemistry guy, but seems to me the task of ID in any given instance is to eliminate all possible material mechanisms as an explanation. Now Dembski claims that once a biological object is well understood, it is possible to calculate the probabilities that it arose through natural, random mechanisms. if they are sufficiently small, that enables one to infer design.
The way to test the validity of the inference, then, is to practice evolutionary biology. Come up with possible physical explanations which overcome the daunting improbability. Maybe at the biochemical level the experimental method is best applicable in this respect. Here, as evolutionary biologists come up with possible explanations, these can be tested in the lab. Then, if successful, one can say that this instance of alleged complexity isn't so complex after all.
The debate between Behe and guys like Miller ought to be fertile ground for experimentation. Behe claims that the bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex, and Miller says, no, it could have come about by different components performing independent functions coming together somehow to form something new. Well, show it in the lab, then.
What will emerge from this process, as possible material mechanism are eliminated, is an increasing confidence in the design inference as to the specific object of study and the overall theory of design.
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RE: ID is not science - 7/29/2008 9:25:31 AM
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ferdgoodfellow
Posts: 237
Joined: 4/11/2005
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: hellohellohi
quote:
4. Evolvability.
???
Hey 3H,
I'll more or less quote Dembski:
EB is in the business of drawing evolutionary connections between bio systems. This requires identifying bio systems, relating them according to some similarity metric and then telling evolutionary stories that connect the dots. Yet for large-scale changes, these stories tend to be imaginative reconstructions for which evidence is thin to nonexistent. This is certainly true of attempts to bridge major divisions in the fossil record. It is also true of molecular phylogenies. Eb's preferred strategy consists in taking distinct bio systems and trying to merge them. ID focuses on a different strategy, namely, taking individual bio systems and perturbing them to see how much the systems can evolve (with and without intelligence). Limitations on evolvability by material mechanisms constitute evidence for design.
In discussing the next research them, the principle of methodological engineerings, Dembski sez:
The reason EB has lost all sense of proportion about how much evolution is possible as a result of blind material mechanisms (like random variation and natural selections) is that it floats free of the science of engineering. At every crucial juncture where some major evolutionary transition needs to be accounted for, EB invokes a designer-substitute (such as natural selction, lateral gene transfer or symbiogenesis) to do the necessary design work. Yet unlike the science of engineering, EB does not actually perform the necessary design work or specify a detailed procedure by which it might be be accomplished. ID takes what I call "methodological engineering" as a fundamental regulative principle for understanding bio systems....
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