Intelligent design news from the 30th of March to the 5th of April, 2011.
Sometimes, keeping up with the intelligent design movement can feel like a full-time job. Other times… not so much. While some of the output by the Discovery Institute and its related organisations is somewhat novel, most of it is simply rehashed ideas from a limited pool. This week was a fairly good example of the latter. We had copy-and-paste arguments for the positive nature of the design argument, as well as an unsurprising plug for a blatantly religious debate, not to mention many, many posts on Uncommon Descent about- well, I don’t really know. The words just tend to blend together after a while, forming a soup of pseudo-philosophy and rhetoric.
The only really “novel” thing this week was something to do with April Fool’s Day… and it wasn’t novel in a good way.
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Okay, I was going to write a more substantial piece about Casey Luskin‘s post on the positive case for intelligent design, but when I realised that 1. there probably wasn’t going to be enough to talk about in this week’s TWiID without it, and 2. Stephen C. Meyer makes a very similar case in Signature in the Cell, which I’ll be doing an in-depth review of soon, I decided against it. However, it is obviously still worth a hefty mention and brief analysis and critique.
Casey’s post – a response to an article by Mark McPeek – is pretty much a copy-and-paste job from his semi-well-known PDF “The Positive Case For Design”. It’s a great piece of work, it seems very persuasive to the uncritical observer, but its arguments really don’t stand up to any sort of criticism. If ID can have a positive argument made for it, Casey doesn’t know what it is.
It’s quite a simple exercise to know and understand the actions of humans, who happen to be intelligent designers. For example, by studying the actions of humans in the world around us we can construct a variety of testable predictions about intelligent design.
The theory of intelligent design begins with observations of how intelligent agents act when designing things. By observing human intelligent agents, there is actually quite a bit we can learn know and understand about the actions of intelligent designers. Here are some observations:
This is the point where it breaks down. Yes, right at the start. Even if we grant Casey’s assumption that the design of an unknown being can be detected through analogy to human design (which I’m not all that happy with, but bear with me), it still doesn’t work – he’s deceptive about what human design necessarily entails.
(1) Intelligent agents think with an “end goal” in mind, allowing them to solve complex problems by taking many parts and arranging them in intricate patterns that perform a specific function (e.g. complex and specified information).
Intelligent agents may think with an end goal in mind, but they also may not. Human action need not be overly thoughtful or planned out. Modifications made to designs may be pointless or thoughtless, not to do with anything relating to function but to economics, aesthetics or cultural norms.
(2) Intelligent agents can rapidly infuse large amounts of information into systems.
True, but they can also take it away from systems. This happens far more frequently than you might at first think. Plus, the level of information change might not be large – human designers can work rather slowly at times, especially when they’re given access to the Internet.
(3) Intelligent agents re-use functional components that work over and over in different systems (e.g., wheels for cars and airplanes).
They can also create new things from scratch. The choice between re-use and from-scratch design can be decided for the most arbitrary of reasons, making a universal pattern amongst all designers impossible to detect without an extreme level of background information about all the designers involved.
(4) Intelligent agents typically create functional things (although we may sometimes think something is functionless, not realizing its true function).
They also make non-functional things. Like information loss vs. information gain, it could be argued that this happens far more frequently than the creation of functional things.
All of Casey’s “observations” about human designers have counterexamples. As such, the predictions he draws from them are utterly meaningless:
(1) Natural structures will be found that contain many parts arranged in intricate patterns that perform a specific function (e.g. complex and specified information).
Natural structures should also be found without intricate or intelligible patterns or any specific function.
(2) Forms containing large amounts of novel information will appear in the fossil record suddenly and without similar precursors.
Large/small amounts of novel information should suddenly/gradually disappear/appear in the fossil record.
(3) Convergence will occur routinely. That is, genes and other functional parts will be re-used in different and unrelated organisms.
The creation of new biologically entities should also occur routinely, in a manner quite unpredictable unless specific information about the designer is known.
(4) Much so-called “junk DNA” will turn out to perform valuable functions.
