Help me understand Intelligent Design (part 2)

I will start with the assumption that there is a theory of intelligent design. In my opinion, if there is such a theory it is a philosophical theory, and not a scientific theory. For no adequate empirical support has been provided or even suggested.In Science vs History - a source of equivocation?, Modulous reminded us that there is an important difference between evolution the theory, and natural history as a separate project that makes use of applied evolutionary theory. In much the same way it is important to distinguish between ID as a theory, and criticisms of evolution as part of a separate project that applies ID.This response will be only about what I understand to be ID, taken as a theory. I base this on my understandings of the writings of Dembski, whom I take to be the originator of the theory. I'll note that Dembski's writings include both ID as theory, and Dembski's musings on ways that the theory might be applied. Dembski himself appears to be mainly a theoretician whose preference would be to leave the applications of his theory to others.With that said, I will suggest my answers to Nuggin's questions. That intelligent design can be deduced from improbability. Lots of probability theory, together with some tenuous philosophy. There are no mechanics given by the theory. The role of the theory is to identify intelligent design. Presumably mechanics of design might be determined in specific applications of the theory, but they are not part of the theory itself.As best I can tell, the theory of intelligent design gives no guidance on how applications of theory might identify the mechanics of design, nor does it appear to give any guidance on how applications would identify the intelligent designer.The mechanics of determining intelligent design appear to be based on determining improbability together with other preconditions. Dembski introduces the concept "specified complexity" in his discussion of these mechanics. With no mechanics given, there can be no answer to this question within the theory of intelligent design. Presumably other theories would then take over to account for these details. Intelligent design theory does not deal with this. Questions about biological diversity might arise as an application of the theory of intelligent design, but they are not themselves part of theory. One must distinguish between incorrect design and apparent incorrect design. One cannot determine that a design is incorrect without first determining the purpose behind the design. As far as I can tell, the theory of intelligent design gives little guidance as to how one would determine this purpose, although the word "specified", as used in "specified complexity" perhaps hints at a direction.

Excellent points.I agree with you that simplicity, not complexity, is the indicator of design. However, I would expect Dembski to disagree. I would expect him to say that it is not simplicity per se, but the presence of a specification.The idea of specification presumed by ID, strikes me as its biggest weakness. I find Dembski's discussion of specification to be quite murky. Presumably Dembski wants to count the DNA as a specifier, thus establishing that there is specified complexity. However, evolutionists consider DNA to be replicas produced by a system of replication. And there is considerable evidence to support this evolutionist account. In my opinion, to show specified complexity in evolution, one should show a separate specification of a replication principle in biology as a whole.

It looks to me as if the Dover trial might come close to demolishing ID, what with Dembski withdrawing as a witness, and Behe saying that astrology fits his view of science.

Hi Steiner62. Welcome to EvCforum.

Hi Steiner62. Your avatar seems to have uploaded just fine.The forum web pages are loading slowly tonight. Maybe the server is under a DoS attack, no doubt by those "dumb Republican God Fearing ID fans".Yes, I already took a look at your blog. I particularly loved those kind words you had for our president. There is a suburb of Chicago that is named "Geneva".

That was done as[qs]wonder how it's done[/qs] I teach computer science, not evolution. There aren't any cultural controversies in computer science, as far as I know. You can find the same problem in other societies, although it is more pronounced here. I'm not sure why, but I suspect that it has to do with American traditions of freedom of the press, skepticism of government, money (for advertising), etc. We all know that America is a highly religious nation. And the God that Americans most worship is the almighty dollar. ID proponents do debate here.

I never did understand why creationists like to mention Flew. He was a philosopher, not a scientists. Most evolutionary scientists had never heard of Flew until the creationists mentioned him. And Flew did not turn against evolution, only against atheism.

The supporters have mostly been silent. Maybe you can answer the question. No, he didn't. Flew is a deist. Most ID proponents believe their is a problem with evolution, and want ID to fit their. But Flew has indicated that he has no problem with evolution. He does question natural abiogenesis, which is not itself part of evolution. You should just discuss ID, maybe answer Nuggins as to what an ID supporter such as yourself believes it to be. Bringing in Flew is a diversion. Thus far the amount of scientific evidence for ID is precisely zero. There has been a lot of philosophical argumentation, but no scientific evidence.

Most scientists are eager to follow the evidence where it leads. The problem for Behe, is that he doesn't have evidence that leads to where Behe would like to go.

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Impeach Bush.

For biological evolution, "beneficial" is simply a matter of what benefits the particular organism, as measured by its reproductive success. Thus "beneficial" is pragmatic and relative. What is beneficial to one organism might not be beneficial to another.The saying "the early bird gets the worm" describes a behavior that is beneficial to the bird but is not at all beneficial to the worm.

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Impeach Bush.

I'm wondering what you mean by "design" and what indications you see.I can sit down with cookbooks, and design a fancy meal. Or I can raid the pantry and cobble together something of a meal out of the food I find. I would use the term "design" only for the first of these, and I would say that the second method of preparing a meal was ad hoc.To me, nature looks ad hoc. Sure, it works well, just as my ad hoc meal could be very nutritional. But it still looks ad hoc.Explain to us where you see the design. I sometimes say things along that line. But that's just a goal that I ascribe to the system. Am I non-physical? Does it make me non-physical that I ascribe such a goal to evolutionary processes?There isn't any magic needed to explain this. By random chance we might expect some processes to behave in ways that tend to keep those processes going. And we might expect other processes to act in ways that do not tend to sustain them. If you come back after a while and see which processes are still going, then it should be obvious that it will be the processes that happened to be acting in ways that are self-sustaining.It doesn't take assumptions about supernatural intervention to understand this.If you ask "why is there anything at all, and not just nothing", then you have a question that has no easy answer. But you would need a different thread to discuss that, since it would be off topic in this thread.

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Impeach Bush.

Nonsense. This assertion is notable only for its utter absurdity. A simple dimensional analysis already shows the assertion to be nonsensical. A person who says such a silly thing is either making a deliberate joke, or is so totally ignorant as to not realize what a whopper this is. Do you actually comprehend any of this?As the referenced web page mentions, it was a group velocity that exceeded the speed of light. That does not in any way contradict Einstein's theory. It has long been known that group velocity could exceed the velocity of light. I was aware of that back in my high school days.I'm not sure where you were getting this (I am not referring to the BBC page you cited). My best guess is that some creationist site is fraudulently misrepresenting the science, and you were gullible enough the swallow their fraud. This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 12-22-2005 03:04 PM

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Impeach Bush.

And apparently you have no clue as to why Darwin's work was good science, but ID is not.Here's a hint for you. Darwin's theory had testable empirical consequences. And you probably have no clue as to why your ID theory, based on this, is not considered good science.Here is another hint. When physicists deal with the quantum events that you consider to be "poofing into existence", they are able to make predictions and to test those predictions.Here is my suggestion on how you could develop your ID theory. You will need to have it make predictions. So you should take what we know of natural history. But make your own interpretation of the data (fossils, for example). Come up with your own natural history, including whatever poofing events you believe belong there.Once you have that natural history, you can try to develop a statistical analysis. See if you can come up with the conditions that will allow you to set probabilities for future poofing events.My guess is that, if you can do this well enough to actually make testable predictions that hold up, you will have come up with a whole new way of rediscovering the Theory of Evolution.