Intelligent Design Creationism

It's been hard to follow the flow from one topic to another, but I'll try with an all-purpose response.On the proportion of evidence available for both theories:
1. Measuring it by the amount of scientists or evidence available to each side would be very fuzzy numbers. It's hard to make a somewhat accurate estimate on that area.
2. If only evolution is taught even with its criticisms, then its evolution vs. itself, which would inevitably grant a "sacred dogma" position to evolution.
3. Having competing theories creates an overall benefit. If each theory has to adapt itself to the challenges of the other theory, then both theories are improved as a result. Whereas if you run a monopoly, very bad things can start to happen (ie: Microsoft).On different forms of evolution and ID:
1. The form of ID that the Center for Science and Culture advocates directly contrasts neo-Darwinism, the prominent form of evolution. The scientists I quoted were specifically supporting this type of intelligent design (unless you want to argue that the web page from the Center for Science and Culture is internally inconsistent).
2. Arguing that ID and evolution are compatible doesn't make much sense. There may be a little bit of compatibility, but overall, this is as bad as trying to argue that economy and environment are compatible.

Like I said before, it is hard to track this from one topic to the next, especially when it happens in multiple posts. I'll try my best here, but there's no guarantees. I'll also mentioned what I've already covered in Message 128.Message 123:
"On the proportion of evidence available for both theories" covers the idea of proportional time.Message 124:
"On different forms of evolution and ID" covers this, but I'll add some more.
In general Intelligent Design, in whatever form it is, should clash with Evolution (or neo-Darwinism, as it is prevalent today). Nitpicking about similarities between the two is like nitpicking about the similarities between economic growth and environmental growth. The major clash is purpose vs. no purpose.Message 125:
When you talk about evidence again, it comes back to teaching time being based on available evidence, so cross-apply "On the proportion of evidence available for both theories"
The whole point of bringing in some of those quotes from the Center for Science and Culture is to show how evolution isn't as dominant as you think. Give me some time and I'll work on a more comprehensive summary of evidence for ID, but for now I'll basically say this: intelligent design works a lot like sciences like forensics and archaeology. Are those arrowheads a random geologic formation or trinkets made by an ancient time? Are there signs in the crime scene of the criminal at work? So, in that respect, intelligent design is nothing new. Of course, that has very little breadth and is too basic, but it'll have to work for now.edit: If I'm going ahead and composing a comprehensive list of evidence, I might as well start a new topic. That will work well since you won't be available much for a while. Stay tuned until then. I have a lot else to do, so it's going to take a while.This message has been edited by commike37, 03-23-2005 10:28 PM

That other topic seems to be quieting down so I'll move on over here.Well, you could start out with a brief history of intelligent design from Plato to Paley to today. Then you could start getting into some basics of modern ID, especially Dembski's explanatory filter. Don't forget to specifically explain that modern ID can't ID (unintended pun) the designer. Throw in some of the accomplishments of ID (like the discovery that junk DNA may not be junk). After that, segway into the modern ID-evolution controversy. That's a cursory draft of a possible curriculum. Also remember that it doesn't have to go too far into detail as well. Biology class was never meant to be an authorative reference on evolution or ID (those who would want to delve further into evolution or ID would probably have to do so on their own time). I doubt that any of the advanced arguments I've seen here have come from biology class.

First off, the history of ID was moreso to give some background on the subject. It wasn't supposed to be the meat of the content, it's just an intro to segway into modern ID theory. (edit: it could also include the design scientists who existsed up until the rise of evolution) Oh, I see, it's always blame it on the Christian right. They're the cause of all the problems in the world. These scientists who work with ID try to make some positive progress, and if they have a personal faith, they try to keep it separate from their scientific work. And yet despite all they try to do, all you can do is dismiss it as a religious/political controversy. Have you taken into account that there may also be some people who believe in ID that are not from the Christian right? Not only is this comment fallacious in multiple ways (two of them are a generalization and ad hominem), but I find it personally offensive when this controversy is constantly blamed on the "Christian right." There's a nice little unsupported assertion. Do you want to bring a scientific challenge to this filter? In fact, do you bring in a single piece of evidence or a logical attack that doesn't involve the word "political" or "religious"?This message has been edited by commike37, 04-19-2005 03:54 PM