Any amount of junk DNA should turn out to be functional/biologically indispensable, as design can explain any combination of competence and the lack thereof.
Starting to see the flaws in Casey’s argument? Intelligent agents, as a set, can do anything they want and they will do anything they want. Predictions made about agents as a whole are useless because any data are consistent with them. You only start to get predictive power when the hypothesis is narrowed down to include known information about the motives of the agent, their design history, their method of creation and other factors that influence their output, like skill, situational ability, social variables etc.
The fact that Casey’s “predictions” can be “backed up” with data is irrelevant if the predictions aren’t specific in the first place. My corrected versions of his predictions, which take into account what we really know about human agents as designers, encompass any and all possible biological organisms. Everything and anything can, hypothetically, be explained, and therefore nothing is.
There was another route I could have taken for the critique, revolving around the unjustified analogy between human design and all design, but I think I’ll save it for my discussion of Stephen C. Meyer’s similar arguments in Signature in the Cell. Sadly, they don’t differ all that much from Casey’s.
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Anika Smith wanted to bring to our attention two debates with William Lane Craig, and bring them to our attention she did:
CSC fellow William Lane Craig is always worth listening to, but it’s when he’s debating prominent atheists that the acuity of his mind comes into sharp relief. For those who enjoy a good argument, this week offers us not just one, but two such debates.
First, in what is certain to be an electric event tonight, Dr. Craig is going up against Lawrence Krauss at North Carolina State (event information here). Dr. Krauss is an eminent theoretical physicist at Arizona State University. Dr. Craig is a Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and author of Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology.
The event is free, but sure to be full tonight, so the organizers are graciously streaming the showdown live at http://www.thegreatdebatencsu.com/, starting at 7pm EDT, 4pm PDT.
Next week Dr. Craig takes on Sam Harris at Notre Dame next Thursday, April 7 at 7pm EST in “The God Debate II: Is Good From God?“
Wait, why is Craig relevant to intelligent design? Doesn’t the Discovery Institute have a policy that ID isn’t about religion? If so, why promote debates about religion via their main blog? This is simply more evidence that the DI doesn’t take its own rhetoric seriously. While I don’t personally think that you need to be a theist to be an ID proponent, many people do, and I can see why they think that way. The intelligent design movement is crawling with religious arguments, language and appeals, and it seems to be unashamed of it.
They may as well all announce that they’re traditional creationists and no one would bat an eyelid.
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I must say, I was hitting myself after April Fool’s Day passed. You see, on April 2nd I came up with the truly ingenious idea of pretending to have been convinced of intelligent design after finishing reading Signature in the Cell. It was brilliant. If only I had had the idea a few days earlier! Dammit!
And then, of course, I read the April Fool’s joke on Evolution News & Views, and I praised my fortuitous lack of temporal idea-luck:
["Boy, were we wrong!'] So says a highly placed spokesman inside the Discovery Institute who prefers to remain anonymous.
“We now know beyond a shadow of a doubt,” says the spokesman, “that Darwinian evolution is a fact. There is overwhelming evidence that all living things are descended from a common ancestor by accidental mutations and unguided natural selection. Intelligent design is wrong, wrong, wrong!”
The anonymous spokesman says that this remarkable turn of events is due to recent scientific breakthroughs in paleontology, embryology, experimental selection, evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), and molecular phylogeny.
[...]
The final triumph of Darwinism will be officially celebrated at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, on April 27, 2011–the 140th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s historicNature article on “Pangenesis.” In that work, Mr. Darwin defended his theory that “gemmules” scattered throughout the body explain the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Although long derided by religiously motivated followers of Roman Catholic priest Gregor Mendel, pangenesis is currently enjoying a renaissance among Darwinists, who are confident that everything written by The Greatest Scientist Who Ever Lived will ultimately be proven true.
Meanwhile, there are rumors that the National Center for Science Education and the American Civil Liberties Union will share the Nobel Peace Prize later this year for promoting Darwin-only education and thereby saving civilization from the forces of darkness.
