Also, biologists agree that the search space for a viable protein is extremely small. Only 1 in 10^11 randomly generated proteins are active _at all_ (not necessarily _usefully_ active, just active at all -- as in have a binding site for ATP).
"The thing is, the Earth is a very large system, and it spans a very long timeframe."
The timeframe proposed is actually very short for the kinds of changes required by evolution.
"Just about anything can be done with enough time and resources"
This is actually false. It is based on a misreading of the probability formula. The classic probability formula is for looking at the probability of independent events. Since all biological reactions are equilibrium reactions, the probabilities are drastically smaller (if not 0) than otherwise examined.
"Indeed, since I am here arguing about it, something must obviously have worked, and thus we set out to find that something."
You are assuming that matter and motion are all that exists. ID states that not all of reality is reducible to matter and motion. If it were, then choice would be an invalid concept.
"And even more finally, even if "accidental" or "random" evolution is shown to be very unlikely, it means only that."
Scientifically, it does. That's exactly what "error bars" are for in science. What you are saying is error bars are unnecessary in science, because it's possible that whatever we are looking at beat the probabilities. So, not only did you abandon testability for evolution, you have simultaneously removed it from all of science.
"That "design" wasn't the only possible solution to the natural selection pressure."
Thanks for playing "speculations gone wild". To advance to "real science" you need to make the case that any of these things are possible at all using only natural selection.
We know it is possible by design. I can modify an organism by direct intent to do whatever it is that I want to do. We don't know that it's possible without design.
"The predictions were falsifiable. Intelligent Design has none of that."
Really? The work of the Avida project is specifically aimed to test Behe's claims to see if they can be falsified. If Behe's claims were not falsifiable, the Avida project would not exist.
In this case you have one research (Behe) whose theories inspire specific research on other theories (the Avida project). Is this not how science is _supposed_ to work? Or do you claim that Avida's work is outside science is well?
"You also have to explain who the designer is, what forces he or she allays in order to effect change, when and where these forces were used."
If an archaeologist were to stumble upon a machine in the middle of the jungle, would they have to find out the identity of the designer to make an inference that the machine was designed, or know what specific tools were used in the machine?
Are you saying that the given archaeologist would be unscientific if they said that the given contraption likely has a designer?
"Evolution is one of the most sound and accepted theories in all of science."
Really? Quantum Mechanics is accurate in its calculations to 9 decimal places. What, specifically, can be calculated in evolution to that degree?
Likewise, what, specifically, are you talking about when you say "evolution"? Are you talking about simple "change" or "Universal Common Ancestry". If it's the former, then you have no disagreement with anyone, seeing as how we don't have offspring who are identical to us. If its the latter, then perhaps you could show the proof.
"ID doesn't even qualify as a theory, more like a fantasy."
Using what sort of demarcation argument? Perhaps you should learn more about ID.
"Oh you mean pseudo-scientists like IDers?"
In what way is Behe a pseudo-scientist? Or Dembski? Both of them have peer-reviewed works dealing with aspects of Intelligent Design.
Actually, evolution is a term often used by people to equivocate on to push their own agenda. If evolution is only talking about observed change, then you would have to classify all creationists as evolutionists. If that is what you're talking about, then there is no disagreement.
On the other hand, if you are referring to Universal Common Ancestry, then you have left the realm of observational science, and are doing forensic/historical science, which has as much to do with ones presuppositions as it does with data.
"Darwinian natural selection is the currently best theory to explain evolution."
This is also incorrect. Darwinian natural selection explains almost nothing. The actual explanations have been coming from the biological self-organization camp, which is anything but Darwinian. See Shapiro for example, among many others.
"Neither of these has anything to do woth the big bang."
When discussing whole-cloth origins issues, you usually find people in general categories. The Big Bang follows the same assumptions as Darwinism, and therefore, is linked more than people think. Likewise, issues regarding the age of the earth are highly linked with Darwinism.
"Well, evolution is a fact. Natural selection is a theory."
Again, what is the definition of evolution?
"If you know anything about science you know that we can never have incontrovertable proof. If we could it wouldn't be science."
Read the article. I would have fired him too no matter what he said for denigrating the child's parents. From the article:
"When are you going to stop believing that crap your parents teach you?"
If _any_ educator holds parents in such contempt, they should be fired immediately. He didn't just go off on creation or evolution, but was specifically denigrating the child's parents.
Access was the most useless tool. Any job that it was appropriately sized for was easier to do in Excel, and anything which was too large for managing in Excel handily exceeded the knowledge and design skill of those using Access, and usually quickly outpaced access itself.
Universal Common Ancestry was widely believed even before Darwin's grandfather. Darwin's was not bold in saying that there was common ancestry, but instead that all the transformations that were accomplished happened without any notion of purpose or looking ahead.
Darwin did hold some Lamarckian ideas, but still beleived that the direction that the change took place was not purposed either by the organism nor by a creator, but instead that many directions were taken within a population, and the successful ones were kept.
What's really interesting is that Mendel actually used his experiments as a refutation of transformism.
Current biology is actually moving away from both Darwin and the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Shapiro has a good overview:
Basically, the idea of a passive cell and a passive genome is going towards a much more Lamarckian idea of an active cell and active genome, making purposeful changes. Another good read on the subject is Evolution in Four Dimensions:
"Cutting down and optimizing existing code is not nearly as glorious as adding new features."
Bzzzt. Wrong.
The problem with OpenOffice is that it started out as a commercial product, and has been trying to fix itself ever since. This was nice because it already solved the problem -- an Office-like suite of tools -- but it was fairly braindead in the way it went about it. But that's what we inherited, and so that's what is being worked on.
If you want to look at open-source projects for a development style comparison, look for the ones that were open-source from their conception, like AbiWord and Gnumeric. Both of these apps are extremely light on their feet, and very good. They both still have some feature catch-up to do, but I am confident that they will.
"you're just making a leap of faith as if that had to be the case, and no alternative explanation is allowed."
Actually it sounds like you're basically agreeing with me.
It all depends on what you mean by "the idea that the process of thought can indeed be understood at all levels."