First off, despite the requests I receive for evidence, rarely do I see the people making these requests use evidence before they make this request. But that's just my observation...Anyway, people do use Dembski's explanatory filter. It's a huge part of modern ID right now, so you can come to expect that it will be used even more in the future.

quote:

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     Response to ACLU ID FAQ: Part 4
Note: The author is Casey Luskin, writing in the first-person.
Regarding original research, this is a complete bluff. In 2002, over 50 leading proponents of intelligent design gathered at Biola University for the RAPID (Research and Progress in Intelligent Design) conference where I attended. I witnessed numerous researchers who presented papers on protein specificity, and using Dembski's explanatory filter, found that many biological systems bear exceedingly high levels of complex and specified information, implying they are the result of design. All of these presenters presented their own lab research which they personally conducted.

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Granted, the explantory filter may not be 100% perfect, but science is a constant process of revising and improving your work, as perfection in science is the unreachable holy grail. I doubt evolution as presented in Origin of Species is an accurate scientific portrayal today (many counter-arguments to it and counter-counter arguments and so on have been developed). However, the explantory filter is making some real progress in the world of ID.

I will admit that it is hard to find published examples (but that's an entirely different subject, or maybe I'm just not looking in the right spots), but a biology class wouldn't have the time to analyze such applications case-by-case. For the purpose of biology class, it would probably be enough to know that the explanatory filter exists, explain how it works, and then know that people do use it (and then dig up an example or two of it). Just like the biology class would present criticism of evolution, it could also present criticisms of the explanatory filter as well.Second, even though that evidence doesn't contain any actual examples, it still is evidence. You would have a lower burden of refutation since I didn't bring up any specific examples, but that doesn't mean you don't have a burden of refutation. It's quite odd. Your evidence refers to the "straw man," but the use of the bacterial flagellum example to prove that it's impossible to calculate the probability of chance is by itself a straw man. OK, maybe Dembski did mess up his calculations with the flagellum, but does that mean we can't calculate the chance of anything? Your comment on assuming design by default doesn't hold much weight as well. I could easily turn this and argue that evolution assumes chance by default, so this is non-unique. Or, I could point out that specified complexity is a two-fold criterion (speficied and complex). Considering that something has to meet a criterion to be design, I wouldn't exactly call that design by default.The explanatory filter isn't the flaw you made it out to be. Some of the finer details of it will be hashed out and debated by scientists, but you can't put up a good enough case that the explanatory filter is so flawed that we can't teach it at all in the classroom.

So you want to claim without any evidence to prove this that Luskin lied and that all of these examples were fabricated?

This is basically a repeat of what you just said in the last post, and what I refuted in my last post. I'm not going to refute this again. Here's what the evidence says: Dembski can not calculate the probability of chance for the backerial flagellum.
Here's what you say: Noone can calculate the probability of chance for anything.
Whether you want to consider that straw man or any other logical fallacy, it's still a logic leap. Once again, you're just repeating what you previously said, rather than contributing something new, but I'll go ahead and refute this further. Although there are a lot of possibilities as to how something could have happened, many of these can be discounted because the probability is so minutely small (it's like we have a million grains of sand). What we instead must consider is the more probably ideas. Sure, we lose some accuracy doing this, but if the calculations lead to a 10*-20 probability when we only need a 10*-10, then that margin of error would be a nonfactor.Furthermore, specified complexity (meaning both specified and complex) is the criterion for design. If it fails this criterion it falls into chance. Being specified but not complex would fail the criterion and fall into chance, so evolution would really be a subset of chance, rather than being excluded from the explanatory filter. You could argue that we have insufficient information to make the calculations for the EF in a specific case, but that shouldn't generalize to say the EF is wrong in all scenarios. Insufficient information is simply not having enough information to use the EF (in situation X only), not a fatal flaw to the EF itself. I'm glad to see that you can refute what I said in a one-word, unexplained response. Sure, you can list these flaws, we can debate them, but are any of them a true science-stopper? There's a difference between being not perfect and being fatally flawed. Neither evolution or ID are perfect, so we give them their proper treatment and teach the controversy in our schools. It's perfectly fine for opposite sides to hold their own opinions (even experts disagree). However, to exclude a certain form or origins science does not just mean that it's inferior, it means that it is completey and undoubtedly unscientific. You can nitpick mistakes with the EF here or there, but you can't prove it be completely and undoubtedly unscientific.