Oh dear. What a satirical trainwreck. Could I be horribly biased towards thinking so? Perhaps, but when I read it, I realised that my attempt, if it had occurred, probably would have been at least as bad. Maybe. There’s an undeniable bitterness about the EN&V piece, and I’m clearly not as cynical as they are, what with my age and all. Boy, we teenagers sure are chirpy little things, aren’t we? Optimists, every one.
Anyway, read through the whole post if you can. Whatever doesn’t kill you must make you stronger, right? Right? At least they’ve never really done anything like it before.
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Rapid fire ID news!
"Intelligent agents may think with an end goal in mind, but they also may not. Human action need not be overly thoughtful or planned out."
Anybody who's worked in an industrial R&D environment knows this perfectly well. Software is particularly notorious in this regard: "If most buildings were constructed the way most programs are, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization."
Trial and error plays a big part. There was a push in the 1930s to build lighter and lighter suspension bridges, structural analysis showing they could bear the loads — without considering aerodynamics and resonance effects. The result was the infamous collapse of the Tacoma Narrows bridge in 1940.
So how does a tinkerer designer differ from evolution, which builds upon successful stable mutations throughout a population, and discards the less-adapted ones? Anyone who's followed the ID movement knows it's an attempt to keep the possibility that the Christian God is the designer, but you should know he didn't "tinker". There's no trial and error in Genesis. He made this and said it was good; he made that, and said it was very good. He did not try out this, saw it needed some adjustment, got his R&D department onto it, and redesigned an organism before he was satisfied enough to let it back into Eden. He's God. He's supposed to be infallible and perfect. That's the point. To argue that the designer happens to design in exactly the same way we see evolution take place is a moot point. Occam's razor will favor evolution, and you may as well throw out the trial-and-error R&D designer hypothesis.
Well (tongue in cheek :-)
(s)he did take a course in pottery in Genesis vol. 2, so (s)he must have gotten doubts or second thoughts about the question whether everything was truly good after Genesis vol. 1.
Yes, but you have to admit he had a good marketing department…..
ID is basically a smokescreen. In reality, we do not now, nor have we ever "identified design".
What we do, scientifically, is model the origin of objects. There is no mark of intelligence on
an object, but there certainly are marks left by the processes by which objects originate.
It is through the comparison of objects of known origin that we determine the process of
origin of objects that we are studying.
Science is always about processes. ID is never about processes, and this the clearest evidence
that ID is not science, or at the very least is not very good science.
So, how did the very first organism come into being? Did it just appear one day? I get what you all are saying; I also get what they are saying. But the question that remains is – what sparked the first organism? I certainly don’t believe that there was a little bit of dirt and a little bit of water and all of the sudden you have a living organism. Hate to say it, but I think that the ID has a better philosophy on that. There had to be something or someone. Something just doesn’t come from nothing, ever. But then the question can go on with if there is an intelligent designer – who designed him/her/it?
Curious, I think we need to distinguish between the origin of species (i.e. from earlier species – what people generally mean by “evolution”) and origin of life itself. I’d certainly agree we do not yet have a worked out model for the origin of life. Though there’s quite a body of work on it, it remains rather speculative. Not surprising, since we can’t expect fossils of the first membranes, proteins etc. to be readily to hand.
However ID spends almost all its time attacking the evolution of certain features of complex organisms, and then using this as a springboard to attack the whole idea of evolution of species. (This is because what really troubles them is the common descent of MAN, for narrow doctrinal reasons concerning the Fall and Redemption.) It is the attack on evolution of species that gets them all the flak, because it flies – idiotically – in the face of the overwhelming success of evolution as an explanatory and predictive theory.
Even on the origin of life, there's a problem: (a) just because we don’t yet have a good model does not mean the explanation MUST be supernatural, and (b) the moment you accept a supernatural explanation you kill further enquiry stone dead. This is because an agent outside natural laws and mechanisms can do as it pleases, so its effects are impossible to detect, predict or rationalise in a repeatable way. This is – intrinsically – a science stopper and as such cannot be within natural science. To put the same thing pragmatically, so long as there are enquiring minds, any belief in a supernatural explanation will be just set to one side, while the search for a natural explanation continues. That’s what science has done since the Renaissance. So, apart from their perverse attacks on evolution, ID also annoys people because they can't or won't follow this logic and insist their ideas are science. (Again, there's a motive – they want to teach it in US schools.)