If this means that you can form a fully predictive model given perfect data and perfect knowledge of processes, then you have undermined choice. If it simply means that you know where in the process that choice comes in, then I think we're in agreement.
"I don't believe there is anything magical about the brain, and I believe it can be reproduced in a man-made form. But I think it is far far more complex than we yet realize."
So do you think that choice is reducible to material mechanisms? If so, how would "choice" come about at all? If choice is reducible to material mechanisms, it is not choice at all. If choice is a fact of life, and choice is not reducible to material mechanisms, then in fact there is something "magical" about the brain, or at least the mind. If choice is not a fact of life, then I have no control over whether or not I write this message.
"(a) It is worth noting that a new idea surpassing current thinking (and demoting current thinking to wrong, old ideas) is not arbitrary. (b) It is not a matter of the old scientists dieing off."
I agree with (a) but disagree with (b). Saying (b) is simply ignoring the social aspects of science because they aren't pretty. But that in fact is how science often works. The new ideas cannot gain traction while the old guard is in control. The new scientists are able to see both theories for what they are, and choose the better one, but the old scientists (a) have too much vested in the old model (like their entire reputations), and (b) after agreeing with a particular model for an extended length of time, have trouble seeing the difference between something which disagrees with their model and something that disagrees with reality. After a while, they become one and the same.
I think that they never understood the _point_ of free software. The point of free software is not the $0 price tag, it is the _freedom_ that it brings. It isn't shared access to the CVS repository, it is the freedom for the customer to be independent of the vendor.
Let's look at a better compromise in terms of the _actual_ goals of the GPL:
1) keep the CVS repository to yourself 2) never give out the software for free, EVER 3) primarily provide the software as part of a larger turn-key system 4) keep the GPL license
This means that no matter what, their competition is ALWAYS a step behind them release-wise. It also means that their competition is a paying customer. This means, if the ripper-offers are still causing them trouble, they can just up the price -- after all, it would wind up that the ripper-offers would be the ones paying, not the end customers, so they would be paying for development, not software.
Basically, it is not free-software nor the GPL to blame necessarily, but free software done stupidly.
The problem I have with this idea is that it violates what used to a more-or-less sacred right of GPL -- the right for a company to use AND MODIFY a program to suit their own internal needs WITHOUT sharing the code with anyone. In fact, the FSF explicitly chastised the Apple license in its "forced sharing" aspect of its license. I can see the issue, but I don't think that it's nearly as bad as is claimed, nor is it as bad as the solutions. Ultimately, we all use internal company software in an indirect way, and this is simply a different indirect way. The user still has full control over what runs on their computers, both to share and not share. The difference is that the software is not running on the user's computer. The only modification I could see them making which would be historically consistent with the FSF's stance is to require that the _javascript_ be under the GPL, since that component is in fact redistributed and does in fact run on the remote user's computer. Other than that, I see such an amendment to be directly contrary to the FSF's historical stance on software freedom.
I think we've got a double-problem. On the one hand, you have the buyers, who should be reasonable human beings, and be able to think for themselves. On the other hand, you have the sellers, who should be required to make a good-faith effort at being correct. The sellers should not be regarded as super-human, and without mistake, but by the same token the buyers should not have to have a degree in engineering to think that the product will work reliably.
Now, with computer software, the ultimate user of the product IS NOT the consumer. In fact, it is the computer. The computer misbalances this equation, because the computer is not reasonable. Any minor error, and the computer cannot compensate. The same even for vaguery. Likewise, it is nearly impossible to be able to do a complete space-search for every possible problem. However, ANY problem leaves the consumer prone to danger, damage, and theft. Similarly, neither the consumers, the courts, nor the government are qualified to determine if a problem in software is a matter of simple error or of negligence.
Therefore, in our currently litigious environment, it makes sense to disclaim warranty. I wish it weren't so, but it makes sense, especially for free software, but also for other software. However, I _would_ be in favor of requiring all such disclaimers be present and _prevalent_ in any advertising for such a product. It would be quite amusing to show a Microsoft Office commercial where everyone is happy and joyous and then have to end it with "we don't warrant that this even works at all".
"Also, why aren't these nifty ID detection methods ever used in archaeology and SETI?"
Demski's explanatory filter is precisely what is used by both these fields. In SETI, the questions that are asked are:
Is this signal a known type of signal? Could this signal be a result of random noise? If the answer is no to both of these, then it has a high likelihood of being a true signal. This is precisely Dembski's explanatory filter in action. SETI tries to accomplish both of these in one swoop by looking for a very high-energy and narrow band (most known types of signals are wide-band, and most noise is low energy).
"BTW, do you say Mozart and Apache are examples of intelligent design because you applied Dembski's "explanatory filter" to them, or because you know people created that stuff?"
While I know origins of Mozart and Apache, let's pretend for a minute that I didn't. If I heard a symphony, I would assume that the symphony had its origins in a designer, and not by random noises. Likewise, if I found a cool computer program on the Internet, and did not know its origin, I would assume that it had a designer and did not come into being through chance manipulations.
"ID is not simply about making measurements, it's part of what is called the Wedge Strategy."
Yes, there are two parts to ID: (1) a mathematical model of Design Detection, and (2) removing materialism as a foregone conclusion in science, law, and education. If you want to know more about it, you should probably read Philip Johnson's book, The Wedge of Truth, and perhaps also Reason in the Balance. Many people make a lot of hoopla over the wedge, but there's nothing really very radical about it. It simply says, "we have assumed too much -- let's go back and revisit our assumptions."
As to your quotes, while I hadn't read the first one (I'd be interested to do so, I know the library has a copy of that book), the rest are simply saying just what I said in my last post -- the ability to ask questions that were previously ruled as out-of-bounds.
"Phillip Johnson makes numerous references to Darwin's theory of evolution and clearly regards evolution incompatible with ID."
