What exactly is ID?

Unfortunately for you, SO, it's absolutely true. Look it up. Or better yet, page back a few pages and read the dozens of posts where people lay this out for you in painstaking detail. You are confusing the "modern ID movement" and the term "ID" as though they were the same thing. They are not. Just like modern medicine is not the same thing as original medicine.There was NO ID movement 100 years ago. It wasn't until Creationism was handed a number of resounding defeats that they simple copies and pasted the word "Creationists" with "Design Proponents" and pretended it was a different term. "CDesign Proponentsists" -- Look it up. Because you saying "I know a guy who's Hindu and an ID supporter, but you don't know him - he lives in Canada" isn't evidence.You are claiming that ID is NOT a wing of Christian Creationism, therefore there should be PLENTY of NON-Christian ID supporters. Learn to read a little before you post. The wiki page that labels him as this references an article. Here's the ACTUAL quote from the article. THAT'S your great "non-Christian" ID supporter? LOL. A guy who admits to supporting Christian ideas and labels himself a secularist to provoke a response.Talk about fail x fail.You got HOSED on this one. So, according to you, ANYTHING which say "1 ft" on it is "1ft" in length whether it is TWICE the size of the next object, or HALF the size of the next object.Because, so long as the object which says "1ft" is the same length as itself, it is valid.THAT'S your basis for reasoning.And you want ME to drop it because you can't be bothered to offer a RATIONAL reason why this is a valid method of evaluation tools.Brilliant.Face it, Smooth, I've owned you up and down these boards for about a month now. Let's check the record:1) Can you name the mechanism of your Creationist/ID claims? NO
2) Can you name ANY other examples of ANYTHING designed where we have no mechanism? NO.
3) Can you name ANYTHING in which your design detection technique can detect design where we don't know how it was designed? NO.
4) Can you name someone who supports your claims who is NOT a Creationist? NO.So, what do you have? You have a "system" created by Dembski, a self proclaimed supporter of Christian Fundamentalism, and a defacto Old Earth Creationist which, as has been pointed out by other posters, doesn't even work INTERNALLY, and as I've pointed out doesn't work EXTERNALLY EITHER.And that is your ONLY source of evidence whatsoever.This isn't just weak sauce, this is nothing but evaporated water.

But what is the DATA SET.You are saying that the BRMDP is unlikely to the order of 10^20.Let's pretend for a second that you are correct.If we said, AT THE BEGINNING OF THE UNIVERSE, what will it take to make a BRMDP. The answer would be 10^20.However, that's NOT what's happened.What's happened is we have an ENORMOUS DATA SET called: "Everything which has ever been produced by biological life billions of years it has existed on Earth".So from the data set of "EVERYTHING EVER" you are taking ONE item and saying "Wow, it's improbably that this one item existed".It's improbably to 10^20.Okay. How many items are there in the "Everything Ever" data set? 10^50? 10^500?If it's equal to or greater than 10^20, then the result is INEVITABLE and therefore nothing to even bother taking note of.

From Wiki:

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Intelligent design originated in response to the 1987 United States Supreme Court Edwards v. Aguillard ruling involving separation of church and state.[4] Its first significant published use was in Of Pandas and People, a 1989 textbook intended for high-school biology classes.[21] Several additional books on the subject were published in the 1990s. By the mid-1990s, intelligent design proponents had begun clustering around the Discovery Institute and more publicly advocating the inclusion of intelligent design in public school curricula.[22] With the Discovery Institute and its Center for Science and Culture serving a central role in planning and funding, the "intelligent design movement" grew increasingly visible in the late 1990s and early 2000s, culminating in the 2005 Dover trial which challenged the intended use of intelligent design in public school science classes.[7] ...

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The Center for Science and Culture serves as the hub of the intelligent design movement. Nearly all of the luminaries of intelligent design are either CSC advisors, officers, or fellows. Stephen C. Meyer, a fellow of the Discovery Institute and founder of the CSC, serves as Senior Fellow and Vice President, and Phillip E. Johnson is the Program Advisor. Johnson is commonly presented as the movement's "father" and architect of the center's Wedge strategy and "Teach the Controversy" campaign, as well as the Santorum Amendment.