Now, if one asks what is the meaning or purpose of the magnificent order we see in the world, and of man's place in it all, then I for one am willing to respect those who suggest there is room to discuss a creator – and maybe a personal God too. But that is metaphysics, philosophy or religion. Natural science does not address such questions.
I agree with you: if ID would only confine itself to abiogenesis (and maybe cosmogeny), and express itself as a PHILOSOPHY as you suggest, I think it would be far more understandable. But IDers can’t do this, because of the doctrinal issue that drives them plus their desire to teach it in school.
Why do people persist in talking about "the first organism" or "the first cell?" It is much more likely that there was a long and tortuous continuum from what we would clearly recognize as non-living chemicals to what we would clearly recognize as a living organism. No one trying to find a serious answer to the origin of life conceives of life "just appearing one day."
What Capt. Haddock and ram said, basically.
There are a great many people who are as curious as you, but where they take it is far more interesting in philosophy than laying it at the feet of an unknowable and untestable interaction between a "Designer" and proto-life. What can be difficult to grasp, is that the first life didn't just spring into existence one day nearly 3.5 billion years ago. The precedents had been around, following laws of physics and chemistry, to bond and form the proteins and structures characteristic of life. The definition of life that separates living cells from non-living cells is not necessarily a solidly delineated barrier that is readily and easily distinguished by an observer. Viruses, for example, show many characteristics of living organisms yet lack others. How do you say definitively whether they are "alive" or "not alive?" It's a good philosophical question than can only be answered through the explorative methods of scientific inquiry
There is a great deal of research into abiogenesis, and it isn't being done through Intelligent Design.
If you are truly curious, then there are places you can look to learn what we know and what we are still trying to find on abiogenesis. Wikipedia is a always a useful place to start.
For example, I just posted a link to a huge paper full of abiogenesis research abstracts: http://www.naontiotami.com/2011/04/want-to-be-slo…
Actually we recognize the pocket watch as being manufactured only because we have an understanding of its process
of manufacture
or we have a familiarity with objects that are similarly manufactured.
Design: Schema of objective elements.
Intelligent: Having the faculty of reasoning.
The exclusion of Design and Intelligence by Evolutionists blinds them. The conclusion Physical, Chemical, Organic, Cellular, Mental, Social and Spiritual properties are not the product of design isn't the result of scientific thinking, it's just another religious superstition, one without a god.
I don't exclude intelligence and design from evolutionary theory a priori, they just haven't been shown to have played a part in the diversification of life. That could change, hypothetically, but nobody has yet to formulate ID in a way that is scientific. The current ID "hypothesis" is vague, unjustified and non-predictive.
NaonTiotami said:
I don't exclude intelligence and design from evolutionary theory a priori, they just haven't been shown to have played a part in the diversification of life.
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Shown v/s Recognized? My Grandfather said more than once, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Design and intelligence are not part of life, they are the essence of life! Evolution doesn't explain the how, the why or the purpose of life. Evolution is a straight jacket, limiting imagination and suppressing dissent. Evolution is like a thermostat, increasing and decreasing traits to fit the environment, it tells us nothing about where energy comes from.
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That could change, hypothetically, but nobody has yet to formulate ID in a way that is scientific.
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Nobody you've come across perhaps, but when you know evolution's limits, you'll realize what's guiding it must have the same property that makes you smart.
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The current ID "hypothesis" is vague, unjustified and non-predictive.
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Intelligence is non predictive when you don't know it's motive. Current ID theory is in it's infancy but it's foundation is solid. To understand ID theory one must understand the concept of Irreducible complexity. Unfortunately the definition is muddled by meta-programs in ME believer's minds. The concept wasn't invented by ID proponents as claimed, it was borrowed and the false definition is what makes ID appear "vague".
jrh
"Shown v/s Recognized? My Grandfather said more than once, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Design and intelligence are not part of life, they are the essence of life! Evolution doesn't explain the how, the why or the purpose of life. Evolution is a straight jacket, limiting imagination and suppressing dissent. Evolution is like a thermostat, increasing and decreasing traits to fit the environment, it tells us nothing about where energy comes from."