The problem is the word "evolution", a word that has so many meanings that it means nothing. If you use it to just mean "change", then there is literally noone in any creationist community who disagrees with you. If you use it to mean "natural selection", Johnson would not disagree with the idea that dead things don't reproduce, and sick things don't reproduce as much. If you mean Universal Common Ancestry, then Johnson probably disagrees with you, though most of the rest of the ID'ers would not. However, if you mean full Darwinism -- that we were created by a completely blind process that had no ends in mind -- that's where you get disagreement.
"It's clear to me that those ID proponents not only believe something supernatural occurred, but also have a very clear idea of who the Designer is."
No doubt at all to me, either. And I never said anything else. What I did say was that they separate theological from scientific arguments, and that Intelligent Design (though I probably would have been more accurate to say "design detection") is the scientific measurement, and the rest comes from other forms of knowledge, not scientific knowledge. I thought I had addressed this in a previous posting, but perhaps not.
"Then it rather defeats the purpose to try to use science as a route to finding out about the Designer."
Why? Science is a route to knowledge, just not the only one. In addition, the different forms of knowledge should not be contradictory, or else one of them is not knowledge. If a person believes that God acted in the world, then it would be a very weak belief if they thought he left no empirical evidence.
"What purpose does ID serve you personally?"
Personally, I am not hugely committed to ID, except to point out to people who are vehemently against it that they usually haven't really understood ID at all. I do agree with, I guess, one and a half of its tenets. I agree that materialism is an unwarranted assumption, and I agree with the idea to remove it as a necessary assumption of science. I also agree with design detection, though I am not entirely sold on the way that Dembski is doing it. It's not that I necessarily think that he is wrong, but I think instead that he is approaching it from the wrong angle, which makes it both harder to comprehend and also harder to determine. I view Intelligent Design from a programming perspective, influenced by Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science". In there, he pointed out that of the cellular automata, Rule 110 was the most chaotic, and also was Turing complete. This lead me to the realization that programmatic expressiveness was a function of the chaotic-ness of the underlying system. The more chaotic the system, the more expressive it is for the programmer. However, this also means that, because the systems are chaotic, errors will cause the problems to be catastrophic, or at least very dramatic. And, it happens to be that Intelligent Designers as a matter of habit bring order to chaotic systems.
"That is: do you think every designing object must have a designer itself?"
No.
"One of the issues I see with ID is that even if it can prove that the universe was designed intelligently, it still won't explain what designed the designers."
How is that an issue with ID? What most people don't understand is that ID is simply a measurement. It's like measuring the temperature of the water. No thermometer, for example, will tell us HOW something got to be that temperature. It simply measures what is there. The process for finding out HOW the water got hot is different than determining WHAT the temperature is. ID is simply taking the "design" temperature. How the design got there would be an entirely different field altogether. While I am certain that most ID'ers have their own ideas of how this happened, all of them view that as a separate realm of inquiry. For more information of this separation, you should read Philip Johnson's book "The Wedge of Truth".
"The dictionary definition says that naturalism is the philosophy that the world can be understood in scientific terms without recourse to spiritual or supernatural explanations."
Yes, but doing so abandons the very concept of reason. See the last paragraph on this post of mine for more details.
"That's odd, because the authoritative figures on this subject claim otherwise."
Which ones are these? Philip Johnson does not claim that scientifically, nor think that such would be a scientific conclusion. I am not sure whether he supports it spiritually. I am pretty sure from a rather full reading of Dembski that Dembski is against it as well, though Dembski often plays his cards close to his chest. Most people don't know, but most ID'ers believe completely agree with Universal Common Ancestry, Behe and Dembski included. ID does not of itself appeal to any type of design outside what I would consider "human-capable" design (not that it is limitted to our technology, but that it is limitted to the types of physical limitations that people have). There is another type of Intelligent Design, but I don't imagine that you've heard of any of them who follow it, called General Intelligent Design. I myself am quite unfamiliar with it, but I'm pretty sure it is much more supernatural in the requirements of the intelligence it is speaking of. The main work for that is by a Mathematician named Hermann, but I can't remember the title at the moment.
"It is much more likely in the scenario of a Designer that we were genetically engineered from apes and have no higher purpose than your average dog or cat."
ID does not rule this out, while Creationism does. However, most ID'ers and Creationists believe that science is not the only means to knowledge.
"The assumption that higher purpose must exist stems from wishful thinking."
Actually, it stems from revelation. Revelation as a source of knowledge is a key concept in Christianity.
"I tend to agree with this, although I believe that no amount of solid science is enough against wishful thinking."
Alchemy eventually came to an end. Of course, creation/evolution has been a sticking point since before the Greeks, so its probably wishful thinking to think that we will settle any time soon.
"Yes, but I can be perfectly skeptical of claims on both sides."
Great. It was sounding like you were only being skeptical to one side, but if you treat all sides with equal skepticism, then yes, you are truly a skeptic.
"The philosophical difference in opinion doesn't stem from preferring natural or supernatural explanations but from the wish to have religion be called religion and science science."
But you are still missing the fact that ALL cosmologies are inherently a mix of science and philosophy, as admitted by ALL cosmologists.
"I'll admit that the mathematical angle is a nice one, but the conclusions lead everywhere including UFO-based rel
"However, the Scientific Method that is at the core of science demands claims to be independently verifiable and falsifiable. Most Christian claims do not meet that criterion and thus do not qualify as scientific."
I think you are confusing Creationism and Intelligent Design. Creationism is a philosophical presupposition, much like the secular humanism, or the philosophical impetus of the Big Bang. As Hawking and Ellis say, you simply cannot do cosmology without mixing in philosophy.
Intelligent Design is simply identifying the characteristics of intelligent action. It is trying to determine a mathematical methodology to apply in order to do this. ID explicitly separates scientific claims of design from religious claims of who the designer is, or whether or not the designer is natural or supernatural.
"You might argue that science is religious too somehow, but you cannot argue that religion is scientific."
I never claimed the latter, though you can do scientific research on certain claims of faith, or using them as a starting point. The former is true of anyone who does cosmology at all. What is happening now is that although those who do cosmology readily admit that they do have a philosophic bias, they reject the philosophic biases of others who start from different places.
