ID and Evolvability

It seems to me that the basic idea ID has, namely to try to come up with a method for identifying things that couldn't have evolved in order to identify ID, is an interesting one.In the thread: "Compare and Contrast ID and SETI", a parallell to the work done by SETI is made... and in some ways it is a good one (and in others not so much).
SETI, like ID works by the method of exclusion. They look for signals that they believe could not have been created by natural phenomena. This is also what IDists want to do with species found on earth.
SETI, when met with a natural phenomena that aptly explains a signal as well as (or better than) the explanation of an intelligent cause, of course decides to pick the natural phenomena as a more likely explanation and moves on to the next signal. For IDists what would be needed in order to follow SETI's lead, would be to find tools that detect unevolvability...
But IDists use no such tools. Concepts like Irreducible Complexity and Complex Specified Information have been found wanting.It is interesting, however, to note that there does seem to exist a tool that works in detecting unevolvability, yet IDists do not use it.
What is this tool I'm talking about? Well... in evolutionary biology, analysing the DNA of a species allows us to see where it fits in the nested hierarchy of species (NHoS for short), and therefore where it fits in the evolutionary process. This (and other methods of building the NHoS, and their unlikely convergence to the same NHoS) is often used as evidence for evolution in EVC type debates because there is no known reason, except for evolution, as to why you should be able to do this.
If ID was reality, shouldn't we be able to find species that don't fit into the nested hierarchy of species? Why would the "Intelligent Agent" need to make species that fit into the NHoS? Shouldn't this be where IDists look? Shouldn't this be the way to find unevolvability?Now... It seems that most IDists of today chose to look for ID, not in individual species, but rather in subsystems (like for instance blood clotting).So I guess this becomes a two parter. One is a question for IDists, and the other for people accepting the validity of evolutionary theory. Here, I cannot think of an analogous method for detecting unevolvability.ID Question
Why don't IDists try to detect design by finding species that don't fit into the nested hierarchy of species? *TOE Question
Does anyone on the evolution side of things, more well read on biology than me, know of a method that can find where in the scheme of evolutionary history subsystems fit in, perhaps a way analogous to the NHoS method I suggested?* Behe, and peope like him, that accept most of Common Descent might not find this tool useful, but since there are other IDists, not so willing to accept Common Descent I still think the question is interesting.

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

There is one glaring reason why they cannot do this. Their claim is not that some life is ID but rather that ALL life is ID. Once you show that one life form is by definition not ID then you have a complete falsification of their premise.This also shows you why they are not doing proper science. They have a predetermined goal of "showing that all life is ID" rather than "investigating if some or all life is ID or not".Contrast this to SETI without undercutting the other thread. They are "investigating if some cosmic signals are ID or not". So far they have a ton of ones that are not. All they need is one to come to the conclusion that "some cosmic signals are ID".This message has been edited by Jazzns, 06-03-2005 10:28 AM

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FOX has a pretty good system they have cooked up. 10 mil people watch the show on the network, FOX. Then 5 mil, different people, tune into FOX News to get outraged by it. I just hope that those good, God fearing people at FOX continue to battle those morally bankrupt people at FOX.
-- Lewis Black, The Daily Show

Hi Maxwell's Demon, Probably because biologists have already beaten them to it!When one uses DNA sequences to build a nested phylogenetic tree, one sometimes has problems with the data. The DNA sequences for two or more species, for example might be identical. This means that there is no data for such species that we can use to put them into a nested hierarchy. Alternatively, the DNA evidence might be conflicting, such that we cannot with any certainty make a nested hierarchy. In such cases, the uncertain part of the phylogenetic tree is collapsed into a polytomy (a node of the tree with more than two "offspring).Here's an example from a study of rodents using cytochrome b dna: Biologists have found that many of these polytomies reflect our own ignorance (i.e. reflect the insufficiency of our data) rather than reflecting genuine simultaneity in the origin of species, or genuine partitioning of animals into distinct non-hierarchical units. As more and more data is gathered, the polytomies fall away.If IDists (or other creationists) could find REAL polytomies at the base of each "kind" of animal, then they might be able to present this as evidence against evolution. But don't hold your breath!MickThis message has been edited by mick, 06-03-2005 12:51 PM

Nice work Mick.
Explain how science recognizes ignorance in these matters so that others can gain an improved perspective on their own ignorance.

Yes this is where they could look. They would not be looking for "unevolvability" but evolution not in nature yet in geography. The figure of such a creature can be cognized at present as something between a dolphin and a seal. This might be a deme or it might be a species. I can not say as of yet.Croizat's method if it was worked on as a method might provide an unbiasable tool to sort out the forms. I have my own ideas on how this might be accomplished but for it to be useful in science the differences that currently exist in the literature need to be "ironed" out.It seems that baraminologists might be well on their creationist way of not simply finding populations that "don't fit" but rather will constuct their own hierarchy.I suppose comparing the various schemes of taxaonomy, niches, and biogeographies one might figure out if there were monos that are not merely sisters or outlyers in the phlylogenetic sense but I would be getting ahead of myself.The answer is a purely visual one, as to if the produced forms can be sorted or not, not if the prior continuum was naturally or artifically selected or man-made, either.Geometry would have to give way to Algebra for this idea at the Hutchinsonian "clevage" plane to take however. I have never seen this attempted in the literature.