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And also from Wiki, concerning the Discovery Institute and its Center for Science and Culture:

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Funding

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The Center is funded through the Discovery Institute, which is largely underwritten by grants and gifts from wealthy Christian fundamentalist conservative individuals and groups, such as Howard Ahmanson Jr., Philip F. Anschutz, Richard Mellon Scaife, and the MacLellan Foundation.[43][44][45] [46]

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Published reports place the Discovery Institute's budget for ID-related programs at over $4 million per year. The Center's expenditures can be assumed to be substantial based on the scope and quality of the Center's extensive public relations campaigns, materials and contributions to local and regional ID and Teach the Controversy efforts.

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CSC director, Stephen C. Meyer, admits most of the Center's money comes from wealthy donors from the Christian right.[44] Howard Ahmanson Jr., who provided $1.5 million in funding that established the Center, has said his goal is "the total integration of biblical law into our lives."[47] The MacLellan Foundation commits itself to "the infallibility of the Scripture."[48] Most Discovery Institute donors have also contributed significantly to the Bush campaign. Until 1995, Ahmanson sat on the board of the Christian reconstructionist Chalcedon Foundation,[49] and funds many causes important to the Christian right, including Christian Reconstructionism.

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Not a lot of science there, eh? Sounds like Nuggin was right. ID is a religious movement pushed by Christian fundamentalists who want all the rest of us eventually to live under biblical rule.You may prefer to deny the religious basis for ID, but it certainly is not being pushed by science! The few real scientists who espouse ID seem all to be creationists first and scientists second.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

In Message 805 Smooth Operator writes: In case no evolutionist has addressed this because they thought it off topic, it does seem on-topic to me. As part of the answer to the question, "What is ID?" someone has offered that it is a product of Christian fundamentalism, thereby calling into question its validity as science because of its roots in Christian theology.Smooth Operator's reply in effect says that ID's claim to be science is as valid as evolution's because evolution has its roots in atheistic thought.Seems worth addressing.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

I think ID is called into question because:1) we can clearly trace the origins of the modern ID movement in the aftermath of the Edwards decision as a replacement for the failed creation "science," itself a replacement for creationism, in the public schools;2) ID does not follow the scientific method; and3) the very few ideas put forth as evidence for ID have been readily shown to be accounted for by other causes (e.g., irreducible complexity).Now if the proponents of ID produced evidence that could not be accounted for by other means, that would be a worthwhile avenue for investigation. To date they have not been able to do so. Everything they have produced has either a documented or a likely natural explanation. Nothing they have produced clearly requires the existence or intervention of deities. Science has to start somewhere, and that somewhere is empirical evidence. Science has developed a method to treat that evidence, and so far it has worked quite well.Science had to start with a blank slate -- that is, knowing nothing. It was only natural that scientists started with things near at hand and easily measured and quantified. And in several centuries of dealing with the natural world, science has been able to explain a huge percentage of what it has addressed. That's not a bad track record.A number of early natural historians tried to fit the natural world into a biblical framework with, for example, subjects such as flood geology. Others, going back to Bishop Usher, have tried to fit everything into a young earth framework. In neither case did the evidence fit, and both of these fields of investigations have largely been dismissed as nonproductive. The RATE Project was a recent attempt to document a young earth through radiometric dating and a changing decay constant, and other related research, but it was unable to do so. The supernatural has simply not been shown to have the explanatory power in science that the techniques used by scientists have.Now the way science operates is not atheism (a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods). Science simply does not deal with deities in any way even though a significant percentage of scientists are theists of one kind or another.The real bottom line is that, so far, nothing has been encountered by science that clearly suggests or requires the abandonment of the current scientific method and the inclusion of spirits or deities as a part of scientific explanation. Rather the opposite has happened; one by one things attributed to deities have been shown to have natural explanations instead. Diseases and lightning/thunder being caused by spirits are two simple examples out of many.Those who believe in deities don't much appreciate science for doing this; they would much rather have science validate their beliefs. This has led to attacks on science and attempts to change the way science operates, as well as challenges to science based on what can only be described as pseudo-science or junk science. Geocentrism is a good example of this. I'm afraid that ID has to be considered in this category as well.(In this discussion I have not singled out evolution because evolution is a science as it follows the scientific method. It is one of the recent talking points of creationists to claim to "respect the 'true' sciences, but certainly not evolution; it's not a real science like physics or chemistry.")To summarize; ID is not rejected just because of its clear origins in Christian fundamentalism. It has been rejected, to date, because it does not measure up as science.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Thanks for pointing that out Admin. I am a 100% evolutionist & I am not atheist. In fact the percentage of atheist is outweighed by that of evolutionists. It may be hard to determine the exact percentage of atheists in the world...I have done research before, but do not remember all details. In any case various studies have found differing percentages amongst all the countries in the world. While some european countries....France & Sweden....have a higher % of atheism.....The USA in contrast has fairly low amount of Atheists in comparison. The USA percentage of atheists is like 5-10% I believe. If you believe that only 5-10% of the USA believes in evolution, you would be mistaken....it is at least half. Therefore the majority of evolutionists are not atheists. Evolution is not based in atheist ideology, just mountains of empirical data.