You're assuming a lot there – that life has or needs a purpose, that evolution is limited to minor adaptation, that life is synonymous with design… You'll need to justify all those points.
"Nobody you've come across perhaps, but when you know evolution's limits, you'll realize what's guiding it must have the same property that makes you smart."
If you know someone who has formulated ID scientifically, please point me in their direction. Also, there are rarely explanatory dichotomies in science, especially at the theory level, where a near infinite number of hypothetical explanations exist. Disproving evolution would not constitute evidence for intelligent design.
"Intelligence is non predictive when you don't know it's motive. Current ID theory is in it's infancy but it's foundation is solid. To understand ID theory one must understand the concept of Irreducible complexity. Unfortunately the definition is muddled by meta-programs in ME believer's minds. The concept wasn't invented by ID proponents as claimed, it was borrowed and the false definition is what makes ID appear "vague"."
I agree with the first sentence, but… ID is being built up the wrong way. Since "intelligence" doesn't predict any specific data, intelligent agents as explanations must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, using characteristics about those agents as a basis for tests and predictions. Since we currently have no intelligent agent candidates, this specific form of ID isn't useful.
jrh, I believe you attribute to "evolutionists" (i.e. most educated people and 99.99% of biologists) a way of thinking that is intrinsic to all natural science. The business of science is to make models of the physical world that follow repeatable laws and processes, enabling observations to be ordered and simplified and successful predictions made. I'll repeat the explanation I gave higher up this thread, as to why the supernatural must be excluded from the methods of science:
The moment you accept a supernatural explanation you kill further enquiry stone dead. This is because an agent outside natural laws and mechanisms can do as it pleases, so its effects are impossible to detect, predict or rationalise in a repeatable way. This is – intrinsically – a science stopper and as such cannot be within natural science. To put the same thing pragmatically, so long as there are enquiring minds, any belief in a supernatural explanation will be just set to one side, while the search for a natural explanation continues. That’s what science has done since the Renaissance.
Please note this is NOT atheism: plenty of scientists are religious believers and plenty more respect their views. It is open to scientists to doubt that a natural explanation will ever be found for certain things – and they may attribute this to design, or God. But that is a philosophical or religious view, and is outside the scope of science. So don't expect to see it in scientific journals or congresses.
Capt. Haddock said:
I believe you attribute to "evolutionists" (i.e. most educated people and 99.99% of biologists) a way of thinking that is intrinsic to all natural science.
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Excluding Design and Intelligence from understanding?
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The business of science is to make models of the physical world that follow repeatable laws and processes, enabling observations to be ordered and simplified and successful predictions made. I'll repeat the explanation I gave higher up this thread, as to why the supernatural must be excluded from the methods of science:
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Before Newton, integrals were supernatural. Even the simplest Cells have elements of collective reasoning. Primitive cells could perceive, discern, memorize and respond and the first group that "evolved" to act together would have such an advantage, any without the ability would not survive. Evolution is the outcome of behavior, not the cause. Design, intelligence and purpose are the foundation of understanding. Even if life was able to self manifest without intervention, it would increase the need for "design" because it would require something like DNA to be embedded in atoms.
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The moment you accept a supernatural explanation you kill further enquiry stone dead.
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The moment concepts necessary for understanding are excluded, you're at a dead end.
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This is because an agent outside natural laws and mechanisms can do as it pleases, so its effects are impossible to detect, predict or rationalize in a repeatable way.
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The Laws of information are not necessarily natural and apply to any logical system including Realities cause.
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This is – intrinsically – a science stopper and as such cannot be within natural science.
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Denying intelligence is/was involved in life's process is a science killer.
