Another Test for Intelligent Design Proponents

Proponents of Intelligent Design hold that the patterns of nature strongly suggest the hand of an artificer, someone who has planned it all and made it happen.To put their ability - to discern intelligence behind a pattern - to the test, I would like to present two figures and ask ID-ers a very straightforward question, namely to tell us of each figure whether or not they think it shows the hallmarks of design, perhaps accompanied by an explanation of their reasoning. First I would like to collect some responses, and then we can discuss them.Here are the figures: The appropriate forum would be 'Intelligent Design'

Hello Buzsaw,Thank you for your response.You asked: The answer is no, this is a topic of its own. I haven't even read the debate you mentioned. The goal of this thread is to get ID-ers to support their claim that they can distinguish between intelligently designed patterns and patterns of other origin.I will not yet comment on your response, other than asking you to have another go at it, this time not thinking in terms of mountains. It's not that I am dismissing your idea of mountains, I'd simply like your input from a different perspective.MangyTiger wrote: to which you answered: Indeed. I would appreciate some of their input too.

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Thanks to all those who replied. I'd still like some more replies (Brad McFall, as someone suggested?) before I discuss the figures of message 1.But I will comment on some of your replies, lumped together in this post.

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True, I made them. But I'd ask you to ignore for a moment the specific representations I made of these patterns. If you would see the pattern of figure 1 somewhere else, what would you conclude about it, in terms of how it came about? Same question for the pattern of figure 2.

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Thank you, Buzsaw. No further comment for now. I'll get back to this.

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Faith, I know you are not an ID-ist, therefore I appreciate your participation all the more. At the same time I must be careful in my comment on your answer, precisely because you don't represent ID.As I pointed out to Randman, the pictures themselves are not at issue, it's the patterns that I'm asking about. (The pictures are obviously designed, by me.)But you said something very important pertaining to the topic: If I understand the ID position well, this should actually be no problem. Their claim is that intelligent design is obvious from certain features of things. My query is about those features.

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Modulous (and Minnemooseus), no comment for now. I'll get back to this too.

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Prophex, your first answer is off-topic. I don't think that's necessary. If you had to venture an answer to the question of message one, what would it be? And why?This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 25-Dec-2005 08:37 PM

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Could you, Jaywill, being a creationist, please give your opinion on the topic as given in the opening post?

It's very simple. The question is: does one of the patterns, or both, or neither, show some characteristics of intelligent design to you? If so, could you describe how? {edited to change subtitle}This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 30-Dec-2005 02:06 PM

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And yet you do. I wonder why. If ID cannot even stand "flippant little examinations", then I think my point is already proven.

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This thread is not about scoring cheap points (what would I need points for?), and it is not a trap. Anybody who thinks otherwise has no business here and is kindly requested to take their comments elsewhere.What this thread is about is finding out how intelligent design can be objectively determined in the patterns of nature, without resorting to subjective judgements. I think this is impossible, but I would like some input from ID-ers, hence my question.The ability to detemine objectively the fact of intelligent design is in the interest of the ID movement, since that would compel scientists to take ID seriously.

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Moose, let's "spring it already", I don't mind.Figure 1, as you already know and Jaywill also suggested, is a bell curve, or a normal distribution. Its form is the result of randomness.The reason I keep speaking of patterns, not graphs, is that although most of the bell curves we see may be graphs, if you take a Galton Board, you can see the pattern appear, and it's made not of ink on paper, but of whatever falls down in the Galton board. So it's not entirely a human construct. (Although I must admit that the Galton board is itself a human construct, the form that appears is solely dependent on the randomness of the collisions of the marbles with the pegs.)I can imagine that people would easily mistake this form for an artefact because of its smoothness and symmetry. It has an aesthetic quality that might fool people into believing it was made by an artificer.Figure 2 is meant to depict randomness. Curiously, it took me several attempts to get it right, i.e. to get it to look like randomness, and I'm still not very satisfied.The bottomline is that the pattern in figure 1 is the result of randomness, whereas the pattern of figure 2 is intelligently designed, although people might think the exact reverse is the case. ID-ers unabatedly tell us that they spot intelligent design in nature. I was wondering if ID-ers could be inspired by my figures to finally tell us how they do it.

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Here's another "trap" for you:If intelligent design is such a wonderful explanation for what we see in nature, can intelligent design please explain the following?

The Intelligent Design movement won't be too pleased with that answer, Prophex. Intelligent Design isn't religion, remember? It's "science".This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 03-Jan-2006 10:11 PM

Prophex,Why are we talking to each other about intelligent design? You are making it painfully clear that you know very little about the subject. Before you discuss these things with evolutionists, you need to talk to Michael Behe, William Dembski, Philip Johnson, Alvin Plantinga and the people of the Discovery Institute. And maybe it wouldn't hurt if you read the Wedge Document.See you when you're done.This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 04-Jan-2006 01:38 PM

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For some reason I doubt he'll even read the first paragraph of the Wedge Document. On the other hand, if he reads the previous sentence of this message, he might feel sufficiently challenged to make it through the second paragraph of that document.Anyway, even if he first acquaints himself with only the ID side of the matter, that would be a boon. If we have to talk him out of something, he at least needs to understand what he is being talked out of.

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Well, it would be, if it weren't actually so sad. One thing I'll say for you, Prophex: you are making it really easy for me to criticize your posts, because here you are, doing it yet again.The prominent ID-ers I mentioned (Behe/Dembski et al.) have gone out of their way to maintain that ID is indeed science, all the while carefully avoiding any association with creationism. And then, along comes Prophex, in a thread about intelligent design, saying that the Intelligent Designer is in fact the Christian God of creationism.On second thought I'll concede it is both sad and funny. The sad part is your remarkable failure to grasp what this is all about. The funny part is that you're actually right about the fact that ID is creationism. It's just that you're not supposed to be saying it out loud.This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 06-Jan-2006 01:23 PM

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Oh, you said it all right: I showed you picture of things in nature that aren't really such fine examples of intelligent design - the pictures in post 70 - and asked you if intelligent design could explain them. You answered: When I replied that Intelligent Design isn't religion, that it was instead supposed to be science, you answered: Maybe you never literally said "the Intelligent Designer is the Christian God of creationism", but you certainly implied it very clearly. You prove once more that you don't understand what the people of the intelligent design movement - whose side you are supposedly on - are actually saying. You are doing them a disservice. Not that I mind, though, such cases of friendly fire are usually welcomed from the opposite side.In any case, to conclude our exchange, the important thing is not that we disagree about whether or not there is an Intelligent Designer, but that I pointed out to you the fact that you and the intelligent design movement are in disagreement, apparently, on what can be said openly about the nature of the intelligent designer.You are welcome to comment, but I will leave it at this.This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 08-Jan-2006 05:00 PM

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

How about an alternative explanation for the patterns? Figure 1 could indeed be a heap of sand, but it could just as well be a block of marble that's been meticulously sculpted into that precise form. The point is that you cannot tell from the observed pattern alone.So if you form a theory about it, you must make sure that you can somehow test it. Introducing an inherently unknown designer into your theory amounts to something you cannot test, demands an explanation of its own, and does little to further our knowledge.The theory that scientists have formed about the patterns we find in living nature can be - and has been - tested, in many different ways. Things that have been introduced to explain it all a bit better (random mutations and natural selection) have been observed to exist, have been explained themselves, and contribute to a great deal of knowledge.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.