Hi Brad H,[p]Once again before I reply to you, I am going to ignore our detractors and have an ID debate or discussion between you and me. I really don't have the time for endless debates on the net anyway. You can describe it as redundancy. I would imagine (not scientific but common sense) that redundany is specified but there should be a line or at least a grey area between what can be described as somewhere between redundant and complex. That is supposed to be 400 bits which Smooth Operator told me and I think the formula is -log2 of 10^120.My intutition told me Dembski's description is not quite adequate but I am slowly investigating ways it can be improved upon. I have a couple of links on the web I need to investagate later. Of course there are plenty of harmful mutations. There is only one that was beneficial that I can think of and that was the nylonase enzyme for a certain type of bacteria. However, it could very well mean the frameshift that occurred to produce that new nylonase enzyme was part of a larger designed system allowing adaptations. For one thing, no start or stop codons (inbetween the information) were created in the frameshift.The other beneficial mutation was the sickel cell but as we all know it has a big disadvantage. I'm not sure if C Harlem was an example of adding information. There is a hypothesis that says brewer's yeast formed or evolved by doubling its entire genetic code and then erasing some of it.Adding information is theoretically possible but the real question is, are these example adequate enough to create new types of body plans and adequate enough to evolve the existence of something like a whale from a hyaena like mammal? Richard Sternberg and Stephen Meyer explain why they don't think so.Here is a video where you would want to listen to Stephen Meyer's presentation just after Richard Sternberg ended his.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRV8_L8Lmzg&feature=relatedListen to the part about the sequences in proteins. One thing his book "Signature in the Cell" pointed out is the active site in an enzyme is very small compared to the overall size of the enzyme protein. The amount of functional information is very small compared to the total amount of information in the protein.Another thing, there are protein to protein binding sites where proteins are bound together in order to work as teams. According to Mike Behe, you can't just randomly mutate them together one step at a time because the each particular bond isn't strong enough. I think lipid bonds and hydrogen bonds play parts in it as well as the specified shape of the parts that fit together. My detractors may say I am relying on Behe as an authority but that doesn't counter the evidence in itself.There are 10,000 protein binding sites in the average cell. I would think this would call for specified information in order to accomplish this.This was all off my memory and there could easily be an error on my part in the above.Edited by traderdrew, : No reason given.

Why yes...yes I am On the basis of Shannon theory

True
And the number 26496739727, which I just punched in at random, carries the same amount of complex information as this number 18003287448. The difference is that the first is much less specific than the second. The first has no specific information while the second, when decoded on any common telephone key pad, has a very specific message. The first one has as many eliminated possibilities as the second, and therefore they are equally as complex, but only one serves a specific function when dialed.

sorry to burst your bubble, mate, but 26 is ireland.The entire world does not revolve around the USA and as such numbers are, very much, just numbers and the two you listed really are just numbers.I'm not sure what you were trying to prove, but there's nothing inherently special about either of them.