Now, perhaps cosmology should be excluded from science entirely -- I'm certainly open to that. But creationism is just as scientific (or unscientific) as any other cosmology, as neither are experimental or observable exercises (which are the characteristics of science). Intelligent Design is much more of a science than either one, because it is not cosmological -- it is simply a measurement.
You might be interested in a summary of Intelligent Design I wrote awhile back:
"We can see that naturalism gives us the most practical tools and predictive powers."
Incorrect. Experimentation and observation give us those things. Naturalism is the abandonment of reason, and is akin to admitting effects without a cause.
"Supernatural claims are almost always circular and can only predict after the fact"
Three things: (1) Intelligent Design differs from Creationism in that ID does not suppose that anything supernatural has occurred. It simply says that intelligence is a causitive force that is different from, but limitted by, natural law. And thus, reducing everything to material causes leaves out a great amount of what is occurring even in every day life. When I write a computer program, I am limitted to what can be done with natural law, but nonetheless creativity and intelligence act as a causitive force of their own to produce something novel. 2) In the case of historical reconstruction (i.e. cosmology), the point isn't practicality anyway. The point is to determine what happened. That is the question, isn't it? What happened. What practical value do we get from Hawking telling us that we formed from a singularity? Can we recreate the singularity? No. So, cosmology itself is different from observational/experimental science in this regard as a whole subject. 3) However, you are still missing the ultimate practical reason -- if we know who we are, how we were made, and why we were made, it then tells us what and how we should then live. Does God exist? Does He care about us? How does He want us to live? Do His wishes matter, or is God merely an illusion? These questions have more practical import than all that science has given us in the last 1,000 years. To answer them wrong because we have assumed the answer before starting is simply ludicrous.
"It's good that you agree that support of Darwin's theory of evolution is not based on what you call "secular assumptions""
Actually, I do. The Christian Church in America gave itself over to secularism quite a while
"No, you are trying to masquerade religion as science."
Incorrect. I'm separating out assumptions from observations. It is true that Christians bring a different set of assumptions to the table. It is also true that secularists bring a specific set of assumptions. It is not true that the secular assumptions are somehow "more scientific" than the Christian ones.
"Whenever someone defends creationism, you can do a 100 to 1 bet than they'll answer "yes" when asked if they happen to be Christian"
You can actually do the same for evolution, simply because Christianity is the dominant religion in america, for both evolutionists and creationists.
"Naturalism is not a religion or a foundation for religious thinking."
Yes, it is. Secular humanism (which is simply a form of naturalism) considers itself a religion without a deity.
"Please don't equate your comfortable myth with healthy skepticism"
Of course "skepticism" gets applied to other people's beliefs, not to secularism or naturalism. It's easy to name-call "comfortable" versus "skeptical", but it's really a baseless charge, considering the fact that Christianity requires your very life, while "skepticism" requires nothing at all except what you want it to require.
The problem with mitochondrial myopathies is that it is often unclear whether the problem is nuclear or mitochondrian DNA. Mitochondrion use DNA from both sources, so having faulty mitochondrion doesn't necessarily indicate that using other mitochondrion will solve things.
"Like most others defending "Intelligent Design", you too are quite dishonest."
Like most who are calling creationists and ID'ers dishonest, the fact is you just disagree but don't like people on the other side, and so resort to calling names. There has been nothing dishonest -- only things that you disagree with. Yet for some reason you can't simply disagree, you have to call them liars.
"e.g. Dishonestly putting words in my mouth:"
Oh please -- you can't handle a little irony? Play on words? You have to resort to name-calling?
"And, honestly, I can't stop you from polluting science threads with your "I know you are, but what I am" attemps at equating science and religion"
I'm not equating science and religion. I'm differentiating observational science from philosophical claims made in the name of science. The latter do occur regularly, both in science classes and even in science in the field. If materialism is simply an assumption for experimental purposes, science must acknowledge that its results do not hold when non-material causes are at play (which they do not). If they do not acknowledge this, then they are indeed engaging in philosophical and theological statements. That is simply a fact.
"They used political power to attempt to discredit the content of a science book because it does not correspond to their religious beliefs."
They were not discreditting the book, but rather noting that the metaphysical assumptions were unproven, which is true.
"To do this, they disguised their religious agenda under a veil of pseudoscience because they aren't allowed to overtly censor scientific teaching based on religious grounds."
Except that evolution is done on religious grounds, namely naturalism. This is the problem - evolution presents the results of secular philosophy as an observable fact, when it is not.
"It is sneaky because they snuck their faith in a science class through the ballot box."
The ballot box is precisely the place where a publicly-funded, publicly-run course should be handled. We opted for a democracy rather than rule by philosophers. This is part of it.
"It is dishonest because they hid their religious motivations."
You mean the biologists? I agree completely. They should not pretend that materialism is an observable fact of nature and should admit its philosophical and theological underpinnings.
"It is underhanded because it was worded so as to evade notice of their religious motivations."
Oh, you're talking about the people who put in the sticker. You are correct that people involved with religion tend to understand philosophical issues better than others, but I don't think its necessary that they explicitly mention their worldview every time. Should we have made Francis Crick mention the fact that the whole reason he was in biology was to discredit the Christian faith every time he spoke? What about Dawkins, same there? Or are you just prejudiced against Christians? If we always mention religious motivations, shouldn't we always tell people when we talk about genetics why Mendel thought it was evidence against evolution, and his religious motivations for developing his theory?
""Intelligent Design" is a religious movement using scientific jargon to discredit actual science. That is not honest."
Actually, Intelligent Design is two things:
1) a mathematical description of design, used to detect design in objects and systems
2) a rejection of materialist philosophy as the sole operating mode of science
Slashdot Mirror
"Also, exactly how unlikely is "mathematically unlikely"? Is there any credible calculation of this probability anywhere?"
Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that require multiple amino acid residues.
Also, biologists agree that the search space for a viable protein is extremely small. Only 1 in 10^11 randomly generated proteins are active _at all_ (not necessarily _usefully_ active, just active at all -- as in have a binding site for ATP).
Functional proteins from a random-sequence library.