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To put the same thing pragmatically, so long as there are enquiring minds, any belief in a supernatural explanation will be just set to one side, while the search for a natural explanation continues.
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The cause of Reality can't be natural. There is a great difference between Scientific law and Realities cause. The claim the supernatural can't be investigated, is no longer true. Simulated Reality, Molecular Biology and Quantum Mechanics have opened the door to a new way of thinking and ID leads the way through the door.
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That’s what science has done since the Renaissance.
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Precisely, evolution was a step forward then, now it's holding us back.
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Please note this is NOT atheism: plenty of scientists are religious believers and plenty more respect their views.
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Atheists need evolution to be true and know nothing has purpose. Those who know God exists, see evolution as the unfolding of a plan and know everything has purpose.
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It is open to scientists to doubt that a natural explanation will ever be found for certain things – and they may attribute this to design, or God.
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Quantum computing is supernatural and we're already there!
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But that is a philosophical or religious view, and is outside the scope of science.
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Religion is the science of morality. It's tenants aren't materialistic, but then neither are information's.
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So don't expect to see it in scientific journals or congresses.
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The United states was the first country founded on the religious principle all men are Created Equal.
jrh
“The moment concepts necessary for understanding are excluded, you’re at a dead end.”
The moment you include concepts that are by definition incomprehensible you are at a dead end.
“Denying intelligence is/was involved in life’s process is a science killer.”
Biologists deny intelligence was involved because no matter how hard they look they cannot see evidence of intelligence being involved. Introducing unnecessary explanations is a science-killer. ID is an untestable statement of belief, or actually of disbelief.
“The cause of Reality can’t be natural. There is a great difference between Scientific law and Realities cause. The claim the supernatural can’t be investigated, is no longer true. Simulated Reality, Molecular Biology and Quantum Mechanics have opened the door to a new way of thinking and ID leads the way through the door.”
I am not quite sure what “Simulated reality, molecular biology and quantum mechanics” can possibly have to do with ID, except to demonstrate that Michael Behe is not a very good researcher.
“Quantum computing is supernatural and we’re already there!”
Lolwut?
“Religion is the science of morality. It’s tenants aren’t materialistic, but then neither are information’s.”
Science requires testing and revision, and has no tenets. When does religion test or revise anything?
“The United states was the first country founded on the religious principle all men are Created Equal.”
You must belong to some religion I have never heard of. There are no democracies in the Bible. I don’t recall reading about how God instructed the Israelites to elect a president and a bicameral legislature. There is a book of Kings, however.
This is slightly off-topic, but to pose a question to Jack Scanlan:
If, say, one was to sequence a given gene in an organism, and encoded in that sequenced DNA was a message, why would that be indicative of intelligence?
Well, you'd have to give me an example of the message first. Also, it wouldn't be indicative of "intelligence" per se, it would be indicative of a human scientist messing with synthetic biology. But again, it would depend on the "message".
There is message in gene. The message is instruction for how a protein should be built.
That's not a "message" we associate with humans. Sure, humans design things, but calling their designs "messages" is removing the word "message" from its proper context.
ID creationists really enjoy using buzzwords and such that they’ve read in one of their favorite ID creationist books or websites, but they never seem to inquire beyond the stated buzzword. I’ve seen IDCs claim that nucleotides are symbolic, and when I ask what they symbolize, I get no answer, or at most, get something abou thow ATGC are letters, they are codes, and codes produce messages. When I point out that there is nothing inherently symbolic about nucleotides, and that WE appended the letters to those molecules for our own convenience, I get accused of ‘equivocation.’
It is truly something to behold.
Renee Marie Jones said: The hallmark of human design is simplicity, not complexity.
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Confusing complexity with randomness is the cause of the misunderstanding. The watch appears simple by design, the rock complex because "random" forces made it. The record of the past in the rock becomes information to those who know how to read it. (Geologists) Just as the "complexity' of the watch is known by those who understand design.
jrh
I don’t know about “messages” but there is certainly information in our genes: information about the environment. That information is produced by a process of random mutation followed by selection by the environment. It is the moment of selection that produces the information. Without selection it is just noise.