Hi Razd
You're right, No they weren't "there" before, but they were somewhere before. What we are looking for is the addition of information that did not previously exist. Lets face it, if we wanted to get from pond scum to pandas, we would need the addition of a lot of "new" information into the DNA. Insertion mutations just don't explain that. First I want to point out that for some reason your link didn't work for me. But secondly I would like to point out that you are making the leap from observed DNA mutations to phenotype changes with the assumption that the one is the cause of the other, without (I presume) observable evidence. I mean unless you can provide a link to a scientific paper where a study was done in which the Phasmatodea were bred and observed spawning a population with wings, and then a later population without, etc...and also in which the DNA of each population was carefully studied and shown to have changed, then you really have no argument.But since you brought up insect wings, I wonder if you have ever considered the metamorphosis of insects like the butterfly? Complex enzymes literally digest the caterpillar in the crysalis. It becomes a "soup" of disjointed tissue and cells but within four days it emerges a fully developed winged butterfly. No current knowledge of chemistry, physics, genetics, or molecular biology can account for or even begin to guess at what "natural" causes produced this process.

Well I thought that by demonstrating the point that one phone number has a specific purpose while the other does not, would show an obvious significance. Or how about we try a little experiment. I will look up the phone number, in the phone book, to the nearest movie theater in my home town and call it to get movie times and listings, and you just dial a number at random to try and get movie times and listings in your home town. We will both agree on only dialing seven digits (which carry equal amounts of information). And we will see which one of us gets the desired results. Just in case this experiment is not scientific enough for you, we can repeat it 100 times and see if the results are repeatably the same.

so, you are suggesting that the "owner" of a valid phone-number (a known restaurant, movie theatre, or whatever) lends the actual numbers some intrinsic value that those numbers didn't have before?Ok, I'm thinking of a string of seven digits.You try looking in the phonebook and I'll write the numbers down - when you don't get the same number-string I'm thinking of, will MY set of numbers carry any more inherent, intrinsic value?Edited by greyseal, : No reason given.

Hi again Traderdrew,
I'm not sure how much you know about Shannon theory, so forgive me if I cover what you already know or over simplify, but the amount of complex information is measured by what the lowest reducible component is. For example the number 123123123123, is not as complex as 8675309, even though it is expressed with more digits. And that is because after the first three digits, it only repeats itself. Things like crystals are only repetitive information which is not near as complex as say the amount of information found in the DNA of a single celled amoeba (which Dawkins says is greater than 1000 volumes of Encyclopedias BTW). Correct. And correct again in your assessment that this appears to be a "design" feature in bacteria. I think though, you may have overlooked the significance of the fact that the changes only occur in the plasmids and not the chromosomes. This is remarkable because plasmids mostly only occur in bacteria. I realize that bacteria are biologists favorite "lab rat" because they reproduce so quickly and many generations can be studied within a single experiment, but if their basic characteristics are not similar to the most of the rest of the living world, then I seriously question drawing an evolutionary conclusion based on bacteria.Unfortunately I am unable to watch utube vids at work so I will have to reserve another time to watch it. However I will comment that I am quite fond of Meyer's work and am currently reading his book that you refered to (only on chapter 5).Thanks again for your comments.
Brad

Hi again Brad H To begin with, new DNA formed during reproduction were not "somewhere before" on the DNA strand, but were assembled from molecules in the process of duplication.Second, many insertions are copies of other sections of DNA, so they were not "somewhere before" on the new DNA strand either.Third, DNA is composed of four basic molecules in a pattern, and in a very mundane sense all such patterns existed before, there is nothing new under the sun, and the only difference is where these sections are such that they affect the coding of proteins. An insertion in a section that affects the coding of proteins is indeed new in that section.Do 123456789 and 1213456789 have the same information? Yes, I noted that. Apparently Nature has moved the original abstract (all you can access without a sign in). I did, however provide the full Nature citation, so it is possible to look it up. I'll see if I can find the new location. Are you making the mistake of thinking that a phenotype that is fixed in a species can happen without genetic changes?We can also discuss Barry Hall's experiment with E.col. where lactose mechanism was disrupted and a new one evolved.Again, either new "information" is involved or "information" is irrelevant to what can and cannot evolve. There are many such experiments. Ever notice how, whenever a creationist is given information that contradicts their belief, they try to change the subject?Enjoy.

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