Likewise, Dembski has done some work regarding such search spaces in his book No Free Lunch and the online paper Searching Large Spaces.
"The thing is, the Earth is a very large system, and it spans a very long timeframe."
The timeframe proposed is actually very short for the kinds of changes required by evolution.
"Just about anything can be done with enough time and resources"
This is actually false. It is based on a misreading of the probability formula. The classic probability formula is for looking at the probability of independent events. Since all biological reactions are equilibrium reactions, the probabilities are drastically smaller (if not 0) than otherwise examined.
"Indeed, since I am here arguing about it, something must obviously have worked, and thus we set out to find that something."
You are assuming that matter and motion are all that exists. ID states that not all of reality is reducible to matter and motion. If it were, then choice would be an invalid concept.
"And even more finally, even if "accidental" or "random" evolution is shown to be very unlikely, it means only that."
Scientifically, it does. That's exactly what "error bars" are for in science. What you are saying is error bars are unnecessary in science, because it's possible that whatever we are looking at beat the probabilities. So, not only did you abandon testability for evolution, you have simultaneously removed it from all of science.
"That "design" wasn't the only possible solution to the natural selection pressure."
Thanks for playing "speculations gone wild". To advance to "real science" you need to make the case that any of these things are possible at all using only natural selection.
We know it is possible by design. I can modify an organism by direct intent to do whatever it is that I want to do. We don't know that it's possible without design.
"The predictions were falsifiable. Intelligent Design has none of that."
Really? The work of the Avida project is specifically aimed to test Behe's claims to see if they can be falsified. If Behe's claims were not falsifiable, the Avida project would not exist.
In this case you have one research (Behe) whose theories inspire specific research on other theories (the Avida project). Is this not how science is _supposed_ to work? Or do you claim that Avida's work is outside science is well?
"You also have to explain who the designer is, what forces he or she allays in order to effect change, when and where these forces were used."
If an archaeologist were to stumble upon a machine in the middle of the jungle, would they have to find out the identity of the designer to make an inference that the machine was designed, or know what specific tools were used in the machine?
Are you saying that the given archaeologist would be unscientific if they said that the given contraption likely has a designer?
"Evolution is one of the most sound and accepted theories in all of science."
Really? Quantum Mechanics is accurate in its calculations to 9 decimal places. What, specifically, can be calculated in evolution to that degree?
Likewise, what, specifically, are you talking about when you say "evolution"? Are you talking about simple "change" or "Universal Common Ancestry". If it's the former, then you have no disagreement with anyone, seeing as how we don't have offspring who are identical to us. If its the latter, then perhaps you could show the proof.
"ID doesn't even qualify as a theory, more like a fantasy."
Using what sort of demarcation argument? Perhaps you should learn more about ID.
"Oh you mean pseudo-scientists like IDers?"
In what way is Behe a pseudo-scientist? Or Dembski? Both of them have peer-reviewed works dealing with aspects of Intelligent Design.
"Evolution is the (observed) change in species."
Actually, evolution is a term often used by people to equivocate on to push their own agenda. If evolution is only talking about observed change, then you would have to classify all creationists as evolutionists. If that is what you're talking about, then there is no disagreement.
On the other hand, if you are referring to Universal Common Ancestry, then you have left the realm of observational science, and are doing forensic/historical science, which has as much to do with ones presuppositions as it does with data.
"Darwinian natural selection is the currently best theory to explain evolution."
This is also incorrect. Darwinian natural selection explains almost nothing. The actual explanations have been coming from the biological self-organization camp, which is anything but Darwinian. See Shapiro for example, among many others.
"Neither of these has anything to do woth the big bang."
When discussing whole-cloth origins issues, you usually find people in general categories. The Big Bang follows the same assumptions as Darwinism, and therefore, is linked more than people think. Likewise, issues regarding the age of the earth are highly linked with Darwinism.
"Well, evolution is a fact. Natural selection is a theory."
Again, what is the definition of evolution?
"If you know anything about science you know that we can never have incontrovertable proof. If we could it wouldn't be science."
Quite true.
Read the article. I would have fired him too no matter what he said for denigrating the child's parents. From the article:
"When are you going to stop believing that crap your parents teach you?"
If _any_ educator holds parents in such contempt, they should be fired immediately. He didn't just go off on creation or evolution, but was specifically denigrating the child's parents.
That is 100% inappropriate.
Access was the most useless tool. Any job that it was appropriately sized for was easier to do in Excel, and anything which was too large for managing in Excel handily exceeded the knowledge and design skill of those using Access, and usually quickly outpaced access itself.
Universal Common Ancestry was widely believed even before Darwin's grandfather. Darwin's was not bold in saying that there was common ancestry, but instead that all the transformations that were accomplished happened without any notion of purpose or looking ahead.
o l.html
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Darwin did hold some Lamarckian ideas, but still beleived that the direction that the change took place was not purposed either by the organism nor by a creator, but instead that many directions were taken within a population, and the successful ones were kept.
What's really interesting is that Mendel actually used his experiments as a refutation of transformism.
Current biology is actually moving away from both Darwin and the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Shapiro has a good overview:
http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/21st_Cent_View_Ev
Basically, the idea of a passive cell and a passive genome is going towards a much more Lamarckian idea of an active cell and active genome, making purposeful changes. Another good read on the subject is Evolution in Four Dimensions:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262101076
"Cutting down and optimizing existing code is not nearly as glorious as adding new features."
Bzzzt. Wrong.
The problem with OpenOffice is that it started out as a commercial product, and has been trying to fix itself ever since. This was nice because it already solved the problem -- an Office-like suite of tools -- but it was fairly braindead in the way it went about it. But that's what we inherited, and so that's what is being worked on.
If you want to look at open-source projects for a development style comparison, look for the ones that were open-source from their conception, like AbiWord and Gnumeric. Both of these apps are extremely light on their feet, and very good. They both still have some feature catch-up to do, but I am confident that they will.
"you're just making a leap of faith as if that had to be the case, and no alternative explanation is allowed."
Actually it sounds like you're basically agreeing with me.
It all depends on what you mean by "the idea that the process of thought can indeed be understood at all levels."
If this means that you can form a fully predictive model given perfect data and perfect knowledge of processes, then you have undermined choice. If it simply means that you know where in the process that choice comes in, then I think we're in agreement.
"With our increasing knowledge of the mechanics of life, it's a matter of time until somebody succeeds in creating life from scratch."
Maybe, but it depends on how life is defined.
"For my money, a much more interesting question is, can we create *intelligence* from scratch?"
Instead of intelligence, the more interesting question is can we impart the ability to make choices on material matter?
"I don't believe there is anything magical about the brain, and I believe it can be reproduced in a man-made form. But I think it is far far more complex than we yet realize."
So do you think that choice is reducible to material mechanisms? If so, how would "choice" come about at all? If choice is reducible to material mechanisms, it is not choice at all. If choice is a fact of life, and choice is not reducible to material mechanisms, then in fact there is something "magical" about the brain, or at least the mind. If choice is not a fact of life, then I have no control over whether or not I write this message.
"(a) It is worth noting that a new idea surpassing current thinking (and demoting current thinking to wrong, old ideas) is not arbitrary. (b) It is not a matter of the old scientists dieing off."
I agree with (a) but disagree with (b). Saying (b) is simply ignoring the social aspects of science because they aren't pretty. But that in fact is how science often works. The new ideas cannot gain traction while the old guard is in control. The new scientists are able to see both theories for what they are, and choose the better one, but the old scientists (a) have too much vested in the old model (like their entire reputations), and (b) after agreeing with a particular model for an extended length of time, have trouble seeing the difference between something which disagrees with their model and something that disagrees with reality. After a while, they become one and the same.
I think that they never understood the _point_ of free software. The point of free software is not the $0 price tag, it is the _freedom_ that it brings. It isn't shared access to the CVS repository, it is the freedom for the customer to be independent of the vendor.
Let's look at a better compromise in terms of the _actual_ goals of the GPL:
1) keep the CVS repository to yourself
2) never give out the software for free, EVER
3) primarily provide the software as part of a larger turn-key system
4) keep the GPL license
This means that no matter what, their competition is ALWAYS a step behind them release-wise. It also means that their competition is a paying customer. This means, if the ripper-offers are still causing them trouble, they can just up the price -- after all, it would wind up that the ripper-offers would be the ones paying, not the end customers, so they would be paying for development, not software.
Basically, it is not free-software nor the GPL to blame necessarily, but free software done stupidly.
The problem I have with this idea is that it violates what used to a more-or-less sacred right of GPL -- the right for a company to use AND MODIFY a program to suit their own internal needs WITHOUT sharing the code with anyone. In fact, the FSF explicitly chastised the Apple license in its "forced sharing" aspect of its license. I can see the issue, but I don't think that it's nearly as bad as is claimed, nor is it as bad as the solutions. Ultimately, we all use internal company software in an indirect way, and this is simply a different indirect way. The user still has full control over what runs on their computers, both to share and not share. The difference is that the software is not running on the user's computer. The only modification I could see them making which would be historically consistent with the FSF's stance is to require that the _javascript_ be under the GPL, since that component is in fact redistributed and does in fact run on the remote user's computer. Other than that, I see such an amendment to be directly contrary to the FSF's historical stance on software freedom.
I think we've got a double-problem. On the one hand, you have the buyers, who should be reasonable human beings, and be able to think for themselves. On the other hand, you have the sellers, who should be required to make a good-faith effort at being correct. The sellers should not be regarded as super-human, and without mistake, but by the same token the buyers should not have to have a degree in engineering to think that the product will work reliably.
Now, with computer software, the ultimate user of the product IS NOT the consumer. In fact, it is the computer. The computer misbalances this equation, because the computer is not reasonable. Any minor error, and the computer cannot compensate. The same even for vaguery. Likewise, it is nearly impossible to be able to do a complete space-search for every possible problem. However, ANY problem leaves the consumer prone to danger, damage, and theft. Similarly, neither the consumers, the courts, nor the government are qualified to determine if a problem in software is a matter of simple error or of negligence.
Therefore, in our currently litigious environment, it makes sense to disclaim warranty. I wish it weren't so, but it makes sense, especially for free software, but also for other software. However, I _would_ be in favor of requiring all such disclaimers be present and _prevalent_ in any advertising for such a product. It would be quite amusing to show a Microsoft Office commercial where everyone is happy and joyous and then have to end it with "we don't warrant that this even works at all".
"Also, why aren't these nifty ID detection methods ever used in archaeology and SETI?"
Demski's explanatory filter is precisely what is used by both these fields. In SETI, the questions that are asked are:
Is this signal a known type of signal?
Could this signal be a result of random noise?
If the answer is no to both of these, then it has a high likelihood of being a true signal. This is precisely Dembski's explanatory filter in action. SETI tries to accomplish both of these in one swoop by looking for a very high-energy and narrow band (most known types of signals are wide-band, and most noise is low energy).
"BTW, do you say Mozart and Apache are examples of intelligent design because you applied Dembski's "explanatory filter" to them, or because you know people created that stuff?"
While I know origins of Mozart and Apache, let's pretend for a minute that I didn't. If I heard a symphony, I would assume that the symphony had its origins in a designer, and not by random noises. Likewise, if I found a cool computer program on the Internet, and did not know its origin, I would assume that it had a designer and did not come into being through chance manipulations.
"ID is not simply about making measurements, it's part of what is called the Wedge Strategy."
Yes, there are two parts to ID: (1) a mathematical model of Design Detection, and (2) removing materialism as a foregone conclusion in science, law, and education. If you want to know more about it, you should probably read Philip Johnson's book, The Wedge of Truth, and perhaps also Reason in the Balance. Many people make a lot of hoopla over the wedge, but there's nothing really very radical about it. It simply says, "we have assumed too much -- let's go back and revisit our assumptions."
As to your quotes, while I hadn't read the first one (I'd be interested to do so, I know the library has a copy of that book), the rest are simply saying just what I said in my last post -- the ability to ask questions that were previously ruled as out-of-bounds.
"Phillip Johnson makes numerous references to Darwin's theory of evolution and clearly regards evolution incompatible with ID."
The problem is the word "evolution", a word that has so many meanings that it means nothing. If you use it to just mean "change", then there is literally noone in any creationist community who disagrees with you. If you use it to mean "natural selection", Johnson would not disagree with the idea that dead things don't reproduce, and sick things don't reproduce as much. If you mean Universal Common Ancestry, then Johnson probably disagrees with you, though most of the rest of the ID'ers would not. However, if you mean full Darwinism -- that we were created by a completely blind process that had no ends in mind -- that's where you get disagreement.
"It's clear to me that those ID proponents not only believe something supernatural occurred, but also have a very clear idea of who the Designer is."
No doubt at all to me, either. And I never said anything else. What I did say was that they separate theological from scientific arguments, and that Intelligent Design (though I probably would have been more accurate to say "design detection") is the scientific measurement, and the rest comes from other forms of knowledge, not scientific knowledge. I thought I had addressed this in a previous posting, but perhaps not.
"Then it rather defeats the purpose to try to use science as a route to finding out about the Designer."
Why? Science is a route to knowledge, just not the only one. In addition, the different forms of knowledge should not be contradictory, or else one of them is not knowledge. If a person believes that God acted in the world, then it would be a very weak belief if they thought he left no empirical evidence.
"What purpose does ID serve you personally?"
Personally, I am not hugely committed to ID, except to point out to people who are vehemently against it that they usually haven't really understood ID at all. I do agree with, I guess, one and a half of its tenets. I agree that materialism is an unwarranted assumption, and I agree with the idea to remove it as a necessary assumption of science. I also agree with design detection, though I am not entirely sold on the way that Dembski is doing it. It's not that I necessarily think that he is wrong, but I think instead that he is approaching it from the wrong angle, which makes it both harder to comprehend and also harder to determine. I view Intelligent Design from a programming perspective, influenced by Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science". In there, he pointed out that of the cellular automata, Rule 110 was the most chaotic, and also was Turing complete. This lead me to the realization that programmatic expressiveness was a function of the chaotic-ness of the underlying system. The more chaotic the system, the more expressive it is for the programmer. However, this also means that, because the systems are chaotic, errors will cause the problems to be catastrophic, or at least very dramatic. And, it happens to be that Intelligent Designers as a matter of habit bring order to chaotic systems.
"Just open the Bible
"That is: do you think every designing object must have a designer itself?"
No.
"One of the issues I see with ID is that even if it can prove that the universe was designed intelligently, it still won't explain what designed the designers."
How is that an issue with ID? What most people don't understand is that ID is simply a measurement. It's like measuring the temperature of the water. No thermometer, for example, will tell us HOW something got to be that temperature. It simply measures what is there. The process for finding out HOW the water got hot is different than determining WHAT the temperature is. ID is simply taking the "design" temperature. How the design got there would be an entirely different field altogether. While I am certain that most ID'ers have their own ideas of how this happened, all of them view that as a separate realm of inquiry. For more information of this separation, you should read Philip Johnson's book "The Wedge of Truth".
"The dictionary definition says that naturalism is the philosophy that the world can be understood in scientific terms without recourse to spiritual or supernatural explanations."
Yes, but doing so abandons the very concept of reason. See the last paragraph on this post of mine for more details.
"That's odd, because the authoritative figures on this subject claim otherwise."
Which ones are these? Philip Johnson does not claim that scientifically, nor think that such would be a scientific conclusion. I am not sure whether he supports it spiritually. I am pretty sure from a rather full reading of Dembski that Dembski is against it as well, though Dembski often plays his cards close to his chest. Most people don't know, but most ID'ers believe completely agree with Universal Common Ancestry, Behe and Dembski included. ID does not of itself appeal to any type of design outside what I would consider "human-capable" design (not that it is limitted to our technology, but that it is limitted to the types of physical limitations that people have). There is another type of Intelligent Design, but I don't imagine that you've heard of any of them who follow it, called General Intelligent Design. I myself am quite unfamiliar with it, but I'm pretty sure it is much more supernatural in the requirements of the intelligence it is speaking of. The main work for that is by a Mathematician named Hermann, but I can't remember the title at the moment.
"It is much more likely in the scenario of a Designer that we were genetically engineered from apes and have no higher purpose than your average dog or cat."
ID does not rule this out, while Creationism does. However, most ID'ers and Creationists believe that science is not the only means to knowledge.
"The assumption that higher purpose must exist stems from wishful thinking."
Actually, it stems from revelation. Revelation as a source of knowledge is a key concept in Christianity.
"I tend to agree with this, although I believe that no amount of solid science is enough against wishful thinking."
Alchemy eventually came to an end. Of course, creation/evolution has been a sticking point since before the Greeks, so its probably wishful thinking to think that we will settle any time soon.
"Yes, but I can be perfectly skeptical of claims on both sides."
Great. It was sounding like you were only being skeptical to one side, but if you treat all sides with equal skepticism, then yes, you are truly a skeptic.
"The philosophical difference in opinion doesn't stem from preferring natural or supernatural explanations but from the wish to have religion be called religion and science science."
But you are still missing the fact that ALL cosmologies are inherently a mix of science and philosophy, as admitted by ALL cosmologists.
"I'll admit that the mathematical angle is a nice one, but the conclusions lead everywhere including UFO-based rel
"However, the Scientific Method that is at the core of science demands claims to be independently verifiable and falsifiable. Most Christian claims do not meet that criterion and thus do not qualify as scientific."
I think you are confusing Creationism and Intelligent Design. Creationism is a philosophical presupposition, much like the secular humanism, or the philosophical impetus of the Big Bang. As Hawking and Ellis say, you simply cannot do cosmology without mixing in philosophy.
Intelligent Design is simply identifying the characteristics of intelligent action. It is trying to determine a mathematical methodology to apply in order to do this. ID explicitly separates scientific claims of design from religious claims of who the designer is, or whether or not the designer is natural or supernatural.
"You might argue that science is religious too somehow, but you cannot argue that religion is scientific."
I never claimed the latter, though you can do scientific research on certain claims of faith, or using them as a starting point. The former is true of anyone who does cosmology at all. What is happening now is that although those who do cosmology readily admit that they do have a philosophic bias, they reject the philosophic biases of others who start from different places.
Now, perhaps cosmology should be excluded from science entirely -- I'm certainly open to that. But creationism is just as scientific (or unscientific) as any other cosmology, as neither are experimental or observable exercises (which are the characteristics of science). Intelligent Design is much more of a science than either one, because it is not cosmological -- it is simply a measurement.
You might be interested in a summary of Intelligent Design I wrote awhile back:
http://crevo.blogspot.com/2005/03/setting-facts-st raight-on-intelligent.html
"We can see that naturalism gives us the most practical tools and predictive powers."
Incorrect. Experimentation and observation give us those things. Naturalism is the abandonment of reason, and is akin to admitting effects without a cause.
"Supernatural claims are almost always circular and can only predict after the fact"
Three things: (1) Intelligent Design differs from Creationism in that ID does not suppose that anything supernatural has occurred. It simply says that intelligence is a causitive force that is different from, but limitted by, natural law. And thus, reducing everything to material causes leaves out a great amount of what is occurring even in every day life. When I write a computer program, I am limitted to what can be done with natural law, but nonetheless creativity and intelligence act as a causitive force of their own to produce something novel. 2) In the case of historical reconstruction (i.e. cosmology), the point isn't practicality anyway. The point is to determine what happened. That is the question, isn't it? What happened. What practical value do we get from Hawking telling us that we formed from a singularity? Can we recreate the singularity? No. So, cosmology itself is different from observational/experimental science in this regard as a whole subject. 3) However, you are still missing the ultimate practical reason -- if we know who we are, how we were made, and why we were made, it then tells us what and how we should then live. Does God exist? Does He care about us? How does He want us to live? Do His wishes matter, or is God merely an illusion? These questions have more practical import than all that science has given us in the last 1,000 years. To answer them wrong because we have assumed the answer before starting is simply ludicrous.
"It's good that you agree that support of Darwin's theory of evolution is not based on what you call "secular assumptions""
Actually, I do. The Christian Church in America gave itself over to secularism quite a while
"No, you are trying to masquerade religion as science."
Incorrect. I'm separating out assumptions from observations. It is true that Christians bring a different set of assumptions to the table. It is also true that secularists bring a specific set of assumptions. It is not true that the secular assumptions are somehow "more scientific" than the Christian ones.
"Whenever someone defends creationism, you can do a 100 to 1 bet than they'll answer "yes" when asked if they happen to be Christian"
You can actually do the same for evolution, simply because Christianity is the dominant religion in america, for both evolutionists and creationists.
"Naturalism is not a religion or a foundation for religious thinking."
Yes, it is. Secular humanism (which is simply a form of naturalism) considers itself a religion without a deity.
"Please don't equate your comfortable myth with healthy skepticism"
Of course "skepticism" gets applied to other people's beliefs, not to secularism or naturalism. It's easy to name-call "comfortable" versus "skeptical", but it's really a baseless charge, considering the fact that Christianity requires your very life, while "skepticism" requires nothing at all except what you want it to require.
The problem with mitochondrial myopathies is that it is often unclear whether the problem is nuclear or mitochondrian DNA. Mitochondrion use DNA from both sources, so having faulty mitochondrion doesn't necessarily indicate that using other mitochondrion will solve things.
"Like most others defending "Intelligent Design", you too are quite dishonest."
Like most who are calling creationists and ID'ers dishonest, the fact is you just disagree but don't like people on the other side, and so resort to calling names. There has been nothing dishonest -- only things that you disagree with. Yet for some reason you can't simply disagree, you have to call them liars.
"e.g. Dishonestly putting words in my mouth:"
Oh please -- you can't handle a little irony? Play on words? You have to resort to name-calling?
"And, honestly, I can't stop you from polluting science threads with your "I know you are, but what I am" attemps at equating science and religion"
I'm not equating science and religion. I'm differentiating observational science from philosophical claims made in the name of science. The latter do occur regularly, both in science classes and even in science in the field. If materialism is simply an assumption for experimental purposes, science must acknowledge that its results do not hold when non-material causes are at play (which they do not). If they do not acknowledge this, then they are indeed engaging in philosophical and theological statements. That is simply a fact.
"They used political power to attempt to discredit the content of a science book because it does not correspond to their religious beliefs."
They were not discreditting the book, but rather noting that the metaphysical assumptions were unproven, which is true.
"To do this, they disguised their religious agenda under a veil of pseudoscience because they aren't allowed to overtly censor scientific teaching based on religious grounds."
Except that evolution is done on religious grounds, namely naturalism. This is the problem - evolution presents the results of secular philosophy as an observable fact, when it is not.
"It is sneaky because they snuck their faith in a science class through the ballot box."
The ballot box is precisely the place where a publicly-funded, publicly-run course should be handled. We opted for a democracy rather than rule by philosophers. This is part of it.
"It is dishonest because they hid their religious motivations."
You mean the biologists? I agree completely. They should not pretend that materialism is an observable fact of nature and should admit its philosophical and theological underpinnings.
"It is underhanded because it was worded so as to evade notice of their religious motivations."
Oh, you're talking about the people who put in the sticker. You are correct that people involved with religion tend to understand philosophical issues better than others, but I don't think its necessary that they explicitly mention their worldview every time. Should we have made Francis Crick mention the fact that the whole reason he was in biology was to discredit the Christian faith every time he spoke? What about Dawkins, same there? Or are you just prejudiced against Christians? If we always mention religious motivations, shouldn't we always tell people when we talk about genetics why Mendel thought it was evidence against evolution, and his religious motivations for developing his theory?
""Intelligent Design" is a religious movement using scientific jargon to discredit actual science. That is not honest."
Actually, Intelligent Design is two things:
1) a mathematical description of design, used to detect design in objects and systems
2) a rejection of materialist philosophy as the sole operating mode of science